"'Twas all her doing, and I knew it was a sin, and have been troubled with the thought of it ever since; yes, I have never known real peace and comfort since I did her bidding. But she told me 'twas a good thing to do; your heart was so set on the child that it would all but kill you to lose her, and one child was equal to another in the sight of G.o.d, and the one that was left would grow up to be a blessing to you, did you but think she was your daughter; and so I yielded, and let her lie to you.

But, O sir, as you are a Christian, do not punish that innocent lamb for our sin. Do not take your love from her."

"It is gone," cried the Squire. "She has become hateful to me."

"She shall trouble you no more, sir," said Irene, with a quiet dignity, which moved her husband almost to tears. "I am very sorry that you should have been cheated, but you must at least own that I have been an innocent impostor. You have been very good to me, sir, and I have loved you as a father should be loved, and though you may hate me, my heart cannot turn so quickly. It cleaves to you still, sir. Good-bye."

She dropped on her knee again and kissed his reluctant hand, then put her hand in her husband's, and glided from the room with him, Mdlle.

Latour following.

"We had best go back to London in the coach that brought us," said Herrick. "Will you come with us, Mademoiselle, or will you follow us later?"

"I will follow in a day or two," answered the little Frenchwoman. "It would seem like sneaking away to go to-day. I will wait till the tempest is lulled. I am really sorry for that poor man, savage as he is in his chagrin and disappointment; I will see the end of it. That woman is a devil."

"Can you forgive me, Rena, for having sprung this surprise upon you?"

asked Herrick, drawing his young wife to his breast, and kissing away her tears. "Or do I seem to have been cruel? I feared your courage might fail if I told you what was coming: and I wanted to have you face to face with your sham father and that wicked witch yonder. I was prepared for her denial of the facts."

"How did you make this discovery, Herrick?"

"That is a long story, dearest. You shall know all about it by and by.

And now, dear love, you are my very own. No tyrannical father can come between my orphan wife and me. We stand each alone, love, and all in all to each other."

"I am content to be yours and yours only," she said, looking up at him with adoring eyes. "But I hope my--I hope Mr. Bosworth will forgive me some day."

"Be sure he will, my pet, and that he loves you dearly at this moment, though he roars and bl.u.s.ters about hatred. All will come well, dearest, in the end."

"And you have married a pauper, after all," said Irene.

"I have married the girl I love, and that is enough for me," answered Herrick. "But it is not so clear to me but that I have married a fortune into the bargain. Wait and see, love; the end has not come yet. And now settle your hood and wrap your cloak round you, and we are off again for London."

And thus, clinging to her husband's arm, she who had so long been called Irene Bosworth left the home that had seemed her birthplace. It had been a solitary joyless life which she had lived there, for the most part, yet she looked back at the old panelled hall with a sigh of regret, the instinctive yearning of an affectionate nature.

"We are as unfettered as our first parents, Irene, and the world is before us," said Herrick gaily, as he lifted her into the coach. "Back to Kingston, my men," to the postillions. "We will stay at the inn there to-night, and go on to London to-morrow morning."

"Go," said the Squire to Bridget, when the door had closed upon his sometime daughter; "go about your business, woman, and consider yourself lucky if I do not send you to gaol."

"You had better think twice of that, Squire," said Mrs. Layburne. "To have this business out before a magistrate might lead to the asking of strange questions."

"Do you think _I_ care what questions they ask?" cried Bosworth scornfully. "Do you suppose I am such an arrant cur as to quail before my fellow-worms because I have lived my own life, crawled upon this earth after my _own_ fashion, and not wriggled in _their_ particular mode? No, Barbara Layburne, if I have been a profligate, I have at least been a bold sinner, and I have never feared the face of a man. Were not the grip of death upon you, madam, _you_ should answer to the law for the trick you have played me."

"What if it was an accident?" asked Barbara; "both the children were so reduced by sickness out of their own likeness, that one might easily mistake one for another."

"You could not. 'Twas you called my attention to the scar upon the baby's arm when she was but an hour in this house."

"Ay, I remember. I bade you mark it well. I had it in my mind even then to ring the changes on you--to cheat you out of a daughter--you who had cheated me out of name and honour, the world's respect, and a good husband--for I might have made a good match, were it not that I was a slave to my pa.s.sion for you. When I came into this house and met only scorn and ignominy, I resolved to be quits with you. I have lain awake many a night trying to hit upon the way; but the devil himself would not help me to a plan till you brought that beggar's brat into the house.

Then in a moment I saw the chance of being even with you. I knew how you prided yourself on your ancient race, how you heaped up riches, caring not as other men care for the things that gold can buy: only caring for wealth as misers care for it, to heap moneybags upon moneybags. I knew you had made your scheme of leaving a vast fortune, as Marlborough did t'other day, marrying your child to a great n.o.bleman, leaving your name among the mighty ones of the land. I knew this, for though you were rarely civil to me, you could not help confiding in me; 'twas an old habit that remained to you from the days when we were lovers. I knew this, and I meant to drag your pride in the dust; and so, as the whole scheme flashed upon me, I bade you note the cicatrice on the baby's arm, so that when my hour came you should see the sign-manual of the lie that had been foisted on you. Your son-in-law has antic.i.p.ated me by a short time--that is all. My play is played out."

