"We offered his Lordship no shares, my Lord--that is the secret. I saw him a few days ago, and he sounded me upon the subject; but--I'm sure your Lordship will understand--in a company such as ours, my Lord"----

"Sir, I quite comprehend you, and I applaud your vigilant discrimination. Sir, in affairs of this description, in order to _secure_ the confidence of the public, it is a matter of the last importance that none but men of the highest--by the way, Mr. Gammon, how are the GOLDEN EGG shares? Would you advise me to sell"----

"Hold, my Lord, a little longer. We are going, in a few days' time, to publish some important information concerning the prospects of the undertaking, of the most brilliant character, and which cannot fail to raise the value of the shares, and _then_ will be the time to sell! Has your Lordship signed the deed yet?"

"Sir, I signed it last Sat.u.r.day, in company with my Lord Marmalade. I should not like to part with my interest in the company, you see--Mr.

Gammon--hastily; but I am in your hands"----

"My Lord, I am ever watchful of your Lordship's interests."

"By the way, will you dine with me to-morrow? We shall be quite alone, and I am very anxious to obtain an accurate account of the present state of Mr. t.i.tmouse's property; for, to tell you the truth, I have heard of one or two little matters that occasion me some uneasiness."

"Can anything be more unfortunate, my Lord? I am engaged out to dinner for the next three days--if indeed I shall be well enough to go to any of them," said Gammon, with an agitation which could have escaped the observation of few persons except the Earl of Dreddlington.

"Sir--I exceedingly regret to hear it; let me trust that some day next week I shall be more fortunate. There are several matters on which I am desirous of consulting you. When did you last see Mr. t.i.tmouse?"

"Let me see, my Lord--I--don't think I've seen him since Monday last, when I casually met him in one of the committee-rooms of the House of Commons, where, by the way, he seems a pretty frequent attendant."

"I'm glad to hear it," replied the earl, somewhat gravely; and, as Gammon imagined, with a slight expression of surprise, or even distrust.

Gammon therefore fancied that the earl had received recent intelligence of some of the wild pranks of his hopeful son-in-law, and wished to make inquiries concerning them of Gammon

"Will you, sir,--by the way--have the goodness to write at your earliest convenience to General Epaulette's solicitors, and tell them I wish to pay off immediately 12,000 of his mortgage? Oblige me, sir, by attending to this matter without delay; for I met the general the other day at dinner--and--I might possibly have been mistaken, sir--but I fancied he looked at me as if he wished me to feel myself his debtor. Do you understand me, sir? It annoyed me; and I wish to get out of his hands as soon as possible."

"Rely upon it, my Lord, it shall be attended to this very day," replied Gammon, scarcely able--troubled though he was--to suppress a smile at the increasing symptoms of purse-pride in the earl, whose long-empty coffers were being so rapidly and unexpectedly replenished by the various enterprises into which, under Gammon's auspices, his Lordship had entered with equal energy and sagacity. While the earl was speaking, the carriage drew up at the door of the company's office, and Gammon alighted. The earl, however, finding that all the gentlemen whom he had left there, had quitted, drove off westward, at a smart pace, and reached the House in time for the matters which he had mentioned to Mr.

Gammon. That gentleman soon dropped the languid demeanor he had worn in Lord Dreddlington's presence, and addressed himself with energy and decision to a great number of important and difficult matters demanding his attention--princ.i.p.ally connected with several of the public companies in which he was interested--and one of which, in particular, required the greatest possible care and tact, in order to prevent its bursting--prematurely. He had also to get through a considerable arrear of professional affairs, and to write several letters on the private business of Lord Dreddlington, and of Mr. t.i.tmouse--respectively. Nay, he had one or two still more urgent calls upon his attention. First came the action against himself for 4,000 penalties, for bribery, arising out of the Yatton election, and as to which he had received, that afternoon, a very gloomy "_opinion_" from Mr. Lynx, who was "advising"

him on his defence. Much in the same plight, also, were Messrs.

