"I ask nothing from you but common sense," answered Victor impatiently.

"Instead of wasting your love upon Reginald Eversleigh, who is not worthy a moment's consideration from you, give at least your esteem and respect to the honourable and unselfish man who truly loves you.

Instead of flying from England, a ruined woman, branded with the name of cheat and swindler, remain as the affianced wife of Douglas Dale--remain to prove to Reginald Eversleigh that there are those in the world who know how to value the woman he has despised."

"Yes, he has despised me," murmured Paulina, speaking to herself rather than to her companion; "he has despised me. He left me alone in this dreary house; in the Christmas festival time, when friends and lovers draw nearer together all the world over, united by the sweet influences of the season; he left me to sit alone by this desolate hearth, while he made merry with his friends--while he sunned himself in the smiles of happier women. What truth can he claim from me--he who has been falsehood itself?"

She remained silent for some minutes after this, with her eyes fixed on the fire, her thoughts far away. Victor did not arouse her from that reverie. He knew that the work he had to do was progressing rapidly.

He felt that he was moulding this proud and passionate woman to his will, as the sculptor moulds the clay which is to take the form of his statue.

At last she spoke.

"I thank you for your good advice, Mr. Carrington," she said, calmly; "and I will avail myself of your worldly wisdom. What would you have me do?"

"I would have you tell Douglas Dale, when he returns to town and comes to see you, the position in which you find yourself with regard to money matters, and ask the loan of a few hundreds. The truth and depth of his love for you will be proved by his response to this appeal."

"How came you to suspect his love for me?" asked Paulina. "It has never yet shaped itself in words. A woman's own instinct generally tells her when she is truly loved; but how came you, a bystander, a mere looker-on, to discover Douglas Dale's secret?"

"Simply because I am a man of the world, and somewhat of an observer, and I will pledge my reputation as both upon the issue of your interview with Douglas Dale."

"So be it," said Paulina; "I will appeal to him. It is a new degradation; but what has my whole life been except a series of humiliations? And now, Mr. Carrington, this interview has been very painful to me. Pardon me, if I ask you to leave me to myself."

Victor complied immediately, and took leave of Madame Durski with many apologies for his intrusion. Before leaving the house he encountered Miss Brewer, who came out of a small sitting-room as he entered the hall.

"You are going away, Mr. Carrington?" she asked.

"Yes," he answered; "but I shall call again in a day or two. Meantime, let me hear from you, if Dale presents himself here. I have had some talk with your friend, and am surprised at the ease with which the work we have to do may be done. She despises Reginald now; she won't love him long. Good night, Miss Brewer."

CHAPTER XXVI.

MOVE THE FIRST.

After the lapse of a few days, during which Victor Carrington carefully matured his plans, while apparently only pursuing his ordinary business, and leading his ordinary life of dutiful attention to his mother and quiet domestic routine, he received a letter in a handwriting which was unfamiliar to him. It contained the following words:

"_In accordance with your desire, and my promise, I write to inform you that, D. D. has notified his return to London and his intention to visit P. He did not know whether she was in town, and, therefore, wrote before coming. She seemed much affected by his letter, and has replied to it, appointing Wednesday after-noon for receiving him, and inviting him to luncheon. No communication has been received from R. E., and she takes the fact easily. If you have any advice, or I suppose I should say instructions, to give me, you had better come here to-morrow (Tuesday), when I can see you alone.--C. B._"

Victor Carrington read this note with a smile of satisfaction, which faithfully interpreted the feelings it produced. There was a business-like tone in his correspondent's letter which exactly suited his ideas of what it was advisable his agent should be.

"She is really admirable," he said, as he destroyed Miss Brewer's note; "just clever enough to be useful, just shrewd enough to understand the precise force and weight of an argument, but not clever enough, or shrewd enough, to find out that she is used for any purpose but the one for which she has bargained."

And then Victor Carrington wrote a few lines to Miss Brewer, in which he thanked her for her note, and prepared her to receive a visit from him on the following day. This written and posted, he walked up and down his laboratory, in deep thought for some time, and then once more seated himself at his desk. This time his communication was addressed to Sir Reginald Eversleigh, and merely consisted of a request that that gentleman should call upon him--Victor Carrington--on a certain day, at a week's distance from the present date.

"I shall have more trouble with this shallow fool than with all the rest of them," said Victor to himself, as he sealed his letter; and, as he said it, he permitted his countenance to assume a very unusual expression of vexation; "his vanity will make him kick against letting Paulina turn him off; and he will run the risk of destroying the game sooner than suffer that mortification. But I will take care he _shall_ suffer it, and _not_ destroy the game.

"No, no, Sir Reginald Eversleigh, _you_ shall not be my stumbling-block in this instance. How horribly afraid he is of me," thought Victor Carrington, and a smile of cruel satisfaction, which might have become a demon, lighted his pale face at the reflection; "he is dying to know exactly how that business of Dale the elder was managed; he has the haziest notions in connection with it, and, by Jove, he dare not ask me. And yet, I am only his agent,--his _to be paid_ agent,--and he shakes in his shoes before me. Yes, and I will be paid too, richly paid, Sir Reginald, not only in money, but in power. In power--the best and most enjoyable thing that money has to buy."

Victor Carrington sent his letter to the post, and joined his mother in her sitting-room, where her life passed placidly away, among her birds and her flowers. Mrs. Carrington had none of the vivacity about her which is so general an attribute of French women. She liked her quiet life, and had little sympathy with her son's restless ambition and devouring discontent. A cold, silent, self-contained woman, she shut herself up in her own occupations, and cared for nothing beyond them.

