AT MARKET VALUE MEW NOVELS AT ALL LIBRARIES. A COUNTRY SWEETHEART. By Dora Rlssell. 3 vols. LOURDES. By E. Zola, i vol. MEMOIRS OF A LANDLADY. By G. R. Sims, i vol. RED AND WHITE HEATHER. By Robert Buchanan. I vol. THE RED SHIRTS. By Paul Gaulot. i vol. MR. SADLER'S DAUGHTERS. By Hugh Coleman David- SON. I vol. A SECRET OF THE SEA. By T. W. S.eight. 1 vol. THE SCORPION. By E. A. Vizetellv. 1 vol. TOM SAWYER ABROAD. By Mark Twain. London: CHATTO & WINDUS, 214 Piccadilly. AT MARKET VALUE B IHovel BV GRANT ALLEN 'this mortal CO AUTHOR OF IL,' ' BLOOD ROYAL,' 'THE SCALLYWAO,' KTC. IN TWO VOLUMES VOL. L UonHon CHATTO cS: WINDUS, PICCADILLY 1894 COlBtCK> U.B.C. Libraries> CONTENTS OF VOL. I. UHAPTEK fAOE I. AN ACCIDENTAL MEETING . - - - 1 II. MRS. HESSLEGRAVE 'AT HOME' - - - 16 III. MILLIONAIRE AND SAILOR - - " - B2 IV. FRATERNAL AMENITIES - - " - 48 V. A CHANCE ENCOUNTER VI. A CASE OF CONSCIENCE VII. MAKING THEIR MINDS UP - - - - 9o VIII. A DIGRESSION ------ 108 IX. BY THE BLUE ADRIATIC X. VISITORS IN VENICE - - - - XI. MRS. HESSLEGRAVE MISAPPREHENDS - - - 150 XII. A mother's DILEMMA .... 165 XIII. A MISSING LOVER . - - - XIV. THE AXMINSTER PEERAGE 64 79 122 135 183 196 AT MARKET VALUE CHAPTER I. AN ACCIDENTAL MEETING. 'TwAS a dejected, dispirited, sheepish-looking thron^^ that gathered, one black Wednesday, round the big back door in Burlington Gardens. For it was Taking- away Day at the Eoyal Academy. For weeks before that annual holocaust, many anxious hearts have waited and watched in eager suspense for the final verdict of the Hanging Com- mittee. To hang or not to hang — that is the ques- tion. But on Taking-away Day the terrible fiat at last arrives ; the Committee regret (on a litho- graphed form) that want of space compels them to decline Mr. So-and-so's oil-painting, ' The Fall of Babylon,' or Miss Whatshername's water-colour, * By Leafy Thames,' and politely inform them that they VOL. I. 1 2 AT MARKET VALUE may remove tlicm iii llicir leisure, uiul at tlieir own expense, from ]5urliiigton House by the back door aforesaid. Then follows a sad ceremony: the rejecti'd flock together to recover their slighted goods, and keep one anotlier company in their liour of humilia- tion. It is a comnumity of grief, a fellowship in misery. Eacli is only sustained from withering under the observant eyes of his neighbour by the inward consciousness that that neighbour himself, after all, is in the self-same l)Ox, and has been the recipient that day of an identical letter. Nevertheless it was some consolation to Kathleen Hesslegrave in her disappointment to observe the varying moods and shifting humours of her fellow- sufferers among the rejected. She had a keon. sense of the ridiculous, and it lightened her troul)le somewhat to watch among the crowd the different funny ways in which other people bore or concealed their own dis- appointment for her edification. There were sundry young men, for example, with long hair down their backs and loose collars of truly Byronic expaiisiveness, whom Kathleen at once recognised as unacclaimed geniuses belonging to the very newest and extremest school of modern impressionism. They hailed from Newlyn. These lordly souls, budding Raphaels of the future, strolled mto the big room with a careless air of absolute unconcern, as who should wonder they had /l.V ACCIDENTAL MEETING 3 ever doif^nefl to submit their immortal works to the arlHtrameiit of a mere everyday Hangin;^' Committee ; and they affected to f«el very Httle surprise indeed at finding; that a vulgar bourgeois world had disdained their efforts. They disdained the vulgar l)Ourgeois world in return with contempt at compound interest visibly written on their {esthetic features. Others, older and shabbier, slunk in unol>sorvcd, and shouldered their canvases, mostly unobtrusive land- scapes, with every appearance of anti(|ue familiarity. It was not the first time they had received that insult. Yet others again — and these were chiefly young girls — advanced blushing and giggling a little from sup- pressed nervousness, to recover with shame their unvalued property. Here and there, too, a l)ig burly-shouldered man elbowed his way through the crowd as though the place belonged to him, and hauled off his mafinum opus (generally a huge field of historical canvas, * King Edward at Calais,' or, * The Death of Attila ') with a defiant face which seemed to bode no good to the first Academi- cian he might chance to run against on his way down Bond Street. A few, on the contrary, were anxious to explain, with unnecessary loudness of voice, that they hadn't sent in themselves at all this year ; they had called for a picture by a friend — that was all, really. Kathleen stood aside and watched A AT MARKET VALUE their varied moods with quiet amusement ; it dis- tracted her attention for the time from her own poor picture. At last she found herself almost the only person remaining out of that jostling crowd, wiih a sailor- looking man, brown and bronzed, beside her. ' " In a Side Canal ; Kathleen Hesslegrave." Yes, this is yours, mum,' the porter said gruffly. ' But you'll want a man to take it down to the cab for you.' Kathleen glanced at her little arms ; they were not very strong, to be sure, though plump and shapely. Then she looked at the porter. But the porter stood unmoved. With a struggling little effort Kathleen tried to lift it. ' In a Side Canal ' was a tolerably big picture, and she failed to manage it. The sailor- looking body by her side raised his hat with a smile. His face was brown and weather-beaten, but he had beautiful teeth, very white and regular, and when he smiled he showed them. He looked like a gentleman, too, though he was so roughly dressed, with a sailor's roughness. * May I help you '?' he asked, as he raised his hat. 'We two seem to be the last — I suppose because we were more modestly retiring than the rest of them. This is a good big picture.' * Yes,' Kathleen answered regretfully. * And it took me a good long time to paint it.' AN ACCIDENTAL MEETING 5 The sailor-looking young man glanced at the subject carelessly. *0h, Venetian!' he cried. 'Why, how odd! We're neighbours. Mine's Venetian, too. The very next canal ; I painted it quite close to San Giovanni e Paolo.' * So did I,' Kathleen exclaimed, brightening up, a little surprised at the coincidence. ' When were you there ?' ' Last autumn.' ' Then I wonder we never met,' the young man put in with another sunshiny smile. * I was working on that canal every day of my life from November to January.' He was carrying her picture as he spoke towards the door for a cab. * Oh, how funny !' Kathleen exclaimed, looking closer at his features. ' It's queer we never hap- pened to knock up against one another. And we knew so many people in Venice, too. Used you ever to go to the Martindales' palazzo ?' The young man smiled once more, this time a restrained smile of deprecatory modesty. If his teeth were good, he certainly lost no opportunity of show- ing them. ' No ; I didn't know the Martindales,' he answered very hastily, as if anxious to disclaim the social 6 AT MARKET VALUE honour thus thrust upon him, for the Martindales lead Anglo-Venetian society. ' Then, perhaps, the Chericis ?' Kathleen interposed once more, with that innate human desire we all of us feel to find some common point with every stranger we run against. ' No,' her new friend replied, looking graver now. ' Nor Countess Cherici either. In point of fact, I may say — except one or two other painter-fellows, if I can call myself a painter — I know nobody in Venice. I was not in society.' ' Oh !' Kathleen answered, dropping her voice a little ; for, though she was a sensible girl, in the circle she had been brought up in, not to be in society was considered almost criminal. The young man noted the sudden drop in her voice, and a curious little line developed itself for a second near the corners of his mouth — an upward line, curving sideways obliquely. It was clear he was amused by her altered demeanour. But he made no reply. He only bore the picture gravely to the door of the Academy, and there tried to call the attention of some passing hansom. But it was clearly useless. They were all engaged already, and the crush at the door was still so great there could be no chance of hiring one for another ten minutes. So the young man laid down the big picture near the door, with its AN ACCIDENTAL MEETING 7 face propped up against the entrance wall, and saying quietl}^ * I'll help you in with it hy-and-by when I see any chance,' went back to the inner room to recover his own Venetian canvas. He was gone a minute ; and when he returned, Katlileen could see he almost ostentatiously set his own picture down at some distance from hers, as though he was little anxious to continue the conversa- tion. She was sori-y for that. He had seemed so eager to help her with such genuine kindliness ; and she was afraid he saw his last remark about not being in society had erected an instinctive class-barrier between them. So, after a moment's hesitation, she left her own work to take care of itself, and took a step or t\\o forward toward her new acquaintance's ambitious canvas. ' You saw mine,' she said apolo- getically, by way of reopening conversation : * May I see yours? One likes to sit in Judgment on the Hanging Committee.' The young man seemed pleased. He had a speak- ing face, and was handsome withal, with a seafaring handsomeness. ' Oh yes, if you like,' he answered ; * though I'm afraid you won't care for it.' And he turned the painted face of the picture towards her. ' But why on earth didn't they take it ?' Kathleen cried spontaneously, almost as soon as she saw it. ' What lovely light on the surface of the water ! And 8 AT MARKET VALUE oh ! the beautiful red sails of those Chioggia fishing- boats !' ' I'm glad you like it,' the stranger replied, with evident pleasure, blushing like a girl. * I don't care for criticism as a rule, but I love sincerity ; and the way you spoke showed me at once you were really sincere about it. That's a very rare quality — about the hardest thing to get in this world, I fancy.' * Yes, I was quite sincere,' Kathleen answered with truth. ' It's a beautiful picture. The thing I can't understand is why on earth they should have re- jected it.' The young man shrugged his shoulders and made an impatient gesture. * They have so many pictures to judge in so short a time,' he answered with a tolerance which was evidently habitual to him. * It doesn't do to expect too much from human nature. All men are fallible, with perhaps the trifling exception of the Pope. We make mistakes ourselves, some- times; and in landscape especially they have such miles to choose from. Not,' he went on after a short pause, * that I mean to say I consider my own fishing- boats good enough to demand success, or even to deserve it. I'm the merest beginner. I was thinking only of the general principle.' 'I'm afraid you're a dreadful cynic,' Kathleen put in with a little wave of her pretty gloved hand, just AN ACCIDENTAL MEETING 9 to keep up the conversation. She was still engaged in looking close into the details of his rejected handi- craft. Though deficient in technique, it had marked imagination. The stranger smiled a broader and more genial smile than ever. * Oh no, not a cynic, I hope,' he answered with emphasis, in a way that left no doubt about his own sincerity. * It isn't cynical, surely, to recognise the plain facts of human nature. We're all of us prone to judge a good deal by the most super- ficial circumstances. Suppose now, you and I were on the Hanging Committee ourselves : just at first, of course, we'd be frightfully anxious to give every work the fullest and fairest consideration. Eesponsibility would burden us. We would weigh each picture well, and reject it only after due deliberation. But human nature can't keep up such a strain as that for long together. We'd begin very fresh, but towards the end of the day we'd be dazed and tired. We'd say : " Whose is that? Ah ! by So-and-so's son; a brother R. A. I know his father. Well, it's not badly painted ; we'll let it in, I think. What do you say, Jiggamaree?" And then with the next: "Who's this by, porter? Oh, a fellow called Smith ! Not very distinctive, is it ? H'm ; we've rejected every bit as good already ; space is getting full. Well, put it away for the present, Jones: we'll mark it doubtful." That's 10 AT MARKET VALUE human nature, after all ; and what we each of us feel we would do ourselves, we can none of us fairly blame in others.' * But I call that cynicism,' Kathleen persisted, look- ing up at him. If the stranger was a cynic, he had certainly caught the complaint in its most genial form, for he answered at once with perfect good-humour : ' Oh no, I don't think so. It's mere acceptance of the facts of life. The cynic assumes a position of censure. He implies that human nature does this, that, or the other thing, which ]«', with his higher and purer moral sense, would never so much as dream of doing. Knowledge of the world is not necessarily cynicism. The cynical touch is added to it by want of geniality and of human tolerance. It is possible for us to know what men and women are like, and yet to owe them no grudge for it — to recognise that, after all, we are all of us au fond very nearly identical.' He spoke like a gentleman and a man of culture. Kathleen was a little surprised, now she heard him talk, to find him so much more educated than she had at first fancied. For his rough exterior had rather prejudiced her against the sailor - looking stranger. But his voice was so pleasant, and his smile so frank, that she really quite admired him, in spite of his sentiments. She was just going to answer AN ACCIDENTAL MEETING II him, in defence of human nature, against his supposed strictures, when a voice in the crowd close by dis- tracted her attention. ' Why, Miss Hesslegrave, there you are !' it cried. ' I wondered if I should see you. Oh, yes, indeed, I also am among the killed and wounded. I've got no fewer than three of them. What, all my pretty ones ! A perfect massacre of the innocents. But there, the Hanging Committee is as bad as its name. No respecter of persons. Euthless, ruthless, ruthless ! And Arnold Willoughby, too ! Well, Willoughby, how are you ? I really didn't know you two knew each other.' * We don't,' Kathleen answered, taking the new- comer's hand. ' We've only just met here. But your friend's been so kind. He's carried my poor rejected picture down for me, and we're waiting for a cab. It is such a crush — and all of us trying to pre- tend we don't mind about it !' ' Who's cynical now ?' the stranger put in, with a mischievous twinkle in his eye. ' I do mind very much ; it's bread and butter to nte ; and I don't pre- tend to conceal it. But I'll leave you now. I see you've found a friend, and I can be of no further service to you.' He raised his hat with more grace than Kathleen could have expected from those rough sailor-like clothes : ' Good-bye,' he said ; * Mortimer, you'll see after the picture.' 12 AT MARKET VALUE The American, for he was one, nodded a polite assent. * Howhickyl am, Miss Hesslegrave,' he murmured, ' to have met you by accident ! And talking to Wil- loughby, too ! You can't think what a conquest that is.' He glanced with some amusement after the stranger's retreating figure. 'You know,' he said, lowering his voice, * Willoughby's a professed miso- gynist, or next door to one, anyhow ; this is the very first time I've ever seen him speaking to a lady. As a rule, he runs away from them the moment he sees one. It was conjectured in Venice among the fellows who knew him that he had been what school- girls describe as "crossed in love," he avoided them so carefully. I suppose the truth is one of them must have jilted him.' ' He was very kind to me,' Kathleen interposed quietly. ' He saw me struggling with this great big canvas, and he came up to help me, and was so nice and polite about it.' * Ah yes,' the American answered, a little lower than before, with a meaning glance. ' Kind to you, Miss Hesslegrave ; that doesn't prove much ; even a confirmed misogynist could hardly be less ; we must allow for circumstances.' Kathleen coloured a little, but didn't altogether dis- like the compliment, for Mortimer was rich — very rich AN ACCIDENTAL MEETING 13 indeed — and the acknowledged catch of the artistic American colony in Paris. But she turned the subject hastily. * Where did you meet him ?' she asked, looking down at her pretty shoes. ' He's so rough-looking outside ; yet he seems a gentleman.' * Oh, he is a gentleman, undoubtedly,' Mortimer answered with true American candour ; * a born gentleman, though not quite the conventional one. He's as poor as a church mouse, and he's been a sailor, I fancy.' ' Who is he ?' Kathleen asked with evident interest. ' Ah, who is he ? That's the question,' Mortimer answered mysteriously. * He's a dark horse, I imagine. I picked him up accidentally last autumn in Venice. He used to lodge at a tiny Italian trattoria, down a side canal — not far from my palazzo — and live off fritura — you know the sort of stuff— fish, flesh, and fowl, three meals a penny.' ' How brave of him !' Kathleen said simply. ' He looks very nice. And all for art's sake, I suppose, Mr. Mortimer ?' The American laughed. 'All for poverty's sake, I imagine,' he answered with candour. * So he told me himself. He didn't care so much about art, he said, as about earning a 14 AT MARKET VALUE livelihood ; and I really believe he starves in his den when he sells no pictures.' * Why did he run away from us '?' Kathleen asked, peering around into the crowd to see if she could discover him. * Well, to tell you the truth,' Mortimer replied, ' I think it was mainly because he saw me come up ; and also because of the faint intonation in your voice when you said, " We don't know one another." Willoughby's a misogynist, as I told you, and he's also sensitive, absurdly sensitive — he might almost be one of my fellow-countrj-men. I don't doubt, when you said that, he took it as his dismissal. He understood you to mean, *' Now I've done, sir, with i/ok. Here's somebody else I know. You may go al)out your busi- ness." And being a person who always feels acutely when he's de trap, he went about his business at once, accordingly.' * I'm sorry,' Kathleen put in ; ' for I really rather liked him.' *0h, he's a thorough good sort,' the American answered quickly. ' He's sterling, Willoughby is. Not at all the sort of man that's given away with a pound of tea. None of your cotton-backed gentlemen. You may test him all through, and you'll find from head to foot he's the genuine material.' * Couldn't you bring him with you to tea, this after- AN ACCIDENTAL MEETING 1^ noon ?' Kathleen suggested, half hesitating. ' I think mamma sent you an "at home" card for Wednesdays.' 'Oh, I'm coming,' the American answered with prompt acquiescence ; ' I have not forgotten it, Miss Hesslegrave ; is it likely I should ? Well, no, I don't think so. But as for AVilloughby— ah, there you know, that's quite a different matter. I don't suppose anything on earth would induce him to go to an "at home " of anybody's. He'd say it was hollow ; and he despises hollowness. He'll never go in for anything but realities. To tell you the truth, I think the only reason he spoke to you at all at the Academy here this morning was because he saw a chance of being of some practical service to you ; and the moment the practical siif, I hear,' he l)egan with meaning, as he took Kathleen's liand. Then he started a Httle in surprise as Pieginald rose from the chair where he had heen sitting, unseen. * But your brother's here,' he added in a disappointed after- thought, whose distinct tone of regret must needs have struck anybody less self-centred and self- satisfied than the stockbroker's assistant. 'Yes, I dropped round to say good-bye to my people to-night,' Reggie answered with a drawl, caressing that budding black line on his upper lip with all a hobbledehoy's affection. * They're off on a round of visits in the country just now. Hard lines on me ! I shall be left all alone by myself in London !' Rufus Mortimer survej'ed him from head to foot with a comprehensive glance, which seemed to say, about as clear as looks could say it, that whatever he did he wouldn't be much missed anywhere — especially just at that moment ; but being a polite young man, after his own lights, he failed to put his idea into words for the present. He merely sat down on the divan, not far from Kathleen, and began to talk with her about art (a subject which invariably bored Mr. Reginald), taking not the slightest notice in any way all the while of her brother's presence. Before he knew it almost, they were away in Florence : deep in 6o A T MA RKE T VA L UE their Eaphaels and Andrea del Sartos, and so forth. Eeggie stood it for ten minutes or so ; then he rose and yawned. Fra FiHppo Lippi had ahnost choked him off : hut Pacchiarotto finished him. He wasn't going to stoj) and hear any more of this rot. He longed for something sensihle. He'd go out and see what the even- ing papers said of the favourite for the Two Thousand. But Kathleen called him back anxiously. * Where are you going to, lleggie "?' she asked, with unexpected affection. It wasn't often she seemed so eager for the pleasure of his society. ' Oh, just strolling out for a bit,' her brother answered evasively, ' till the Mums comes back. I thought you and Mortimer seemed to be hitting it off on high art very well together.' * Don't go just yet,' his sister put in, with a quick look at him. 'I'm sure mother 'd be vexed if you went away without seeing her.' ' I meant to come back soon,' Eeggie responded with a sigh, his right hand still fingering the knob of the door. ' I expect you won't miss me.' 