"You are a devil!" muttered Bosworth, walking towards the door.

"I am as G.o.d made me--a woman who could love, and who can hate."

CHAPTER III.

"AND ALL YOUR HONOUR IN A WHISPER LOST."

The great house in Soho Square was alive with movement and light, the going and coming of guests, the setting down of chairs and squabbles of coachmen and running footmen, the flare of torches in the autumn dusk.

The Topsparkles were in town again, everybody of importance had come to town, to be present at the coronation, from old d.u.c.h.ess Sarah and her bouquet of d.u.c.h.ess daughters, and her wild grandsons and lovely granddaughters, and the mad d.u.c.h.ess of Buckingham, and Mary Wortley Montagu, otherwise Moll Worthless, and the wits and beaux and Italian singers--all the little great world of brilliant personalities, card-playing, dicing, intriguing, dancing, masquerading, duelling, running away with other men's wives or beating their own. The wild whirlpool of town life was at its highest point of ebullition, all the wheels were going madly round, and the devil and his imps had their hands full of mischief and iniquity.

It was the first winter season of the new reign. Caroline was triumphant in her a.s.surance of a well-filled purse; in her security of dominion over a dull, dogged, self-willed little husband, who was never more her slave than when he affected to act and think for himself; happy too in the knowledge that she had two of the cleverest men in England for her prime minister and her chamberlain; scornfully tolerant of a rival who helped her to bear the burden of her husband's society; indulgent to all the world, and proud of being admired and loved by the cleverest men in her dominions. King George was happy also after his sober fashion, oscillating between St. James's and Richmond, with a secret hankering for Hanover, hating his eldest son, and with no pa.s.sionate attachment to any other member of his numerous progeny. Amidst the brilliant Court circle there were few ladies whom the Queen favoured above Judith Topsparkle. She had even condescended so far as to wear the famous Topsparkle diamonds at her coronation; for of all Queen Anne's jewels but a pearl necklace or so descended to Queen Caroline, and it was generally supposed that his late Majesty had ransacked the royal jewel-caskets for gems to adorn his German mistresses, the fat and the lean; while perchance his later English sultana, bold Miss Brett, may have decked her handsome person with a few of those kingly treasures. At any rate, there was but little left to adorn Queen Caroline, who was fain to blaze on her coronation-day with a borrowed l.u.s.tre.

It was November; the Houses were sitting, and Lavendale, after a period of complete seclusion and social extinguishment, had startled the town in a new character, as politician and orator. Perchance his friend's success in the Lower House may have stimulated his ambition, or his appearance in the senate may have been a whim of the moment in one whose actions had been too often governed by whim; but whatever the motive, Lord Lavendale startled the peers by one of the finest speeches that had been made in that august a.s.sembly for some time; and the House of Lords in the dawn of the Hanoverian dynasty was an a.s.sembly which exercised a far more potent influence for good or evil than the Upper House of that triply reformed Parliament which we boast of to-day.

People talked about Lord Lavendale's speech for at least a fortnight. It was not so much that the oration itself had been really fine and had vividly impressed those who heard it, but it was rather that such dignified opposition, such grave invective, and sound logic came from a survivor of the Mohawk and of the Calf's Head Clubs, a notorious rake and reveller, a man whose name five years ago had been a synonym for modish profligacy. It was as when Lucius Junius Brutus startled the Roman Forum; it was as when Falstaff's boon companion, wild Prince Hal, flung off his boyish follies and stood forth in all his dignity as the warrior king; it was a transformation that set all the town wondering; and Lavendale, who had plunged again into the whirlpool of society, found himself the fashion of the hour, a man with a new reputation.

Yes, he had gone back to the bustling crowded stage of Court life: he had emerged from the hermit-like seclusion of laboratory and library, from the wild walks and woodland beauties of Lavendale Manor. He was of the town again, and seemed as eager for pleasure as the youngest and gayest of the bloods and beaux of Leicester Fields and St. James's. He attended half a dozen a.s.semblies of an evening, looked in nightly at opera or playhouse, gambled at White's, talked at b.u.t.ton's, dawdled away an occasional morning at d.i.c.k's, reading the newest pamphlet for or against the Government. He was seen everywhere.

"Lavendale has been in Medea's cauldron," said Captain Asterley. "He looks ten years younger than when I saw him last summer."

"I believe the man is possessed," replied Lady Polwhele; "he has an almost infernal gaiety. There is a malignant air about him that is altogether new. He used to be a good-natured rake, who said malicious things out of pure light-heartedness; but now there is a lurking devilry in every word he utters."

