'<*. THE QUEEN OF HEARTS BY WILKIE COLLINS AUTHOR] OP "THE MOONSTONE," "THE NEW MAGDALEN," ETC., ETC. NEW YORK JOHN W. LOVELL COMPANY 14 AND 16 VESEY STREET lllllllllllllltfllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllMIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII II I! I! II PRIVATE LIBRARY OF F 5 . A. NKKDHAIVl. If thou art borrowed by a friend, Right welcome shall he be To read, to study; not to lend, But to return to me. Not that imparting knowledge doth Diminish learning's store; But books. I often find, when lent, Return to me no more, Then like a true and honest friend, If you would gain renown, For credit's sake, the leaves keep clean, Nor turn the corners down. Tkiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiniiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiinl THE QUEEN OF HEARTS. BY WILKIE LETTER OF DEDICATION TO EMILE FORGUES. AT a time when French readers were altogether unaware of the existence of any books of my writing, n critical examination of my novels appeared under your signature in the Reeue des Mondes. I read that article a f the time of its appearance, with sincere pleasure and sincere gratitude to O).e vwrifce~, "dnd I have honestly done my best to profit by it'evt-r since. At a later period, when arrangements were made for the pub- lication of my novels in Paris, you kindly undertook, at some sacrifice of your own convenience, to give the first of the series "The Dead Secret" the great advantage of being rendered into French by your pen. Your excellent translation of "The Lighthouse " had already taught me how to appreciate the value of your assistance; and when "The Dead Secret " appeared in its French form, although I was sensibly gratified, I was by no means surprised to find my fortunate work of fiction, not trans- lated, in the mechanical sense of the word, but transformed from a novel that I had written in iny language to a novel that you might have written in yours. I am now about to ask you to confer one more literary obligation on me by accepting the dedication of this book, as the earliest acknowledgment which it has been in my power to make of the debt I owe to my critic, to my translator, and to my friend. The stories which form the principal contents of the following pages are all, more or less, exercises in that art which I have now sfeudied anxiously for some years, and which I still hope to cultivate, to better and better purpose, for many more. Allow >y inscribing the collection to you, to secure one reader for it at the outset of its progress through the world of letters whose capacity for seeing all a writer's defects may be matched by many other critics, but whose rarer faculty of seeing all a writ- er's merits is equaled by very few. WILKIE COLLINS, THE QUEEN OF HEARTS. CHAPTER I. WE were three quiet, lonely old men, and SHE was a lively, handsome young woman, and we were at our wits' end what to do with her. A word about ourselves, first of all a necessary word to ex- plain the singular situation of our fair young guest. We are three brothers; and we live in a barbarous, dismal old house called the Glen Tower. Our place of abode stands in a hilly, lonesome district of South Wales. No such thing as a line of railway runs anywhere near us. No gentleman's seat is within an easy drive of us. We are at an unspeakably incon- venient distance from a town, and the village to which we send for our letters is three miles off. My eldest brother, Owen, was brought up to the Church. All the prime of his life was passed in a populous London parish. For more years than I now like to reckon up, he worked unre- mittingly, in defiance of failing health and adverse fortune, amid the multitudinous misery of the London poor; and he would, in all probability, have sacrificed his life to his duty long before the present time if the Glen Tower had not come into his possession through two unexpected deaths in the elder and richer Uranch ,of our family. This opening to him of a place of rest and refuge saved his life. No man ever drew breath who better .deserved the gifts of fortune; for no man, I sincerely be- lieve, moie .tender -a?- others, more diffident of himself, more gentle, more generous, and more simple-hearted than Owen, ever walked this earth. My second brother, Morgan, started in life as a doctor, and learned all that his profession could teach him at home and abroad. He realized a moderate independence by his practice, beginning in one of our large northern towns, and ending n physician in London; but although he was well-known and ap- preciated among his brethren, he failed to gain that sort of reputation with the public which elevates a man into the p< tion of a great doctor. The ladies never liked him. In the first place, he was ugly (Morgan will excuse me for mentioning this); in the second place, he was an inveterate smoker, and he smelt of tobacco when he felt languid pulses in elegant bedrooms; in the third place, he was the most formidably outspoken teller of the truth as regarded himself, his profession, and his patients, that ever imperiled the social standing of the science of medi- cine. For these reasons, and for others which it is not necessary to mention, he never pushed his way, as a doctor,into the front ranks and he never cared to do so. About a year after Owen came into possession of the Glen Tower, Morgan discovered that he had saved as much money for his old age as a sensible man could want; that he was tired of the active pursuit or, as he term- ed it, of the dignified quackery of his profession; and that it was only common charity to give his invalid brother a compan- ion who could physic him for nothing, and so prevent him from getting rid of his money in the worst of all possible ways, by THE QUEEN OF HEARTS. 