Mr. Hankes would like to have said something complimentary, something flattering, but it did not exactly occur to him how he was to do it.

To have exalted her heroism would be like a confession of his own poltroonery; to have seen any surprising evidence of boldness in her daring might possibly reflect upon her delicacy. He felt--none could have felt more thoroughly--that she was very courageous and very full of energy; but, somehow, these were humble aid to propagate that notion,--I had almost said that fallacy. "Only hear me out," said she, as he tried to interrupt "I began my duties in the most sanguine of all moods.

Heaven knows not what dreams I had of a land of abundance and content.

Well, I have seen the abundance,--the wealth has really poured in; every one is richer, better fed, clothed, housed, and cared for, and almost in an equal ratio are they grown more covetous, grasping, envious, and malevolent--You won't let me finish," cried she, as he showed an increasing impatience. "Well, perhaps, as we stroll along the cliffs to-morrow, you will be more disposed to listen; that is, if I have not already terrified you from accepting the companionship."

"Oh, no! by no means; but how are we to go,--do we drive?"

"Drive! why, my dear Mr. Hankes, it is only a Kerry pony has either legs or head for the path we must follow. Cast your eye along this coast-line; Jagged and fanciful as it looks, it conveys no notion of its rugged surface of rock, and its wild and darksome precipices. Take my word for it, you have as much to learn of the scenery as of the temperament of the land."

"But I'd like to go," repeated he, his accent being marvellously little in accordance with the sentiment.

"Nothing easier, sir. I'll give orders to have a pony--a most reliable pony--ready for you here to-morrow evening, when I shall expect you at tea."

Mr. Hankes bowed his grateful acknowledgments.

"I suspect, sir," said she, playfully, "that I have guessed your reason for this journey."

"My reason, my dear Miss Kellett," said he, in confusion,--"my reason is simply the pleasure and honor of _your_ company, and the opportunity of visiting an interesting scene with--with--with--"

"No matter for the compliment; but I began really to imagine that you wished to learn my secret of bargaining with the people; that you wanted to witness one of these contracts you have heard so much of. Well, sir, you shall have it: our sole secret is, we trust each other."

CHAPTER XV. A BRIDLE-PATH

Sybella Kellett was less than just when she said that the country which lay between the Hermitage and Bantry Bay had few claims to the picturesque. It may possibly have been that she spoke with reference to what she fancied might have been Mr. Hankes's judgment of such a scene.

There was, indeed, little to please an English eye,--no rich and waving woods, no smiling corn-fields, no expanse of swelling lawn or upland of deep meadow; but there was a wild and grand desolation, a waving surface fissured with deep clefts opening on the sea, which boomed in many a cavern far beneath. There were cliffs upright as a wall, hundreds of feet in height, on whose bare summits some rude remains were still traceable,--the fragment of a church, or shrine, or some lone cross, symbol of a faith that dated from centuries back. Heaths of many a gorgeous hue--purple, golden, and azure--clad a surface ever changing, and ferns that would have overtopped a tall horseman mingled their sprayey leaves with the wild myrtle and the arbutus. The moon was at her full as Sybella, accompanied by Mr. Hankes, and followed by an old and faithful groom,--a servant of her father's in times past,--took her way across this solitary tract.

If my reader is astonished that Mr. Hankes should have offered himself for such an expedition, it is but fair to state that the surprise was honestly shared in by that same gentleman. Was it that he made the offer in some moment of rash enthusiasm; had any impulse of wild chivalry mastered his calmer reason; was it that curious tendency which occasionally seems to sway Cockney natures to ascend mountains, cross dangerous ledges, or peep into volcanic craters? I really cannot aver that any of these was his actual motive, while I have my suspicion that a softer, a gentler, though a deeper sentiment influenced him on this occasion. Mr. Hankes--to use a favorite phrase of his own--"had frequent occasion to remark" Miss Kellett's various qualities of mind and intelligence; he had noticed in her the most remarkable aptitude for "business." She wrote and answered letters with a facility quite marvellous; details, however complicated, became by her treatment simple and easy; no difficulties seemed to deter her; and she possessed a gift--one of the rarest and most valuable of all--never to waste a moment on the impracticable, but to address herself, with a sort of intuition, at once, to only such means as could be rendered available.