'Oh, don't let him stay on /;;// account,' Mortimer echoed with polite anxiety, giving Kathleen a pleading look half aside in his turn. It was clear ^rom that look he wanted a tete-a-tete with her. But Kathleen was hiexorable. ' I'd rather you stopped, Eeggie,' she said in such a decided voice that FRATERNAL AMENITIES 6l even Eeggie understood, and made up his mind to give way to her. ' Mother '11 be here before long, and I want you to wait for her.' Eeggie sat down with a bump. * Oh, as you will,' he answered, dropping back into his easy-chair. ' I'm sure I don't mind. It's all the same to me. Only, I thought you two could run this Fra Angelico business just about as well without me, don't you know, as with me. I don't pretend to excite myself over Fra Angelico, any way.' So for the next half-hour poor Eufus Mortimer sat on, still discussing art — which is a capital subject, no doubt, w'hen 3'ou want to talk of it, but which palls a little, it must be confessed, if it intervenes inconti- nently at the exact moment of time when you're waiting to ask the young woman of your choice whether or not she'll have you. Eufus Mortimer, for his part, was rather inclined, as things stood, to put his money on the )i<)t. For if that delightful English girl had really wanted him, surely she would have managed to get rid, by hook or by crook, of her superfluous brother. Instead of which, she had positively en- couraged him in remaining. Which things being so, Eufus Mortimer was more than half disposed to think she desired to avoid having to give him an answer. For that he was really and truly sorry ; for he had always liked her very much ; and now that she showed 62 AT MARKET VALUE some disposition to refuse him, why, he came ex- ceedingly near to loving her. Such is the way of man ! The fact that Kathleen Hesslegrave seemed to hold him at arm's-length made Eufus Mortimer resolve in his own mind at all hazards to marry her. After Mrs. Hesslegrave had returned for a few minutes, somewhat later, the young man rose to go. It was no use waiting now ; Kathleen was fenced in, as it were, by a doul)le thorn hedge of mother and brother. Yet he paused by the open door, and held Kathleen's hand for a second in his own as he said good-bye. * Then we shall meet in Venice,' he said at last, re- gretfully. ' In Venice ; in October.' Kathleen looked at him with some concern. 'But you would do better to be in Paris,' she said low. * It's so much more important for your art, you know !' And she trembled slightly. ' No,' the American answered, brightening up at that little spark of seeming interest in his private pur- suits. ' It shall be Venice, Miss Hesslegrave. I make it Venice.' Then he paused for a second, as if afraid of going too far. * There are things,' he said, gazing wistfully at her with his big brown eyes, ' much more important in one's life than art ! So Venice it shall be ! Let me meet you hi Venice !' FRATERNAL AMENITIES 63 As soon as he was gone, Eeggie turned to her with a sniggle. ' That chap's awfully gone on you, Kitty,' he said, much amused. ' He's awfully gone on you. For my part, I never can understand any fellow being gone on such a girl as you ; but he's awfully gone on you . Why wouldn't you let me go out ? Didn't you see he was Just dying to have ten minutes alone with you ?' * Yes, I did see,' Kathleen answered ; ' and that was exactly why I didn't want you to go out that moment. I didn't wish to be left alone with him.' Eeggie opened his eyes wide. 'He's a jolly good match,' he continued. * And a decent enough sort of fellow too — though he knows nothing of horses. I'm sure I don't see why you should make such bones about accepting him!' * I quite agree with Eeggie,' put in Mrs. Hesslegrave, who had entered. 'He's an excellent young man. I'm surprised at what you say of him.' Kathleen rose from her seat like one who doesn't care to continue a discussion. ' He's a very good fellow,' she said, with one hand on the door : ' and I like him immensely. So much that — I didn't care to be left alone with him this evening.' And with that enigmatical remark she sliiDped away from the room and ran quietly upstairs to complete her packing. CHAPTER V. A CHANCE ENCOUNTER. ' October in Venice is always charming,' Euf us Morti- mer remarked, as he leaned back luxuriously on the padded seat of his own private gondola, the Crhtofovo Colombo. ' The summer's too hot here, and the winter's too chilly ; but October and April are perfect poems. I'm so glad I made up my mind to come, after all. I never saw Venice before to such absolute advantage.' Mrs. Hesslegrave gathered her light wrap round her ample shoulders, and settled herself down on the best back bench with an air of unalloyed and complete enjoyment. She was thoroughly in her element. * There's nothing more delightful than a gondola to travel in,' she said with placid contentment in her full round face, looking up at the two sturdy gondoliers in gay costumes, who handled the paddles at prow and stern with true Venetian mastery of the art and craft A CHANCE ENCOUNTER 65 of the lagoons. She would have said, if she had been quite candid, ' Nothing more delightful than a priratr gondola ;' for 'twas that last touch indeed that made up to Mrs. Hesslegrave half the pleasure of the situa- tion. It flattered her vanity, her sense of superiority to the vulgar herd. She hated to hire a mere ordinary hack-boat at the steps by the Molo ; to entrust herself to the hands of a possibly extortionate and certainly ill-dressed boatman, and to be lost in the common ruck of plain tourist humanity. But what her soul just loved was to glide like this along the Grand Canal in a private craft, with two gentlemen's servants in full Venetian costume— red sash and black jerkin— by the iron bow; to know herself the admired of all beholders, who really couldn't tell at a casual glance whether she was or was not the proprietor in person of the whole turn-out, the eminently respectable family equipage. I don't know why, but we must all admit there is certainly a sense of extreme luxury and aristo- cratic exclusiveness about a private gondola, as about the family state -barge of the seventeenth - century nobleman, which is wholly wanting to even the most costly of modevn carriages and beliveried footmen. Mrs. Hesslegrave felt as much — and was happy accordingly ; for nothing gave her mind such pure enjoyment as the feeling, quite hateful to not a few among us, that she was enjoying something which all the world could VOL. I. 5 66 AT MARKET VALUE not equally enjoy, and was giving rise to passing qualms of envy, hatred, malice, and all uncharitable- ness in the ill-balanced minds of casual spectators. So she glided in placid enjoyment down the Grand Canal, drinking it all in as she went with receptive eyes, and noting, by the mute evidence of blinds and shutters, which families were now back in their stately palazzos from their summer holidays, and which were still drinking ' the gross mud-honey of town ' in London or Paris, Berlin or Vienna. * There's the Contarini-Fasan,' Kathleen cried in delight as they passed in front of one delicious little palace with mouldering pointed Venetian arches of the fourteenth century. * How lovely it always looks ! That exquisite moulding ! That rich work round the windows ! And those romantic balconies ! — I wonder, Mr. Mortimer, you didn't try to rent some old place like that, instead of the one you've got. It's so much more picturesque, you know !' * Do you think so ?' the young American answered, looking quite pleased for a second that she should make the suggestion. ' Well, you see, I didn't know you'd prefer a medieval one. And the Eenaissance are certainly more convenient to live in.' * Why, my dear child,' Mrs. Hesslegrave interposed, with quite a shocked expression, * what on earth could be more lovely than Mr. Mortimer's palazzo ? It's A CHANCE ENCOUNTER 67 much the largest and most important-looking house (except, of course, the Pi-efecture and the foreign ambassadors') on the Grand Canal. I don't see, my- self, how in the world you can find fault with it.' ' Miss Hesslegrave's quite right,' the American answered quickly, with grave politeness, darting a glance at Kathleen. * Of course, in point of beauty, there can be no comparison between a palazzo like mine, all plain round windows or Eenaissance doors, and such crystallized dreams in lace- like stone as the Ca d'Oro or the Palazzo Pisani. One capital of their columns is worth my whole courtyard. It's for those alone w^e come to live in Venice. But then, they're not always in the market, don't you see ; and besides, in many ways they're less convenient to live in. One must think of that sometimes. The picturesque is all very w^ell as an object of abstract contemplation in life ; but when it comes to daily needs, we somehow seem to prefer the sanitary and the comfortable.' ' Oh, and what an exquisite glimpse up the side- canal there !' Kathleen exclaimed once more, with a lingering accent on the words, as they passed Just in front of an old red tower with bells hung in its arch- ways. * That's the campanile of San Vitale, that tower. I always love it : it's a beautiful bit. These quaint out-of-the-way places, that nobody else ever paints, I love the best of all in Venice. They're so 68 AT MARKET VALUE much more beautiful and picturesque, after all, than the common things all the world admires, and one sees everywhere — the Rialto, and the Bridge of Sighs, and Santa Maria della Salute.' ' The Macdougalls are back, I see,' Mrs. Hesslegrave interposed with a glance at a first-floor. ' That's their house, Mr. Mortimer. They're charming people, and immensely wealthy. That big red place there, just round by the Layards'.' 'And what lovely old windows it has!' Kathleen exclaimed, glancing up. ' Those deep-recessed quatre- foils ! How exquisite they look, with the canary- creeper climbing up the great stone mullions to the tracery of the arches ! Don't you love the blue posts they moor their boats to ?' * I wonder if they've begun their Friday afternoons yet,' Mrs. Hesslegrave went on, following out the track of her own reflections. ' We must look and see, Kathleen, when we go back to our lodgings.' ' There was a whole heap of cards, mother,' Kathleen replied, watching the curl of the water from the paddle's edge. ' I didn't much look at them ; but I stuck them all in the yellow Cantagalli pot on the table by the landing. For my part, I just hate these banal gaieties in Venice. They interfere so much with one's time and one's painting.' ' Ah, yes, poor Kathleen !' Mrs. Hesslegrave mur- A CHANCE ENCOUNTER 69 mured pathetically. 'It's so hard on her, Mr. Mortimer. I'm sure you pity her. She has to work like a slave ! She grudges all the time she gives up every week to the natural sports and tastes of her age and her position in society. It's so different with ijou, of course. You have only to paint just when and where you like. Yours is art for art's sake. Poor Kathleen feels compelled to stick at it for a liveli- hood.' ' But I like it, mother,' Kathleen cried, colouring up to her very ears. *I love my art. I'd much rather be out painting on one of these lovely, solitary side-canals than cooped up in a drawing-room talking silly small-talk to a whole lot of stupid people I don't care a pin about.' Mrs. Hesslegrave sighed, and shook her head faintly, with a speaking glance beneath her eyelids at Mortimer. (She was under the impression that she was ' drawing him on ' by the pathetic channel.) ' It's so sweet of you to say so, dear,' she murmured half aside. ' You want to reassure me. That's charm- ing and sweet of you. And I know you like it. In your way you like it. It's a dispensation, of course. Things are always so ordered. What's that lovely text about " tempering the wind to the shorn lamb " ? I'm sure it applies to you. I invariably think so in church when I hear it.' For Mrs. Hesslegrave was 70 AT MARKET VALUE not the first to attribute to Holy Scripture that sentimental and eminently untrustworthy saying, which belongs by right to the author of ' Tristram Shandy.' Just at that moment, however, as they turned with a dexterous twirl under a low bridge up the silent little water-way that leads through quaint lanes to the church of the Frari, they were startled by a sudden voice crying out from close by in clear English tones : * Hullo, Mortimer ! There you are ! So you're back again in Venice !' The speaker was not in a gondola, whether private or otherwise ; and his costume was so unaffectedly and frankly sailor-like, as of the common mariner, that Mrs. Hesslegrave was at first sight inclined to resent his speaking in so familiar a tone of voice to the occupants of a distinguished and trimly-kept craft like the Cristoforo Colombo. But his accent was a gentle- man's ; and Mrs. Hesslegrave reflected, just in time to prevent her from too overtly displaying her hostile feelings, that nowadays young men of the very best families so often dress Just like common sailors when they're out on a yachting cruise. No doubt this eccentric person in the jersey and cap who called out BO easily to their host as ' Mortimer,' must be one of these ; otherwise, he would surely have known his place better than lo shout aloud in that unseemly A CHANCE EN COUNTER 71 hail-fellow-well-met way to the occupants of a hand- some private gondola. But Rufus Mortimer looked up at him with a quick glance of recognition. ' Hullo, Willoughby,' he cried, waving his hand to the gondoliera to draw near the bank. ' So you're back again, too ! This is better than I expected. I was more than half afraid we shouldn't see you at all at the old perch this winter.' And even as Mrs. Hesslegrave looked up and won- dered — oh, miracle of Fate ! — Kathleen rose from her seat and leant over the edge of the gondola with one hand outstretched in quite kindly recognition towards the sailor-looking stranger. * Why, it's you, Mr. Willoughby,' she cried with clear welcome in her voice. ' I a)ii so glad to see you in Venice !' Arnold Willoughby held out his hand in return with a slight tremor of pleased surprise at this unwonted reception. ' Then you haven't forgotten me ?' he exclaimed with unaffected pleasure. ' I didn't think, Miss Hessle- grave, you'd be likely to remember me.' Kathleen turned towards her mother, whose eyes were now fixed upon her in the mutely interrogative fashion of a prudent mamma when her daughter recognises an uncertified stranger. * This is the gentleman I told you about, dear,' she 73 AT MARKET VALUE Baid simply, presenting him. ' The gentleman who was BO good to me that Taking-away Day at the Academy this spring. Don't you remember, I mentioned him ?' Mrs. Hesslegrave froze visibly. This was really too much. She drew herself up as stiff and straight as one can easily manage in a wobbling gondola. * I have some dim recollection,' she said with slow accents in her chilliest tone, * that you spoke to me of some gentleman you didn't know who was kind enough to help you in carrying back your picture. I— I'm de-lighted to meet him.' But the tone in which Mrs. Hesslegrave said that word * de-lighted ' belied its significance. * Step into the gondola, Willoughby,' the young American suggested with the easy friendliness of his countrymen. ' Are you going anywhere in particular ? — No ? Just lounging about reconnoitring the ground for the winter's campaign ? Then you'd better jump in and let's hear what you've been up to.' Arnold Willoughby, nothing loath, descended lightly into the gondola. As he entered Mrs. Hesslegrave drew her gown just a little on one side instinctively. She had a sort of feeling in her soul that this maritime- looking young man didn't move in exactly the same exalted sphere as that to which she and hers had always been accustomed. He hadn't at all the air of a cavalry officer; and to Mrs. Hesslegrave's mind A CHANCE ENCOUNTER 73 your cavalry officer was the measure of all tliinpis. So she shrank from him unol)trusively. But Kathleen noticed the shrinking, and heinr:; half afraid the nice sailor-like painter might have noticed it too, she was even more polite to him than she might otherwise have been in consequence of her mother's unspokeii slight. Willoughhy took a place in the stern, on the com- fortahle stulied seat between IMortimer and Kathleen. His manners at least, Mrs. Hesslegravo observed with comparative pleasure, were those of a gentleman ; though his tailor's bill would certainly not have suited her son Reginald's enlightened views on that im- portant subject. 'Well, tell us all about it,' Mortimer began at once, with the utmost cordiality. ' You're here, we all see. How have you managed to come here ? It was only yesterday I was telling Miss Hesslegrave at tht> station how you weren't sure whether things would turn out so as to enable you to return; and she said she so much hoped you'd manage to come back again.' 'We should be painting so near one another this year, no doubt,' Kathleen said with a pleasant smile, ' we'd be able to see something of one another's work and one another's society.' Arnold Willoughby's face flushed with genuine and unexpected pleasure. Could it be really the fact that 74 AT MARKET VALUE thia pretty and pleasant-mannered artist girl was genuinely glad he had come back to Yenice ? And he a poor painter with only his art to bless himself with '? To Arnold Willoughby, after his rude awakening to fuller experience of the ways and habits of men and women, such disinterested interest seemed well-nigh incredible. He glanced at her timidly, yet with a face full of pleasure. * That was very, very kind of you,' he answered, rather low, for kindness always overcame him. Then he turned to the American. * Well, it was like this, you see, Mortimer,' he said ; ' I sold my picture.' * Not the Chioggia Fisher-boats '?' Kathleen cried, quite interested. ' Yes, the same you saw that day I met you at the Academy,' Arnold answered, with secret delight that the pretty girl should have remembered the name and subject of his maiden effort. 'I thought you'd sell it,' Kathleen replied, really radiant. * I am so glad you did. Mr. Mortimer told me your return to Venice and your future in art very largely depended upon your chance of selling it.' ' Kathleen, my dear,' Mrs. Hesslegrave interposed in her chilliest voice, ' do take care what you do. Don't you see you're letting your shawl hang over into the water ?' Kathleen lifted it up hurriedly, and went on with A CHANCE ENCOUNTER 75 her conversation, unheeding her mother's hint, which indeed fell flat upon her. 'I knew you'd sell it,' she continued with girlish enthusiasm. ' It was so good. I liked it immensely. Such rich colour on the sails; and such delicate imagination !' 'But it rather lacked technique,' the American interposed, just a trifle chillily. ' Oh, technique anybody can get nowadays,' Kathleen answered with warmth—' if he goes to the right place for it. It's a matter of paying. What he can't buy or be taught is imagination — fancy — keen sense of form — poetical colour-perception.' 'And how much did they give you for it?' the American asked, point-blank, with his country's directness. (An Englishman would have said, 'I hope the terms were satisfactory.') Willoughby parried the question. ' Not much,' he answered discreetly. ' But enough for my needs. I felt at least my time had not been wasted. It's enabled me to come back this autumn ot Venice, which on many grounds I greaily desired to do; and it will even allow me to get a little more instruction in that technique of art which you rightly say is the weak point of my position. So, of course, on the whole, I'm more than satisfied.' * And what have you been doing all summer ?' 76 AT MARKET VALUE Mortimer continued, with a lazy wave to the gondolier, leaning back at his ease on his padded cushions. Arnold Willoughby still retained too much of the innate self-confidence of the born aristocrat to think it necessary for him to conceal anything that seemed to himself sufficiently good for him to do. If he could do it, he could also acknowledge it. ' Oh, I just w^ent to sea again,' he answered frankly. ' I got a place as A.B. on a Norwegian ship that traded with Dieppe ; deal planks and so forth ; and the hard work and fresh air I got in the North Sea have done me good, I fancy. I'm ever so much stronger than I was last winter.' Mrs. Hesslegrave had been longing for some time to interpose in this very curious and doubtful conver- sation ; and now she could restrain her desire no longer. ' You do it for your health, then, I suppose ?' she ventured to suggest, as if on purpose to save her own self-respect and the credit of Rufus Mortimer's society. ' You've been ordered it by the doctor ?' ' Oh, dear no ! I do it for my livelihood,' Arnold Willoughby answered stoutly, not in the least ashamed. * I'm a sailor by trade ; I go to sea all summer, and I paint all winter. It's a very good alternation I find it suits me.' A CHANCE ENCOUNTER ■ yy This was too much for Mrs. Hesslegrave. She felt that Mortimer, though he had a perfect right, of course, to choose his own friends where he Uked, ought not to have exposed dear Kathleen and herself to the contagion, so to speak, of such strange acquaint- ances. ' Dear me !' she cried suddenly, looking up at the big brick tower that rose sheer just in front of them : 'here we are at the Frari !— Kathleen, didn't you say you wanted to go in and look again at that picture of What's- his-name's— Ah, yes, Tintoretto's— in the Scuola di San Eocco?— Oh, thank you so much, Mr. Mortimer; we won't trouble you to wait for us. Kathleen knows her way on foot all over Venice. She can get from place to place in the most wonderful fashion, from end to end of the town, by these funny little calli. It n-as so kind of you to give us a lift so far.— Here, Kathleen; step out! Good-morning, Mr. Mortimer; your gondola's just charming.— Good-morning, Mr.— ah— I forget your friend's name; oh, of course: Mr. Willoughby.' The inevitable old man with a boat-hook was hold- ing the gondola by this time to the bank, and extend- ing his hat for the expected penny. Mrs. Hesslegrave stepped out, with lier most matronly air, looking a dignified Juno. Kathleen stepped after her on to the slippery stone pavement, green-grown by the water's 78 AT MARKET VALUE edge. As she did so, she turned, with her sweet sHght figure, and waved a friendly good-bye to the two painters, the rich and the poor impartially. 