"Whatever you please, my own."

"I could get away by four."

"Then I will stay at home for you."

He left her reluctantly, and she followed him to the head of the stairs, and hung over the bal.u.s.ters as if she would like to fly after him.

He turned at the street-door, saw that radiant and gentle face beaming after him, and they kissed hands to each other by one impulse, as if they were parting for ever so long.

He had gone scarcely half an hour when a letter, addressed to her, was left at the door by a private messenger.

"Any answer?" inquired the servant.

"No."

The letter was sent up, and delivered to her on a silver salver.

She opened it; it was a thing new to her in her young life--an anonymous letter.

"MISS BRUCE--I am almost a stranger to you, but I know your character from others, and cannot bear to see you abused. You are said to be about to marry Sir Charles Ba.s.sett. I think you can hardly be aware that he is connected with a lady of doubtful repute, called Somerset, and neither your beauty nor your virtue has prevailed to detach him from that connection.

"If, on engaging himself to you, he had abandoned her, I should not have said a word. But the truth is, he visits her constantly, and I blush to say that when he leaves you this day it will be to spend the afternoon at her house.

"I inclose you her address, and you can learn in ten minutes whether I am a slanderer or, what I wish to be,

"A FRIEND OF INJURED INNOCENCE."

CHAPTER V.

SIR CHARLES was behind his time in Mayfair; but the lawyer and his clerk had not arrived, and Miss Somerset was not visible.

She appeared, however, at last, in a superb silk dress, the broad l.u.s.ter of which would have been beautiful, only the effect was broken and frittered away by six rows of gimp and fringe. But why blame her?

This is a blunder in art as universal as it is amazing, when one considers the amount of apparent thought her s.e.x devotes to dress. They might just as well score a fair plot of velvet turf with rows of box, or tattoo a blooming and downy cheek.

She held out her hand, like a man, and talked to Sir Charles on indifferent topics, till Mr. Oldfield arrived. She then retired into the background, and left the gentlemen to discuss the deed. When appealed to, she evaded direct replies, and put on languid and imperial indifference. When she signed, it was with the air of some princess bestowing a favor upon solicitation.

But the business concluded, she thawed all in a moment, and invited the gentlemen to luncheon with charming cordiality. Indeed, her genuine _bonhomie_ after her affected indifference was rather comic. Everybody was content. Champagne flowed. The lady, with her good mother-wit, kept conversation going till the lawyer was nearly missing his next appointment. He hurried away; and Sir Charles only lingered, out of good-breeding, to bid Miss Somerset good-by. In the course of leave-taking he said he was sorry he left her with people about her of whom he had a bad opinion. "Those women have no more feeling for you than stones. When you lay in convulsions, your housekeeper looked on as philosophically as if you had been two kittens at play--you and Polly."

"I saw her."

"Indeed! You appeared hardly in a condition to see anything."

"I did, though, and heard the old wretch tell the young monkey to water my lilac dress. That was to get it for her Polly. She knew I'd never wear it afterward."

"Then why don't you turn her off?"

"Who'd take such a useless old hag, if I turned her off?"

"You carry a charity a long way."

"I carry everything. What's the use doing things by halves, good or bad?"

"Well, but that Polly! She is young enough to get her living elsewhere; and she is extremely disrespectful to you."

"That she is. If I wasn't a lady, I'd have given her a good hiding this very day for her cheek!"

"Then why not turn her off this very day for her cheek?"

"Well, I'll tell you, since you and I are parted forever. No, I don't like."

"Oh, come! No secrets between friends."

"Well, then, the old hag is--my mother."

"What?"

"And the young jade--is my sister."

"Good Heavens!"

"And the page--is my little brother."

"Ha, ha, ha!"

"What, you are not angry?"

"Angry? no. Ha, ha, ha!"

"See what a hornets' nest you have escaped from. My dear friend, those two women rob me through thick and thin. They steal my handkerchiefs, and my gloves, and my very linen. They drink my wine like fishes.

They'd take the hair off my head, if it wasn't fast by the roots--for a wonder."

"Why not give them a ten-pound note and send them home?"

"They'd pocket the note, and blacken me in our village. That was why I had them up here. First time I went home, after running about with that little scamp, Vandeleur--do you know him?"

"I have not the honor."

"Then your luck beats mine. One thing, he is going to the dogs as fast as he can. Some day he'll come begging to me for a fiver. You mark my words now."

"Well, but you were saying--"

"Yes, I went off about Van. Polly _says_ I've a mind like running water. Well, then, when I went home the first time--after Van, mother and Polly raised a virtuous howl. 'All right,' said I--for, of course, I know how much virtue there is under _their_ skins. Virtue of the lower orders! Tell that to gentlefolks that don't know them. I do. I've been one of 'em--'I know all about that,' says I. 'You want to share the plunder, that is the sense of your virtuous cry.' So I had 'em up here; and then there was no more virtuous howling, but a deal of virtuous thieving, and modest drinking, and pure-minded selling of my street-door to the highest male bidder. And they will corrupt the boy; and if they do, I'll cuts their black hearts out with my riding-whip.

But I suppose I must keep them on; they are my own flesh and blood; and if I was to be ill and dying, they'd do all they knew to keep me alive--for their own sakes. I'm their milch cow, these country innocents."