3 wasting it on doctor's bills. In a week after Morgan had ar- rived at these conclusions, he was settled at the Glen Tower; and from that time, opposite as their characters were, my two elder brothers lived together in their lonely retreat, thoroughly understanding, and, in their very different ways, heartily loving one another. Many years passed before I, the youngest of the three chris- tened by the unmelodious name of Griffith found my way, in my turn, to the dreary old house, and the sheltering quiet of the Welsh hills. My career in life had led me away from my brothers; and even now, when we are all united, I have still ties and inter- ests to connect me with the outer world which neither Owen nor Morgan possess. I was brought up to the Bar. After my first year's study of the law, I wearied of it, and strayed aside idly into the brighter and more attractive paths of literature. My occasional occupa- tion with my pen was varied by long traveling excursions in all parts of the Continent; year by year my circle of gay friends and acquaintances increased, and" I bade fair to sink into the condition of a wandering, desultory man, without a fixed pur- pose in life of any sort, when I was saved by what has saved many another in my situation an attachment to a good and sensible woman. By the time I had reached the age of thirty- five, I had done what neither of my brothers had done before me I had married. As a single man, my own small independence, aided by what little additions to it I could pick up with my pen, had been suf- ficient for my wants; but with marriage and its responsibilities came the necessity for serious exertion. I returned to my neg- lected studies, and grappled resolutely, this time, with the in- tricate difficulties of the law. I was called to the Bar. My wife's father aided me with his interest, and I started into practice without difficulty and without delay. For the next twenty years my married life was a scene of hap- piness and prosperity, on which T now look back with a grateful tenderness that no words of mine can express. The memory of my wife is busy at my heart while I think of those past times. The forgotten tears rise in my eyes again, and trouble the course of my pen while it traces these simple lines. Let me pass rapidly over the one unspeakable misery of my life; let me try and remember now, as I tried to remember then, that she lived to see our only child our son, who was eo good to her, who is still so good to me grow up to manhood; that her head lay on my bosom when she died; and that the last frail movement of her hand in this world was the movement that brought it closer to her boy's lips. I bore the blow with God's help I bore it, and bear it still. But it struck me away forever from my hold on social life; from the purposes and pursuits, the companions and the pleasures of twenty years, which her presence had sanctioned and made dear to me. If my son George had desired to follow my profes- sion, I should still have struggled against myself, and have kept place in the world until I had seen him prosperous and set- 4 THE QUEEN OF HEARTS. tied. But his choice led him to the army; and before his moth- er's death he had obtained his commission, and had entered on his path in life. No other responsibility remained to claim from me the sacrifice of myself; my brothers had made my place ready for me by their fireside; my heart yearned, in its desolation, for the friends and companions of the old boyish days; my good, brave son promised that no year should pass, as long as he was in England, without his coming to cheer me; and so it happened that I, in my turn, withdrew from the world, which had once been a bright and a happy world to me, and re- tired to end my days, peacefully, contentedly, and gratefully, as my brothers are ending theirs, in the solitude of the Glen Tower. How many years have passed since jwe have all three been united it is not necessary to relate. It will be more to the pur- pose if I briefly record that we have never been separated since the day which first saw us assembled together in our hillside re- treat; that we have never yet wearied of the time, of the place, or of ourselves, and that the influence of solitude on our hearts and minds has not altered them for the worse, for it has not im- bittered us toward our fellow-creatures, and it has not dried up in us the source from which harmless occupations and innocent pleasures may flow refreshingly to the last over the waste pla of human life. Thus much for our own story, and for the cir- cumstances which have withdrawn us from the world for the rest of our days. And now imagine us three lonely old men, tall and lean, and white-headed; dressed, more from past habit than from present association, in customary suits of solemn black: Brother O\\ yielding, gentle, and affectionate in look, voice, and manner; brother Morgan, with a quaint, surface-sourness of address, and a tone of dry sarcasm in his talk, which single him out, on all occasions, as