Now, whether it was that Mr. Hankes anticipated a time when Mr. Dunn, in his greatness, might soar above the meaner cares of a business life,--when, lifted into the Elysian atmosphere of the nobility, he would look down with contemptuous apathy at the straggles and cares of enterprise,--or whether Mr. Hankes, from sources of knowledge available peculiarly to himself, knew that the fortunes of that great man were not built upon an eternal foundation, but shared in that sad lot which threatens all things human with vicissitude; whether stern facts and sterner figures taught him that all that splendid reputation, all that boundless influence, all that immense riches, might chance, one day or other, to be less real, less actual, and less positive than the world now believed them to be; whether, in a word, Mr. Hankes felt that Fortune, having smiled so long and so blandly on her favorite, might not, with that capriciousness so generally ascribed to her, assume another and very different aspect,--whatever the reason, in short, he deemed the dawn of his own day was approaching, and that, if only true to himself, Mr. Hankes was sure to be the man of the "situation,"--the next great star in the wide hemisphere that stretches from the Stock Exchange to--the Marshalsea, and includes all from Belgravia to Boulogne-sur-Mer.

Miss Kellett's abilities, her knowledge, her readiness, her tact, a certain lightness of hand in the management of affairs that none but a woman ever possesses, and scarcely one woman in ten thousand combines with the more male attributes of hard common-sense, pointed her out to Mr. Hankes as one eminently suited to aid his ambition. Now, men married for money every day in the week; and why not marry for what secured not alone money, but fame, station, and influence? Mr. Hankes was a widower; his own experience of married life had not been fortunate. The late Mrs.

Hankes was a genius, and had the infirmities of that unsocial class; she despised her husband, quarrelled with him, lampooned him in a book, and ran off with the editor of a small weekly review that eulogized her novel. It was supposed she died in Australia,--at least, she never came back again; and as the first lieutenant gravely confirms the sun's altitude when he mutters, "Make it noon," so Mr. Hankes, by as simple a fiat, said, "Make her dead," and none disputed him. At all events, he was a widower by brevet, and eligible to be gazetted a husband at any moment.

Miss Kellett possessed many personal attractions, nor was he altogether insensible to them; but he regarded them, after all, pretty much as the intended purchaser of an estate might have regarded an ornamental fish-pond or a flower-garden on the property,--something, in short, which increased the attraction, but never augmented the value. He was glad they were there, though they by no means would have decided him to the purchase. He knew, besides, that the world set a high price on these things, and he was not sorry to possess what represented value of any kind. It was always scrip, shares, securities, even, although one could not well say how, when, or where the dividend was to be paid.

There was another consideration, too, weighed materially with him. The next best thing, in Mr. Hankes's estimation, to marrying into a good connection, was to have none at all,--no brothers, no sisters-in-law, no cousins-german or otherwise, no uncles, aunts, or any good friends of parental degree. Now, except a brother in the Crimea,--with an excellent chance of being killed,--Sybella had none belonging to her. In the happy phrase of advertisements, she had no encumbrances. There was no one to insist upon this or that settlement; none to stipulate for anything in her favor; and these were, to his thinking, vast advantages. Out of these various considerations our reader is now to fashion some of the reasons which induced Mr. Hankes to undertake an excursion alike foreign to his taste and uncongenial to his habits; but as a placeman would not decline the disagreeables of a sea-voyage as the preliminary to reaching the colony he was to govern, so this gentleman consoled himself by thinking that it was the sole penalty attached to a very remunerative ambition.