'And I hope, Mr. Mortimer,' she called out in her cheeriest tone, ' you'll bring Mr. Willoughby with you next week to our usual tea-and-talk at four on Wednes- day.' As for poor Mrs. Hesslegrave, she stood speechless for a second, dumfounded with dismay, on the stone steps of the Frari. What could Kathleen be thinking of ? That dreadful man ! And this was the very misfortune she had been bent on averting ! CHAPTER VI. A CASE OF CONSCIENCE. But the cup of Mrs. Hesslegrave's humiliation was not yet full. A moment's pause lost all — and lo ! the floodgates of an undesirable acquaintance were opened upon her. It was charity that did it— pure feminine charity, not unmingled with a faint sense of how noblesse ohlifie, and what dignity demands from a potential Lady Bountiful. For the inevitable old man, with a ram- shackled boat-hook in his wrinkled brown hand, and n'^ teeth to boast of, who invariably mocrs your gondola to the shore while you alight from the prow, and holds his hat out afterwards for a few loose soldi, bowed low to the ground in his picturesque rags as Mrs. Hesslegrave passed him. Now, proper respect for her superior position always counted for much with Mrs. Hesslegrave. She paused for a moment at the top of the mouldering steps m helpless search for an 8o AT MARKET VALUE elusive pocket. But the- wisdom and foresight of her London dressmaker had provided for this contingency well beforehand by concealing it so far back among the recesses of her gown that she fumbled hi vain and found no suldi. In her difficulty she turned with an appealing glance to Kathleen. ' Have you got any coppers, dear ?' she in(iuired in her most mellifluous voice. And Kathleen forthwith proceeded in like manner to prosecute her search for them in the labyrinthine folds of her own deftly- screened pocket. On what small twists and turns of circumstance does our whole life hang ! Kathleen's fate hinged entirely on that momentary delay, coupled with the equally accidental meeting at the doors of the Academy. For while she paused and hunted, as the old man stood bowing and scraping by the water's edge, and consider- ing to himself, with his obsequious smile, that after so long a search the forcsticrl couldn't decently produce in the end any smaller cohi than half a lira — Eufus Mortimer, perceiving the cause of their indecision, stepped forward in the gondola with his own purse open. At the very same instant, too, Arnold Willoughby, half-torgetful of his altered fortunes, and conscious only of the fact that the incident was dis- composing at the second for a lady, pulled out loose his scanty stock of available cash, and selected from it A CASE OF CONSCIENCE 8i tlie smallest silver coin he happened to possess, whicli chanced to be a piece of fifty rciitcHiini. Then, while jMortinier was hunting among his gold to find a franc, Arnold handed the money hastily to the cringing old bystander. The man in the picturesque rags closed his wrinkled brown hand on it with a satisfied grin ; and Mortimer tried to find another half-franc among the folds of his purse to repay on the spot his sailor acquaintance. But Arnold answered with sucli a firm air of quiet dignity, 'No, thank you; allow me to settle it,' that Mortimer, after a moment of ineffectual remonstrance—' But this is my gondola '—was fain to hold his peace ; and even Mrs. Hesslegrave was con- strained to acquiesce in the odd young man's whim with a murmured, ' Oh, thank you.' After that, she felt she could no longer be frigid— till the next oppor- tunity. Meanwhile, when Kathleen suggested in her gentlest and most enticing voice, ' Why don't you two step out and look at the Tintorettos]with us '?'— Mrs. Hesslegrave recognised that there was nothing for it now but to smile and look pleased and j)retend she really liked the strange young man's society. So they went into the Scuola di San Bocco together. But Rufus Mortimer, laudably anxious that his friend should expend no more of his Inird-earned cash on such unseasonable gallantries, took good care to go on a few paces ahead and take tickets for the whole party VOL. I. 6 82 AT MARKET VALUE before Mrs. Hesslegrave and Kathleen, escorted l)y the unsuspecting Arnold, had turned the corner by the rearmg red church of the Frari. The elder lady arrived at the marble-coated front of the Scuola not a little out of breath ; for she was endowed with asthma, and she hated to walk even the few short steps from the gondola to the tiny piazza ; which was one of the reasons, indeed, why Kathleen, most patient and dutiful and considerate of daughters, had chosen Venice rather than any other Italian town as the scene on which to specialize her artistic talent. For nowhere on earth is locomotion so cheap or so easy as in the city of canals, where a gondola will convey you from end to end of the town, without noise or jolting, at the modest expense of eightpence sterlmg. Even Mrs. Hesslegrave, however, could not resist after a while the contagious kindliness of Arnold Willoughl)y's demeanour. 'Twas such a novelty to him to be in ladies' society nowadays, that he rose at once to the occasion, and developed at one bound from a confirmed misogynist into an accomplished courtier. The fact of it was he had been taken by Kathleen's frank gratitude that day at the Academy ; and he was really touched this afternoon by her evident recollection of him, and her anxiety to show him all the politeness in her power. Never before since he had practically ceased to be Earl of Axminster had any woman A CASE OF CONSCIENCE 83 treated him with half so much consideration. Arnold Willouf;}il)v was almost tempted in his own heart to try whether or not he had hit here, by pure accident of fate, upon that rare soul which could accept him and love him for the true gold that was in him, and not for the guinea stamp of which he had purposely divested himself. As they entered the great hall, Campagna's master- piece, its walls richly dight with Tintoretto's frescoes, Arnold Willoughhy drew back involuntarily at the first glance with a little start of astonishment. 'Dear me,' he cried, turning round in his surprise to Kathleen, and twisting his left hand in a lock of hair l)eliind his ectr — which was a trick he had when- ever he was deeply interested — * what amazing people these superb old Venetians were, after all ! Why, one's never at the end of them ! What a picture it gives one of their magnificence and their wealth, this sumptu- ous council-house of one unimportant brotherhood !' 'It is fine,' Mortimer interposed, with a little smile of superiority, as one who knew it well of old. * It's a marvel of decoration. Then, I suppose, from what you say, this is the first time you've been here ?' 'Yes, the ver^ first time,' Arnold admitted at once with that perfect frankness which was bis most charming characteristic. ' Though I've lived here so long, there are in Venice a great many interiors I've 84 AT MARKET VALUE never seen. Outside, 1 ilihik I know every nook and corner of the smallest side-canals, and the remotest calU, about as well as anybody; for I'm given to meandering on foot round the town ; and it's only on foot one can ever really get to know the whole of Venice. Perhaps you wouldn't believe it, Init there isn't a single house on all the islands tliat make up the town which can't be reached on one's own legs from every other by some circuit of bridges, without one's ever liavhig to trust to a ferry-boat or a gondola. Jiut of course you must know the tortuous twists and turns to get round to some of them. So, outside at least, 1 know my Venice thoroughly. But inside— ah, there ! if you except St. Mark's and a few other churches— with, of course, the Academy— I hardly know it at all. There are dozens of places you could take me to like this that I never stepped inside yet.' Kathleen was just going to ask, ' Why ?' when the answer came of itself to her. In order to gain admit- tance to most of these interiors, you have to pay a franc ; and she remembered now, with a sudden burst of surprise, that a franc was a very appreciable sum indeed to their new acquaintance. So she altered her phrase to : ' Well, I'm very glad at least we met you to-day, and have had the pleasure of bringing you for the first time to San Eocco.' A CASE OF CONSCIENCE 85 And it »Y^ocket. It's a thing to be ashamed of, for a gentleman, of course, to have a sister who is obliged to dabble in paint for a liveli- hood : but, from the practical point of view, it has its advantages also. And Reggie found it a distinct advan- tage during the racing seas u ^hat he was able to draw upon Kathleen's earnings for unlimited loans, which were never repaid, it is true, but which were described as such in order to save undue wear and tear to Mr. Reginald's delicate feelings. It doesn't ' look well ' to ask your sister point-blank for a present of a ten- pound note ; but a loan to that amount, from time to time, to meet a pressing temporary emergency, is a form of advance that never grates for a moment upon the most refined susceptibilities. * That's a nuisance,' Charlie Owen responded, with a sympathetic, wry face ; * for I suppose you counted upon it.' Now, this was exactly what Mr. Reginald had done, after the fashion of the City clerk who fancies himself 110 AT MARKET VALUE as a judge of horse-flesh; but he wasn't going to acknowledge it. * It never does to count upon anything in the glorious uncertainty of racing,' he answered with a bounce, swallowing his disappointment in that resigned spirit which is born of a confident belief that your sister, after all, will have in the end to make good the deficit. * Though, to be sure, I was in need of it ; for I've asked Florrie Clarke and her mother to run round to the Gaiety for an hour with me this evening; and I can tell you it comes heavy on a fellow, and no mis- take, to settle for the grub for Florrie's mother ! She is a dab at lobster salad !' * Then, you're taking them to supper afterwards !' Charlie inquired with admiration. One young fool invariably admires another for his courage and nobility in spending the money he hasn't got, to somebody else's final discomfort and detriment. Reginald nodded a careless assent. « To Romano's,' he answered, with justifiable pride in the background of his tone. ' When I do the thing at all, I like to do it properly ; and Florrie's the sort of girl, don't you know, who's accustomed to see things done in the very best style ; so I mean to go it.' ♦What a fellow you are!' Charlie Owen exclaimed with heart-felt admiration. * After a knock-down blow like this, that would dishearten most chappies !' A DIGRESSION in Mr. Re^'iiuild smiled a deprecatory Hinilo of modest self approval. * Well, I flatter myself I am a bit of a philosopher,' he admitted with candour, like one who glides lightly over his own acknowledged merits. * Why don't you come too ? There'd be room in my box for you.' 'Does it run to a box, then?' Charlie Owen asked, open-eyed. And Reggie answered, with an expansive wave of his neatly-gloved hand : * Do you suppose I'd ask Florrie and h.3r mother to go in the pit? I imagine I know how to do the thing like a gentleman.' 'Well, of course, if you've got a box,' Charlie assented with alacrity, 'one more or less doesn't count. But still — there's the supper !' Mr. Reginald dismissed the sordid suggestion with another dainty wave of his well-gloved left. ' When a gentleman asks another gentleman to sup with him,' he observed with sententious dignity, ' it isn't usual for his guest to make inquiries beforehand as to the cost of the entertainment.' After which noble rebuke, Charlie Owen felt it would be positive bad manners not to accept with effusion ; and was lost in wonder, delight, and awe — as Reggie intended he should be — at the magnanimity of a chappie who, after a loss like that, could immediately launch out 112 AT MARKET VALUE into fresh extravagance by inviting a friend to a quite unnecessary and expensive banquet. What a splendid creature the fast young man really is, after all ! and how nobly he dispenses unlimited hospitality to all and sundry on his relations' money ! So that evening at eight saw Mr. Eeginald Hessle- grave in full evening dress and a neat hired brougham, stopping at the door of the Gaiety Theatre to deposit Mrs. Clarke and her daughter Florrie. The party, to be sure, was nothing if not correct ; for mamma was there to ensure the utmost proprieties ; and Miss Florrie herself, who was a well-conducted young lady, had no idea of doing anything more decided than accepting a box for nothing as affection's gift from the devoted Eeggie. Miss Florrie' s papa was an eminently respectable West-end money-lender ; and Miss Florrie and her mamma were practically used, in the way of business, partly as decoy ducks for unwary youth, and partly as a means of recovering at once, in presents and entertainments, a portion of the money advanced by papa on those familiar philanthropic principles of ' note-of-hand at sight, without inquiry, and no security,' which so often rouse one's profound esteem and wonder in the advertisement columns of the daily papers. Unfortunately, however, it is found, for the most part, in this hard business world of ours, that philanthropy like this can only be made to pay A DIGRESSION 1 13 on the somewhat exorbitant terms of sixty per cent., deducted beforehand. But Mr. Reginald, as it happened, "was far too small game for either Miss Florrie or her papa to fly at ; his friendship for the young lady was distinctly a platonic one. She and her mamma used him merely as an amiable young fool who could fill in the odd evenings between more serious engagements, when papa's best clients took her to the opera with mamma, and presented her with a brooch or an amethyst bracelet out of the forty per cent, which alone remained to them from papa's munificence. Not that Miss Florrie's conduct was ever anything but the pink of propriety ; with a con- nection like papa's, it was always on the cards that she might end (with good luck) by becoming ' my lady ' in lieu of accumulated interest on bills renewed ; and was it likely that Miss Florrie was going to fling away a first-rate chance in life like that by ill-timed entanglements with a penniless clerk in a stockbroker's office ? Miss Florrie thought not : she knew her market worth too well for such folly ; she might flirt, but she perfectly understood where to stop flirtation ; meanwhile, she found Mr. Eeginald Hesslegrave an agreeable and harmless companion, and an excellent wedge of an unobtrusive sort for attacking the narrow opening into certain grades of society. It ' looks well ' to be seen about with mamma in the company of an VOL. I. 8 114 AT MA RKET VA L UE excellently 'onnected yonnp; man of no means at all ; people can never accuse you, then, of unmitigated fortune-hunting. ]\[iss Florrie and her mamma were most charming that evening. Mrs. Hesslegrave herself wo'ild have been forced to admit they were really most cliarming. The mamma was as well dressed as could reasonably be expected — that is to say, not much more over- dressed than in the nature of things a money-lender's wife must be ; and her diamonds, Charlie Owen remarked with delight, were greatly noted and com- mented upon by feminine occupants of neighbouring boxes. As for Eeginald Hesslegrave, he felt the evening was what he would himself have described as 'a gigantic success.' 'It's all going off very well,' he observed with nervous pride to Charlie Owen as they paced the corridor, cigarette in mouth, during the interval between the acts. And Charlie Owen, patting his back, made answer emphatically : * Going off very well, man ! Why, it's a thundering triumph ! What a fellow you are to be sure ! Ices in the box and everything ! Clinking ! simply clinking ! The eldest son of a duke couldn't have done the thing better. It's made a distinct impression on the Clarkes, I can tell you.' A DIGRESSION 115 * You think so ?' Reggie asked, with a proud flush of satisfaction. * Think so ?' CharHe repeated once more. * Why, I can see it with half a glance. Florrie's gone on you, that's where it is. Visibly to the naked eye, that girl's clean gone on you !' Mr. Eeginald returned to the box feeling half an inch taller. He knew himself a lady-killer. And he noticed with pride that Miss Florrie and her mamma were on terms of bowing acquaintance with a great many people in the stalls and dress circle ; the very best people ; gentlemen for the most part, it is true, but still, a sprinkling of ladies, including among them Mrs. Algy Redburn, who ought by rights to be Lady Axminster. And though the ladies returned Miss Florrie's bows and smiles with a tinge of coldness, and seemed disinclined to catch the eagle eye of her mamma — who was a stoutish matron of a certain age and uncertain waist — it was an undeniable fact that those who did catch it were for the most part women of title and of social distinction, in the fastest set : so that Mr. Eeginald felt himself in excellent society. As they were leaving the theatre, while Mrs. Clarke and Florrie went off in search of their wraps from the ladies' cloak-room, Reggie drew Charlie Owen mys- teriously aside for a moment. * Look here, old fellow,' he said coaxingly, in a ji6 AT MARKET VALUE whispered undertone, button-holing his friend as he spoke ; ' you're coming on to supper with us. Could you manage to lend me a couple of sovereigns for a day or two ?' Charlie Owen looked glum. He pursed his under lip. Like Bardolph's tailor, he liked not the security. ' What's it for?' he asked dubiously. Reggie made a clean breast of it. ' Well, the brougham and things have run into a little more than I expected,' he answered with a forced smile ; ' and of course we must open a bottle of cham ; and if Mrs. Clarke wants a second— she's a fish at fizz, I know— it'd be awkward, don't you see, if I hadn't quite cash enough to pay the waiter.' ' It would so,' Charlie responded, screwing up a sympathetic but exceedingly doubtful face. « Do you happen to have a couple of quid about you ?' Reggie demanded once more, with an anxious air. Charlie Owen melted. * Well, I have,' he answered slowly. ' But mind you, I shall want them on Saturday without fail, to pay my landlady. She's a demon for her rent. Raises blazes if it runs on. Will insist on it weekly. Can you promise me faithfully to let me have the oof back by Saturday ?' Reggie drew a sigh of relief. A DIGRESSION "7 •Honour bright!' he answered, clutching hard at the straw. 'It's all square, I assure you. I've remittances coming.' ' Where from ?' Charlie continued, not wishing to be hard, but still anxious for 'the collateral,' as Florrie's papa would have put it. • Oh, I've telegraphed to-day to my people at Venice,' Keggie responded airily. But 'my people' of course was a euphemism for ' my sister.' • And got an answer ?' Charlie insisted. He didn't want to seem mean, but business is business, and he desired to know on what expectations precisely he was risking his money. 'Yes; here it is,' Eeggie replied, drawing it out, somewhat sheepishly, from the recesses of his pocket. He didn't like to show it, of course ; but he saw too well that on no other terms could he be spared the eternal disgrace of having to refuse Florrie Clarke's mamma a second bottle of Veuve Clicquot, should she choose to demand it. Charlie ran his eye over the telegram. It was short but satisfactory. •Entirely disapprove. Am sending the money. This is the last time. Eemember. —Kathleen.' ' She always says that,' Mr. Eeginald interposed in an apologetic undertone. ii8 AT MARKET VALUE ' Oh, dear yes ; I know ; it's a way they have,' Charlie responded with a tolerant smile, as one who was well acquainted with the strange fads of one's people. * How much did you ask her for ?' * A tenner,' Mr. Reginald responded. Charlie Owen drew the coins with slow deliberation from his dress waistcoat pocket. * Well, this is a debt of honour,' he said in a solemn voice, handing them over impressively. * You'll pay me off, of course, before you waste any money on paying bills or landlords and such-like.' Reggie slipped the two sovereigns into his trousers- pocket with a sigh of relief. ' You are a brick, Charlie !' he exclaimed, turning away quite happy, and prepared, as is the manner of such young gentle- men in general, to spend the whole sum recklessly at a single burst on whatever first oftered, now he was relieved for the moment from his temporary em- barrassment. For it is the way of your Reggies to treat a loan as so much cash in hand, dropped down from heaven, and to disburse it freely on the nearest recipient in light-hearted anticipation of the next emergency. The supper was universally acknowledged to be the success of the evening. It often is, in fact, where the allowance of Veuve Clicquot is sufficiently unstinted. Mrs. Clarke was most affable, most increasingly A DIGRESSION 119 affable ; and as to Miss Florrie, a pretty little round- faced ingenue, with a vast crop of crisp black hair, cut short and curled, she was delightful company. It was her rdle in life to flirt ; and she did it for the love of it. Reginald Hesslegrave was a distinctly good- looking young man, very well connected, and she really liked him. Not, of course, that she would ever for a moment have dreamed of throwing herself away for life on a man without the means to keep a carriage ; but Miss Florrie was one of those mod^^rn young ladies who sternly dissociate their personal likes and dislikes from their matrimonial schemes ; and as a person to sup with, to talk to, and to flirt with, she really liked Master Reggie — nay, more, she admired him. For he knew how to ' go it '; and ability for ' going it ' was in Miss Florrie's eyes the prince of the virtues. It was the one that enabled a man, however poor in reality, to give her the greatest amount of what she lived for — amusement. So Florrie flooded Reggie with the light of her round black eyes till he was fairly intoxicated with her. She played li^.' crisp curls at him with considerable effect, and was charmed when he succumbed to them. 'Twas a pity he wasn't the heir to a hundred thousand pounds. If he had been. Miss Florrie thought, she might have got papa to discount it oft'hand on post-obits, and have really settled down to a quiet life of balls and theatres in his agreeable society. I20 AT MARKET VALUE So much smitten was Reggie, indeed, that before the end of the evening, under the expansive influence of that excellent Yeuve Clicquot, he remarked chaffingly to Florrie, at a moment when Mrs. Clarke was deep in talk with Charlie Owe^i : ' I tell you what it is, Miss Clarke — or rather Florrie — I shall call you Florrie — some day, you and I wull have to make a match of it !' Miss Florrie did not resent this somewhat abrupt and inartistic method of broaching an important and usually serious subject. On the contrary, being an easy-going soul, she accepted it as a natural compli- ment to her charms, and smiled at it good-humouredly. But she answered none the less, with a toss of the crisp black curls : ' Well, if we're ever to do that, Mr. Hesslegrave, you must find the wherewithal first ; for I can tell you I want a carriage and a yacht and a house-boat. The man for my heart is the man with a house-boat. As soon as you're in a position to set up a house-boat, you may invite me to share it with you. And then ' — she looked at him archly with a witchi^ig smile — ' I may consider my answer.' She was a taking little thing ! — there was no deny- ing it. * Very bad style,' so the ladies in the stalls remarked to one another, as they scanned her through their opera - glasses ; 'but awfully taking!' And Reginald Hesslegrave found her so. From that moment forth, it became his favourite day-dream that A DIGRESSION I2t he had made a large fortune at a single stroke (on the turf, of course), and married the owner of the crisp black curls. So deep-rooted did this ideal become to him, indeed, that he set to work at once to secure the large fortune. And how ? By working hard day and night, and saving and investing ? Oh dear me, no ! Such hoiinjeois methods are not for the likes of Mr. Keginald Hesslegrave, who prided himself upon being a perfect gentleman. By risking Kathleen's hard- earned money on the Derby favourite, and accepting ' tips ' as to a * dark horse ' for the Leger ! CHAPTER IX. BY THE BLUE ADRIATIC. April in Venice, young ladies aver, is * just too lovely for anything.' And Rufus Mortimer utilized one of its just too lovely days for his long-deferred project of a picnic to the Lido. Do you know the Lido? 