a character in our little circle; brother Griffith forming the link between his two elder companions, capable, at one time, of sympathizing with the quiet, thoughtful tone of Owen's conversation, and ready, at another, to exchange brisk severities on life and manners with Morgan in short, a plia' 1 double-sided old lawyer, who stands between the clergy mau- brother and the physician brother with an ear ready for each and with a heart open to both, share and share together. Imagine the strange old building in which we live to be really what its name implies a tower standing in a glen; in past times the fortress of a fighting Welsh chieftain; in present times a dreary Ian J-light-house, built up in many stories of two rooms each, with a little modern lean-to of cottage form tacked on quaintly to one of its sides; the great hill, on whose lowest slope it stands, rising precipitously behind it; a dark, swift-flowing stream in the valley below; hills on hills all around, and no way of approach but by one of the loneliest and wildest cross-roads in all South Wales. Imagine such a place of abode as this and such inhabitants of it as ourselves, and then picture the descent among us as of a goddess dropping from the clouds of a lively, handsom THE QUEEN OF HEARTS. 5 ionable young lady a bright, gay, butterfly creature, used to flutter away its existence in the broad sunshine of perpetual gayety a child of the new generation, with all the modern ideas whirling together in her pretty head, and all the modern accom- plishments at the tips of her delicate fingers. Imagine such a light-hearted daughter of Eve as this, the spoiled darling of soci- ety, the charming spendthrift of Nature's choicest treasures of beauty and youth, suddenly flashing into the dim life of three weary old men suddenly dropping into the place, of all others, which is least fit for her suddenly shut out from the world in the lonely quiet of the loneliest home in England. Realize, if it be possible, all that is most whimsical and most anomalous in such a situation as this, and the startling confession contained in the opening sentence of these pages will no* longer excite the faintest emotion of surprise. Who can wonder now, when our bright young goddess really descended on us, that I and my brothers were all three at our wits' end what to do with her! CHAPTER II. WHO is the young lady ? And how did she find her way into the Glen Tower? Her name (in relation to which I shall have something to say a little further on) is Jessie Yelverton. She is an orphan and an only child. Her mother died while she was an infant; her father was my dear and valued friend Major Yelverton. He lived long enough to celebrate his darling's seventh birthday. When he died he intrusted his authority over her and his re- sponsibility toward her to his brother and to me. When I was summoned to the reading of the major's will, I knew perfectly well that I should hear myself appointed guard- ian and executor with his brother: and I had been also made acquainted with my lost friend's wishes as to his daughter's ed- ucation, and with his intentions as to the disposal of all his prop- erty in her favor. My own idea, therefore, was, that the read- ing of the will would inform me of nothing which I had not known in the testator's lifetime. When the day came for hear- ing it, however, I found that I had been over hasty in arriving at this conclusion. Toward the end of the docunent there was a clause inserted which took me entirely by surprise. After providing for the education of Miss Yelverton under the direction of her guardians, and for her residence, under ordinary circumstances, with the major's sister, Lady Westwick, the clause concluded by saddling the child's future inheritance with this curious condition; From the period of her leaving school to the period of her reaching the age of twenty-one years, Miss Yelverton was to pass not less than six consecutive weeks out of every year under the roof of one of her two guardians. During the lives of both of them, it was left to her own choice to say which of the two she would prefer to live with. In all other respects the condition was imperative. If she forfeited it, excepting, of course, the 6 THE QUEEN OF HEARTS. case of the deaths of both her guardians, ehe was only to have a life-interest in the property; if she obeyed it, the money itself was to become her own possession on the day when she com- pleted her twenty-first year. This clause in the will, as I have said, took me at first by sur- prise. I remembered how devotedly Lady Westwick had soothed her sister-in-law's death-bed sufferings, and how tenderly she had afterward watched over the welfare of the little motherless child I remembered the innumerable claims she had established in this way on her brother's confidence in her affection for his orphan daughter, and I was, therefore, naturally amazed at the appearance of a condition in his will which seemed to show a positive distrust of Lady "Westwick's undivided influence over the character and conduct of her niece. A few words from my fellow- guardian, Mr. Richard Yelver- ton, and a little after-consideration of some of my deceased friend's peculiarities of disposition and feeling, to which I had not hitherto attached sufficient importance, were enough to make me understand the motives by which he had been influenced in providing for the