my foolish Blanche, talk absurd nonsense about being a wretched slave —a slave with fifteen hundred and upwards per annum-how can I reply otherwise than I do? You wouldn't like to take off that pretty muslin-trimmed with real Valenciennes I perceive-or that sweet thing in bonnets; you wouldn't like to exchange Patterson's boots for the conventional beggar-woman's ragged sandals, or Sir Jasper Denison's hospitality for the casual ward in Roxborough Union. My Blanche, above all things let us be sensible. You owe me every thing. I claim something. You received the half-yearly payment of your income a few weeks ago; never mind how I know it, since I do know it. I want three hundred and fifty pounds."

Mrs. Harding shook her head.

"It is quite impossible," she said. "I paid my milliner a very heavy account before I left London, and I owe a good deal to different people." "I am sorry to hear that you have been so extravagant. But I must have the three-fifty-that is to say, the Jews must have it."

"I tell you again it is quite impossible," answered the widow in a dogged manner that was quite foreign to Sir Jasper's enchantress.

"And I deeply regret to be obliged to remark for the third time that I must have the money," returned Mr. Holroyde presently. "Your own life has been happily so remarkably exempt from trouble, that you have no idea what importunate fellows the Jews are. I can't say, by the way, that I have received any wonderful indulgence from the Christians; but when a man is down in the world, it's always a safe thing for him to fasten his difficulties upon the Jews. I suppose it's the old business of the scapegoat over again. But to return to those unpleasant moutons of ours: I really must have the three-fifty."

"But if I haven't got the money-"

"Oh, I think you will find the money. If you can't manage to oblige me just now, when you are living at free quarters here with our dear Sir Jasper, when are you likely to be able to oblige me? My dearest Blanche, don't let us be nonsensical. You know you must give me the money. Wouldn't it be much wiser to give it with a good grace ?"

The widow's handsome head drooped on her breast in an attitude of sullen despair. So might the Clytemnestra of Eschylus have looked when she stood beside her victim's bath waiting till it should be time to throw the fatal net about that kingly form. But Mr. Holroyde was most serenely indifferent to dark looks. He wore a handsome cameoring on one of his tapering fingers, and he amused himself by taking it off that finger and trying it on the others, with the air of having only that moment discovered what a handsome ring it was, and what charming fingers they were.

"Yes," said Mrs. Harding after a pause, "you are quite right, I must give you the money, and as much more as you choose to ask for. Of course you will take care not to make me too desperate, for then I might really throw off the mask, and tell Godfrey Pierrepoint every

thing, and go out into the streets to beg or to die. You will keep the sword dangling above my miserable head, but you will take care the hair does not break. Have you ever read any stories about those wretched galley-slaves? I have. Now and then some desperate scoundrel escapes from Toulon. To do so is, I believe, something as nearly impossible as it very well can be; but there are men who do it. And then the creature goes back to Paris, where all his crimes have been committed, and the only place in which he can be happy; and he sets up some little low wine-shop-the White Rabbit, or the Red Mill, or something in that way, and is doing well, and has saved money, when one day an old comrade drops in and calls for his choppe, and recognises the landlord. You know what the comrade does, Mr. Holroyde. He talks about that 'gulf' of a place out yonder, and he is very friendly, and then on parting company he borrows a handful of francs, or a napoleon, as the case may be, and he goes away. But the White Rabbit has not seen the last of him. He comes again, and again, and again, and every time he comes he must have drink and money. He sprawls about the benches, and he spills his wine upon the floor, and he smokes in the faces of the sober customers, and sings vile songs, and he must have money before he will go away. And he comes again, and again, and again, till the wretched runaway thinks it would be better to have the old torture of the iron upon his leg and the southern sun beating down upon his head once more. I think the French call that sort of thing chantage, don't they, Mr. Holroyde?"

"I don't know any thing about it, my dear madam. I don't read third-rate French novels-horrible books, with smudgy engravings in the middle of the page, to say nothing of an inveterate limpness and a tendency to double-up suddenly, just as you are beginning to be interested. But, my dearest Blanche, the light is going; and if I am to do the civil to Sir Jasper Denison, I must go and look at his modern pictures. By the way, you will not forget that I want that three-fifty between this and nine o'clock. It happens fortunately that you have the feminine notion about bankers, and are in the habit of keeping your balance in the secret drawer of your dressing-case, or in your jewel-box, amongst those bracelets and brooches which represent the scalps of your victims. Between this and nine! Remember, I have a twelve-mile ride before I sleep to-night."

