Wagstaffe, afterwards Mrs. Berry, had procured credentials for the young Anglo-Frenchman from some eminently Protestant friends in London. Acting under her counsels—and why these were so ready, and why so much aid of other kinds was afforded by her, needs not to be told to those who know the rest—Hardwick had gained the good opinion of her Evangelical friends by a device, not then so ordinary as it has since become, and one by which many an admirable and conscientious English woman has been deceived, and has deserved no reproach for her error. It is only those who know the intense conviction held by thousands, that the creed of Rome is the way to hell, who can fairly appreciate the eager zeal with which such believers welcome a Catholic who appears open to an effort for his conversion. Even now, when foreign adventurers have worked this mine until one would think its last lode was exhausted, we occasionally find a profligate and plebeian scoundrel, to whom no vice is unknown, succeeding, by dint of lying avowal that he is dissatisfied with the teachings of the Roman Catholic Church, and desirous of a more “vital” faith, in obtaining access to the homes of England, and in securing a favouritism which would be far more cautiously extended to a Englishman of social position. The police of France and England can tell strange tales of many who have sat, and even yet sit “at good men’s feasts.” But at the time in question, the game was not so often or so vulgarly played, and it is not to be imputed as a heavy fault to those who, prepared by Miss Wagstaffe’s representations, received the handsome, thoughtful, and interesting young doubter, Ernest Hardwick, and, touched by his candour and zeal for truth, became the Aquilas and Priscillas to the convert, but aided him to procure such employment as should render him independant of the tyrannical priests, to whom he described himself as an unwilling slave. He came to Mrs. Spagley’s with testimonials which brought the tears into the eyes of that well-meaning custodian of so many future wives and mothers.
But he did not come alone. With him came a companion, a Frenchman, younger than himself, who had been his victim in Paris, at a time when Henri Amyot was dissipating a handsome inheritance in the ordinary courses of a young gentleman’s ruin. It was Hardwick who, while plundering his friend, did him the deeper wrong of demoralising him, and of converting a careless, self-indulgent, but not very profligate boy into a premature debauchee, and, finally, into a criminal who had placed himself within reach of the law. When Amyot’s means were gone, and he was in a position of danger that rendered him useless to Ernest, the latter would have discarded Henri, and left him to his fate. But they were not to part company so easily, for the pupil had learned something from his master, enough to make Henri a most inconvenient enemy. Later in life, Adair, as he subsequently called himself, might have disposed of this difficulty in some bold fashion of his own. But he was then young and had not entirely divested himself of the natural affections. They had been friends before they were fellow-criminals, and there was something in the gentle and confiding character of Henri Amyot,—something in the almost childlike trust which he at first reposed in Adair,—which made Ernest reluctant to abandon to utter ruin the lad whom he had so deeply injured. Through all Amyot’s vice there was a sentiment, lacking to Adair’s, and even when Amyot was revelling in the wildest excesses, he managed to tinge them with a touch of romance, which, if it did not render them less hateful, might have excused some slight pity for the fanciful and impassioned Henri. Let it have been the tie which is so often formed by the conviction of superiority, or let it have been any temporary sensation of remorse, there was something that forbad Adair to cast away his weak and gentle associate into the abyss, and though he but withdrew Henri from one atmosphere of guilt to steep him in another, Ernest permitted his friend to cling to him, and the image of that fair young face, with its deep blue eyes and pensive expression, was perhaps the least depraved of the images which set out the temple of Adair’s ungodly worship.
He brought Henri to England with him, and what such friendship as Adair’s could do for him was done. Its best effort was but to give Amyot chances similar to those which Adair worked so well. But Amyot was indolent by constitution, and his nature, libertine as he was, recoiled from many a scheme which his master set before him. Henri, though he dared not avow it to the scoffing Adair, had a dream of extricating himself from the slough, and of uniting himself to some exquisitely good and beautiful English girl, of fortune and of piety, who might enable him to pass the rest of his life in an extreme of luxury, but a luxury elevated into poetry, and refined by purity. It was a modest aspiration for the pupil of Ernest Adair, but it was genuine. And when Amyot was established in England, where vicious indulgence was not only not forced upon him, but was scarcely attainable, his purpose strengthened. Poor boy, he took the best course that he knew. He made a vow of virtue, and he addressed himself to the study of religion—such religion as stealthily read books of Catholic theology taught, and which he adapted and improved to suit his own tastes by an admixture of a poetry which would have scandalised the authors of his manuals. At this time he enjoyed the only happiness of his brief and wasted life.
For, at this time, when his heart was softened, and even improved by his religious ponderings, and by his withdrawal from the debasing associations of other days, he was introduced, through Adair’s means, to Laura Vernon.
The beautiful girl, just emerging into womanhood, and though happy, restless, too, from the sense that her happiness has yet to be complete and defined, was nearly the ideal of Amyot’s dream of an English maiden. Her heart, her person, her sweetness of disposition, her gentle yet sensitive nature were all that he could wish, and he believed that his religious efforts had found favour, and that his destiny was to be happy. Ardent and trustful, he at once accepted the representations of Adair that the father of Laura was a man of boundless wealth, which he was hoarding