future of his child. Major Yelverton had raised himself to a position of affluence and eminence from a very humble origin. He was the son of a small farmer, and it was his pride never to forget this circum- stance, never to be ashamed of it, and never to allow the preju- dices of society to influence his own settled opinions on social questions in general. Acting in all that related to his intercourse with the world, on such principles as these, the major, it is hardly necessary to say, held some strangely heterodox opinions on the modern education of girls, and on the evil influence of society over the characters of women in general. Out of the strength of those opinions, and out of the certainty of his conviction that his sister did not share them, had grown that condition in his will which removed his daughter from the influence of her aunt, for six con- secutive weeks in every year. Lady Westwick was the most light- hearted, the most generous, the most impulsive of women; capable when any serious occasion called it forth, of all that was devoted and self-sacrificing, but, at other and ordinary times, constitu- tionally restless, frivolous, and eager for perpetual gayety. Dis- tnisting the sort of life which he knew his daughter would lead under her aunt's roof, and at the same time gratefully remem- bering his sister's affectionate devotion toward his dying wife and her helpless infant, Major Yelverton had attempted to make a compromise, which, while it allowed Lady Westwick the close domestic intercourse with her niece that she had earned by in- numerable kind offices, should, at the same time, place the young girl for a fixed period of every year of her minority under the corrective care of two such quiet old-fashioned guardians as his brother and myself. Such is the history of the clause in the will. My friend little thought, when he dictated it, of the ex- traordinary result to which it was one day to lead. For some years, however, events ran on smoothly enough. Little Jessie was sent to an excellent school, with strict instruc- THE QUEEN OF HEARTS. 7 tions to the mistress to make a good girl of her, and not a fash- ionable young lady. Although she was reported to be anything but a pattern pupil in respect of attention to her lessons, she became from the first the chosen favorite of every one about her. The very offenses which she committed against the discipline of the school were of the sort which provoke a smile even on the stern countenance of authority itself. One of these quaint freaks of mischief may not inappropriately be mentioned here, inasmuch as it gained her the pretty nickname under which she will be found to appear occasionally in these pages. On a certain autumn night shortly after the midsummer va- cation, the mistress of the school fancied she saw a light under the door of the bedroom occupied by Jessie and three other girls. It was then close on midnight; and, fearing that some case of sudden illness might have happened, she hastened into the room. On opening the door, she discovered, to her horror and amazement, that all four girls were out of bed were dressed in brilliantly fantastic costumes, representing the four grotesque " Queens" of Hearts, Diamonds, Spades, and Clubs, familiar to us all on the pack of cards and were dancing a quadrille, in which Jessie sustained the character of the Queen of Hearts. The next morning's investigation disclosed that Miss Yelvertou had smuggled the dresses into the school, and had amused her- self by giving an impromptu fancy ball to her companions, in imitation of an entertainment of the same kind at which she had figured in a "court-card" quadrille at her aunt's country house. The dresses were instantly confiscated, and the necessary pun- ishment promptly administered; but the remembrance of Jes- sie's extraordinary outrage on bedroom discipline lasted long enough to become one of the traditions of the school, and she and her sister-culprits were thenceforth hailed as the " queens " of the four " suites " by their class- companions whenever the mistress' back was turned. Whatever might have become of the nicknames thus employed in relation to the other three girls, such a mock title as the Queen of Hearts was too appropriately descriptive of the natural charm of Jessie's character, as well as of the adventure in which she had taken the lead, not to rise naturally to the lips of every one who knew her. It followed her to her aunt's house ife came to be as habitually and fa- miliarly connected with her, among her friends of alleges, as if it had been formally inscribed on her baptismal register; and it has stolen its way into these pages because it falls from my peu naturally and inevitably, exactly as it often falls from my lips in real life. When Jessie left school the first difficulty presented itself; in other words the necessity arose of fulfilling the conditions of the will. At that time I was already settled at the Glen Tower, and her living six weeks in our dismal solitude and our humdrum society, was, as she herself frankly wrote me word, quite out of the question. Fortunately, she had always got on well with her uncle and his family; so she exerted her liberty of choice, and much to her own relief and to mine also, passed her regular six 8 THE QUEEN OF HEARTS. weeks of probation, year after year, under Mr. Richard Yelver- ton's roof. During this period I heard