He looked at the girl's beautiful face with the admiration which every man feels for the perfection of beauty--the pure, calm, reverential feeling of an artist, or a poet--and he never supposed it possible that the day might not be far distant when he would contemplate that lovely countenance with altered sentiments, with a deeper emotion.

"Come to the dining-room, Miss Milford," he said; "I expected you to-day--I have made all my arrangements accordingly. You must be hungry after your journey; and as I have not yet lunched, I hope you will share my luncheon?"

Honoria assented. Her manner towards her benefactor was charming in its quiet grace, deferential without being sycophantic--the manner of a daughter rather than a dependent Before leaving the library, she looked round at the books, the bronzes, the pictures, with admiring eyes.

Never before had she seen so splendid an apartment: and she possessed that intuitive love of beautiful objects which is the attribute of all refined and richly endowed natures.

The baronet placed his ward on one side of the table, and seated himself opposite to her.

No servant waited upon them. Sir Oswald himself attended to the wants of his guest. He heaped her plate with dainties; he filled her glass with rare old wine; but she ate only a few mouthfuls, and she could drink nothing. The novelty of her present position was too full of excitement.

During the whole of the repast the baronet asked her no questions. He talked as if they had long been known to each other, explaining to her the merits of the different pictures and statues which she admired, pleased to find her intelligence always on a level with his own.

"She is a wonderful creature," he thought; "a wonderful creature--a priceless pearl picked up out of the gutter."

After luncheon Sir Oswald rang for his carriage, and presently Honoria Milford found herself on her way to her new home.

The mansion inhabited by the Misses Beaumont was called "The Beeches."

It had of old been the seat of a nobleman, and the grounds which encircled it were such as are rarely to be found within a few miles of the metropolis; and they would in vain be sought for now. Shabby little streets and terraces cover the ground where grand old cedars of Lebanon cast their dark shadows on the smooth turf seven-and-twenty years ago.

Honoria Milford was enraptured with the beauty of her new home. That stately mansion, shut in by noble old trees from all the dust and clamour of the outer world; those smooth lawns, and exquisitely kept beds, filled with flowers even in this chill spring weather, must have seemed beautiful to those accustomed to handsome habitations. What must they have been then to the wanderer of the streets--the friendless tramp--who a week ago had depended for a night's rest on the chance of finding an empty barn.

She looked at her benefactor with eyes that were dim with tears, as the carriage approached this delightful retreat.

"If I were your daughter, you could not have chosen a better place than this," she said.

"If you were my daughter, I doubt if I could feel a deeper interest in your fate than I feel now," answered Sir Oswald, quietly.

Miss Beaumont the elder received her pupil with ceremonious kindness.

She looked at the girl with the keen glance of examination which becomes habitual to the eye of the schoolmistress; but the most severe scrutiny would have failed to detect anything unladylike or ungraceful in the deportment of Honoria Milford.

"The young lady is charming," said Miss Beaumont, confidentially, as the baronet was taking leave; "any one could guess that she was an Eversleigh. She is so elegant, so patrician in face and manner. Ah, Sir Oswald, the good old blood will show itself."

The baronet smiled as he bade adieu to the schoolmistress. He had told Honoria that policy had compelled him to speak of her as a distant relative of his own; and there was no fear that the girl would betray herself or him by any awkward admissions.

Sir Oswald felt depressed and gloomy as he drove back to town. It seemed to him as if, in parting from his _protegee_, he had lost something that was necessary to his happiness.

"I have not spent half a dozen hours in her society," he thought, "and yet she occupies my mind more than my nephew, Reginald, who for fifteen years of my life has been the object of so much hope, so many cares.

What does it all mean? What is the key to this mystery?"

CHAPTER V.

"EVIL, BE THOU MY GOOD."

Reginald Eversleigh was handsome, accomplished, agreeable--irresistible when he chose, many people said; but he was not richly endowed with those intellectual gifts which lift a man to either the good or bad eminence. He was weak and vacillating--one minute swayed by a good influence, a transient touch of penitence, affection, or generosity; in the next given over entirely to his own selfishness, thinking only of his own enjoyment. He was apt to be influenced by any friend or companion endowed with intellectual superiority; and he possessed such a friend in the person of Victor Carrington, a young surgeon, a man infinitely below Mr. Eversleigh in social status, but whose talents, united to tact, had lifted him above his natural level.

The young surgeon was a slim, elegant-looking young man, with a pale, sallow face, and flashing black eyes. His appearance was altogether foreign, and although his own name was English, he was half a Frenchman, his mother being a native of Bordeaux. This widowed mother now lived with him, dependent on him, and loving him with a devoted affection.