If Sybella was not without some astonishment at his proposal to accompany her, she never gave herself the slightest trouble to explain the motive. She acceded to his wish from natural courtesy and the desire to oblige, and that was all. He had been uniformly polite and civil in all their intercourse; beyond that, he was not a person whose companionship she would have sought or cared for, and so they rode along, chatting indifferently of whatever came uppermost,--the scene, the road, the season, the condition of the few people who formed the inhabitants of this wild region, and how their condition might possibly be affected by the great changes then in progress near them.

Guarded and cautious as he was in all he said, Mr. Hankes could not entirely conceal how completely he separated, in his own mind, the success of the great scheme and the advantage that might accrue to the people; nor was she slow to detect this reservation. She took too true and just a view of her companion's temper and tone to approach this theme with the scruples that agitated herself, but at once said,--

"Let us suppose this scheme to be as prosperous as its best friends can wish it, Mr. Hankes; that you all--I mean you great folk, who are directors, chairmen, secretaries, and so forth--become as rich and powerful as you desire, see your shares daily increasing in value, your speculations more and more lucrative, what becomes of the people--the poor man--all this while?"

"Why, of course he participates in all these successes; he grows rich too; he sells what he has to sell at a better market, obtains higher wages for his labor, and shares all our prosperity."

"Granted. But who is to teach him the best use of this newly acquired prosperity? You, and others like you, have your tastes already formed; the channels are already made in which your affluence is to run: not so with him; abundance may--nay, it will--suggest waste, which will beget worse. Who are to be his guides,--who his examples?"

"Oh, as to that, his increase of fortune will suggest its own appropriate increase of wants. He will be elevated by the requirements of his own advancing condition, and even if he were not, it is not exactly any affair of ours; we do our part when we afford him the means of a higher civilization."

"I don't think so. I suspect that not alone do you neglect a duty, but that you inflict a wrong. But come, I will take another alternative; I will suggest--what some are already predicting--that the project will not prove a success."

"Who says that?" cried Hankes, hastily, and in his haste forgetting his habitual caution of manner.

"Many have said it. Some of those whose opinions I am accustomed to place trust in, have told myself that the speculation is too vast,--disproportioned to the country, undertaken on a scale which nothing short of imperial resources could warrant--"

"But surely you do not credit such forebodings?" broke he in.

"It is of little consequence how far _I_ credit them. I am as nothing in the event. I only would ask, What if all were to fail?--what if ruin were to fall upon the whole undertaking, what is to become of all those who have invested their entire fortunes in the scheme? The great and affluent have many ventures,--they trust not their wealth to one argosy; but how will it be with those who have embarked their all in one vessel?"

Mr. Hankes paused, as if to reflect over his reply, and she continued: "It is a question I have already dared to address to Mr. Dunn himself. I wrote to him twice on the subject. The first time I asked what guarantee could be given to small shareholders,--those, for instance, who had involved their whole wealth in the enterprise. He gave me no answer.

To my second application came the dry rejoinder that I had possibly forgotten in whose service I was retained; that I drew my resources from the Earl of Glengariff, and not from the peasantry, whose advocate I had constituted myself."

"Well?" cried Hankes, curious to hear what turn the correspondence took.

"Well," said she, smiling gently, "I wrote again. I said it was true I had forgotten the fact of which he reminded me, but I pleaded in excuse that neither the Earl nor her Ladyship had refreshed my memory on the circumstance by any replies to eight, or, I believe, nine letters I sent them. I mentioned, too, that though I could endure the slight of this neglect for myself, I could not put up with it for the sake of those whose interest I watched over. Hear me out," said she, perceiving that he was about to interrupt. "It had become known in Glengariff that all the little fortune I was possessed of--the few hundred pounds Mr. Dunn had rescued for me out of the wreck of our property--was invested in this scheme. Mr. Dunn counselled this employment of the money, and I consented to it. Now, this trustfulness on my part induced many others to imitate what they deemed my example."

"And you really did make this investment?" said Hankes, whose eagerness could not brook longer delay.

"Yes," said she, with a quiet smile, "though, evidently, had I consulted Mr. Hankes, he would never have counselled the step." After a moment, she resumed, "I have half a mind to tell you how it happened."