"He is only imitating the mad Irish parson," said Asterley. "Your most fashionable wit, nowadays, is a mixture of dirt and malignity such as the Dean affects. Everybody tries to talk and write like Cadenus, since it has been discovered that to be half a savage and more than half a beast is the shortest road to a woman's favour."

"I believe all you men are jealous of the Dean," retorted her ladyship, "and that is why his influential friends have conspired to keep him on the other side of the Irish Channel. He is a fine personable man, and if he has his savage gloomy moods, be sure he has his melting moments, or that poor Miss Vanhomrigh would not have made such a fool of herself. I saw her once at an auction, and thought her more than pa.s.sable, and with the manners of a lady."

There had been no more spurts of jealousy on the part of Mr. Topsparkle.

His wife and he had lived on the most courteous terms since last midsummer, Lavendale's disappearance from the scene had appeased the husband's anger. He concluded that his remonstrances had been taken in good part, and that Lady Judith had dismissed her flirt. That Lavendale had been anything more than her flirt Mr. Topsparkle did not believe; but from flirt to lover is but a swift transition, and there had a.s.suredly been an hour of peril.

Mr. Topsparkle also had a rejuvenised air when he came up to town and made his reappearance in distinguished circles; but what in Lavendale was a caprice of nature, an erratic flash and sparkle of brilliancy in a waning light, was in Topsparkle the result of premeditated care and the highest development of restorative art. He had vegetated for the last three months at Ringwood Abbey, leaving his wife to do all the hard work of entertaining visitors, and sleeping through the greater portion of his existence; and now he reappeared in London full of energy and vivacity, and with an air of superiority to most of the younger men, who were content to show themselves in their true colours as exhausted debauchees, men who had drained the cup of sensual pleasure to the dregs, and whose jaded intellects were too feeble to originate any new departure in vicious amus.e.m.e.nts.

Though in society Mr. Topsparkle affected to be only the connoisseur, dilettante, and man of fashion, there was a leaven of hard-hearted commercial sagacity in his mind, an hereditary strain which marked his affinity to the trading cla.s.ses. Keen though he was as a collector of pictures and curios, he was still keener as a speculator on 'Change, and knew every turn in the market, every trick of the hour.

He loved London because it brought him nearer to the money market, brought him, as it were, face to face with his millions, which were for the most part invested in public securities, Alderman Topsparkle having had no pa.s.sion for adding field to field at two and a half per cent per annum. The alderman put out his wealth safely, in the New River Company and in the best National securities.

Vyvyan Topsparkle had done nothing to hazard those solid investments or to jeopardise his hereditary income; but he liked to trifle with the surplus thousands which acc.u.mulated at his banker's, and which even Judith's extravagance could not exhaust; he liked to sail his light bark over the billows of speculation, fanned by the summer winds of chance and change, and glorying in his skill as a navigator. Ombre and quadrille had very little excitement for him, but he loved to watch the fluctuations of a speculative stock, and to sell out at the critical moment when a bubble was on the point of bursting. He had been either wonderfully clever or wonderfully lucky; for he had contrived with but few exceptions to emerge from every risky enterprise with a profit. Such trivial speculations were but playing with money, and made no tangible impression upon the bulk of his wealth: but as the miser loves to h.o.a.rd his guineas in a chest under his bed and to handle and toy with them, so Mr. Topsparkle loved to play at speculation, and to warm the dull blood of age with the fever of the money market.

He was sitting before a boule bureau, with three rows of pigeon-holes stuffed with papers in front of him, and a litter of papers on his desk, when Fetis entered, carrying his master's periwig. The room was s.p.a.cious, half dressing-room and half study, with panelled walls richly adorned with old Italian pottery, and a fireplace in an angle of the room, with a mantelpiece carried up to the ceiling by narrow shelves and quaint divisions, all filled with curios; delf and china, India monsters, Dutch teapots, German chocolate-pots, jars, and tea-cups. In one window stood the toilet-table, a veritable laboratory, before which Mr. Topsparkle sat for an hour every morning while his complexion was composed for the day. In the corner opposite the fireplace was the triangular closet in which Mr. Topsparkle's full-bottomed wig was besprinkled with marechale powder. The atmosphere of the room was loaded with various perfumes, including a faint suggestion of burnt rappee, a kind of snuff which had been fashionable ever since a fire at a famous tobacconist's, which had thrown a large quant.i.ty of scorched snuff upon the market, and had given the bucks a new sensation and a new taste.

Fetis put the wig on a stand near the dressing-table, adjusted the feathery curls carefully with delicate finger-tips, fell a step or two back to contemplate his work, gazing at it dreamily as at the perfection of beauty, suggesting the august countenance of its wearer, who was looking over a sheaf of doc.u.ments and seemed preoccupied.

His valet watched him deferentially for some minutes, and then coughed gently as if to attract attention.

Topsparkle looked up suddenly. He had not heard the cautious opening of the door or the velvet tread of his slave.