Bloodsuck, Mudflint, and Woodlouse, for whom Messrs. Quirk, Gammon, and Snap were defending similar actions; and who were worried out of their lives by daily letters from their terror-stricken clients, as to the state, progress, and prospects of the several causes in which they were so deeply interested. All these actions were being pressed forward by the plaintiffs with a view to trial at the ensuing York a.s.sizes; had been made, by the plaintiffs, special juries; and, infinitely to Gammon's vexation and alarm, he had found, on hurrying to retain Mr.

Subtle, that he, Mr. Sterling, and Mr. Crystal, had been already retained for the plaintiffs! Lastly, he was dreadfully teased by an action of seduction, which had, a few days before, been brought against Mr. t.i.tmouse; and which Gammon, finding it to be a very bad case, was making great efforts to compromise. To each and every of these matters, he gave the attention that was due--and, about seven o'clock, having finished his labors for the day, repaired, a good deal exhausted, to his chambers at Thavies' Inn. After a slight repast, he proceeded to draw up confidential "_instructions_" for Mr. Frankpledge, to frame the deeds necessary to carry into effect his contemplated arrangement with t.i.tmouse. That did not take him long; and having sealed up his packet, and addressed it, he threw himself down on the sofa, and gave himself up to anxious meditation, for he was aware that he was now, as it were, touching the very crisis of his fortunes. Again, again, and again he recurred to the incident of the day--the destruction of his doc.u.ments by t.i.tmouse; and cursed his own inconceivable stupidity, even aloud. Yet he could not avoid indulging at the same time in secret pride and exultation at the presence of mind which he had displayed--the successful skill with which he had encountered so sudden, singular, and serious an emergency. But what would be the effect of the destruction of those doc.u.ments, upon _certain secret arrangements_ of his connected with t.i.tmouse's recovery of the Yatton property? This was a question which occasioned Gammon great perplexity and apprehension. Then, as to Gammon's rent-charge of 2,000 per annum on the Yatton estates--he bethought himself, with no little uneasiness, of some expressions concerning t.i.tmouse's property, let fall by the earl that day: and if his Lordship should persevere in his determination to become minutely acquainted with the state of t.i.tmouse's property, how could the new and heavy enc.u.mbrance about to be laid upon it, possibly escape discovery?

and if it did, how was it to be accounted for, or supported? Confound it! It seemed as if fate were bent upon urging on a catastrophe!

"Shall I," thought Gammon, "wait till I am challenged on the subject, and then fire my shot, and bring his Lordship down from the tight-rope?

Then, however, I cannot but appear to have known the thing from the very beginning; and who knows what liabilities, civil or criminal--of fraud or conspiracy--may be attached to what I have done! Shall I wait for a convenient, though early opportunity, and rush, with dismay and confusion, into the earl's presence, as with a discovery only just made?

By Heaven! but the thing wears already a very ugly appearance. If it come out, what an uproar will be in the world! The lightning will fall on my head first, unless I take care. The discovery will doubtless kill Lord Dreddlington; and as for his daughter, it may overturn the little reason she has!"

Pa.s.sing from this subject, Gammon surveyed his other relations with the earl, which were becoming daily more involved and critical. He had seduced his Lordship into various mercantile speculations, such as had already placed him in a very questionable point of view, as taking deliberate, systematic advantage of the raging mania for bubble companies. In fact, Gammon had, by his skilful but not very scrupulous manuvring, already put into Lord Dreddlington's pocket some forty thousand pounds, and at the same time involved his Lordship in liabilities which he never dreamed of, and even Gammon himself had not contemplated. Then he warmed with his apparent proximity to Parliament, (to that part of t.i.tmouse's bargain Gammon resolved to hold him to the very letter,) which he was sure of entering on the very next election.

By that time he would have realized a sum, through his connection with the various companies, which, even independently of the income to be derived thereafter from the Yatton property, would render him so far independent as to warrant him in dissolving partnership with Messrs.

Quirk and Snap, and quitting at least the _practice_ of the profession.