'Tis that long natural bulwark, ' the bank of sand which breaks the flow of Adria towards Venice,' as Shelley calls it. It stretches for miles and miles in a narrow belt along the mouth of the lagoons ; on one side lies the ocean, and on one the shallow pool of mudbanks and canals. This is the only place near Venice, indeed, where a horse can find foothold ; and on that account, as well as for the sake of the surf-bathing, it is a favourite resort of Venetians and visitors in spring and summer. The side towards the lagoon rises high and dry, in a sort of native breakwater, like the lofty Chesil Beach that similarly cuts off the English Channel from the BY THE BLUE ADRIATIC 123 Hhallow expanse of the Fleet in Dorsetshire; its opposite front descends in a gentle slope to the level of the Adriatic, and receives on its wrinkled face the thunderous billows of that uncertain main, Horace's 'turbulent Hadria.' Hither, then, Rufus Mortimer brought his guests and friends one bright April morn- hig, when the treacherous sea was sleeping calmly like a child, and no breath of wind from the Dalma- tian hills disturbed the tranquil rest of its glassy bosom. They crossed over partly in Mortimer's own private gondola, partly in a hired harca—a hencoop, as Arnold Willoughby irreverently called it— from the steps of the Molo. As they passed out of the harbour, the view behind them rose even lovelier than usual. That is the way to see Venice ; its front-door is the sea ; it breaks upon one full face as one looks at it from the Lido. We who arrive at it nowadays by the long and tedious railway embankment over the shallow lagoon hardly realize that we are entering the city of the Doges by its back-door. We come first upon the slums, the purlieus, the Ghetto. But the visitor who approaches the Bride of the Adriatic for the first time by sea from Trieste or Alexandria sees it as its makers and adorners intended he should see it. As he draws nigh shore, the great buildings by the water's edge rise one after another before his enchanted eyes. He 124 AT MARKET VALUE sees Fortnna on her golden ball above the Popjana di Mare ; he sees the Doges' Palace with its arcade and its loggia ; ho sees the clustered ciipolns and spires of St. Mark's ; he sees the quaint volutes and swelling domes of Santa IMaria della Salute. Then, as he nears the Molo, the vast panorama of beauty bursts upon him at once in all its detail— the Bridge of Sighs, the famed Lion Column, St. Theodore on his crocodile, St. Mark on his airy pinnacle, the Piazzetta, the Piazza, the Campanile, the Clock Tower. He lands by the marble steps, and finds himself face to face with the gorgeous pilasters of Sansovino's library, the facade of the great church, the porphyry statues, the gold and alabaster, the blaze of mosaics, the lavish waste of sculpture. With a whirling head, he walks on through it all, amazed, conscious of nothing else save a phantasmagoria of glory, and thanking heaven in his heart that at last he has seen Venice. This was the view upon which the occupants of Rufus Mortimer's gondola looked back with delighted eyes that April morning. But this was not all. Behind and above it all, the snow-capped chain of the Tyrolese Alps and the hills of Cadore rose fairy-like in a semicircle. Their pencilled hollows showed purple : their peaks gleamed like crystal in the morn- ing sun. Cloudless and clear, every glen and crag BY THE BLUE ADRIATIC 125 pinked out by tlio searcliiiif; rays, tliey stood silhouetted in pure white against the soUd bhie sky of Italy. In front of them, St. Mark's and the Campanile were outlined in dark hues. 'Twas a sight to rejoice a painter's eyes. Arnold Willough])y and Kathleen Hesslegrave sat entranced as they looked at it. Nothing rouses the emotional side of a man's nature more vividly than to gaze Pu beautiful things with a beautiful woman. Arnold .lloughby sat by Kathleen's side and drank it all in delighted. He half made up his mind to ask her that very day whether, if he ever could succeed in his profession, she would be willing to link her life with a poor marine painter's. He didn't mean to make her Lady Axminster. That was far from his mind. He would not have cared for those * whose mean ambition aims at palaces and titled names,' as George Meredith has phrased it. But he wanted to make her Mrs. Arnold Willoughby. As they crossed over to the Lido, he was full of a new discovery he had made a few days before. A curious incident had happened to him. In hunting among a bundle of papers at his lodgings, which his landlady had bought to tie up half-kilos of rice and macaroni, he had come, it appeared, upon a wonderful manuscript. He hardly knew himself at the time how important this manuscript was to become to him here- 126 AT MARKET VALUE after ; but he was full of it, all the same, as a singular discovery. * It's written in Itahan,' he said to Kathleen; ' that's the funny part of it; but still, it seems, it's by an English sailor; and it's immensely interesting — a narrative of his captivity in Spain and his trial by the Inquisition, for standing up like a man for Her Grace's claim to the throne of England.' * What's the date of it ?' Kathleen asked, not know- ing or not catching the special Elizabethan tinge of that phrase, Her Grace, instead of Her Majesty. * Oh, Elizabeth, of course,' Arnold answered lightly. ' Such a graphic story ! And the queerest part of it all is, it's written in cipher.' * Then how did you make it out ?' Kathleen asked admiringly. To her mind, it seemed a perfectly astonishing feat that any man should be able to decipher such a thing for himself by mere puzzling over it. * Why, easily enough,' Arnold answered with a smile ; ' for happily I took it for granted, since I found it in Italy, the language was Italian ; so I soon spelt it out. Those sixteenth-century people always made use of the most simple ciphers — almost foolishly simple. Any child could read them.' Kathleen looked up at him with profound admira- tion. For her own part, she couldn't imagine how on BY THE BLUE ADRIATIC W earth it could be done. 'How wonderful!' she ex- claimed. * You must show it to me some day. And it's interesting, is it ? I should love to see it.' * Yes, it's interesting,' Arnold answered. * As inter- esting as a novel. A perfect romance. Most vivid and amusing. The writer was a man named John Collingham of Norfolk, the owner and skipper of an English barque; he was taken by the Spaniards off Cape Finisterre, and thrown into prison for six months at Cadiz. Afterwards he escaped, and made his way to Venice, where he wrote this memorial in cipher to the Council of Ten, whom he desired to employ him ; but what became of him in the end I haven't yet got to. It takes some time to decipher the whole of it.' That was all, for the moment. More important concerns put the manuscript afterwards for a time out of Kathleen's head ; though in the end she had good reason indeed to remember it. However, just then, as soon as they landed, Kufus Mortimer hurried heJ off to admire the view from the top of the Lido ; and he took excellent care she should have no other chance that day of private conversation with Arnold Willoughby. They lunched al fresco on the summit of the great bank, looking down on the sea to the right, and the long stretch of the shallow lagoon to the left, with the 128 AT MARKET VALUE distant towers of Venice showing up with all their spires in the middle distance, and the jagged range of snowy Alps gleaming white in the background. As soon as they had finished, Kufus Mortimer managed to get Kathleen to himself for a quiet stroll along the sea-beach. The sand was hard and firm and strewn with seaweed ; here and there a curled sea-horse lay tossed up by the tide; and innumerable tiny shells gHstened bright like pearls on the line of high-water. Kathleen felt a little shy with him. She guessed what was coming. But she pretended to ignore it, and began in her most conventional society tone : ' Have you heard that Canon Valentine and his wife are coming out here to Venice next week to visit us ?' Mortimer gazed at her with a comic little look of quizzical surprise. He had got away alone with her after no small struggle, and he meant to make the best of this solitary opportunity. ' Have I heard that Canon Valentine and his wife are coming ?' he asked with a sort of genial satire in his voice. ' Now, do you think, Miss Hesslegrave, I planned this picnic to the Lido to-day, and got off with you alone here, for nothing else but to talk about that bore, Canon Valentine, and that stick of a wife of his ?' 'I— I really don't know,' Kathleen faltered out demurely. BY THE BLUE ADRIATIC 129 Mortimer gazed at her hard. * Yes, you do,' he answered at last, after a long deep pause. * You know it very well. You know you're playing with me. That isn't what I want, and you can see it. Miss Hesslegrave. You can guess what I've come here for. You can guess why I've brought you away all alone upon the sands.' He trembled with emotion. It took a good deal to work Eufus Mortimer up, but when once he was worked up, his feelings ran away with him. He quivered visibly. ' Oh, Miss Hesslegrave,' he cried, gazing wildly at her, * you must have seen it long since. You can't have mis- taken it. You must have known I loved you ! I've as good as told you so over and over again, both in London and here ; but never till to-day have I ventured to ask you. I didn't dare to ask, because I was so afraid you'd say me nay. And now it has come to this : I must speak. I must. I can't keep it back within myself any longer.' Every woman is flattered by a man's asking for her love, even when she means to say ' No ' outright to him ; and it was something for Kathleen to have made a conquest like this of the American millionaire, whom every girl in Venice was eager to be introduced to. She felt it as such. Yet she drew back, all tremu- lous. 'Please don't, Mr. Mortimer,' she pleaded, as the VOL. I. 9 130 ■ ^ AT MARKET VALUE American tried hard to seize her vacant hand. * I — I wish you wouldn't. I know you're very kind ; but — I don't want you to take it.' * Why not ?' Mortimer asked, drawing back a little space and gazing at her earnestly, ' Because,' Kathleen answered, finding it hard indeed so to phrase her feelings as not unnecessarily to hurt the young man's, *I like you very much— as a friend, that is to say— but I could never love you.' •You thought you could once,' Mortimer replied, with a face of real misery. ' I could see you thought it once. In Venice here, last year, you almost hesi- tated ; and if your mother hadn't shown herself so anxious to push my interest with you, I really believe you would have said ' ' Yes ' ' then to me. What has made the difference now ? You must— you must tell me.' ' I hardly know myself,' Kathleen answered truth- fully. 'But I must hear it,' the American answered, placing himself in front of her in an eager attitude. He had all the chivalrous feeling of his countrymen towards women. Eich as he was, he felt, and rightly felt, it was a great thing to ask such a girl as Kathleen Hesslegrave for the gift of her heart ; and having wound himself up to make what for him was that fatal plunge, he must know the worst forthwith ; he BY THE BLUE ADRIATIC 131 must learn once for all then and there whether or not there was any chance left for him. So he stood with clasped hands repeating over and over again : ' You must tell me, Miss Hesslegrave. I have a right to know. The feeling I bear towards you gives me a claim to know it.' ' I can't tell myself,' Kathleen replied, a little falteringly, for his earnestness touched her, as earnest- ness always touches women. ' I shall always like you very much, Mr. Mortimer, but I can never love you.' * Do you love somebody else, will you tell me that ?' the young man asked, almost fiercely. Kathleen hesitated, and was lost. *I— I don't know myself, Mr. Mortimer,' she answered feebly. Mortimer drew a long breath. ' Is it Willoughby ?' he asked at last, with a sudden turn that half frightened her. Kathleen began to cry. ' Mr. Mortimer,' she exclaimed, ' you have no right to try to extort from me a secret I have never told yet to anybody— hardly even to myself. Mr. Willoughby is nothing more than a friend and a companion to me.' But the American read her meaning through her words, for all that. * Willoughby !' he cried—* Wil- loughby ! It's Willoughby who has supplanted me. 132 AT MARKET VALUE I was half afraid of this.' He paused irresolute for a moment. Then he went on much lower: 'I ought to hate him for this, Miss Hesslegrave ; but somehow I don't. Perhaps it isn't in my blood. But I like him and admire him. I admire his courage. I admire your courage for liking him. The worst of it is, I admire you, too, for having the simple honesty to prefer him to me— under all the circumstances. I know you are doing right ; I can't help admiring it. That penniless man against American millions ! But you have left my heart poor. Oh, so poor ! so poor ! There was one thing in life upon which I had fixed it, and you have given that to Willoughby ; and. Miss Hesslegrave, I can't even quarrel with you for giving it !' Kathleen leant forward towards him anxiously. * Oh, for heaven's sake,' she cried, clasping her hands, 'don't betray me, Mr. Mortimer! I have never breathed a single word of this to him, nor he to me. It was uncanny of you to find it out. I ask you, as a woman, keep it— keep it sacred, for my sake, I beg of you'' Mortimer looked at her with the intensest affection in his eyes. He spoke the plain truth ; that woman was the one object in life on which he had set his heart ; and without her, his wealth was as worthless dross to him. BY THE BLUE ADRIATIC i33 ' Why, Miss Hesslegrave,' lie answered, ' what do you thmk I am made of? Do you thmk I could surprise a woman's secret like that, and not keep it more sacred than anything else on earth ? You must have formed indeed a very low opinion of me. I can use this knowledge but for one aim and end— to do what I can towards making Willoughby's path in life a little smoother and easier for him. I wished to do so for his own sake before ; I shall wish it a thousand times more for your sake in future.' Tears stood in his eyes. He spoke earnestly, seriously. He was one of those rare men who rise far above jealousy. Kathleen was touched by his attitude —what woman would not have been ? For a moment she half regretted she could not answer him * Yes.' He was so genuinely in love, so deeply and honestly grieved at her inability to love him. Of her own accord she took his hand. ' Mr. Mortimer,' she said truthfully, ' I like you better this minute than I have ever liked you. You have spoken like a friend ; you have spoken like a gentleman. Few men at such a moment could have spoken as you have done. Believe me, indeed, I am deeply grateful for it.' ' Thank you,' Mortimer answered, brushing his tears away shamefacedly. Americans are more frank about such matters than we self-restrained Britons. * But, oh. 134 AT MARKET VALUE Miss Hesslegrave, after all, what poor comfort that is to a man who asks your love, who loves yon devotedly !' They turned with one accord, and wandered hack along the sands in silence towards the rest of the party. So far as Rufus Mortimer was concerned, that picnic had been a dead failure. 'Twas with an effort that he managed to keep up conversation the rest of the afternoon with the mammas of the expedition. His heart had received a very heavy blow, and he hardly sought to conceal it from Kathleen's observant vision. Sad that in this world what is one man's loss is another man's gain. Arnold Willoughby, seeing those two come back silent from their stroll along the sands together, looked hard in Kathleen's face, and then in Mortimer's — and read the whole history. He felt a little thrill of pleasure course through his spine like a chill. ' Then he has asked her,' Arnold thought; * and she — she has refused him. Dear girl, she has re- fused him ! I can trust her, after all. She prefers the penniless sailor to the richest man this day in Venice !' It is always so. We each of us see things from our own point of view. Any other man would have taken it in the same way as Arnold Willoughby. But Kathleen went home that evening very heavy at heart for her American lover. He was so kind and true, so manly and generous, she felt half grieved in her heart she couldn't have said ' Yes ' to him. CHAPTEK X. VISITORS IN VENICE. Canon Valentine stared about him in the midst of the Piazza with a stony British stare of complete disappro- bation. He rejected it in toto. ' So this is modern Venice !' he exclaimed, with the air of a man who revisits some painful scene he has known in its better days. ' This is what emancipated Italy has made of it ! Dear me, Mrs. Hesslegrave, how altered it is, to be sure, since the good old times of the Austrian occupation !' ' Ah, yes,' Kathleen interposed, not entering into his humour. 'No doubt you see great changes, Canon. You haven't been here before since United Italy. How much lovelier it must look to you, now it's really and truly Italian!' The Canon gazed at her, full face, in the blankest astonishment. ' Quite the contrary,' he said curtly. ' I see very 136 AT MARKET VALUE great changes — but they're all for the worse. These pigeons, for example ; they were always a nuisance ; Hying about under one's feet, and getting in one's way at every twist and turn — but there are ten times as many of them now. as there ever used to be.' 'Why, I love the pigeons,' Kathleen cried, all amazed. ' They're so tame and familiar. In England, the boys would throw stones at them and frighten them ; but here, under the shadow of St. Mark's, they seem to feel as if they belonged to the place, and as if man was a friend of theirs. Besides, th(:^.y're so cha- racteristic ; and they're historically interesting too, don't you know ! They're said to be the descendants of the identical birds that brought Doge Dandolo good news from friends on shore, which enabled him to capture Crete, and so lay the foundations of the Vene- tian Empire. I Just love the pigeons.' *I dare say you do,' the Canon answered testily; * but that's no reason why they should be allowed to stroll about under people's heels as they walk across the Piazza. In the good old Austrian days, I'm sure, that was never permitted. Intolerable, simply ! — And then the band ! What very inferior music ! — When the Austrians were here, you remember, Amelia, we had a capital bandmaster ; and everybody used to come out to listen to his German tunes in the evening. The Square was always gay with bright uniforms VISITORS IN VENICE 137 then — such beautiful coats ! Austrian hussar coats, deep braided on either side, and flung carelessly open. The officers looked splendid by the tables at Florio's. Venice was Venice in those days, I can tell you, before all this nonsense cropped up about United Italy.' 'But what could be lovelier,' Kathleen exclaimed, half shocked at such treason, ' than the Italian officers in their picturesque blue cloaks — the Bersaglieri espe- cially? I declare, I always fall quite in love with them.' * Very likely,' the Canon answered. He was never surprised, for his part, at a)iy aberration of feeling on the part of young girls, since this modern education craze. It had unsexed women for him. ' But the place is spoiled, for all that. You should have seen it at its best, before it was vulgarized. Even St. Mark's is gilded and furbished up now out of all recognition. It's not fit to look at. — Amelia, my dear, don't you agree with me, the place was far more picturesque when the Austrians had it ?' ' Oh, very much more picturesque !' Mrs. Valentine echoed dutifully. She was a meek-looking old lady, in a long black cloak, absolutely overborne by fifty years of the Canon's individuality, and she would have answered the exact opposite in perfect good faith if only she perceived the Canon expected it. Irreverent 138 AT MARKET VALUE young men in their catliedml town were wont to speak of her familiarly as ' the propliet's donkey.' The Canon examined critically the fa(;ade of St. Mark's— that ^jlorioiis composite fa(;ade, of no par- ticular time or style or fashion, which Kathleen admired so fervently, with its fantastic mixture of all elements alike— Byzantine, Oriental, Romanesque, Gothic, Renaissance. * Very mixed !' the Canon mur- mured, holding his head on one side—* very mixed indeed. I can't say I care for it. It's so low and squat. And how the mosaics disfif];ure it !' In answer to criticism like that, poor Kathleen had nothing to say ; so she wisely held her tongue. She knew when to he silent. The Canon strolled on, with Mrs. Hesslegrave hy his side, past Leopardo's bronze sockets, which still hold aloft the great flagstaffs of the Republic in front of the marvellous church ; past the corner of St. Mark's where stand the square pillars from St. Saba at Ptoleraais; past the main gate of the palace, with its sculptured design of Doge Francesco Foscari, in cap and robes, kneeling in submission before the lion of St. Mark ; past the noble arcades and loggias of the Piazzetta ; past the two huge columns in the seaward square, and down by slow degrees to the steps of the Molo. Kathleen listened in wonder, half incredulous, to his criticisms as he passed. She was so little accustomed herself to anything save VISITO/iS IN VENICE 139 breathless admiration and delight at the glories of Venice, tliat this strange attitude of cold blame seemed to her well-nigh unnatural. To think that any man sliould stand unawed before the very faces of St. Mark and St. Theodore ! At the Molo they called a gondola, and glided in it slowly down the Grand Canal. The Canon thought it had fallen off since the days of the Austrians. Half the palaces were worse kept, and the other half were scraped and cleaned and redecorated throughout in the most ridiculous Wardour Street fashion. He couldn't bear to see Venice Blundell-Mapled. It was all quite depressing. But what astonished Kathleen the most was the singular fact that, after passing the bend in the canal by the Palazzo Contarini, the Canon seemed almost entirely to forget in what city they were, though this was his first day for thirty years in the sea-born city, and, looking no longer at churches or palaces, began to gossip about the people he had left behind him in London. His world went with him. They might have been in Bond Street or Kotten Row, for any notice he took of the Rialto or the C^ d'Oro. He glided past the Fondaco without even a single word : he never deigned to give a glance to the School of St. Mark or the tower of San Zanipolo. To Kathleen's artistic soul it was all a strange puzzle. She couldn't understand it. Had the man no eyes in I40 AT MARKET VALUE his head that he could pass those glorious arcades, those exquisite balconies, without even looking up at them? * And you were going to tell us something about this Axminster business,' Mrs. Hesslegrave remarked after a pause, as they reached the front of the Arsenal on their circuitous peregrination, which Kathleen had arranged so as to take in at one round all the principal buildings. ' Poor dear Lady Axminster ! Has any- thing been done yet about this affair of the peerage ?' ' Oh dear yes,' the Canon replied, brightening up at the suggestion. ' I was coming to that. I intended to tell you all about it. Haven't you read it in the papers ? We're in hopes at last we're really going to get a definite settlement.' ' That's well,' Mrs. Hesslegrave echoed with a sympathetic smirk. 