of her regularly, sometimes from my fellow-guardian, sometimes from my son George, who, when- ever his military duties allowed him the opportunity, contrived to see her, now at her aunt's house, and now at Mr. Yelverton's. The particulars of her character and conduct, which I gleaned in this way, more than sufficed to convince me that the poor major's plan for the careful training of his daughter's disposi- tion, though plausible enough in theory, was little better than a total failure in practice. Miss Jessie, to use the expressive com- mon phrase, took after her aunt. She was as generous, as im- pulsive, as light-hearted, as fond of change, and gayety, and fine clothes in short, as complete and genuine a woman as Lady West wick herself. It was impossible to reform the " Queen of Hearts," and equally impossible not to love her. Such, in few words, was my fellow-guardian's report of his experience of our handsome young ward. So the time passed till the year came of which I am now writ- ing the ever-memorable year, to England, of the Russian war. It happened that I had heard less than usual at this period, and indeed for many months before it, of Jessie and her procfvd- ings. My son had been ordered out with his regiment to the Crimea in 1854, and had other work in hand now than record- ing the sayings and doings of a young lady. Mr. Richard Yel- verton, who had been hitherto used to write to me with tolera- ble regularity, seemed now, for some reason that I could not conjecture, to have forgotten my existence. Ultimately I v reminded of my ward by one of George's own letters, in which he asked for news of her: and I wrote at once to Mr. Yelverton. The answer that reached me was written by his wife; he \ dangerously ill. The next letter that came informed me of his death. This happened early in the spring of the year 1855. I am ashamed to confess it, but the change irTmy own posi- tion was the first idea that crossed my mind when I read the news of Mr. Yelverton's death. I was now left sole guardian, and Jessie Yelverton wanted a year still of coming of age. By the next day's post I wrote to her about the altered state of the relations between us. She was then on the Continent with her aunt, having gone abroad at the very beginning of the y. Consequently, so far as eighteen hundred and fifty- five was c cerned, the condition exacted by the will yet remained to be performed. She had still six weeks to pass her last six weeks, seeing that she was now twenty years old under the roof of one of her guardians, and I was now the only guardian left. In due course of time I received my answer, written on rose- colored paper, and expressed throughout in a tone of light, e, feminine banter, which amused me in spite of myself. I\ Jessie, according to her own account, was hesitating, on receipt, of my letter, between two alternatives the one, of allowing 1. self to be buried six weeks in the Glen Tower; the other, of breaking the condition, giving up the money, and remaining magnanimously contented with nothing but a life- interest in her THE QUEEN OF HEARTS. 9 father's property. At present she inclined decidedly toward giving up the money, and escaping the clutches of " three hor- rid old men;" but she would let me know again if she happened to change her mind. And so, with best love, she would beg to remain always affectionately mine, as long as she was well out of my reach. The summer passed, the autumn came, and I never heard from her again. Under ordinary circumstances this long silence might have made me feel a little uneasy. But news reached me about this time from the Crimea that my son was wounded not dangerously, thank God, but still severely enough to be laid up and all my anxieties were now centered in that direction. By the beginning of September, however, I got better accounts of him, and my mind was made easy enough to let me think of Jes- sie again. Just as I was considering the necessity of writing once more to my refractory ward, a second letter arrived from her. She had returned at last from abroad, had suddenly chang- ed her mind, suddenly grown sick of society, suddenly become enamored of the pleasures of retirement, and suddenly found out that the three horrid old men were three dear old men, and that six weeks' solitude at the Glen Tower was the luxury, of all others, that she languished for most. As a necessary result of this altered state of things she would therefore now propose to spend her allotted six weeks with her guardian. We might certainly expect her on the twentieth of September, and she would take the greatest care to fit herself for our society by arriv- ing in the lowest possible spirits and bringing her own sackcloth and ashes along with her. Tho first ordeal to which this alarming letter forced me to sub- mit was the breaking of the news it contained to my two broth- ers. The disclosure affected them very differently. Poor dear Owen merely turned pale, lifted his weak, thin hands in a panic- stricken manner, and then sat staring at me in speechless and motionless bewilderment. Morgan stood up straight before me, plunged both his hands into his pockets, burst suddenly into the harshest laugh I ever heard from his lips, and told me, with an air of triumph, that it was exactly what he expected. " What you expected?" I repeated, in astonishment. "Yes," returned Morgan, with his bitterest emphasis. "It