Mr. Gammon was a man of very powerful mind, possessing energies of the highest order, and for the development and display of which he felt, and fretted when he felt, his present position in society afforded him no scope whatever, till at least he had entered upon that series of bold but well-conceived plans and purposes with which he has been represented as occupied, since the time when he first became the secret master of the fortunes of t.i.tmouse. His ambition was boundless, and he felt within himself a capacity for the management of political affairs of no ordinary magnitude, could he but force himself into the regions where his energies and qualifications could be discovered and appreciated.

Indeed, I will undertake to say, that, had Gammon only been a GOOD man, he would, in all probability, have become a great one. But, to proceed with the matters which were then occupying his busy brain. There was yet one upon which all his thoughts settled with a sort of agitating interest--his connection with the Aubreys; and whenever that name occurred to his thoughts, one beauteous image rose before him like that of an angel--I mean Miss Aubrey. She was the first object that had ever excited in him any, the faintest, semblance of the pa.s.sion of _love_--that love, I mean, which is in a manner purified and sublimated from all grossness or sensuality by a due appreciation of intellectual and moral excellence. When he dwelt upon the character of Miss Aubrey, and for a moment realized the possibility of a union with her, he felt, as it were, elevated above himself. Then her person was very beautiful; and there was a certain bewitching _something_ about her manners, which Gammon could only _feel_, not describe; in short, his pa.s.sion for her had risen to a most extraordinary pitch of intensity, and became a sort of infatuation. In spite of all that had happened at Yatton, he had contrived to continue, and was at that moment, on terms of considerable intimacy with the Aubreys; and had, moreover, been all the while so watchful over himself as to have given none of them any reason to suspect the state of his feelings towards Miss Aubrey; and, on the other hand, nothing had ever transpired to give him the slightest inkling of the state of matters between Miss Aubrey and Delamere--with the exception of one solitary circ.u.mstance which had at the moment excited his suspicions--Mr. Delamere's contesting the borough of Yatton. Though he had watched for it, however, nothing had afterwards occurred calculated to confirm his apprehensions. He had taken infinite pains to keep a good name in Vivian Street, with great art representing, from time to time, his disgust for the conduct and character of t.i.tmouse, and the reluctance with which he discharged his professional duty towards that gentleman. He made a point of alluding to the "gross and malignant insult" which had been offered at the hustings to the venerable Vicar of Yatton, and which, he said, was a sudden suggestion of Mr. t.i.tmouse's, and carried into effect by "that vile Unitarian parson, Mudflint," in defiance of Mr. Gammon's wishes to the contrary. He represented himself as still haunted by the mild, reproachful look with which Dr. Tatham had regarded him, as though he had been the author of the insult. The account which appeared in the _True Blue_ of his indignant interference on the occasion of Mr. Delamere's being struck on the hustings, was calculated, as Mr. Gammon conceived, to corroborate his representations, and aid the impression he was so anxious to produce. For the same reason, Mr. Gammon, whenever he had been at Yatton, had acted with great caution and secrecy, so as to give no cause of offence to Dr. Tatham; to whom he from time to time complained, in confidence, of those very acts of Mr. t.i.tmouse which had been dictated to him by Mr. Gammon. Thus _reasoned_ Mr. Gammon; but it would indeed have been singular had he _succeeded_ as he desired and expected. He lost sight of the proverbial influence of one's wishes over one's belief. In imagining that he had concealed from the Aubreys all the unfavorable features of his conduct, was he not, in some degree, exhibiting the folly of the bird, which, thrusting its _head_ only into the bush, imagines that it has thereby concealed its whole body?

The Aubreys knew amply sufficient to warrant a general dislike and distrust of Mr. Gammon; but there existed grave reasons for avoiding any line of conduct which Gammon might choose to consider offensive. Mr.