'What's being done about it now? We haven't seen a paper in this benighted place for weeks and weeks, don't you know — except, of course, Galigiiani. It's really quite dreadful how one falls behind the times about all the most important and interesting things that are going on in England !' The Canon looked big. This appeal flattered him. He liked to feel he came primed with news about the best people. * Well, we've taken the thing to the House of Lords,' he said, with as much delight as if he were himself the appellant. ' Poor Algy has VISITORS IN VENICE I4' claimed the peerage on the ground that his cousin Bertie is dead, as I told you. We've reduced success to a practical certainty. The Lords will adjudicate on his claim in a week or two ; but it's a foregone con- clusion. I'm very glad, I must say, for Algy's sake, and for his wife's too. She's a nice little thing, Mrs. Algy Redburn!' 'My brother knows her slightly,' Kathleen said, with a tolerant smile, * and seems to think a great deal of her.' ' Oh yes ; she's a charming woman,' Mrs. Hessle- grave interposed—' a most charming woman.' (Mrs. Hesslegrave thought all peers and peeresses, actual or prospective, particularly charming— even more charm- ing, indeed, than the rest of the people in the best society.) The Canon took no notice, however, of these inter- jected remarks. He severely ignored them. To say the truth, he regarded the entire Axminster connection as his own private property, from a social point of view, and rather resented than otherwise the im- pertinent suggestion that anyone else in the world could have anything to do with them. ' Yes, we've reduced it to a practical certainty,' he went on, lean- ing back in his place in the gondola and staring hard at the water. 'The crux of the case consisted, of course, in the difficulty of proving that the man 142 AT MARKET VALUE Douglas Overton, who shipped from the port of London in the Sauctj Sally — that was the name of the vessel, if I recollect aright — for Melhourne, Australia, was really the same man as Albert Ogilvie Redburn, seventh Lord Axminster. And it was precious hard to prove satisfactorily, I can tell you ; but Marip. has proved it — proved it up to the hilt. Maria's a very clever woman of the world, and she knows how to work these things like a private detective. Her lawyer said to her in my hearing : " Nobody but you, Lady Axminster, would ever have succeeded in pulling it through ; but thanks to your ability and energy and acumen, not even the House of Lords can have the shadow of a doubt about it." And the House of Lords, you may take your affidavit, will doubt any- thing any mortal on earth could doubt, to keep a claimant out of a peerage, if only they can manage it.' ' But you think it's quite safe now ?' Mrs. Hessle- grave asked with interest. Anything that referred to a peer of the realm had for her mind a perfectly en- thralling attraction. * Oh dear yes, quite safe. Not a doubt in the world of it. You see, we've established, in the first place, the fact that the man Douglas Overton really was Bertie Redburn, which is always something. And we've established in the second place the complemen- VISITORS IN VENICE 143 tary fact that the Saucy SciUt/, from London for Melbourne, went ashore on some wretched island nobody ever heard of in the Indian Ocean, and that all souls on board perished — including, of course, the man Douglas Overton, who is Bertie Eedburn, who is the late Lord Axminster. A child can see it — let alone the Privilege Committee.' ' I'm glad it's going to be settled,' Mrs. Hesslegrave remarked with unction. ' It's such a dreadful thing for poor Mr. Algernon Eedburn to be kept so long, through no fault of his own, out of the money j,nd title.' ' Oh, dreadful,' the Canon assented — * dreadful, dreadful, dreadful ! But there, poor Bertie never had any conscience ! It was quite painful the distressing views he used to hold on such subjects, for a man in his position. I always set it down to the gipsy blood in him. I've heard hihi say more than once he longed to be doing something that he called useful for the mass of the community. Long before he gave way to these abnormal longings, and neglected his natural duties, and ran away to sea, he's told me time and again he felt a sailor's life was a life of undoubted value and useful- ness to the country. A sailor was employed in carry- ing commodities from one place where they were produced to another place where they were wanted or eaten or something — consumed, I think he called it — 144 AT MARKET VALUE and nobody could deny that was a good and useful thing for the people that consumed them. " Very well, Bertie," said I — half in a joke, don't you know — " then why shouldn't you go yourself, and carry coals to Newcastle, or whatever else may be the crying want in that line at the moment?" — never dreaming, of course, the poor silly boy would go and follow my advice, as he did to the letter. But there ! these things come out all right in the long-run. " There's a divinity that shapes our ends," as Tennyson or somebody says — ah, thank you, was it Shakespeare? — " rough-hew them how we may;" and that's been the case, I say, with this Axminster peerage business. For the upshot of it all is, that poor Bertie's dead and gone, sooner than one could reasonably have ex- pected, and Algy's come into the property and title before his time ; which is a very desirable thing to have happened : for Bertie might have married a woman after his own heart, no doubt — a sailor's Poll for choice — and if he had, why, one trembles to think what the children might have been like — a perfect disgrace to their ancestry !' Mrs. Hesslegrave smiled an acquiescent smile. But as for Kathleen, a flash of light broke suddenly upon her. * A sailor is employed in carrying com- modities from the place where they are produced to the place where they are needed ; and that nobody VISITORS IN VENICE 14S can deny to be on the whole a useful and a valuable function for society!' Surely this line of reasoning, were it right or wrong, sounded strangely familiar to her ! And then, as she thought it over, it broke upon her like a revelation that she had heard similar words before now— from Arnold Willoughby ! From Arnold Willoughby! From the courteous artist- sailor. A strange misgiving seized upon her. If Lord Axminster could disguise himself as Douglas Overton, why not also as Arnold Willoughby ? She thought at once of her sailor friend's extraordinary knowledge of art and literature for a common sailor ; of his chival- rous manners ; of his demeanour, which so belied his dress and his pretensions. Turning sharply to Canon Valentine she ventured to put all at once the dubious question : * Did Lord Axminster paint ? Had he any know- ledge of art, I mean ?' * Oh dear me, yes !' the Canon answered without a second's hesitation. 'He studied in Paris under a first-rate painter, a fellow, with one of their long- winded double-barrelled names : Bastien-somebody it was ; I never can get the hang of them.' Kathleen asked no more. Her heart was strangely troubled. For her sailor had spoken more than once incidentally of Bastien-Lepage's studio. Loyalty to Arnold Willoughby made her hold her peace, and 10 VOL. I. 146 AT MARKET VALUE refrain from blurting out the doubt that rose within her. If he was really Lord Axminster, why, it would be wrong of her even to attempt to surprise his secret — still more to betray it. The words from which she suspected she discovered his identity had been spoken in confidence, in the most private conversation. Kathleen couldn't help framing to herself ofTliand a pretty little romance, based on the familiar Lord-of- Burleigh model—' He was but a landscape painter, And a village maiden she !' A romance of how this young man had tried to win her love as a common sailor (and what was more, succeeded in it), and how he meant in the end to astonish the world by telling her he was an Earl, and carrying her off unawares to his home in Devonshire, to share the fancied glories of Membury Castle. ' And while now she wonders blindly, Nor the meaning can divine, Proudly turns he round and kindly, " All of this is mine and thine." ' 'Twas a romantic little day-dream. To say the truth, Kathleen regarded it only as such. For as yet she had no positive reason to believe that Arnold Willoughby even loved her. She had but guessed it instinctively, with a woman's intuition. And as to his real position in life she knew absolutely nothing. The singular coincidence in thought and phrase VISITORS IN VENICE 147 between the things he had said to her and the things the Canon repeated as Lord Axminster's sayings was indeed close enough ; but it might be accidental. No human being is ever really unique ; every thought and feeling we can have, somebody else has had in almost the same form, we may be sure, before us. And perhaps they had both taken word and thought alike from some previous thinker, as often happens with all of us. For aught she knew to the contrary, it might be some commonplace of Emerson's or Thoreau's. At any rate, Kathleen attached no serious importance to this flash of identification, at least after the first moment. Still, she went on indulging the day-dream, as one often will, for many minutes together, out of mere fanciful delight in it. It gave her some slight relief from the clinrf, cling, cling of the Canon's perpetual chatter about the sayings and doings of his great folk in London. While he went droning on to Mrs. Hesslegrave about Lady This and Lady That, their virtues and their delinquencies, Kathleen leaned back in her seat in the broad Italian sunshine, and closed her ears to it all mentally, while she enlarged to herself upon this Axminster day- dream, and saw herself as Arnold Willoughby's bride pacing entranced through the full leaf of June at Membury Castle. At last she shut her eyes for a moment, as they 148 AT MARKET VALUE were nearing a bridge at one familiar corner, where a Romanesque staircase of exquisite workmanship ran spirally up outside a round tower in the background. It helped her day-dream somewhat to shut her eyes : she could see the great oaks of an English park : she could see the fallow deer on dappled spots of shade under the spreading chestnuts. A sharp cry from the Canon made her open them again suddenly. Glancing ap in alarm, she looked in the direction where her visitor's eyes were fixed, and saw, leaning on the parapet of the high-pitched bridge that spanned their canal close by— who else but Arnold Willoughby ! The Canon's last w^ords, unheeded as he spoke them, now rang clear in her ears—' He's dead ; that's certain. "We've got full particulars. All hands were lost — and he must have been lost among them.' But this moment, at sight of Arnold Willoughby's bent head, with one linger twisted carelessly in the lock behind his ear, the Canon sat staring wildly in front of him with wide-open eyes. * Why, look there !' he cried, taken aback, in a voice of something very little short of horror. ' Look there ! Who's that ! The man on the bridge just in front of us ?' ' What's the matter with him !' Mrs. Hesslegrave exclaimed, following blankly the direction of the Canon's eyes. She had always been sure there must VISITORS IN VENICE I49 be something seriously wrong about that dreadful Willoughby man ; and now they were discovering it. Could the Canon have recognised him as an escaped convict, or told him at a glance as the Banbury murderer ? But Canon Valentine gazed harder and more steadily than any of them. He seized Kathleen's arm with a convulsive start. ' Yes, it's him !' he said excitedly, in a tone of blank alarm ; * a good deal altered, of course, and quite dis- guised beyond anybody else's recognition. But it's him, sure enough ! I should know him in a thou- sand !' * It's 2vlio r Mrs. Hesslegrave faltered out, hardly daring to ask. The Canon gasped for breath. He could only just speak. 'Why, Bertie!' he answered low, leaning forward to whisper it. * Don't you understand ? Bertie Redburn ! The man that's dead ! The late Lord Axminster !' CHAPTEK XI. MRS. HESSLEGRAVE MISAPPREHENDS. The words were scarcely out of the Canon's mouth when straightway he repented of them. If this was really Bertie, he ought to have held his peace. The man was skulking in that case — quite evidently skulk- ing ; he wanted to disappear : he didn't wish to be recognised. It was no business of the Canon's, then, to drag a feliow-creature against his will out of volun- tary retirement, and so spoil Algy's chance of obtain- ing the peerage. On the other hand, if it wasn't Bertie, the Canon should, of course, have been the last man on earth to call attention to a likeness — really, now he came to think of it, a very remote likeness — to the late Earl, and so give rise to a rumour which might prove prejudicial in the end to Algy's position. He had cried out in the heat of the moment, in the first flush of surprise ; he began to hedge at once, as soon as ever he perceived, on cooler reflection, the possible MRS. HESSLEGRAVE MISAPPREHENDS 151 consequences of his instinctive action. This is a very small planet. Sooner or later, we all collide upon its surface. As for Kathleen, her first thought was one of loyalty to Arnold. If he teas Lord Axminster— and of this she had now very little doubt left ; the double coinci- dence settled it— he was trying to hide himself : he didn't wish to be recognised. That was enough for her. He desired that his personality as Arnold Willoughby should not be mixed up with his person- ality as Bertie Eedburn. Therefore, it was her clear duty not to betray him in any way. She glanced nervously at her mother. Mrs. Hesslegrave had half risen from her seat, overjoyed to hear that this was really an English earl, whose high birth and intrinsic nobility they had discovered for themselves under the guise of a common sailor, and was just about to call out : ' Mr. Willoughby ! Mr. Willoughby !' But Kath- leen darted upon her suddenly such a warning glance that she withered up forthwith, and held her peace devoutly. She didn't know why she was to keep silent; but she could see, from Kathleen's half- imperious, half - imploring look, there was some good reason for it; and Mrs. Hesslegrave was one of those rare stupid people who recognise the fact of their own stupidity, and allow themselves to be blindly guided in emergencies by others. So she 152 AT MARKET VALUE held her peace, merely remarkinp;, as she sat down again : * So you thmk that's Lord Axminster ! Dressed up like that ! Well, really now, how interesting !' Arnold Willoughhy's face, meanwhile, was all the time turned half in the opposite direction. He did not see the gondola, nor Kathleen, nor the Canon. He was engaged, in fact, in watching and mentally photographing for artistic purposes the graceful move- ments of a passing barge as she swung slowly through the bridge over whose balustrade he was hanging. While Mrs. Hesslegrave spoke, he turned and went on without observing them. Next instant, he was lost in the crowd that surged and swayed through the narrow caUc. The danger was averted. He had never so much as observed the Canon. As for that astute old gentleman, now he had recovered his breath, he saw his mistake at once, and faced it boldly. When Mrs. Hesslegrave said, ' So you think that's Lord Axminster !' he answered im- mediately, with perfect self-control : * No, I don't. I was mistaken. It was — a passing fancy. For a second I imagined — merely imagined, don't you know — the man looked something like him. I suppose it was the sailor get-up which just at first deceived me. Poor Axminster used to dress like a sailor when he yachted. Amelia, my dear, that was MRS. HESSLEGRAVE MISAPPREHENDS 153 not Bertie, was it? You could see the man dia- tinctly.' * Oh doar uo, Fred,' Mrs. Valeutiiie cclioed iu a voice of profound conviction ; * not the least bit Hke him !' The Canon frowned sUghtly. Ameh'a had l)ottorod her instructions unl)idden. He irrift tlie least bit like him, else why should the Canon have mistaken him at first sight for his kinsman Bertie ? But not very like. 'A mere superficial resemblance,' he went on, hedg- ing violently. ' Just at the first glance, to be sure — having my head full of the subject, and seeing the sailor dress— I mistook him for Bertie. But when I came to look again, the fellow was altogether different. Same build, perhaps, but features gone shorter and thicker and flatter. A man may dye his hair, and cut his beard, and so forth; but, hang it all, Mrs. Hesslegrave ! he can't go and get rid of his own born features.' He talked all the rest of the way home of nothing on earth except singular resemblances and mistaken identities. There were Perkin Warbeck, and Edmund Wyld, and the Tichborne Claimant. There was Sidney Carton in the ' Tale of Two Cities.' And he came back always to the fundamental point, that the features of a face at least— the features must always remain ; you might dress, and you might paint, but there was no 154 AT MARKET VALUE possibility of getting over the features. He over- elaborated this issue, in fact. Kathleen could see from every phrase he was sure in his own heart he had seen Bertie Eedburn, and was trying to argue himself, and still more his hearers, out of that positive conviction. Even Mrs. Hesslegrave saw it, indeed, and murmured aside to Kathleen, as they stood on the steps of the Molo : ' That is Lord Axminster, Kitty, and the dear Canon knew it ; but, for Algernon Eedburn's sake, he didn't like to acknowledge it.' Kathleen gazed at her seriously. 