"I pray you let me hear it."

"Well, it was in this way: Shortly after that affair of the Ossory Bank,--the run for gold, I mean,--I received a few hurried lines from Mr. Dunn, urging me to greater exertion on the score of the Glengariff scheme, and calling upon me to answer certain newspaper insinuations against its solvency, and so forth. Before replying to these attacks, I was, of course, bound to read them; and, shall I confess it, such was the singular force of the arguments they employed, so reasonable did their inferences appear, and so terrible the consequences should the plan prove a failure, that I for the first time perceived that it was by no means impossible the vast superstructure we were raising might be actually on the brink of a volcano. I did not like exactly to tell Mr.

Dunn these misgivings; in fact, though I attempted two or three letters to that effect, I could not, without great risk of offending, convey my meaning, and so I reflected and pondered over the matter several days, working my brain to find some extrication from the difficulty. At last, I bethought me of this: Mr. Dunn was my guardian; by his efforts was the small fragment of property that fell to me rescued and saved. What if I were to request him to invest the whole of it in this scheme? Were its solvency but certain, where could the employment of the money be safer or more profitable? If he consented, I might fairly suppose my fears were vain, and my misgivings unfounded. If, however, he showed any reluctance, even backwardness, to the project, the very phrase he might employ to dissuade me would have its especial significance, and I could at once have something to reason upon. Well, I wrote to him, and he answered by the next post: 'I fully coincide with your suggestion, and, acting on it, you are now the possessor of fifty-four shares in the allotment. As the moment for buying in is favorable, it is a thousand pities you could not make an equally profitable investment for your brother, whose twelve hundred pounds is yielding the very inglorious interest of the bank.'"

"And so you took the shares?" said Hankes, sighing; then added, "But let me see,--at what rate did you buy?"

"I am ashamed to confess, I forget; but I know the shares were high?"

"After the Ossory run," muttered he,--"that was about September. Shares were then something like one hundred and twenty-seven and a quarter; higher afterwards; higher the whole month of November; shaky towards the end of the year; very shaky, indeed, in January. No, no," said he to himself, "Dunn ought not to have done it."

"I perceive," said she, half smiling, "Mr. Hankes opines that the money had been better in the bank."

"After all," continued he, not heeding her remark, "Dunn could n't do anything else. You own, yourself, that if he had attempted to dissuade you, you would immediately have taken alarm; you 'd have said, 'This is all a sham. All these people will find themselves "let in" some fine morning;' and as Dunn could very readily make good your few hundred pounds, why, he was perfectly justified in the advice he gave."

"Not when his counsel had the effect of influencing mine," said she, quickly; "not when it served to make me a perfidious example to others.

No, no, Mr. Hankes; if this scheme be not an honest and an upright one, I accept no partnership in its details."

"I am only putting a case, remember," said Hankes, hurriedly,--"a possible, but most improbable case. I am supposing that a scheme with the finest prospectus, the best list of directors, the most respectable referees in the empire, to be--what shall I say?--to be sickly,--yes, sickly,--in want of a little tonic treatment, generous diet, and so forth."

"You 'll have to follow me here, Mr. Hankes," broke in Sybella; "the pathway round this cliff only admits one at a time. Keep close to the rock, and if your head be not steady, don't look down."

"Good heavens! we are not going round that precipice!" cried Hankes, in a voice of the wildest terror.

"My servant will lead your horse, if you prefer it," said she, without answering his question; "and mind your footing, for the moss is often slippery with the spray."

Sybella made a signal with her whip to the groom, who was now close behind, and then, without awaiting for more, moved on. Hankes watched her as she descended the little slope to the base of a large rock, around which the path wound itself on the very verge of an immense precipice. Even from where he now stood the sea could be seen surging and booming hundreds of feet below; and although the night was calm and still, the ever-restless waves beat heavily against the rocks, and sent masses of froth and foam high into the air. He saw her till she turned the angle of the path, and then she was lost to his view.