Aubrey justly regarded him as standing, at present, alone between him and some of his most serious liabilities. If Gammon, to accomplish objects to them undiscoverable, wore a mask--why challenge his enmity by attempting to tear off that mask? Mr. Aubrey governed his movements, therefore, with a prudent caution; and though, after the election, and the infamous decision of the election committee, Gammon was received at Vivian Street--whither he went with no little anxiety and trepidation--it was with a visibly increased coolness and reserve, but still with studious _courtesy_; and beyond that distinct but delicate line, none of them ever advanced a hair's-breadth, which Gammon observed with frequent and heavy misgivings. But he felt that something must at length be _done_, or attempted, to carry into effect his fond wishes with reference to Miss Aubrey. Months had elapsed, and their relative position seemed totally unchanged since the first evening that his manuvre had procured him a brief introduction to Mrs. Aubrey's drawing-room. In fact, he considered that the time had arrived for making known, in some way or another, the state of his feelings to Miss Aubrey; and after long deliberation, he resolved to do so without loss of time, and, moreover, personally. He had a fearful suspicion that he should be--at all events at first--unsuccessful; and now that, having taken his determination, he pa.s.sed in rapid review all their intercourse, he perceived less and less ground for being sanguine; for he felt that Miss Aubrey's manner towards him had been throughout more cold and guarded than that of either Mr. or Mrs. Aubrey. Like a prudent general contemplating the contingencies of an important expedition, and calculating his means of encountering them, Gammon considered--_persuasion_ failing--what means of _compulsion_ had he? He came, at length, finally to the conclusion, that his resources were most available at that moment; and, moreover, that his circ.u.mstances _required_ an immediate move.

The very next day, about ten o'clock, he sallied forth from his chambers, and bent his steps towards Vivian Street, intending to keep watch for at least a couple of hours, with a view to ascertaining whether Mrs. Aubrey's going out unaccompanied by Miss Aubrey would afford him an opportunity of seeing Miss Aubrey, alone and undisturbed; reasonably reckoning on the absence of Mr. Aubrey at the Temple, whither he knew he always went about half-past nine o'clock. That day, however, Mr. Gammon watched in vain; during the time that he stayed, only the servants and the children quitted the door. The next day he walked deliberately close past the house; was that brilliant and tasteful performance of the piano, _hers_? Again, however, he was unsuccessful.

On the third day, from a safe distance, he beheld both Mrs. and Miss Aubrey, accompanied by a female servant and the children, quit the house, and walk in the direction of the Park, whither--but at a great distance--he followed their movements with a beating heart. On a subsequent occasion, he saw Miss Aubrey leave the house, accompanied only by little Charles, and he instantly turned his steps despondingly eastward. How little did either of those fair beings dream of the strict watch thus kept upon their every movement! Two days afterwards, however, Gammon's perseverance was rewarded; for shortly after eleven o'clock, he beheld Mrs. Aubrey, accompanied by the two children, quit the house, and turn towards the Park. Gammon's heart began to beat hard.

Though he never cared much for dress, his appearance on the present occasion afforded indications of some little _attention_ to it; and he appeared simply a well-dressed gentleman, in a dark-blue b.u.t.toned surtout, with velvet collar, and plain black stock, as, after a moment's somewhat flurried pause, he knocked and rang at Mr. Aubrey's door.

"Is Mr. Aubrey within?" he inquired of the very pretty and respectable-looking maid-servant, who presently answered his summons.

"No, sir; he is never here after"----

"Perhaps _Mrs._ Aubrey"----

"No, sir; there is only Miss Aubrey at home; my mistress and the children are gone out into the Park, and Miss Aubrey is writing letters, or she would have gone with my mistress."

"Perhaps--I could see Miss Aubrey for a moment?" inquired Gammon, with as matter-of-fact an air as he could a.s.sume.

"Certainly, sir--she is in the drawing-room. Will you walk up-stairs?"

said the girl, who of course knew him well, as not an infrequent visitor at the house. So she led the way up-stairs, he following, and with somewhat fading color.

"_Mr. Gammon!_" he presently heard, as he stood on the landing, echoed in the rich and soft voice of Miss Aubrey, who seemed to speak in a tone of great surprise, in answer to the servant's announcement. "Why, f.a.n.n.y, did you not say that neither your master nor mistress was at home?"

Gammon next heard hastily asked in a lower tone by Miss Aubrey, and his countenance fell a little; for there was a tone of displeasure, or chagrin, in her voice, especially as she added, "You should have said that I was _engaged_! However, show him in, f.a.n.n.y;" and the next moment Mr. Gammon found himself bowing his way towards Miss Aubrey, with whom, for the first time in his life, he found himself alone.

