"And was Bella ill?" asked Tony, eagerly.

"Yes, since Tuesday or Wednesday, and even up to Friday, very ill. There was a time this could scarcely have happened without your coming to ask after her."

"Is it my fault, Alice? First of all, I never knew it. You know well I go nowhere. I do not mix with those who frequent grand houses. But tell me of Bella."

"She was never alarmingly ill; but the doctor called it scarlatina, and frightened every one away; and poor Mrs. Maxwell has not yet recovered the shock of seeing her guests depart and her house deserted, for Bella and myself are all that remain."

"May I present my friend to you?--he would take it as such a favor,"

asked Tony, timidly.

"I think not," said she, with an air of indolence.

"Do let me; he saw your picture--that picture of you and Bella at the Exhibition--and he is wild to see yourself. Don't refuse me, Alice."

"If you think this a favor, I wonder you have courage to ask it. Come, you need not look cross, Master Tony, particularly as all the fault is on your own side. Come over to Tilney the day after to-morrow with your friend."

"But I don't know Mrs. Maxwell."

"That does not signify in the least; do what I bid you. I am as much mistress there as she is while I stay. Come early. I shall be quite alone, for Mark goes to-morrow to town, and Bella will scarcely be well enough to see you."

"And you'll not let me introduce him now?"

"No; I shall look more like my picture in a house dress; and perhaps--though I 'll not promise--be in a better temper too. Good-bye."

"Won't you shake hands with me, Alice?"

"No; it's too cold to take my hand out of my m.u.f.f. Remember, now, Sat.u.r.day morning, without fail."

"Alice!" said he, with a look at once devoted and reproachful.

"Tony!" said she, imitating his tone of voice to perfection, "there's your friend getting impatient. Good-bye."

As the spanking team whirled past, Skeffy had but a second or two to catch a glance at the veiled and m.u.f.fled figure that reclined so voluptuously in the corner of the carriage; but he was ready to declare that she had the most beautiful eyes in the world, and "knew what to do with them besides." "You 're in love with her, Tony," cried he, fixing a steadfast stare on the pale and agitated features at his side. "I see it, old fellow! I know every shade and tint of that blessed thing they miscall the tender pa.s.sion. Make me no confessions; I don't want them.

Your heart is at her feet, and she treats it like a football."

Tony's cheeks grew purple.

"There's no shame in that, my boy. Women do that with better men than either of us; ay, and will continue to do it centuries after you and I shall be canonized as saints. It's that same contempt of us that makes them worth the winning; but, I say, why is the fellow drawing up here?--Is he going to bait his beast?"

"No," muttered Tony, with a certain confusion; "but we must get down and walk here. Our road lies by that path yonder: there 's no carriage-way up to our 'chateau;'" and he gave a peculiar accent to the last word.

"All right," said Skeffy, gayly. "I 'm good for ten miles of a walk."

"I 'll not test your powers so far; less than a quarter of an hour will bring us home. Take down the luggage, and I 'll send up for it," said he to the driver.

"What honest poor devils you must be down here!" said Skeffy, as he saw the carman deposit the trunks on the road and drive off. "I 'd not like to try this experiment in Charing Cross."

"You see there is some good in poverty, after all," said Tony, laughing.

"Egad, I've tried it for some years without discovering it," said Skeffy, gravely. "That," continued he, after a brief pause, "it should make men careless, thoughtless, reckless if you like, I can conceive; but why it should make them honest, is clean beyond me. What an appet.i.te this sharp air is giving me, Master Tony! I'll astonish that sirloin or that saddle of yours, whichever it be."

"More likely neither, Skeffy. You 're lucky if it be a rasher and eggs."

"Oh, that it may be," cried the other, "and draught beer! Have you got draught beer?"

"I don't think we have any other. There's our crib,--that little cabin under the rocks yonder."

"How pretty it is,--the snuggest spot I ever saw!"

"You're a good fellow to say so," cried Tony; and his eyes swam in tears as he turned away.

