"No; they say the house is full."

"Not quite! Mine is a double-bedded chamber. You shall share it with me, if you like. What do you say?"

"Thank you, I should like it very much."

"Come in, then, and have a wash and a change of clothes; after which we will have supper. What would you like?"

"Anything at all. I know they cannot send up a bad one here."

Mr. Brudenell touched the bell. The waiter speedily answered it.

"Supper directly, James. Four dozen oysters; a roast fowl; baked potatoes; muffins; a bottle of sherry; and, and, black tea!--that is your milksop beverage, I believe, Ishmael," added Mr. Brudenell, in a low voice, turning to his guest.

"That is my milksop beverage," replied Ishmael good-humoredly.

The waiter went away on his errand. And Mr. Brudenell conducted Ishmael into the adjoining chamber, where the young man found an opportunity of renovating his toilet. When they returned to the sitting room they found the supper served and the waiter in attendance, but it was not until the traveler had done full justice to this meal, and the service was removed, and the waiter was gone, and the father and son were alone together, that they entered upon the confidential topics.

Mr. Brudenell questioned Ishmael minutely upon all the details of the Banff tragedy. And Ishmael satisfied him in every particular.

One circumstance in these communications was noticeable--Mr.

Brudenell, in all his questionings, never once mentioned the name of the Countess of Hurstmonceux. And even Ishmael avoided bringing it into his answers.

When Mr. Brudenell had learned all that he wanted to know, Ishmael in his turn said:

"I hope, sir, that the business which brought you to England has been satisfactorily settled?"

Mr. Brudenell sighed heavily.

"It has been settled, not very satisfactorily, but after a fashion, Ishmael. I never told you exactly what that business was. I intended to do so; and I will do it now."

Mr. Brudenell paused as if he were embarrassed, and doubtful in what terms to tell so unpleasant a story. Ishmael settled himself to attend.

"It was connected with my mother and sisters, Ishmael. They have been living abroad here for many years, as you have perhaps heard."

"Yes."

"And they have been living far above their means and far above mine.

And consequently debts and difficulties and embarrassments have come. Again and again I have made large sacrifices and settled all claims against them. I am sorry to say it of my mother and sisters, Ishmael; but if the truth must be told, their pride and extravagance have ruined them and me, so far as financial ruin goes. If that had been all, it might have been borne. But there was worse to come.

About a year ago my sister Eleanor--who had reached an age when single women begin to despair of marriage--formed the acquaintance of a disreputable scoundrel, one Captain Dugald, a younger brother, I hear, of the present Earl of Hurstmonceux--"

"Captain Dugald! I have heard of him!" exclaimed Ishmael.

"No doubt, most people have. He is rather a notorious character.

Well, my infatuated sister took a fancy to the fellow; misled him into the belief that she was the mistress of a large fortune; and played her cards so skillfully that--well, in a word, the handsome scamp ran off with her, or rather she ran off with him; for she seems all through to have taken the initiative in her own ruin."

"But I do not understand why she should have run off? She was of ripe age and her own mistress. Who was there to run from?"

"Her mother, her mother; who could not endure the sight of Captain Dugald, and who had forbidden him her house."

"Ah!"

"Well, they were married at Liverpool. He took her to the United States. At my mother's request I followed them there to reclaim my sister, for report said that the captain had already another wife when he married Eleanor. This report, however, I have ascertained to be without foundation. I could not find them in the United States, and soon gave up the search. Captain Dugald had no love for my sister. He appears to have treated her brutally from the first hour that he got her into his power. And when he learned that she had deceived him,--deceived him in every way, in regard to her fortune, in regard to her age, in regard to her very beauty, which was but the effect of skillful dress,--he conceived a disgust for her, abused her shamefully, and finally abandoned her in poverty, in sickness, and in debt."

"Poor, unhappy lady; what else could she have expected? She must have been mad," said Ishmael.

"Mad--madness don't begin to explain it. She must have been possessed of a devil. When thus left, she sold a few miserable trinkets of jewelry his cupidity had spared her, and took a steerage passage in one of our steamers and followed him back to England; but here lost sight of him, for it seems that he is somewhere on the Continent. She came to my mother's house in London in the condition of a beggar, knowing that she was a pauper, and fearing that she was not a wife. In this state of affairs my mother wrote, summoning me to her assistance. I came over as you know. I have ascertained that my sister's marriage is a perfectly legal one; but I have not succeeded in finding her scoundrel of a husband and bringing him to book. He is still on the Continent somewhere; hiding from his creditors, it is said."

"And his unhappy wife?"

"Is on her voyage to America. I have sent them all home, Ishmael.

They must live quietly at Brudenell Hall."

"But now that the Viscount Vincent is dead, and Captain Dugald becomes the heir presumptive to the earldom of Hurstmonceux, his prospects are so much improved that I should think he would return to England without fear of annoyance from his creditors; such gentry being usually very complaisant to the heirs of rich earldoms."

"I doubt if he will live to inherit the title and estate, Ishmael.

He is nearly eaten up by alcohol. Eleanor, I know, will not live long. She is in the last stage of consumption. Her repose at Brudenell Hall may alleviate her sufferings, but cannot save her life," said Mr. Brudenell sadly. "I have only waited until your business here should be concluded, Ishmael, in order to return thither myself. You have nothing more to do. however, but to act for Judge Merlin in this matter of restitution, and then you will be ready to go, I presume."

"Yes; I have something else to do, sir. I have to expose a villain, to vindicate a lady, and to reconcile a long-estranged pair,"

replied Ishmael, in a nervous tone, yet with smiling eyes.

"Why, what have you been doing but just those things? What was Lord Vincent? What was Claudia? What was your part in that affair? Never, since the renowned Knight of Mancha, the great Don Quixote, lived and died, has there been so devoted a squire of dames, so brave a champion of the wronged, as yourself, Ishmael," said Mr. Brudenell.

"You may laugh, but you shall not laugh me out of my next enterprise, or 'adventure,' as the illustrious personage you have quoted would call it. And, by the way, do you know anything of a fellow-passenger of ours in the late voyage, the German Jew, Ezra Isaacs?"

"No; why?"

"I need him in the prosecution of this adventure."

"I have not seen him since we parted at Liverpool. I know nothing whatever about him."

"Well, then, after I have been at the chambers of Messrs. Hudson, I must go to Scotland Yard, and put the affair in the hands of the detectives, for have Isaacs hunted up I must."

"Is he the villain you are about to expose?"

"No; but he has been the tool of that villain, and I want him for a sort of state's evidence against his principal."

"Ah! I wish you joy of your adventure, Ishmael. It reminds one forcibly of the windmills," said Mr. Brudenell.

Ishmael laughed good-humoredly.

"I think it will do so, sir, when you find that the objects that you have been mistaking for giants are only windmills after all," he said.

"I do not understand you, my dear fellow."

Ishmael took from his breast-pocket the miniature of the Countess of Hurstmonceux, and opening it and gazing upon it, he said:

"This is the likeness of the injured lady whose honor I have sworn to vindicate."

"Is it Claudia's?" inquired Mr. Brudenell, stretching his hand for it.