She was sitting writing at her desk, before which stood, in a small flower-gla.s.s, a beautiful moss-rose. There was a little air of negligence in the arrangement of her hair, and her light morning costume displayed her figure to infinite advantage. There was really something inexpressibly lovely in her whole appearance, seen, though she was, at that moment, by Gammon, through the faint mist of displeasure which she had thrown around herself.

"Good-morning, Mr. Gammon," she commenced, rising a little from her chair; and sinking again into it, slightly turned it towards him, gazing at him with some curiosity.

"May I venture to hope, madam, that I am not intruding upon you?" said he, seating himself in the chair nearest to him.

"My brother always leaves at half-past nine; is he not at the Temple to-day, Mr. Gammon?" she added a little eagerly--for the first time observing something unusual in the expression of his countenance.

"I really don't know--madam,--in fact, I have not been there to-day; I thought it better, perhaps"----He paused for a second.

"I sincerely trust, Mr. Gammon," interrupted Miss Aubrey, slightly changing color, and looking with great anxiety at her visitor--"that nothing unpleasant--nothing unfortunate--has happened: do, pray, Mr.

Gammon!" she continued earnestly, turning her chair full towards him--"for Heaven's sake, tell me!"

"I a.s.sure you, madam, upon my honor, that nothing whatever unpleasant has happened, that I know of, since last we met."

"Oh dear--I was getting so alarmed!" said she, with a faint sigh, her white hand hastily putting back the curls which were cl.u.s.tering rather more luxuriantly than usual over her cheek.

"Certainly, madam, you have no occasion to be alarmed; I have, however, an errand--one to _me_, at least, of inexpressible importance," he commenced, and in a lower key than that in which he had previously spoken; and there was a peculiarity in his manner which quite riveted Miss Aubrey's eye upon his expressive--and now, she saw plainly, agitated countenance. What can possibly be the matter? thought she, as she made a courteous but somewhat formal inclination towards him, and said something about "begging him to proceed."

"I hope, madam, that, comparatively few as have been my opportunities of becoming acquainted with it, I may venture to express, without offence, my profound appreciation of your superior character."

"Really, sir," interrupted Miss Aubrey, very anxiously--"you are not candid with me. I am now certain that you have some unpleasant communication to make! Do, I entreat of you, Mr. Gammon, give me credit for a _little_ presence of mind and firmness; let me know the worst, and be prepared to break it to my brother and sister." Gammon seemed unable to bear her bright blue eyes fixed upon his own, which he directed to the floor, while his cheek flushed. Then he looked again at her; and with an eye which explained all, and drove away the bloom from her cheek, while it also suspended, for a moment, her breathing.

"Oh, forgive me for an instant--for one moment bear with me, Miss Aubrey!" continued Gammon, in a voice of low and thrilling pathos--"this interview agitates me almost to death; it is that which for a thousand hours of intense--absorbing--agonizing doubts and fears, I have been looking forward to!" Miss Aubrey sat perfectly silent and motionless, gazing intently at him, with blanched cheek: he might have been addressing a Grecian statue. "And now--now that it has at last arrived--when I feel as if I were breathing a new--a maddening atmosphere, occasioned by your presence--by the sight of your surpa.s.sing loveliness"----

"Gracious Heaven, sir! what can you mean!" at length interrupted Miss Aubrey, with a slight start--at the same time slipping her chair a little farther from Mr. Gammon. "I declare, sir, I do not in the least understand you," she continued with much energy; but her increasing paleness showed the effect which his extraordinary conduct had produced upon her. She made a strong and successful effort, however, to recover her self-possession.

"I perceive, madam, that you are agitated"----

"I am, sir! Astonished!--Shocked!--I could not have imagined"----

"Madam! madam! at the risk of being deemed unkind--cruel--if I _die_ for it, I cannot resist telling you that I reverence--I love you to a degree"----

"Oh, Heavens!" murmured Miss Aubrey, still gazing with an air of amazement at him. Several times she thought of rising to ring the bell, and at once get rid of so astounding an interruption and intrusion; but for several reasons she abstained from doing so, as long as possible.