From a chance meeting in a public billiard-room, an intimacy arose between Victor Carrington and Reginald Eversleigh, which speedily ripened into friendship. The weaker nature was glad to find a stronger on which to lean. Reginald Eversleigh invited his new friend to his rooms--to champagne breakfasts, to suppers of broiled bones, eaten long after midnight: to card-parties, at which large sums of money were lost and won; but the losers were never Victor Carrington or Reginald Eversleigh, and there were men who said that Eversleigh was a more dangerous opponent at loo and whist since he had picked up that fellow Carrington.

"I always feel afraid of Eversleigh, when that sallow-faced surgeon is his partner at whist, or hangs about his chair at _ecarte_," said one of the officers in Reginald Eversleigh's regiment. "It's my opinion that black-eyed Frenchman is Mephistopheles in person. I never saw a countenance that so fully realized my idea of the devil."

People laughed at the dragoon's notion: but there were few of Mr.

Eversleigh's guests who liked his new acquaintance, and there were some who kept altogether aloof from the young cornet's rooms, after two or three evenings spent in the society of Mr. Carrington.

"The fellow is too clever," said one of Eversleigh's brother-officers; "these very clever men are almost invariably scoundrels. I respect a man who is great in one thing--a great surgeon, a great lawyer, a great soldier--but your fellow who knows everything better than anybody else is always a villain."

Victor Carrington was the only person to whom Reginald Eversleigh told the real story of his breach with his uncle. He trusted Victor: not because he cared to confide in him--for the story was too humiliating to be told without pain--but because he wanted counsel from a stronger mind than his own.

"It's rather a hard thing to drop from the chance of forty thousand a year to a pension of a couple of hundred, isn't it, Carrington?" said Reginald, as the two young men dined together in the cornet's quarters, a fortnight after the scene in Arlington Street. "It's rather hard, isn't it, Carrington?"

"Yes, it _would be_ rather hard, if such a contingency were possible,"

replied the surgeon, coolly; "but we don't mean to drop from forty thousand to two hundred. The generous old uncle may choose to draw his purse-strings, and cast us off to 'beggarly divorcement,' as Desdemona remarks; but we don't mean to let him have his own way. We must take things quietly, and manage matters with a little tact. You want my advice, I suppose, my dear Reginald?"

"I do."

The surgeon almost always addressed his friends by their Christian names, more especially when those friends were of higher standing than himself. There was a depth of pride, which few understood, lurking beneath his quiet and unobtrusive manner; and he had a way of his own by which he let people know that he considered himself in every respect their equal, and in some respects their superior.

"You want my advice. Very well, then, my advice is that you play the penitent prodigal. It is not a difficult part to perform, if you take care what you're about. Sir Oswald has advised you to exchange into the line. Instead of doing that, you will sell out altogether. It will look like a stroke of prudence, and will leave you free to play your cards cleverly, and keep your eye upon this dear uncle."

"Sell out!" exclaimed Reginald. "Leave the army! I have sworn never to do that."

"But you will find yourself obliged to do it, nevertheless. Your regiment is too expensive for a man who has only a pitiful two hundred a year beyond his pay. Your mail-phaeton would cost the whole of your income; your tailor's bill can hardly be covered by another two hundred; and then, where are you to get your gloves, your hot-house flowers, your wines, your cigars? You can't go on upon credit for ever; tradesmen have such a tiresome habit of wanting money, if it's only a hundred or so now and then on account. The Jews are beginning to be suspicious of your paper. The news of your quarrel with Sir Oswald is pretty sure to get about somehow or other, and then where are you?

Cards and billiards are all very well in their way; but you can't live by them, without turning a regular black-leg, and as a black-leg you would have no chance of the Raynham estates. No, my dear Reginald, retrenchment is the word. You must sell out, keep yourself very quiet, and watch your uncle."

"What do you mean by watching him?" asked Mr. Eversleigh, peevishly.

His friend's advice was by no means palatable to him. He sat in a moody attitude, with his elbows on his knees, and his head bent forward, staring at the fire. His wine stood untasted on the table by his side.

"I mean that you must keep your eye upon him, in order to see that he don't play you a trick," answered the surgeon, at his own leisure.

"What trick should he play me?"

"Well, you see, when a man quarrels with his heir, he is apt to turn desperate. Sir Oswald might marry."

"Marry! at fifty years of age?"

"Yes. Men of fifty have been known to fall as desperately in love as any of your heroes of two or three and twenty. Sir Oswald would be a splendid match, and depend upon it, there are plenty of beautiful and high-born women who would be glad to call themselves Lady Eversleigh.

Take my advice, Reginald, dear boy, and keep your eye on the baronet."

"But he has turned me out of his house. He has severed every link between us."

"Then it must be our business to establish a secret chain of communication with his household," answered Victor. "He has some confidential servant, I suppose?"