'Mother, mother,' she cried, in a low voice, 'for heaven's sake, don't say so! Don't say anything about it. You won't understand yet; but when we get home, I'll tell you. Plcasr say nothing more now. If you do, you may upset everything !' A vague idea crossed Mrs. Hesslegrave's mind at that moment, that Kathleen might perhaps have known this all along, and that that might account for her being so much taken up with this dreadful sailor-man — who wasn't really a dreadful sailor-man at all, as it turned out, but the real Lord Axminster ! If so, how delightful '; However, she waited for more light on these matters in Kathleen's own good time, only murmuring, meanwhile, half under her breath, to her d aughter : MRS. HESSLEGRAVE MISAPPREHENDS 155 * Well, whoever he is, he's a charming fellow. You must admit, yourself, I've thought all along he's a charming fellow.' By this time the Canon had settled with the gondo- lier — after a resolute attempt at resistance to the man's extortionate endeavour to exact his proper fare by municipal tariff— and was ready to stroll up to the Hesslegraves' apartments. For it was a principal clause in the Canon's private creed that every foreigner is always engaged in a conspiracy to defraud every British subject on whom he can lay his hands ; and that the way to make your road easy across the Continent is to fight every item of every account, all along the line, the moment it is presented. The extortionate gondolier had conquered, however, by producing a printed tariff which fixed his hire at the modest rate of a franc an hour ; so the Canon, paying it ouv, without a sou of pourboire, strode on towards the lodgings, disconsolate and distracted. He knew in his heart of hearts that was really Axminster; much altered, no doubt, by deliberate disguise; dis- torted beyond belief, but still undeniably Axminster ; and he firmly resolved never to mention his conclusion for worlds to anyone — not even to Amelia. A man has no right to appear and disappear and then suddenly crop up again by fits and starts in this uncanny manner — to play bo-peep, as it were, with 156 AT MARKET VALUE the House of Lords, the most dignified, exalted, and supreme court in the United Kingdom. Once dead, always dead, was a rule that ought to be applied to these TichLornian revivalists. If you choose to go out like a candle of your own free will, why, the world should sternly decline to recognise you when you want to come to life again at inconvenient moments. There should be a Bill brought in to declare Bertie Eedburn was really dead ; and then dead he should remain, by Act of Parliament ! But as soon as they w^ere inside the house, and Kathleen had gone up with her mother and Mrs. Valentine into her pretty little bedroom to take off her bonnet, the Canon's own wife gave vent explosively to a fearful and wholly unexpected disclosure. ' You know, my dear,' she said confidentially, * that was Lord Axminster. I feel quite sure of it. Only, of course, I wouldn't say so, on dear Fred's account. You know dear Fred can't bear to be contradicted.' Once more Kathleen darted a warning look at her mother ; and once more Mrs. Hesslegrave accepted the hint blindly. ' But he was so different, the Canon thought,' she remarked, just to keep up the conversation, wondering dimly all the while what this mystification could mean — too deep, in fact, for a quiet, respectable old lady's fathoming. ' Oh, you can't deceive me /' Mrs. Valentine MRS. HESSLEGRAVE MISAPPREHENDS 157 answered with warmth. * I'm sure it was Lord Axminster. And I'll tell you how I know : his features were really changed, exactly as Fred said : he must have had something done to them. They say you can get your face moulded like putty, if you choose to bear it, nowadays. But he had always a nervous trick of pulling one back lock of his hair, as he stood still and thought — like this, don't you know ! a sort of back-handed twirl : and the moment I saw him, I remembered it instantly. He might walk down Bond Street any morning, and meet every friend he ever knew in the world, and not one in a thousand would ever suspect it was he ; but Fred and I, we would know, because we saw such a lot of hiii; as a child, and were accustomed to reprove him for this same awkward trick of his.' And, as a matter of fact, the moment Mrs. Valentine mentioned it, Kathleen recollected perfectly that she had often observed Arnold Willoughby stand in just the way she mimicked, pulling a particular lock at the back of his hair, whenever he was observant of a person's face, or attentive to any element in a picture or landscape. The moment she could get alone with her mother upstairs, she began to speak to her seriously. ' Mother,' she said in her most coaxing tone, 'you were so good to take my hints. I didn't want Canon 158 AT MARKET VALUE Valentine to know who Mr. Willoughby was — I mean, what name he calls himself — or that you and I knew him ; for I'm sure the Canon was right : Mr. Wil- loughby's Lord Axminster.' Mrs. Hesslegrave made no immediate reply except to step forward with the utmost gentleness and press a motherly kiss upon her daughter's forehead. * Oh, Kitty,' she cried, gazing fondly at her, ' how awfully clever of you ! My darling, I'm so glad ! And I've been seeing all along how much attention he was paying you.' Kathleen flushed up to her eyes again. It was a way she had when deeply moved. And she knew her mother was very much pleased with her indeed ; for only when very much pleased did Mrs. Hesslegrave ever address her by her pet name of Kitty. *But that's not all, mother,' she went on eagerly. ' I want you to promise me, oh, ever so faithfully, you won't tell anybody who he is, or anything else about him. He wouldn't like it, if you did. Promise me, dearest, promise me !' Mrs. Hesslegrave drew back for a second, lost in mazes of thought. She couldn't quite understand this queer Axminster mystery. Then, being a romantic old lady, as many old ladies are, she wove for herself on the spot a little private romance of how it had all happened. Lord Axminster, it appeared. MRS. HESSLEGRAVE MISAPPREHENDS 159 distrusting all womankind, after his bitter experience with Lady Sark, had come abroad in disguise as a common sailor, in order to look out for some girl he could really love — some girl who could really love him, as a man wishes to be loved, for himself, not for his estate, his rank or his title. But Kathleen, like a clever girl that she was, had discovered by intuition his real position in life under those humble surround- ings, and had fallen in love with him, and made him fall in love with her. Mrs. Hesslegrave could under- stand now what she had never understood before — how a well-conducted girl like her Kitty could have permitted herself to form a romantic attachment for a man apparently so very far beneath her. It was just like Kitty to have unmasked the real Earl ; in her joy and pride — to think her own daughter should have captured a peer of the realm under such adverse con- ditions by sheer dint of insight — Mrs. Hesslegrave once more bent tenderly forward, and kissed the wondering Kathleen a second time on her forehead. * I'll promise whatever you like, dear,' she said in a very pleased tone, for this was a great occasion, ' Oh, Kitty, I'm so delighted ! And indeed, dear, I'm sorry I ever seemed to throw any obstacles in Mr. Willough- by's way — I mean, in Lord Axminster's. But there ! you'll forgive me: I didn't understand the circum- stances as you did. And though I didn't quite approve l6o AT MARKET VALUE of your seeing so much as you did of him — under misapprehension, of course, as to his real place in society — you must remember yourself I always allowed that, viewed as a man alone, he was a most charming person.' Kathleen didn't exactly understand what her mother was driving at ; these words were too deep for her : but for the moment she didn't think it necessary to inquire as to their hidden meaning : she was so afraid her mother might by some imprudence betray Arnold Willoughby's secret. And no matter wdiy he wished it kept, she felt for her own part 'twas a point of honour for them both to insist upon keeping it. So she said very hurriedly : 'Whatever you do, dear mother, don't let Canon Valentine know Mr. Willoughby's a friend of ours. Don't say a word about him, in fact. Let the Canon suppose the man he saw on the bridge is a perfect stranger to all of us. I must manage to prevent Mr. Wllloughby from visiting the house for the present, somehow. If Canon Valentine w^ere to find out who he really was, it would spoil all— and then Mr. Wil- loughby would be so dreadfully disappointed.' Mrs. Hesslegrave caught instinctively at that one phrase, ' spoil all,' which confirmed her at once in her most romantic preconceptions. Then it was just as she expected : the Earl and Kitty had arrived at an MRS. HESSLEGRAVE MISAPPREHENDS i6i understanding. There was a mystery in the case, of course ; })ut Kitty would clear it all up ; and she should live yet to see her only daughter a countess. * My darling,' the proud mother said, looking at her with affection — for it is something to have a daughter who can catch earls in disguise — * tell me all about it ! "When did Lord Axminster ask you ?' * He has never asked me, mother,' Kathleen an- swered with a very deep blush. Then she paused for a moment. Her heart rose into her mouth. The avowal seemed so natural at a crisis like that. ' But I love him,' she went on, clasping her hands ; ' and I'm sure he loves me. Oh, mother, don't say any- thing that would lead him to suppose you've heard a word of all this. If you do, all will be lost ! I know he wouldn't care for any of us to know he was really Lord Axminster.' She trembled for her unavowed lover, now the truth was upon her. * My dear,' Mrs. Hesslegrave answered, her admira- tion for Kathleen's cleverness and power of self-restraint growing deeper each minute, * you may set your mind at rest : you may rely upon my prudence. I grasp the situation. I couldn't have believed it, Kitty ; but I'm very, very glad of it. What a wonderful girl you are! I declare you really almost take my breath away !' VOL. I. 11 i62 AT MARKET VALUE And, indeed, Mrs. Hesslegrave felt it was most meri- , torious in Kathleen to have discovered the young man's rank so early — as of course she must have done — and to have succeeded in keeping her own counsel so well that even her mother never for a moment suspected the real rank of her lover ; for that a lover he was, Mrs. Hesslegrave took for granted at once, now she knew the dreadful sailor-man was really an earl. She would hardly have given her Kathleen credit before for so much gumption. As for Kathleen, she was so fully bent upon pre- serving Arnold Willoughby's secret, that she never even noticed her mother's misapprehension. Her one desire now was to keep the matter entirely from Canon Valentine, aiid, if possible, to prevent their accident- ally meeting. And that,, she foresaw, would be no easy task ; for of late, in spite of Mrs. Hesslegrave's marked coldness, Arnold had frequently called round on one errand or another with sketches or books at the lodgings by the Piazza. Just as she was wondering how best to avert the misfortune of an unexpected encounter, however, Mrs. Hesslegrave observed with her blandest smile : * We haven't seen much of Mr. Willoughby lately. I really think, Kathleen, I'll write this very day and invite him to come round to tea some afternoon while the Canon's with us,' MRS. HESSLEGRAVE MISAPPREHENDS 163 Kathleen stood aghast with horror. She quite understood Arnold Willoughhy's motives now ; with a flash of intuition, the minute she learned who he really was, she read at once the reasons for his strange behaviour. Something of the sort, indeed, had oc- curred to her as possible even before, when she con- trasted the man's talk and wide range of information with his supposed position in life ; but now she knew who he was, it all burst at once upon her. And she had loved him as the common sailor ; that she had never concealed from her own heart for many days, since the trip to the Lido. He could never say of her in future it was his rank and his artificial position in the world that had captivated her fancy. She loved him for himself ; she knew it ; she was certain of it ! Had she not written it down in plain black and white in her diary ? Yet if he were to find out now that she had discovered his true name— Kathleen trembled to herself as she thought of the possible result, for she was very much in love— he might never ask her. She wished in her heart he was really Arnold Willoughby, the sailor-painter, or that she had never discovered the truth as to his artificial position. But something must be done at once to prevent this catastrophe which Mrs. Hesslegrave so innocently proposed to bring about. Kathleen seized her mother's arm with a nervous clutch. 1 64 AT MARKET VALUE * Mother,' she cried, much agitated, * for worlds you mustn't write ! for worlds you mustn't ask him ! Oh, promise me you won't ask him ! You don't know how much depends on it. For Heaven's sake, say you won't ; say you'll do as I beg of you !' Mrs. Hesslegrave, much puzzled as to what all this mystification and agitation could mean, yet drew back at once, and answered in perfect good faith : • Oh, certainly, certainly, I'll do as you wish, dear ; though I'm sure I don't know why. Such plot and counterplot is a great deal too deep for a poor simple old woman.' Kathleen's heart sank at the words. They were only too true. She felt sure she could trust her mother's good intentions implicitly ; but she was by no means so certain she could trust her discretion. 'Though I've always said,' Mrs. Hesslegrave re- marked in conclusion, ' he was really in his way a most charming person.' CHAPTER XII. A mother's dilemma. Canon Valentine had intended to stop a week at Venice. He stopped just two days; and then, to Kathleen's secret joy and no small relief, bronchitis seized him. That stern monitor hm-ried him off in- continently to Florence. ' I'm sorry, Mrs. Hessle- grave,' he said ; ' I can't tell you how sorry. I'd looked forward to seeing everything in this charming place under your daughter's guidance-she's a capital cicerone, I must say, your daughter ; we did so enjoy going round the Grand Canal with her the day before yesterday. It's so deUghtful to see all these beautiful things in company with an artist ! But the damp of the lagoons is really too much for my poor old throat ; we're given to throat-trouble, you see ; it's common to my cloth ; and as I went along with Miss Hessle- grave to the Academy yesterday in an open gondola, I felt the cold air rise up bodily from the Canal and i66 AT MARKET VALUE catch hold of me and throttle me. It took me just BO, by the larynx, like a hand, and seemed to choke me instantly. " Amelia," said I at the time, '* this chilly air has done for me." And, sure enough, I woke in the night with a tickle, tickle, tickle in my bronchial tubes, which I know means mischief. When once that sets in, there's nothing for it but to leave the place where you are immediately. Change the air without delay : that's the one safe remedy. And indeed, to tell you the truth, Venice is so spoilt, 80 utterly spoilt, since the Austrians left it, that, except for you and Miss Hesslegrave, I must confess I shan't be sorry to get out of it. Most insanitary town, I call it — most insanitary in every way.' Kathleen could hardly even pretend to regret their departure. During the last two days she had lived in instant dread that the Canon would somehow knock up against Arnold Willoughby. And if the truth must be told, it was the very same dread on the Canon's part, not bronchitis alone, that was driving him to Florence. For as they stood on the balcony of the Doges' Palace the day before, looking out upon the liiva and the busy quays and the panorama of the harbour, Canon Valentine beheld a man's back in the distance, rounding the corner by Danieli's, and he said to himself with a shudder : * Axminster's back — or the devil's !' (Being an old-fashioned clergy- A MOTHER'S DILEMMA '67 man, the Canon, you ^vill perceive, was not afraid of a very mild unparliamentary expression.) And the more convinced he became that the mysterious person thus flitting about Venice was really Lord Axmhister, the more desirous did he grow to avoid the misfortune of actually meeting him. For if they met face to face, and caught one another's eyes, the Canon hardly knew how, for very shame, he could let Algy go on with his claim of right without informing him -which he was loath to do-that his cousin Bertie had never been drowned at all, but had been sighted in the flesh, and in sailor costume, in the city of Venice. There are compromises we all make now and again with our consciences ; and there are points where we feel the attempt at compromise becomes practically impossible. Now, the Canon was quite willing to give Algy and his wife the benefit of the doubt, as long as he'felt only just morally certain that the person m the street with the trick of twisthig his back hair was the last Lord Axminster. But if they met face to face, and he recognised his man without doubt, as he felt sure he must do when they came to close quarters, then the Canon felt in his heart he could no longer retain any grain of self-respect if he per- mitted the claim to be pushed through the House of Lords without even mentioning what he had seen to 1 68 AT MARKET VALUE Algy. He might have kept silence, indeed, and let self-respect take its chance, if he met the man alone ; but what on earth could he do if he met him, full front, while out walking with Amelia ? That was the question. And I may remark parenthetically that most men feel keenly this necessity for preserving their self-respect before the face of their wives — which is a very important ally, indeed, to the cause of all the virtues. So, on the third morning of his stay, the Canon left Venice. Kathleen breathed freer as soon as he was gone. The load of that gnawing anxiety was much lightened upon her. That very same day, as it chanced, Arnold Wil- loughby, reflecting to himself in his own room, made his mind up suddenly to step round in the afternoon and have a word or two with Kathleen. Ever since that morning when they picnicked at the Lido, he had been debating with himself whether or not he should ask that beautiful soul to marry him ; and now his mind was made up ; he could resist no longer : he had decided that very day to break the ice and ask her. He was quite sure she liked him — liked him very, very much : that she showed unequivocally : and he had waited so long only because he couldn't muster up courage to speak to her. Would it be right of him, he asked himself, to expect that any A MOTHER'S DILEMMA 169 woman should share such fortunes as his would henceforth he? Was he justified in begging any woman to wait till an obscure young painter could earn money enough to keep her in the comfort and luxury to which she had been accustomed ? He put that question to himself seriously ; and he answered it in the affirmative. If he had really been always the Arnold Willoughby he had now made himself by his own act, he need never have doubted. Any young man, just starting in life, would have thought himself justified in asking the girl he loved best in the world to wait for him till he was in a position to marry her. Why should not he do what any other man might do lawfully? He had cast the past behind him ; he was a painter sailor now ; but why need he hesitate on tha.t account to ask the girl whose love he believed he had won on his own merits if she would wait till he could marry her ? Arnold Willoughby would have done it ; and he ivas Arnold Willoughby. So, about three o'clock, he went round, somewhat tremulous, in the direction of the Piazza. He hadn't seen Kathleen for a day or two ; she had told him friends would be visiting them, without mentioning their name; and she had given herself a holiday, while the friends were with her, from her accustomed work on the Fondamenta della Zattere. I70 AT MARKET VALUE When he got to the door, Francesca, who opened it, told him, with a sunny display of two rows of white teeth, that the signorina way out, but the signora was at home, if he would care to see her. Much disappointed, Arnold went up, anxious to learn whether any chance still remained that, later in the afternoon, he might have a word or two with Kathleen. To his immense surprise, the moment he entered, Mrs. Hesslegrave rose from her seat with obvious warmth, and held out her hand to greet him in her most gracious manner. Arnold had noticed by this time the seven distinct gradations of cordiality with which Mrs. Hesslegrave was accustomed to receive her various '^iuests ill accordance with their respective and relative positions in the table of prece- dence as by authority established. This afternoon, therefore, he couldn't help observing her manner was that with which she was wont to welcome peers of the realm and foreign ambassadors. To say the truth, Mrs. Hesslegrave considerably overdid it in the matter of graciousness. There was an inartistic abruptness in her sudden change of front, a practical inconsist- ency in her view of his status, which couldn't fail to strike him. The instant way in which Mrs. Hessle- grave, who had hitherto taken little pains to conceal her disli^'.e and distrust of the dreadful sailor man, flung^^herself visibly at his head, made Arnold at once A MOTHER'S DILEMMA i7i suspect some radical revolution must have taken place meanwhile in her views as to his position. 'Why, Mr. Willoughby,' she cried, holding his hand in her own much longer than was strictly neces- sary for the purpose of shaking it, ' what a stranger you are, to be sure ! You never come near us now. It's really quite unfriendly of you. Kathleen was saying this morning we must write round to your chambers and ask you to dine with us. And she hasn't seen you for the last day or two on the Zattere, either ! Poor child ! she's been so occupied. We've had some friends here, who've been taking up all our time. Kitty's been out in a gondola all day long with them. However, that's all over, and she hopes to get to work again on the quay to-morro\\-— she's so anxious to go on with her Spire and Canal ; wrapped up in her art, dear girl-you know, it's all she lives for. However, she'll be back at it, I'm glad to say, at the old place, in the morning. Our friends are just gone— couldn't stand the climate— said it gave them sore throats-and Kathleen's gone off to say good-bye to them at the station.' ' That's fortunate,' Arnold answered a little stiffly, feeling, somehow, a dim consciousness that, against his will, he was once more a lord, and lapsing for the moment into his early bad.habit of society small-talk. • For the lights on the Canal have been lovely the last 172 AT MARKET VALUE three days, and I've regretted so much Miss Hessle- grave should have missed them.' * Not more than she has, I'm sure,' Mrs. Hessle- grave went on, quite archly, with her blandest smile — ' mother's society smirk,' as that irreverent hoy Keggie was wont to term it. 