"I don't know whether you are serious, but it is quite true. I don't wish any unpleasantness between us. I don't think I need say more than that; having thought it over, I don't see how it could ever be."

"Will you give me your reasons?"

"I really don't see that I can add anything in particular to what I have said."

"I think, Mr. Arden, considering all that has pa.s.sed between us on this subject, that you are _bound_ to let me know your reasons for so marked a change of opinion."

"I can't agree with you, Mr. Longcluse. I don't see in the least why I need tell you my particular reasons for the opinion I have expressed. My sister can act for herself, and I certainly shall not account to you for my reasons or opinions in the matter."

Mr. Longcluse's pale face grew whiter, and his brows knit, as he fixed a momentary stare on the young man; but he mastered his anger, and said in a cold tone--

"We disagree totally upon that point, and I rather think the time will come when you _must_ explain."

"I have no more to say upon the subject, Sir, except this," said Arden, very tartly, "that it is certain your hopes can never lead to anything, and that I object to your continuing your visits at Mortlake."

"Why, the house does not belong to you--it belongs to Sir Reginald Arden, who objects to your visits and receives mine. Your ideas seem a little confused," and he laughed gently and coldly.

"Very much the reverse, Sir. I object to my sister being exposed to the least chance of annoyance from your visits. I protest against it, and you will be so good as to understand that I distinctly forbid them."

"The young lady's father, I presume, will hardly ask your advice in the matter, and _I_ certainly shall not ask your leave. I shall call when I please, so long as I am received at Mortlake, and shall direct my own conduct, without troubling you for counsel in my affairs." Mr. Longcluse laughed again icily.

"And so shall I, mine," said Arden sharply.

"You have no right to treat anyone so," said Longcluse angrily--"as if one had broken his honour, or committed a crime."

"A crime!" repeated Richard Arden. "Oh! _That_, indeed, would pretty well end all relations."

"Yes, as, perhaps, you shall find," answered Longcluse, with sudden and oracular ferocity.

Each gentleman had gone a little farther than he had at first intended.

Richard Arden had a proud and fierce temper when it was roused. He was near saying what would have amounted to insult. It was a chance opening of the door that prevented it. Both gentlemen had stood up.

"Please, Sir, have you done with the room, Sir?" asked the man.

"Yes," said Longcluse, and laughed again as he turned on his heel.

"Because three gentlemen want the room, if it's not engaged, Sir. And Lord Wynderbroke is waiting for you, please, Mr. Arden."

So with a little toss of his head, which he held unusually high, and a flushed and "glooming" countenance, Richard Arden marched a little swaggeringly forth, to his dinner _tete-a-tete_ with Lord Wynderbroke.

CHAPTER XXVIII.

STORIES ABOUT MR. LONGCLUSE.

The irritation of this unpleasant interview soon subsided, but Mr.

Longcluse's anxiety rather increased.

Next day early in the afternoon he drove to Lady May's and she received him just as usual. He learned from her, without appearing to seek the information, that Alice Arden was still at Mortlake. His visit was one of but two or three minutes. He jumped into a hansom and drove out to Mortlake. He knocked. Man of the world as he was, his heart beat faster.

"Is Miss Arden at home?"

"No, Sir."

"Not at home?"

"Miss Arden is gone out, Sir."

"Oh! perhaps in the garden?"

"No, Sir; she has gone out, and won't be back for some time."

The man spoke with the prompt.i.tude and decision of a servant instructed to deny his mistress to the visitor. He had not a card; he would call again another day.

He heard the piano faintly, and, he thought, Alice's voice also; and certainly he saw Vivian Darnley in the drawing-room window, as his cab turned away from the door. With a swelling heart he drove into town. The portcullis, then, had fallen; access was denied him; and he should see her no more!

Good Heaven! what had he done? He walked distractedly, for a while, up and down his study. Should he employ Lady May's intervention, and tell her the whole story? Good-natured Lady May! Perhaps she would undertake his cause, and plead for his re-admission. But was even that so certain?

How could he tell what view she might take of the matter? And were she to intercede for him ever so vehemently, how could he tell that she had any chance of prevailing?