Mr. Holroyde and his companion were walking through the long gallery as he said this. The widow paused with her hand on the greenbaize door that communicated with the inhabited portion of the Abbey, and looked Arthur Holroyde full in the face with angry threatening eyes. "I wonder you are not afraid that I may murder you," she said in a low voice.

"Do you? My dear child, you ought really to give me credit for more penetration. The last thing in the world I have to fear is any overt act of violence from you. You are too fond of yourself. The

VOL. XV.

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fellows who commit your revengeful murders are unhappy desperate devils whose lives are not worth a halfpenny to them. Your life is worth fifteen hundred a-year, and you are a handsome woman; and Sir Jasper Denison admires you; and there is a very pretty little game to be played yet with the cards you hold in your hand. No, dear Blanche, I am not afraid of you. If you could get any one else to murder me, it would be a different thing; but we don't live in romantic Italy in the age of the Borgias; and the hireling assassin with the infallible dagger is not available. What nice times those were, by the bye! Do you remember what the woodcutter said when he saw Cæsar Borgia throw his brother's corpse into the Tiber? I shan't put myself out of the way about that,' said he; 'I see that sort of thing every day in the week.'”

Mr. Holroyde found Sir Jasper basking before a cheerful fire in the yellow drawing-room, whither the visitor was conducted by Mrs. Harding, who was the Baronet's bright Circe once more, and no longer the haggard Clytemnestra of the picture-gallery. The September evening was cool; and the yellow drawing-room was rendered all the more agreeable by that cosey fire. Mr. Holroyde approached the hearth as gaily as if he had just concluded the pleasantest interview possible between devoted friends, and began to talk Allan Cunningham and Charles Blanc for the Baronet's edification; while Mrs. Harding retired to dress for dinner.

The light was not good enough for the inspection of Sir Jasper's Ettys; so the two gentlemen lounged over the fire, talking very pleasantly, until they were disturbed by the entrance of Marcia and the curate, who was to dine at the Abbey after the performance of his duty.

"The vans have just departed, papa," said Marcia; "and the children were singing the Evening Hymn as they rode away. I can't tell you what a happy day it has been to them, or how much I owe to Mr. Silbrook's untiring exertions."

Poor Mr. Silbrook had exposed himself to a meridian sun and a September wind until his face was too red to be susceptible of becoming any redder, or he would have been covered with blushes as he acknowledged this compliment. While he was responding to Miss Denison in a husky murmur, Sir Jasper interrupted him.

"Marcia," he said, "let me introduce you to a friend of Mrs. Harding's, who is good enough to dine with us. My daughter Marcia, Mr.-Mr.-"

"Holroyde," suggested the visitor.

"My daughter, Mr. Holroyde. Mr. Silbrook, my friend and neighbour, Mr. Hol- Why, Marcia, what's the matter?"

She had turned suddenly away from the little group, and had sunk into the nearest chair. But she rose as her father spoke, and answered him quietly: "Nothing, papa. I am a little tired, and-I shall scarcely have time to dress."

She paused for a moment, looking steadily at Arthur Holroyde, as if she could not resist the impulse that prompted her to see what this man was like; and then she left the room very quietly, but so quickly that Mr. Silbrook, eager to open the door for her, plunged forward in the dusk and ran aground against a triangular ottoman.

Five minutes before the butler announced dinner, he was intruded upon in the sanctity of his pantry by breathless little Dorothy, who entreated him to inform Sir Jasper as quietly as he could that Miss Denison was too tired to return to the drawing-room, and would take a cup of tea in her own room.

"Which I do not hold with, giving dinners to charity-children, and making the servants'-hall unbearable with the smell of roast-beef, and the housekeeper's-room as damp and sticky as a laundry with the steam of plum-puddings," remarked the stately butler to Dorothy Tursgood.