She had the French national taste and talent for needlework, and generally listened to her son, as he talked or read to her, with a piece of elaborate embroidery in her hand. On the present occasion, she was engaged as usual, and Victor looked at her work and praised it, according to his custom.

"What is it for, mother?" he asked.

"An altar-cloth," she replied. "I cannot give money, you know, Victor, and so I am glad to give my work."

The young man's dark eyes flashed, as he replied;--

"True, mother, but the time will come--it is not far off now--when you and I shall both be set free from poverty, when we shall once more take our place in our own rank--when we shall be what the Champfontaines were, and do as the Champfontaines did--when this hateful English name shall be thrown aside, and this squalid English home abandoned, and the past restored to us, we to the past." He rose as he spoke, and walked about the room. A faint flush brightened his sallow face, an unwonted light glittered in his deep-set eyes. His mother continued to ply her needle, with downcast eyes, and a face which showed no sign of sympathy with her son's enthusiasm.

"Industry and talent are good, my Victor," she said, "and they bring comfort, they bring _le bienetre_ in their train; but I do not think all the industry and talent you can display as a surgeon in London will ever enable you to restore the dignity and emulate the wealth of the old Champfontaines."

Victor Carrington glanced at his mother almost angrily, and for an instant felt the impulse rise within him which prompted him to tell her that it was not only by the employment of means so tame and common-place that he designed to realize the cherished vision of his ambition. But he checked it instantly, and only said, with the reverential inflection which his voice never failed to take when he addressed his mother, "What, then, would you advise me to try, in addition?"

"Marry a rich woman, my Victor; marry one of these moneyed English girls, who are, for the most part, permitted to follow their inclinations--inclinations which would surely, if encouraged, lead many of them your way." Mrs. Carrington spoke in the calmest tone possible.

"Marry--I marry?" said Victor, in a tone of surprise, in which a quick ear would have noticed something also of disappointment. "I thought you would never like that, mother. It would part us, you know, and then what would you do?"

"There is always the convent for me, Victor," said his mother, "if you no longer needed me." And she composedly threaded her needle, and began a very minute leaf in the pattern of her embroidery.

Victor Carrington looked at his mother with surprise, and some vague sense of pain. She _could_ make up her mind to part with him--she had thought of the possibility, and with complacence. He muttered something about having something to do, and left her, strangely moved, while she calmly worked in at her embroidery.

CHAPTER XXVII.

"WEAVE THE WARP, AND WEAVE THE WOOF."

On the following day Victor Carrington presented himself at Hilton House, and was received by Miss Brewer alone. She was pale, chilly, and ungracious, as usual, and the understanding which had been arrived at between Carrington and herself did not move her to the manifestation of the smallest additional cordiality in her reception of him.

"I have to thank you for your prompt compliance with my request, Miss Brewer," said Victor.

She made no sound nor sign of encouragement, and he continued. "Since I saw you, another complication has arisen in this matter, which makes our game doubly safe and secure. In order to explain this complication thoroughly, I must ask you to let me put you through a kind of catechism. Have I your permission, Miss Brewer?"

"You may ask me any questions you please," returned Miss Brewer, in a hard, cold, even voice; "and I will answer them as truthfully as I can."

"Do you know anything of Douglas Dale's family connections and antecedents?"

"I know that his mother was Sir Oswald Eversleigh's sister, and that he and Lionel Dale, who was drowned on St. Stephen's day, were left large incomes by their uncle, in addition to some inconsiderable family property which they inherited from their father, Mr. Melville Dale, who was a lawyer, and, I believe, a not very successful one."

"Did you ever hear anything of the family history of this Mr. Melville Dale, the father of Lionel and Douglas?"

"I never heard more than his name, and the circumstance I have already mentioned."

"Listen, then. Melville Dale had a sister, towards whom their father conceived undue and unjust partiality (according to the popular version) from their earliest childhood. This sister, Henrietta Dale, married, when very young, a country baronet of good fortune, one Sir George Verner, and thereby still further pleased her father, and secured his favour. Melville Dale, on the contrary, opposed the old gentleman in everything, and ultimately crowned the edifice of his offences by publishing a deistical treatise, which made a considerable sensation at the time of its appearance, and caused the author's expulsion from Balliol, where he had already attained a bad eminence by numerous escapades of the Shelley order. This proceeding so incensed his father that he made a will, in the heat of his anger, by which he disinherited Melville Dale, and left the whole of his fortune to his daughter, Lady Verner. If he repented this summary and vindictive proceeding, neither I nor any one else can tell. The disinherited son reformed his life very soon after the breach between himself and his father, and was lucky enough to win the affections of Sir Oswald Eversleigh's sister. But he was too proud to ask for his father's forgiveness, and the father died a year after Douglas Dale's birth--never having seen Mrs. Dale or his grandchildren. At the time of her father's death, Lady Verner had no children, and she was, I believe, disposed to treat her brother very generously; but he was an obstinate, headstrong man, and persisted in believing that she had purposely done him injury with his father. He would not see her. He refused to accept any favour at her hands, and a complete estrangement took place. The brother and sister never met again; and it was only through the medium of the newspapers that Lionel and Douglas Dale learned, some time after their father's death (Melville Dale died young), that severe affliction had befallen their aunt, Lady Verner.

The bitter and deadly breach between father and son, and between brother and sister, was destined never to be healed. Lionel and Douglas grew up knowing nothing of their father's family, but treated always with persistent kindness by their uncle, Sir Oswald Eversleigh, who insisted upon their making Raynham Castle a second home."

"Their cousin Reginald must have liked _that_, I fancy," remarked Miss Brewer, in her coldest tone.