limited means. The poor girls had not, in their earlier life, been surrounded by the comforts which children accept without recognition; and which, supplied by those who love them, leave their young hearts at liberty to devise ornaments and amusements. For far too many a year it had been matter of thankfulness, or perhaps I had better write, of congratulation, if the day were got through without any particular annoyance, and the meals of the household were not palpably deficient in something usually esteemed a necessary. The ordinary combats with the tradesfolk, and the occasional campaign when millinery wants could be resisted no longer, and dress must be managed somehow, had left poor Beatrice and Bertha very regardless of flowers, birds, embroideries, and pictures, and the thousand and one dainty little signs that mark the habitation of happy girlhood. With Laura the case was somewhat different, as her removal from a scene of strife and penury to one of comparative comfort, had taken place at an earlier part of her life, and the child speedily acquired the tastes and sympathies of those of her own age. Beatrice and Bertha clung to their thumbed and sentimental novels, to their shifty ways and general untidiness, while Laura became rangée, thoughtful, orderly, and fond of adorning her home as if it were a place to live in, not one meant merely to get through life in. But this difference created no estrangement among the sisters, for whom their common troubles had created perhaps stronger ties than belong to sisterhood—that connection apparently so close, and yet so easily and completely sundered by changed circumstances—and a truer alliance could not have been discovered than existed between Beatrice, Bertha, and Laura Vernon. While they resided at Lipthwaite their intimacy was unbroken, and when both the elder girls married, which they easily did, to the surprise and indignation of many better-dowered maidens of Lipthwaite, neither husbands nor children, nor that more potent solvent of affection, rivalry in the world, produced alienation of feeling between them. When Laura, at nineteen, succeeded in appropriating to herself the heart and hand of the handsome Arthur Lygon, and was removed to her London home, the loneliness of Lipthwaite became insupportable by her father, and with the assent of the surviving Miss Judson—the elder had departed, bequeathing some kindly evidences that her heart had been less stern than her professions—Vernon again settled in the neighbourhood of London, but this time in a pleasant boarding-house, where he was much admired for his bright eyes and fluency of language, and where he had ample opportunity, at most comfortable dinners and over excellent wine, both costing him nothing, of proving to successions of amused guests that the world was thoroughly wicked, and that all its institutions were utterly detestable.
Thus far went Mr. Berry’s information. How much farther may be seen hereafter, but men of his vocation seldom tell all that they know.
Had Mr. Berry ever heard of a scene like this?
It was night—but not far into the night of a cheerless day late in October—when a man, whose rapid movement betokened his youth, forced his way through the carelessly kept hedge at the end of a long garden, in the country, and, pausing for a moment to assure himself that he had caused no alarm to a powerful house-dog which he knew to be kenneled near the other extremity of the garden, made his way to an arbour, which, but that it was boarded and roofed with thatch, would have been bleak and bare enough that drear and all but wintry night. The feeble rays of a rising moon afforded him uncertain guidance, but he trod as one who well knew his way, for all his stealthy entrance; but he had either the art of a cat-like tread, or was very lightly shod, for his foot paces could scarcely have been heard by a listener.
Yet there was a certain recklessness in his next act—unless it arose from habitual inability to deny himself any enjoyment that occurred to him as desirable.
Feeling his way into the arbour, and taking his seat on a bench, he took out a match and struck it. It flashed and expired, and he muttered, but not angrily, a French oath, and struck a second match, with which he carefully lit a cigarette.
Having finished this, without moving, he looked impatiently towards the house, and in an under key rather chanted than sang a vaudeville couplet intimating that though
“Woman keeps us waiting now,
She shall wait for us to-morrow.”
And after some further manifestations of impatience, the stranger drew from his pocket one of those convenient continental inventions in which candle and candlestick are made to shut up in the smallest compass, and he lit his taper, placed it before him on a little table, and, taking out a tiny volume, began to read.
A spectator, had there been one, would now have had a good opportunity of observing the person who conducted himself so coolly.
He was, as has been said, young, and well made, and but for the intense and settled paleness of his face, might have been called something more than handsome. There was intellect, of a keen order, though far from the highest, in the delicate features, the somewhat square and closely shaven face, and the lofty forehead, from which he had removed a kind of military cap, thus disclosing what remained to him of shortly cut black hair, smoothly laid, it might seem with a view of exhibiting that fine forehead to the best advantage. The lips were very red, and somewhat compressed, and on the upper one was a small black moustache, an addition to the effect of a face which, though an Englishman’s, was Parisian in its finesse. His dark, deeply set eyes glistened in the light of the taper, which also showed, resting on the table, a white small hand, with a glittering ring—the other hand was in a black glove. The stranger’s dress, too, was black, and his frock-coat was buttoned at his neck, soldier fashion. But, be it again said, for the pallor of the face, it was one upon which you would at first look with a pleasure, which might not be permanent.
The spectator would have needed to be rapid, however, in his observation, for in a few moments light and hurrying footsteps were heard, and a