Mr. Holroyde was considerably disappointed by the absence of the heiress; and a dull despair took possession of the curate when Sir Jasper coolly announced the fact of his daughter's fatigue. He had looked forward with such thrilling enjoyment to this banquet, to be shared with her. He ate his dinner without knowing what he was eating. The lights and the flowers and the glitter of silver and shimmer of fairy glass delighted him not. He dropped the ice in his soup, and spilt the salt in his wine; and the beautiful Marquise, in her wine-dark violet dress, was not there-not his marquise at least. Mrs. Harding occupied her old place on Sir Jasper's right hand, a little paler than usual, but with a languishing pensive air that charmed the Baronet; and she had contrived to dress herself to perfection in a demi-toilette of pale-gray silk relieved with delicate pink, and with one large half-shattered rose fastened amongst the luxuriance of her dark hair. It was a natural rose; and as she talked to Sir Jasper, the perfumed petals were scattered by a motion of her graceful head, and fluttered upon his shoulder in a little shower of sweetness. Perhaps the half-blown rose was what Balzac would have called a mouche.

Once in the course of the dinner there was a little pause in the conversation, and Mr. Holroyde, rousing himself as if from a reverie, exclaimed: "Oh, by the way, I wonder what has won the Leger. I am not a horsy' man, and indeed don't take the faintest interest in that sort of thing; but however indifferent a man is, he is apt to find himself wondering at this time in the evening."

He said this with his most graceful carelessness of manner; and his indifference was quite genuine. He was not a horsy man; no man who cares to be a hero amongst women ever is; and as to the racesomebody would be ruined no doubt, and somebody else would win a heap of money, and there would be a general shuffling of the cards, but no possible gain therefrom for Mr. Arthur Holroyde. How was he to guess that on that northern race-course there had been another hazard above and beyond the ordinary prizes and the ordinary hazards of the

meeting, and that a horse had run for no less a stake than the brilliant Arthur Holroyde's life-and had lost!

CHAPTER XXVII.

66 AND I—WHAT I SEEM TO MY FRIEND, YOU SEE !"

THE telegram that reached Roxborough in the September evening brought despair to the hearts of Henry Adolphus Dobb and his most dangerous adviser. The news came almost as quickly as it could come to the tobacconist's shop, where the two men sat pale and nervous, trying to look unconcerned, trying to carry matters with a high hand, and to smoke their cigars and talk lightly of general topics, but suffering a torture only second to that of the wretch who waits in the dock while a British jury deliberates upon his doom. A breathless boy came with the telegram. The tobacconist was horsy, and went shares with a sporting neighbour in the expense of the message. There were a good many men in the shop, privileged customers, all waiting for the same intelligence, and all failing dismally in the attempt to assume an easy and indifferent bearing. They pressed round the tobacconist as he tore open the envelope and read the message; but Dobb pushed fiercely through the little throng, and put his hand upon the man's shoulder, craning over him to look at the paper in his hand.

"Fly-by-night first, Heliogabalus second, Twopenny-Postman a bad

third."

And neither the lieutenant nor the clerk had backed the horse for a place they had backed him to win! They had set their lives upon "this little chance," like Dr. Mackay's Salamandrine, and had lost.

Mr. Dobb's face was of a dull livid complexion as he rejoined his companion, a little way outside the eager circle round the tobacconist. Gervoise Catheron had no need to ask any questions about the message; he could read the result of the race in the face of his friend. They went out into the street silently, and they had walked several yards before either spoke. They turned as if instinctively out of the bustling crowded High Street into that dismal little lane leading to the river, the dreary little lane in which Gervoise had walked with the brilliant widow some nine months before. Men in difficulty or despair seem to take to these dirty lanes and dark obscure alleys as naturally as a wild animal takes to his covert.

"This is a nice fix you've got me into!" the clerk said at last in a hoarse breathless manner.

"Don't say I've got you into it, Dobb, old fellow. Lord knows I didn't make the horse lose," pleaded the lieutenant, in whose tones there was some touch of fear. It is not pleasant for the tempter to encounter the reproaches of his victim. Surely once or so in the course of that dark life-drama Mephistopheles must have been ever so little afraid of Faust.

"No, but you told me he was safe to win," answered the clerk with