What a change has come over Tony Butler within the last twenty-four hours! All his fears and terrors as to what Skeffy would think of their humble cottage and simple mode of life have given way, and there he goes about from place to place, showing to his friend how comfortable everything is, and how snug. "There are grander dining-rooms, no doubt, but did you ever see a warmer or a 'cosier'? And as to the drawing-room,--match the view from the window in all Europe; between that great bluff of Fairhead and the huge precipice yonder of the Causeway there is a sweep of coast unrivalled anywhere. Those great rocks are the Skerries; and there, where you see that one stone-pine tree,--there, under that cliff, is the cove where I keep my boat; not much of a boat," added he, in a weaker voice, "because I used always to have the cutter,--Sir Arthur's yacht Round that point there is such a spot to bathe in; twenty feet water at the very edge, and a white gravel bottom, without a weed. Pa.s.sing up that little pathway, you gain the ledge yonder; and there--do you mark the two stones, like gate-piers?--there you enter Sir Arthur Lyle's demesne. You can't see the shrubberies, for the ground dips, and the trees will only grow in the valleys here!" And there was a despondent tenderness in the last words that seemed to say, "If it were not for that, this would be paradise!"

Nor was it mere politeness, and the spirit of good breeding, that made Skeffy a genial listener to these praises. What between the sense of a holiday, the delight of what c.o.c.kneys call an "outing," the fine fresh breezy air of the place, the breadth and s.p.a.ce,--great elements of expansiveness,--Skeffy felt a degree of enjoyment that amounted to ecstasy.

"I don't wonder that you like it all, Tony," said he. "You 'll never, in all your wanderings, see anything finer."

"I often say as much to myself," replied Tony. "As I sit here of an evening, with my cigar, I often say, 'Why should I go over the world in search of fortune, when I have all that one wants here,--here at my very hand?' Don't you think a fellow might be content with it?"

"Content! I could be as happy as a king here!" and for a moment or two Skeffy really revelled in delighted thoughts of a region where the tinkle of a minister's hand-bell had never been heard, where no "service messengers" ever came, where no dunning tailors invaded; a paradise that knew not the post nor dreamed of the telegraph.

"And as to money," continued Tony, "one does not want to be rich in such a place. I 'm as well off here with, we 'll say, two hundred a year--we have n't got so much, but I 'll say that--as I should be in London with a thousand."

"Better! decidedly better!" said Skeffy, puffing his cigar, and thinking over that snowstorm of Christmas bills which awaited him on his return.

"If it were not for one thing, Skeffy, I 'd never leave it," said he, with a deep sigh, and a look that said as plainly as ever words spoke, "Let me open my heart to you."

"I know it all, old fellow, just as if you had confessed it to me. I know the whole story."

"What do you know, or what do you suspect you know?" said Tony, growing red.

"I say," said Skeffy, with that tone of superiority that he liked to a.s.sume,--"I say that I read you like a book."

"Read aloud, then, and I 'll say if you 're right"

"It 's wrong with you here, Butler," said Skeffy, laying his hand on the other's heart; and a deep sigh was all the answer. "Give me another weed," said Skeffy, and for some seconds he employed himself in lighting it "There's not a man in England," said he, slowly, and with the deliberateness of a judge in giving sentence,--"not a man in England knows more of these sort of things than I do. You, I 'm certain, take me for a man of pleasure and the world,--a gay, b.u.t.terfly sort of creature, flitting at will from flower to flower; or you believe me--and in that with more reason--a fellow full of ambition, and determined to play a high stake in life; but yet, Tony Butler, within all these there is another nature, like the holy of holies in the sanctuary. Ay, my dear friend, there is the--what the poet calls the 'crimson heart within the rose.' Isn't that it?"

"I don't know," said Tony, bluntly.

And now Skeffy smoked on for some minutes without a word. At length he said, in a solemn tone, "It has not been for nothing, Butler, that I acquired the gift I speak of. If I see into the hearts of men like you, I have paid the price of it."

"I 'm not so certain that you can do it" said Tony, half doubting his friend's skill, and half eager to provoke an exercise of it.

"I 'll show whether I can or not. Of coa.r.s.e, if you like to disclaim or deny--"