'I don't know why, I'm sure, Mr. Willoughby, but Kathleen has enjoyed her painting on the quay this winter and spring a great deal more than she ever before enjoyed it. It's been a perfect treat to her. She says she can't bear to be away for one day from that dear old San Trovaso. She just loves her work ; and I assure you she seemed almost sentimentally sad because these friends who've been stopping with us kept her away so long from her beloved picture. — And from her fellow-artists,' Mrs. Hesslegrave added after a pause, in some little trepidation, uncertain whether that last phrase might not go just one step too far in the right direction. Arnold Willoughby eyed her closely. All his dearest suspicions were being fast aroused ; he began to tremble in his heart lest somebody had managed to pierce the close disguise with v hioh he had so care- fully and so long surrounded himself. ' Will Miss Hesslegrave be back by-and-by ?' he asked in a coldly official tone. * Because, if she will, I should like to stop and see her.' Mrs. Hesslegrave jumped at the chance with unwise A MOTHER'S DILEMMA i73 avidity. This was the very first time, in fact, that Arnold Willoughby had ever asked to see her daughter in so many words. She scented a proposal. ' Oh yes,' she answered, acquiescent, with obvious eagerness, though she plumed herself inwardly as she spoke upon her own bland ingenuity ; ' Kathleen will be back by-and-by from the station, and will be dehghted to see you. I know there's some point in that last year's picture she's touching up that she said she wanted to consult you about, if possible. I shall have to go out myself at four, unfortunately— I'm engaged to an " at home" at dear Lady Devonport's ; but I dare say Kathleen can give you a cup of tea here ; and no doubt you and she can make yourselves happy to- gether.' She beamed as she said it. The appointment with Lady Devonport was a myth, to be sure; but Mrs. Hesslegrave thought it would be wise, under the circumstances, to leave the young people alone with one another. Arnold Willoughby's suspicions grew deeper and deeper. Mrs. Hesslegrave was one of those transparent people w4iose little deceptions are painfully obvious ; he could see at half a glance some- thing must have occurred which gave her all at once a much more favourable view of him. He m<3asured her doubtfully with his eye. Mrs. Hesslegrave in return showered her sweetest smiles upon him. She 174 ^T MARKET VALUE was all obsequiousness. Then she began to talk with ostentatious motherly pride about Kathleen. She was such a good girl ! Few mothers had a comfort like that in their daughters. The only thing Mrs. Hesslegrave couldn't bear was the distressing thought that sooner or later Kathleen must some day leave her. That icoidd be a trial. But there ! no mother can expect to keep her daughter always by her side : it would be selfish, wouldn't it? — and Kathleen was adapted to make a good man so supremely happy. And then Mrs. Hesslegrave, leaning forward in her chair, grew almost confidential. Had Mr. Willoughby noticed that Mr. Mortimer, the rich young American, thought so much of Kathleen ? Well, he certainly did ; he quite haunted the house ; though Mrs. Hesslegrave believed in her heart of hearts Kathleen didn't really care one bit for him. And she was a girl of such high principle — such very high principle ! Unless she truly loved a man — was fascinated, absorbed in him — she never would marry him, though he were as rich as Croesus. Kathleen meant to come back by the Zattere, she believed ; and she knew Mr. Mortimer would be waiting there to see her ; he always hung about and waited to see her every- where. But Kathleen was such a romantic, poetical- minded girl ! She would rather take the man of her choice, Mrs. Hesslegrave believed — with an impressive A MOTHER'S DILEMMA I75 nod of the coffee-coloured Honiton head-dress— than marry the heh to all the estates in England, if he didn't happen to please her fancy. As she maundered on, floundering further into the mire each moment, Arnold Wiiioughby's conviction that something had gone wrong grew deeper and deeper with every sentence. He shuffled uneasily on his chair. For the first time since he had practically ceased to be an Earl, he saw a British mamma quite obviously paying court to him. He would have liked to go, indeed, this queer talk made him feel so awkward and uncomfortable ; it reminded him of the days when adulation was his bane: more still, it jarred against his sense of maternal dignity. But he couldn't go, somehow. Now the doubt was once aroused, he must wait at least till Kathleen returned —that he might see her, and be rid of it. Yet all this strange dangling of inartistically-wrought flies before the victim's eye was disagreeably familiar to him. He had heard a round dozen of Mayfair mammas talk so to him of their daughters, and always in the same pretended confidential strain, when he was an Earl and a catch in London society ; though he confessed to himself with a shudder that he had never yet heard anybody do it quite so fatuously, transparently, and woodenly as Kathleen's mother. She, poor soul ! went on with bland self- 176 AT MARKET VALUE satisfaction, convinced in her own soul she was making the running for Kathleen in the most masterly fashion, and utterly unaware of the disgust she was rousing in Arnold Willoughby's distracted bosom. At last, Arnold's suspicions could no longer be concealed. The deeper Mrs. Hesslegrave probed, the more firmly convinced did her patient become that she had somehow surprised his inmost secret, and was trying all she knew to capture him for Kathleen ; and trying most ineptly. This sudden change of front from her attitude of sullen non-recognition to one of ardent sycophancy roused all his bitterest and most cynical feelings. Was this day-dream, then, doomed to fade as his earlier one had faded ? Was Kathleen, the sweet Kathleen he had in^-ested to himself in his fervid fancy with all the innocent virtues, to crush his heart a second time as Lady Sark had once crushed it? Was she, too, a self- seeker ? Did she know who he was, and what title he bore ? Was she allowing him to make love to her for his money (such as it was) and his earldom ? With a sudden resolve, he determined to put the question to the proof forthwith. He knew Mrs. Hesslegrave well enough to know she could neve- control her face or her emotions. Whatever passed within, that quick countenance betrayed to the most A MOTHER'S DILEMMA 177 casual observer. So, at a pause in the conversation (when Mrs. Hesslegrave was just engaged in wonder- ing to herself what wouk. he a good fresh subject to start next with an Earl in disguise whom you desired to captivate), Arnold turned round to her sharply, and asked with a rapid swoop, which fairly took her off her guard : ' Have you seen the English papers ? Do you know what's being done in this Axminster peerage case ?' It was a bold stroke of policy; but it committed him to nothing, for the subject was a common one, and it was justified by the result. Mrs. Hesslegrave, ful) herself of this very theme, looked up at him in astonishment, hardly knowing how to take it. She gave a little start, and trembled quite visibly. In her perplexity, indeed, she clapped her hand to her mouth, as one will often do when the last subject on earth one expected to hear broached is suddenly sprung upon one. The movement was unmistakable. So was the frightened and hesitating way in which Mrs. Hesslegrave responded as quickly as she could : ' Oh yes — that is to say, no — well, we haven't seen much about it. But — the young man's dead, of course — or, do you think he's living ? I mean — well, really, it's so difficult, don't you know, in such a perplexing case, to make one's mind up about it.' She drew out her handkerchief and wiped her fwe- VOL. I. 12 178 AT MARKET VALUE head in her confusion. She would havo given ten pounds that moment to have Kathleen by her side to prompt and instruct her. Arnold Willoughby pre- served a face of sphinx - like indifference. How dreadful that he should have boarded her with that difficult and dangeroiis subject ! What would Kath- leen wish her to do? Ought she to pretend to ignore it all, or did he mean her to recognise him? 'Is he dead or living? Which do you think?' Arnold asked again, gazing hard at her. Mrs. Hesslegrave quailed.' It was a trying moment. People oughtn't to lay such traps for poor innocent old women, whose only desire, after all, is the perfectly natural one to see their daughters well and creditablj' married. She looked back at her questioner with a very frightened air. 'Well, of coiiYSG, y oil know,' she faltered out, with a glimmering perception of the fact that she was irrevocably committing herself to a dangerous position. * If it comes to that, you must know better than any- one.' 'Why so?' Arnold Willoughby persisted. He wasn't going to say a word either way to compromise his own incognito ; but he was determined to find out just exactly how much Mrs. Hesslegrave knew about the matter of his identity. A MOTHER'S DILEMMA I79 Mrs. Hesslegrave gazed up at him with tears rising fast in her poor puzzled ej'es. 'Oh, what shall I do?' she cried, wringing her hands in her misery and perplexity. * How cruel you are to try me so ! What ought I to answer ? I'm afraid Kathleen will he so dreadfully angry with me.' ' Why angry ?' Arnold Willoughby asked once more, his heart growing like a stone within him as he spoke. Then, the worst was true. This was a deliberate con- spiracy. 'Because,' Mrs. Hesslegrave blurted out, * Kathleen told me I wasn't on any account to mention a word of all this to you or to anybody. She told me that was imperative. She said it would spoil all-those were her very words ; she said it would spoil all ; and she begged me not to mention it. And now I'm afraid I lave spoiled all ! Oh, Mr. Willoughby - Lord Axminster, I mean— for Heaven's sake, don't be angry with me. Don't say I've spoiled all ! Don't say so ! Don't reproach me with it !' * That you certainly have,' Arnold answered with disdain, growing colder and visibly colder each moment. * You've spoiled more than you know— two lives that might otherwise perhaps have been happy. And yet— it's best so. Better wake up to it now than wake up to it— afterwards. Miss Hesslegrave has been less wise and circumspect in this matter, though, 1 8o AT M A R KE T VA LUE than ill the rest of her conduct. She took me in com- pletely. And if she hadn't been so ill-advised as to confide her conclusions and suspicions to you, why, she might very likely have taken me in for ever. As it is, this edaircissnncnt has come in good time. No harm has yet been done. No word has yet passed. An hour or two later, the result, I dare say, might have been far more serious.' * She didn't tell me,' Mrs. Hesslegrave burst out, anxious, now the worst had come, to make things easier for Kathleen, and to retrieve her failure. ' It wasn't she who told me. I found it out for myself — that is, through somebody else ' 'Found out icliatr Arnold asked coldly, fixing his eye upon hers with a stony glare. Mrs. Hesslegrave looked away from him in abject terror. That glance of his froze her. ' Why, found ou{ that you were Lord Axminster,' she answered with one burst, not knowing what to make of him. * She knew it all along, you know ; but she never told me or betrayed your secret. She never even mentioned it to me, her mother. She kept it quite faithfully. She was ever so wise about it. I couldn't imagine why she — well, took so much notice of a man I supposed to be nothing but a common sailor ; and it was only yesterday, or the day before, I discovered by accident she had known it all along, A MOTHER'S DILEMMA i8i and had recognised the born gentleman under all dis- guises.' Mrs. Hesslegrave thought that last was a trump card to play on Kathleen's behalf. But Arnold Wil- loughby rose. 'Well, you may tell Miss Hesslegrave,' he said stiffly, * that if she thought she was going to marry an English Earl, and live like a Countess, she was very much mistaken. That was wholly an error. The man who loved her till ten minutes ago — the man she seemed to love — the man who, thinking she loved him, came here to ask for her hand this very afternoon, and whom she would no doubt have accepted under that painful misapprehension — is and means to remam a common sailor. She has made a mistake — that's all. She has miscalculated her chances. It's fortunate, on the whole, that mistake and miscalculation have gone no farther. If I had married her under the misapprehension which seems to have occurred, she might have had in the end a very bitter awakening. Such a misfortune has been averted by your lucky indiscretion. You may say good-bye for me to Miss Hesslegrave when she returns. It is not my intention now to remain any longer in Venice.' * But you'll stop and see Kathleen !' Mrs. Hessle- grave exclaimed, awe-struck. i82 AT MARKET VALUE * No, thank you,' Arnold answered, taking his hat in his hand. * "What you tell me is quite enough. It is my earnest wish, after the error that has occurred, never as long as I live to set eyes on her again. You may give her that message. You have, indeed, spoiled all. It is she herself who said it !' CHAPTER XIII. A MISSING LOVER. 'TwAS in bitter disappointment that Arnold Willoughhy strode away from the Hesslegraves' door that afternoon in Venice. For the second time in his life his day- dream had vanished. And the new bubble had burst even more painfully than the old one. He was young, he said to himself, when he fell in love with Blanche Middleton. With a boy's simplicity, he mistook the mere blushing awkwardness and uncertainty of the ingdiuie for innocence of mind and purity of purpose. He had a rude awakening when he saw Lady Sark sell herself for money and title, and develop into one of the vainest and showiest among the heartless clan of professional beauties. But this time, he had said to his own heart, he was older and wiser. No such hasty mistakes for him nowadays! He knew the difference now between the awkward bashfulness of the frightened school-girl and the pure white integrity 1 84 AT MARKET VALUE of a noble-minded woman. Bit l)y bit, Kathleen Hesslegrave had won back the soured misogynist to a belief in her sex, in its goodness, in its unselfishness, in its nobility of nature. He knew she could have married Rufus Mortimer if she wished ; but he believed she had refused him for the penniless sailor's sake. It was because he believed her capable of real disinterested affection like that, that he had fallen in love with Kathleen Hesslegrave. And now, what a disillusion ! He found he had been mistaken in her from the very beginning. The woman whom he had thought so far raised above her fellows that she could love a struggling artist, without past, without future, for his own sake alone, turned out, after all, to be an intriguer, more calculating and more deceitful in her way than Lady Sark herself had been. Kathleen must have known from the beginning that the man whose advances she had accepted with so much blushing uncertainty and with such pretty coyness was really Lord Axminster. She had been saying those sweet things, about respecting him so much and not caring for rank or wealth or position, because she thought that was the way that WQuld lead her to a coronet. With incredible cunning and deceptiveness, she had managed to hide from him her knowledge of his original position, and to assume a sort of instinctive shrinking from his lowly calling, A MISSING LOVER 185 which she allowed her love and respect to overcome, as it were, (iiiite visil)ly hefore his eyes, with consum- mate cleverness. As a piece of fine acting in real life it was nothing short of admiral)le. If that girl were to go upon the stage now, Arnold said to himself hitterly, she would make her fortune. Those modest side-glances; those dexterously summoned hlushes ; that timid demeanour at first, giving way with fuller acquaintance to an uncontrollahle affection, so strong that it compelled her, agahist her will, as it seemed, to overlook the prejudices of hirth, and to forget the immense gulf in artificial position— oh, as acting it was marvellous ! But to think it was only that ! Arnold Willoughby's brain reeled. Ah, why could he never cast this birthright of false adulation and vile sycophancy behind him? Why could he never stand out before the world on his merits as a man, and be accepted or rejected for himself alone, without the intervention of this perpetual reference to his arti- ficial value and his place in the peerage ? And the secrecy of it, too! The baseness! The privy planning and plotting! Why, this woman, whom he imagined all frankness and candour, with a heart as straightforward as that open brave face of hers, had concocted this vile trap to catch a coronet unawares, all by herself, unaided, and had concealed her inmost thoughts from her own mother even. l86 AT MARKET VALUE There was a cold-blooded deliberateness about it all which disgusted and disillusioned Arnold Willoughby on the first blush of it. He had gone into that house that afternoon in a lover's fever and with a lover's fervour, saying to himself as he crossed the thres- hold: ' There is none like her, none ; I shall ask her this very day ; 1 could risk my life for her with joy ; I could stake my existence on her goodness and purity !' And now— he came out of it coldly numb and critical. He hated to think he had been so readily deceived by a clever woman's wiles. He hated and despised himself. Never again while he lived would he trust a single one of them. Their most innocent smile hides their blackest treachery. It's a way men have, when they are out of conceit for a time with their wives or their sweethearts. As for poor Mrs. Hesslegrave, the unoffending cause of all this lamentable misapprehension, sli'3 sat by herself, meanwhile, wringing her hands in impotent despair, in her own drawing-room, and wondering when Kathleen would come in to comfort her. Each minute seemed an hour. What could be keeping Kathleen ? As a rule, the dear child came back so soon from such errands as this to her beloved work ; for Kathleen was never so happy as when painting or sketching ; and she wrought with a will, both for A MISSING LOVER 187 love's sake and money's. But to-day she was some- how unaccountably delayed. Her stars were unpro- pitious. And the real cause of the delay, as fate would have it, was one of those petty ch'cumstances upon which our lives all hinge. She had gone round on her way home by the Fondamenta delle Zattere, as a woman in love will do, expecting to find Arnold Willoughby at work on his canvas there, and hoping to seem as if mere accident had brought her l)ack to the place she had abandoned during the Valentines' visit. Three days was so long a time to go without seeing Arnold ! But instead of finding him, she had fallen in with Eufus Mortimer, engaged upon his christening scene ; and Mortimer, guessing her object, and generously anxious, as was his nature, to aid her in her love affair, had kept her talking long in front of the picture he was painting, under the belief that Arnold would shortly turn up, and that he was doing her a kindness by thus making her presence there seem more natural and less open to misconstruction. Yet, as often happens in this world of mischance, Mortimer's very anxiety to help her defeated his own purpose. It was the kind-hearted young American's fate in life to do as much harm by his well-intentioned efforts as many worse natures do by their deliberate malice. Into this unconscious trap Kathleen fell readily l88 AT MARKET VALUE enough, and waited on as long as she could, m the vain hope that Arnold Willoughby would turn up sooner or later. But when at last it seemed clear that he was taking an afternoon off, and wouldn't he there at all, she accepted Mortimer's offer of a lift home in his gondola, and, having wasted her day hopelessly by this time, went in on her way hack to fulfil a few small commissions at shops in the Calle San !Moise, which still further delayed her return to her mother's. When she reached home and went upstairs she was astonished to find Mrs. Hesslegrave rocking herself up and down distractedly in her chair, and the yellow Honiton head-dress in a last stage of disorder, which betokened a long spell of very vigorous misery. * Why, mother dear,' she cried in alarm, * what has happened since I went out ? You haven't had another letter from Reggie, asking for money, have you ?' Mrs. Hesslegrave broke down. ' I wish I had,' she answered, sobbing. * I wish it was only that ! I wish it was Reggie ! Oh, Kitty, Kitty, Kitty, how am I ever to tell you ? He's been here since you went out. And you'll never, never forgive me.' * He's been here ?' Kathleen repeated, not knowing what her mother could mean. ' Reggie's been here ? To-day ? Not at this house — in Venice !' A MISSING LOVER 189 'No, no, no! not Rej^'^ie,' Mrs. Hesslegrave an- swered, rocking herself up and down still move vigorously than before. 'Mr. Willoughby — Lord Axminster.' In a second the colour tied from Kathleen's cheek as if by magic. Her heart grew cold. She trembled all over. ' Mr. Willoughby !' she cried, clasping her bloodless hands. Every nerve in her body quivered. Never till that moment did she know how far her love had carried her. ' Oh, mother, what did you say ? What did he do? What has happened ?' * He's gone !' Mrs. Hesslegrave cried feebly, wring- ing her hands in her distress. ' He's gone for good and all. He told me to say good-bye to you.' ' Good-bye !' Kathleen echoed, horror-struck. ' Good- bye ! Oh, mother ! Where's he going, then ? What can it mean ? This is very, very sudden.' ' I don't know,' Mrs. Hesslegrave answered, burst- ing afresh into tears. * But he said T'd spoiled all. He said so more than once. And he told me it was you yourself who said so.' For a minute or two Kathleen was too agitated even to inquire in any intelligent way what exactly had happened. Just at first, all she knew was a vague consciousness of fate, a sense that some terrible blow had fallen upon her. Her mother had com- 1 90 AT MA RKET VA L UE mitted some fatal indiscretion ; and Arnold was gone — gone, without an explanation! But slowly, as she thought of it all, it began to dawn upon her what must have happened. With a fearful sinking at heart, she hardened herself for the effort, and drew slowly from the reluctant and penitent ^Irs. Hessle- grave a full and complete confession of her share in this misfortune. Bit by bit, Mrs. Hesslegrave allowed the whole painful and humiliating scene to be wrung out of her, piecimeal. As soon as she had finished, Kathleen stood up and faced her. She did not reproach her mother ; the wound had gone too deep by far for reproach ; but her very silence was more terrible to Mrs. Hesslegrave than any number of reproaches. * I must go, mother,' she cried, breaking away from her like some wild and wounded creature ; * I must go at once and see him. This cruel misapprehension is more than I can endure. I didn't know who he was till Canon Valentine told us. I fell in love with him for himself, as a common sailor ; I never knew he was Lord Axminster. I must go and tell him so!' Mrs. Hesslegrave's sense of propriety was severely outraged. Not only was it dreadful to think that a young lady could have fallen in love with a man unasked, and that man, too, a common sailor ; but it A MISSING LOVER 191 was dreadful also that Kathleen should dream of going to see him in person, instead of writing to explain to him, and asking him to call round for the further clearing up of this painful entanglement. ' Oh, my dear,' she cried, drawing back, * you're not surely going to call for him ! It would look so bad ! Do you think it would be right? Do you thhik it would be womanly ?' *Yes, I do!' Kathleen answered with unwonted boldness. ' llight and womanly to the last degree. Most right and most womanly. Mother dear, I don't blame you; you did what you thought best in my interest, as you imagined ; but you have left him under a cruel misapprehension of my character and motives — a misapprehension that would be dreadful for me to bear with anyone, but ten thousand times worse with a nature like Arnold Willoughby's ; and I can't sit down under it. I can't rest till I've seen him and told him how utterly mistaken he is about me. There's no turning back now. I must and shall see him.' And in her own heart she said to herself a great deal more than that—' I must and shall marry him.' So, with face on fire and eager steps that never paused, she rushed hotly down the stairs and out into the Piazza. The pigeons crowded round her as if nothmg had happened. Thence she took the narrow lane that led most directly, by many bridges, to the 192 AT MARKET VALUE little salt-fish shop, and went to make her first call on the man of her choice at his own lodgings. Little Cecc? was at the door, plajdng with a big new doll. She looked up with a smile at the beautiful lady, whom she recognised as the person she had seen out walking one day with ' our Inglese.' * Is the signore at home ?' Kathleen asked, too deeply moved to return the child's smile, yet touching her golden head gently. The little one looked up at her again with all the saucy southern conlidingness. ' No, he isn't,' she answered, dimpling, ' The signore' s gone away ; but he gave me two lire before he went, don't you see, and I bought this pretty doll with it, at neighbour Giacomo's. Isn't it a pretty one ? And it cost all two lire.' 