No; on the whole it was better to be his own advocate. He would sit down then and there, and write to the offended or alarmed lady, and lay his piteous case before her in his own words and rely on her compa.s.sion, without an intervenient.

How many letters he began, how many he even finished, and rejected, I need not tire you by telling. Some were composed in the first, others in the third person. Not one satisfied him. Here was the man of a million and more, who would dash off a note to his stock-broker, to buy or sell a hundred thousand pounds' worth of stock--who would draft a resolution of the bank of which he was the chairman, directing an operation which would make men open their eyes, without the tremor of a nerve or the hesitation of a moment--unmanned, helpless, distracted in the endeavour to write a note to a young and inexperienced girl!

O beautiful s.e.x! what a triumph is here! O Love! what fools will you not make of us poor masculine wiseacres! The letter he dispatched was in these terms. I daresay he had torn better ones to pieces:--

"DEAR MISS ARDEN,--I had hoped that my profound contrition might have atoned for a momentary indiscretion--the declaration, though in terms the most respectful, of feelings which I had not self-command sufficient to suppress, and which had for nearly a year remained concealed in my own breast. I am sure, Miss Arden, that you are incapable of a gratuitous cruelty. Have I not sworn that one word to recall the remembrance of that, to me, all but fatal madness shall never escape my lips, in your presence? May I not entreat that you will forget it, that you will forbear to pa.s.s upon me the agonising sentence of exclusion? You shall never again have to complain of my uttering one word that the merest acquaintance, who is permitted the happiness of conversing with you, might not employ. You shall never regret your forbearance. I shall never cease to bless you for it; and whatever decision you arrive at, it shall be respected by me as sacred law. I shall never cease to reverence and bless the hand that spares or--afflicts me. May I be permitted this one melancholy hope, may I be allowed to interpret your omitting to answer this miserable letter as a concession of its prayer? Unless forbidden, I will endeavour to construe your silence as oblivion.

"I have the honour to remain, dear Miss Arden, with deep compunction and respect, but not altogether without hope in your mercy,

"Yours the most unhappy and distracted man in England,

"WALTER LONGCLUSE."

Mr. Longcluse sealed this letter in its envelope, and addressed it. He would have liked to send it that moment, by his servant, but an odd shyness prevented. He did not wish his servants to conjure and put their heads together over it; he could not endure the idea; so with his own hand he dropped it in the post. Somewhat in the style of the old novel was this composition of Mr. Longcluse's--a little theatrical, and, one would have fancied, even affected; yet never was man more desperately sincere.

Night came, and brought no reply. Was no news good news, or would the morning bring, perhaps from Richard Arden, a withering answer? Morning came, and no answer: what was he to conjecture?

That day, in Grosvenor Square, he pa.s.sed Richard Arden, who looked steadily and sternly a little to his right, and _cut_ him.

It was a marked and decided cut. His ears tingled as if he had received a slap in the face. So things had a.s.sumed a very decided att.i.tude indeed! Longcluse felt very oddly enraged, at first; then anxious. It was insulting that Richard Arden should have taken the initiative in dissolving relations. But had he not been himself studiously impertinent to Arden, in that brief colloquy of yesterday? He ought to have been prepared for this. Without explanation, and the shaking of hands, it was impossible that relations of amity should have been resumed between them. But Longcluse had been entirely absorbed by a threatened alienation that affected him much more nearly. There was a thesis for conjecture in the situation, which made him still more anxious. A very little time would probably clear all up.

He was walking homeward, saying to himself as he went, "No, I shall find no answer; I should be a fool to fancy anything else;" and yet walking all the more quickly, as he approached his house, in the hope of the very letter which he affected, to himself, to have quite rejected as an impossibility. Some letters had come, but none from Mortlake. His letter to Alice was still unanswered. He was now in the agony of suspense and distraction.

The same evening Richard Arden was talking about him, as he leaned with his elbow on the mantelpiece at Mortlake. He and Alice were alone in the drawing-room, awaiting the arrival of the little dinner-party. This, as you know, was to include Lord Wynderbroke, before whose advances, in Richard Arden's vision, Mr. Longcluse had waned, and even become an embarra.s.sment and a nuisance.