'Gone away?' Kathleen echoed, a cold thrill coming over her. * Gone away ? Not from Venice ?' The child nodded and puffed out her lips. ' Si, si,' she said, ' from Venice.' And then she went on singing in her childish nursery rhyme : ' Vate a far una barca o una batela ; Co ti I'a fata, butila in mar ; La ti condurra in Venezia bela.' ' But he hasn't done that,' she added in her baby-like pvattle. 'He's taken his boat and gone away from A MISSING LOVER 193 Venice ; away from Venice ; from Venezia bela ; right away, right away from Venezia bela.' Kathleen stood for a moment reeling. The child's words unnerved her. She had hard work to restrain herself from fainting then and there. A terrible weakness seemed to break over her suddenly. Gone ! and with that fatal misapprehension on his mind. Oh, it was too, too cruel. She staggered into the shop. With an effort she burst out : • The signore, your lodger — the Inglese — Signer Willoughby ?' A large young woman of the florid Venetian type, broad of face and yellow of hair, like a vulgarized Titian, was sitting behind the counter knitting away at a coloured head-dress : she nodded and looked grave. Like all Italians, she instantly suspected a love-tragedy, of the kind with which she herself was familiar. • Is gone !' she assented in a really sympathetic tone. * Si, si, is gone, signora. The little one says the truth. Is gone this very evening.' * But where ?' Kathleen cried, refraining with a struggle from wringing her poor hands, and repress- ing the rising tears before the stranger's face with visible difficulty. The bountiful-looking Italian woman spread her hands open by her side with a demonstrative air. VOL. I. . 13 194 AT MARKET VALUE * Who knows ?' she answered placidly. * 'Tis the way with these seafarers. A bella ragazza in every port, they say ; one here, one there ; one in Venice, one in London — and perhaps, for all we know, one in Buenos Ayres, Calcutta, Eio. — But he may write to you, signora ! He may come back again to Italy !' Kathleen shook her head sadly. Much as the woman misunderstood the situation, reading into it the ideas and habits of her own class and countiy, Kathleen felt she meant to be kind, and was grateful for even that mechanical kindness at such a terrible moment. * He will not return,' she answered despairingly, with a terrible quiver in her voice. * But it wasn't that I wanted. I wanted to speak with him before he went, and — and to clear up a misconception. — Which way has he gone, do you know ? By sea or by land ? The port or the railway- station ?' There was time even yet ; for at that moment, as it chanced, Arnold Willoughby was still engaged in registering his luggage for Genoa, whence he hoped to get employment on some homeward-bound steamer. And if the woman had told the truth, much trouble would have been averted. But truth is an article of luxury in Italy. The vulgarized Titian looked at Kathleen searchingly, yet with a pitying glance. *0h, he's gone,' she answered, nodding her head; A MISSING LOVER 195 * he's gone altogether. He got out his box and his pictures quite suddenly just now; and our Pietro rowed him off to a stoamer in the harbour. And I saw the steamer sail ; she's at the Lido by this time. But he'll write ; he'll write, make sure ! Don't take it to heart, signora.' Kathleen pressed her hand to her bosom, to still its throbbing, and went forth into the street. All was black as night for her. She staggered home in a maze. Her head reeled unspeakably. But as soon as she was gone, the woman turned to a man who lounged among the packing-cases at the back of the shop, with a smile of triumph. * He was a good fellow,' she said, with true Southern tolerance, 'and I wasn't going to tell her he'd gone by train to Genoa. Not likely I should! You know what she wanted ? She would have stuck a knife into him. I saw it in her eye, and, aha ! I prevented it. But sailors icill be sailors ; and. Signer Villabi, say I, was always a pleasant one. Why should I wish him harm? He liked little Cecca, and paid his bill punctually. She's not the first signora, we all know well, who has been deceived and deserted by a good- looking sailor. But what would you have ? 'Tis the way of them ! Mariners, mariners— like the gulls of Marano ! Here to-day, and there to-morrow !' CHAPTEK XIV. THE AXMINSTER PEERAGE. At Genoa, as luck would have it, Arnold Willoughby found a place on a homeward-bound brigantme direct for London. That was all he wanted. He craved for action. He was a sailor once more, and had cast art behind him. No more dalliance with the luxurious muse of painting. In the daily drudgery of the sea, in the teeth of the wind, he would try to forget his bitter disappointment. Hard work and dog-watches might suffice to cauterize the raw surface of the wound Kathleen Hesslegrave had unwillingly and unwittingly inflicted. He did wrong to fly from her, of course, without giving her at least the chance of an explanation ; but, then, that was exactly Arnold Willoughby's nature. He would have been other than himself if he had not so acted. Extreme modifiability was the keynote of his character. The self-same impulse which had THE AXMINSTER PEERAGE 197 made him in the first instance sink name and indi- viduality at a moment's notice, in order to become a new man and a common sailor, made him also in the second instance rush at once to the conclusion that he had been basely deceived, and drove him to re- model, without a second's delay, his whole scheme of life and activity for the future. Half gentleman, half gipsy, he was a man of principle, and yet a creature of impulse. The instant he found his plans going hopelessly wrong, he was ready to alter them off-hand with drastic severity. And yet, he said to himself, it was never his own individuality he got rid of at all. That alone persisted. All these changes and disguises were forced upon him, indeed, by the difficulty of realizing his own inner personality in a world which insisted on accepting him as an Earl, instead of reckoning him up, as he wished, at his intrinsic value as a human being. That intrinsic value Arnold Willoughby was determined to discover and appraise, no matter at what cost of trouble and disillusion ; his naked worth as a man among men was the only kind of worth he cared one jot or tittle to realize. When he reached London, therefore, he decided to see what steps were being taken in the vexed question of the Axminstpv peerage, before he engaged for a longer voyage to the Northern seas, which he liked 198 AT MARKET VALUE best to sail in bracing summer weather. So, on the very afternoon of his discharge fro?u the brigantine, where he had sigred for the single voyage only, he walked into a coffee-house on the -iver bank, and invested a ha'penny in an evening paper. He was not long in coming upon the item he wanted : * Ax- minster Peerage Case. — This afternoon, the House of Lords will deliver judgment upon the claim of Algernon Loftus Kedburn, eldest son of the late Honourable Algernon Eedburn, of Musbury, Devonshire, to the Earldom of Axminster. The case is a romantic one. It will be remembered that the seventh Earl, who was a iDerson of most eccentric habits and ideas, closely bordering upon insanity, disappeared without warn- ing from London society' — and so forth, and so forth. Arnold set down the paper, with a deeper curl than usual at the corner of his genial mouth. It ' bordered on insanity,' of course, for a born gentleman, who might have spent his time in dining, calling, shooting grouse, and running racehorses, to determine upon doing some useful work in the world ! So very un- dignified ! Arnold was quite familiar by this time with that curious point of view ; 'tis the point of view of nine-tenths of the world in this United Kingdom ; but none the less, every time he saw it solemnly com- mitted to print, it amused him afresh by its utter in- THE AXMINSTER PEERAGE 199 congruity. The contrast between the reahty and the grasp of life he obtained in his chosen vocation of sailor, with the shadowy superficiality of the existence he had led in the days when he was still Lord Ax- minster, made such criticism seem to him rather childish than unkindly. He made up his mind at once. He would go down to the House and see them play this little farce out. He would be present to hear whether, on the authority of the highest court in the realm, he was dead or living. He would watch the last irrevocable nail being knocked into his cofi&n as Earl of Axminster, and would emerge with the certainty that some other man now bore the title which once was his, and that he was legally defunct by decision of Parliament. Go down to the House ! Then a little laugh seized him. He was thinking of it to himself as he used to think in the days when he had but to order his carriage and drive down from Eaton Place to the precincts of Westminster. What chance would there be for a sailor in his seaman's dress to get into the House by mere asking for a place ? Not much, he confessed to himself. However, he would try. There was something that pleased him in the idea of the bare chance that he might be turned back from the" doors of the Chamber to which he hereditarily belonged on the day when he was to be declared no longer living. 200 AT MARKET VALUE It would be funny if the Lords refused to let him hear them pronounce their decision of his own death ; funnier still if they solemnly declared him dead in his living presence. So he walked by St. Paul's and the Embankment to Westminster, and presented himself at that well- known door where once — nay, where still — he had, by law and descent, the right of entry. It was a private business day, he knew, and their lordships would only be sitting as a committee of privilege ; in other words, half a dozen law lords would have come down sleepily, as a matter of duty, to decide the vexed question of the peerage before them. On such occasions, the Strangers' Gallery is never at all full; and Arnold hoped he might be lucky enough to corrupt by his eloquence the virtue of the under door-keeper. The door-keeper, however, was absolutely incorruptiljle — except, of course, by gold, which was too rare an object now for Arnold to bestow upon him lightly. *I don't know all the peers by sight,' the ofl&cial said with some contempt, surveying the new-comer from head to foot; 'there's peers from the country that turn up now and again when there's important bills on, that you wouldn't know from farmers. Times like that, we let any gentleman in who's dressed as such, and who says he's a Markis. But you ain't a THE AXMINSTER PEERAGE 201 peer, anyhow ; you ain't got the cut of it. Nor you don't much look like a Distinguished Stranger.' And the door-keeper laughed heartily at his own humour. Arnold laughed in turn, and walked away discon- solate. He was just on the point of giving up the attempt in despair, when he saw an old law lord enter, whom he knew well by sight as a judge of appeal, and who had the reputation of being a good-humoured and accessible person. Arnold boarded him at once with a polite request for a pass to the gallery. The old peer looked at him in surprise. 'Are you interested in the case?' he asked, seeing the sailor's garb and the weather-beaten features. Arnold answered with truth : ' Well, I know something of the man they called Douglas Overton.' Lord Helvellyn (for it was he) scanned the bronzed face again with some show of interest. * You were a ship-fellow ?' he asked. And Arnold, without remembering how much the admission implied, Diade answer with truth once more : « Yes— at least— that is to say-I sailed in the Saucy Sally.' The old peer smiled acquiescence, and waved him to follow to the door of the waiting-room. Arnold did 202 AT MARKET VALUE so, somewhat amused at the condescending air of the new-made peer to his hereditary companion. In the House of Lords he couldn't, somehow, altogether forget his traditions. * Pass this man to the gallery,' the old law lord said with a nod of command to the door-keeper. The door-keeper bowed low, and Arnold Willoughby followed him. The proceedings in the House were short and purely formal. The Committee, represented by one hall-blind old gentleman, read their report of privilege in a mumbling tone ; but Arnold could see its decision was awaited with . the utmost interest by his cousin Algy, w^ho, as claimant to the seat, stood at the bar of the House awaiting judgment. The Committee found that Albert Ogilvie Eedburn, seventh Earl of Ax- minster, was actually dead ; that his identity with the person who sailed in the Saucy Sally from Liverpool for Melbourne under the assumed name of Douglas Overton had been duly proved to their satisfaction ; that the Saucy Sally had been lost, as alleged, in the Lidian Ocean, and that all souls on board had really perished; that amongst the persons so lost was Albert Ogilvie Eedburn, alias Douglas Overton, seventh Earl of Axminster ; that Algernon Loftus Eedburn, eldest son of the Honourable Algernon Eedburn, deceased, and grandson of the fifth Earl, was the heir to the THE AXMINSTER PEERAGE 203 peerage ; and that this house admitted his claim of right, and humbly prayed Her Majesty to issue her gracious writ summoning him as a Peer of Parliament accordingly. Algernon Redburn, below, smiled a smile of triumph. But Arnold Willoughby, in the gallery, felt a little shudder pass over him. It was no wonder, indeed. He had ceased to exist legally. He was no longer his own original self, but in very deed a common sailor. He knew that the estates must follow the title ; from that day forth he was a beggar, a nameless nobody. Till the report was read, he might have stood forth at any moment and claimed his ancestral name and his ancestral acres. Nov. i le die was cast. He felt that after he had once stood by as he had stood by that day and allowed himself to be solemnly adjudicated as dead, he could never again allow himself to be resurrected He should have spoken then, or must for ever keep silent. It would be wrong of him, cruel of him, cowardly of him, unmanly of him, to let Algy and Algy's wife take his place in the world, with his full knowledge and assent, and then come forward later to deprive them of their privilege. He was now nothing more than ' the late Lord Axminster.' That at least was his past ; his future would be spent as mere Arnold Willoughby. Had Kathleen proved different, he hardly knew 204 AT MARKET VALUE whetlier, at the last moment, he might not have turned suddenly round and refused so completely to burn his boats ; but as it was, he was glad of it. The tie to his old life, which laid him open to such cruel disillusions as Kathleen had provided for him, was now broken for ever ; henceforth he would be valued at his own worth alone by all and sundry. But no more of women ! If Arnold Willoughby had been a confirmed misogynist before he met Kath- leen Hesslegrave by accident at the Academy doors, he was a thousand times more so after this terrible reaction from his temporary backsliding into respect- able society. He went down into the corridor, and saw Algy surrounded by a whole group of younger peers, who were now strolling in for the afternoon's business. They were warmly congratulating him upon having secured the doubtful privileges of which Arnold for his part had been so anxious to divest himself. Arnold was not afraid to pass quite near them. Use had accustomed him to the ordeal of scrutiny. For some years, he had passed by hundreds who once knew him, in London streets or Continental towns, and yet, with the solitary exception of the Hesslegraves (for he did not know the part borne in his recognition by the "N'alentines), not a soul had ever pierced the successful disguise with which he had surrounded himself. A THE AXMINF' PEERAGE 205 few years before, the same men would have crowded just as eagerly round the seventh as round the eighth Earl ; and now, not a word of the last holder of the title ; nothing but congratulation for the man who had supplanted him, and who stood that moment, smiling and radiant, the centre of a little group of friendly acquaintances. As Arnold paused, half irresolute, near the doors of the House, a voice that he knew well called out suddenly : « Hullo, Axminster, there you are ! I've been looking for you everywhere.' Arnold turned half round in surprise. \Vhat an unseasonable interruption! How dreadful that at this moment somebody should have recognised him ! And from behind, too-that was the worst-for the speaker was invisible. Arnold hesitated whether or not to run away without answering him ; then, with a smile, he realized the true nature of his mistake. It's so strange to hear another man called by the name that was once your own. But the voice was Canon Valentine's, fresh back from Italy, and the 'Axminster' he was addressing was not Arnold Willoughby, but the new-made peer, his cousin Algy. Nevertheless, the incident made Arnold feel at once it was time to go. He was mere afraid of Canon Valentine's recognising him than of any other acquaintance ; for the Canon 2o6 AT MARKET VALUE had known him so intimately as a boy, and used to speak to him so often about that instinctive trick of his — why, there ! as Arnold thought of it, he removed his hand quickly from the lock in which it was twined, and dodged behind a little group of gossiping peers in the neighbourhood just in time to escape the Canon's scrutiny. But the Canon didn't see him ; he was too busily engaged in shaking Algy's hand — too full of his salutations to the rising sun to remember the setting one. Arnold strolled out somewhat saddened. If ever in his life he felt inclined to be cynical, it must at least be admitted he had much just then to make him so. It was all a sad picture of human fickleness. And then, the bitter thought that Kathleen had been doing just like all of these was enough to sour any man. Arnold turned to leave the House by the strangers' entrance. In order to do so, he had to pass the door of the peers' robing-room. As he went by it, a fat little old gentle- man emerged from the portal. It was Lord Helvellyn, who had passed him to the Strangers' Gallery. But now the little man looked at him with a queer gleam of recollection. Then a puzzled expression came over his sallow face. * Look here,' he said, turning suddenly to Arnold ; * I want one word with you. What was that you told THE AXMINSTER PEERAGE 207 me about having sailed with Lord Axminster in the Smicy Sally V Arnold scented the danger at once, but answered in haste : ' It was true— quite true. I went out on her last voyage.' ' Nonsense, man,' the little fat law lord replied, scanning his witness hard, as is the wont of barristers, ' How dare you have the impudence to tell me so to my face, after hearing the evidence we summarized in our report ? It's pure imposture. Douglas Overton or Lord Axminster made only one voyage on the Saucy Sally; and in the course of that voyage she was lost with all hands. It was that that we went upon. If anybody had survived, we must have heard of him, of course, and have given judgment differently. How do you get out of that, eh ? You're an impostor, sir— an impostor !' ' But I left the ship,' Arnold began hurriedly ; he ^yas going to say ' at Cape Town,' when it was borne in upon him all at once that if he confessed that fact, he would be practically reopening the whole field of inquiry ; and with a crimson face he held his peace, most unwillmgly. That was hard indeed, for nothing roused Arnold Willoughby's indignation more than an imputation of untruthfulness. 2o8 AT MARKET VALUE Lord Helvellyn smiled grimly. ' Go away, sir,' he cried with a gesture of honest contempt. * You lied to me, and you know it. You're an impudent scoundrel, that's what you are — a most impudent scoundrel ; and if ever I see you loitering about this house again, I'll give orders to the door- keeper to take you by the scruff of your neck and eject you forcibly.' Arnold's blood boiled hot. For a second he felt himself once more an aristocrat. Was he to be jostled and hustled like this, with insult and con- tumely, from his own hereditary chamber, by a new- fangled law lord? Next moment his wrath cooled, and he saw for himself the utter illogicality, the two- sided absurdity, of his own position. It was clearly untenable. The old law lord was right. He was not the Earl of Axminster. These precincts of Parliament were no place for him in future. He slunk down the steps like a whipped cur. 'Twas for the very last time. As he went, he shook off the dust from his feet meta- phorically. "Whatever came now, he must never more be a Redburn or an Axminster. He was quit of it once for all. He emerged into Parliament Street, more fixedly than ever, a plain Arnold Willoughby. If Kathleen Hesslegrave wished to make herself a Countess, she must fix her hopes somewhere else, he THE AXMINSTER PEERAGE 209 felt sure, than on Membury Castle. For him, the sea, and no more of this fooling ! Life is real life is earnest, and Arnold Willoughby meant to take it earnestly. f«.» END OF VOL. HI LLINO AND SONH, PRINTERS, GUILDFORD. / [Sept. 1894. ^ Hist of ISoolts Put)lis1ftcir ti5 CHATTO & W^JNT^ ^214, Piccadilly, Lop^' TQ ABOUT.-THF FFT' • ■«> --r ' . ,., ■-■: J'.. ompSA , AGONY ( Kfliiii'j, ' . AIM (HV. > V A! ^ Al iiiro'iuft t.. P081F8AH1>IAL ymLOL^i i Crown Svc. rinsh ■f:»'u-3,3M. 0»t. IV Ar ^-r?: ■r=« ■'SR TH OV. AT ■■■ A&CHti ■ TItH. 'il AliOf (tf ! TricKs, . ARNOLD TKK V.;. ■ TM> ' ARTE- THl:';;;. I», U .^3 vvARO. tiy Edward . .. .. ovo, cloth extra, Ja. Od« v.. \ ^ M.i»t of Boolts 3?n1)Us'^tti bs CHATTO & ^A^INDUS ^214, Piccadilly, London, W. 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