doesn't surprise me in the least. It's the way things go in this world it's the regular moral see-saw of good and evil the old story with the old end to it. They were too happy in the garden of Eden down comes the serpent and turns them out. Solomon was too wise down comes the Queen of Sheba and makes a fool of him. We've been too comfortable at the Glen Tower down comes a woman and sets us all three by the ears together. All I wonder at is that it hasn't happened before." With those words Morgan resignedly took out his pipe, put on his old felt hat and turned to the door. " You're not going away before she comes ?" exclaimed Owen, piteously. " Don't leave us please don't leave us!" "Going!" cried Morgan, with great con tempt. " What should I gain by that ? When destiny has found a man out, and heated 10 THE QUEEN OF HEARTS. his gridiron for him, he has nothing left to do, that I know of, but to get up and sit on it." I opened my lips to protest against the implied comparison be- tween a young lady and a hot gridiron, but, before I could speak, Morgan was gone. " Well," I said to Owen, " we must make the best of it. We must brush up our manners, and set the house tidy, and amuse her as well as we can. The difficulty is where to put her; and, when that is settled, the next puzzle will be, what to order in to make her comfortable. It's a hard thing, brother, to say what will or what will not please a young lady's taste." Owen looked absently at me, in greater bewilderment than ever opened his eyes in perplexed consideration repeated to himself slowly the word "tastes" and then helped me with this suggestion: " Hadn't we better begin, Griffith, by getting her a plum-cake ?" "My dear Owen," I remonstrated, "it is a grown young woman who is coming to see us; not a little girl from school." "Oh!" said Owen, more confused than before. "Yes I see; we couldn't do wrong, I suppose could we? if we got her a little dog, and a lot of new gowns ?" There was, evidently, no more help in the wav of advice to be expected from Owen than from Morgan himself. As I came to that conclusion, I saw through the window our old housekeeper on her way, with her basket, to the kitchen-garden, and left the room to ascertain if she could assist us. To my great dismay, the housekeeper took even a more gloomy view than Morgan of the approaching event. When I had ex- plained all the circumstances to her, she carefully put down her basket, crossed her arms, and said to me in slow, deliber; mysterious tones: " You want my advice about what's to be done with this young woman? Well, sir, here's my advice: Don't you trouble your head about her. It won't be no use. Mind, I tell you, it won't be no use." " What do you mean?" " You look at this place, sir it's more like a prison than a house, isn't it ? You look at us as lives in it. We've got (saving your presence) a foot apiece in our graves, haven't we? When you was young yourself, sir, what would you have done if they had shut you up for six weeks in such a place as this, among your grandfathers and grandmothers, with their feet in the grave." " I really can't say." " I can, sir. You'd have run away. She'll run away. Don't you worry your head about her she'll save you the trouble. I tell you again she'll run away." With those ominous words the housekeeper took up her basket, sighed heavily, and left me. I sat down under a tree quite helpless. Here was the whole responsibility shifted upon my miserable shoulders. Not a lady in the neighborhood to whom I could apply for assistance, and the nearest shop eight miles distant frpjn, u,s, Jfce toughest case THE QUEEN OF HEARTS. 11 1 ever had to conduct, when I was at the Bar, was plain sailing compared with the difficulty of receiving our fair guest. It was absolutely necessary, however, to decide at once where she was to sleep. All the rooms m the tower were of stone dark, gloomy, and cold even in the summer-time. Impossible to put her in any one of them. The only other alternative was to lodge her in the little modern lean-to, which I have already described as being tacked on to the side of the old building. It contained three cottage rooms, and they might be made barely habitable for a young lady. But then those rooms were occu- pied by Morgan. His books were in one, his bed was in another, his pipes and general lumber were in the third. Could I expect him, after the sour similitudes he had used in reference to our expected visitor, to turn put of his habitation and disarrange all his habits for her convenience? The bare idea of proposing the thing to him seemed ridiculous; and yet inexorable necessity left me no choice but to make the hopeless experiment. I walked back to the tower hastily and desperately, to face the worst that might happen before my courage cooled altogether. On crossing the threshold of the hall door I was stopped, to my great amazement, by a procession of three of the farm-servants, followed by Morgan, all walking after each other, in Indian file, toward the spiral staircase that led to the top of the tower. The first of the servants carried the materials for making a fire; the second bore an inverted arm-chair on his head; the third tottered under a heavy load of books; while Morgan came last, with his canister of tobacco in his hand, his dressing gown over his shoulder, and his whole collection of pipes hugged up together in a bundle under his arm. " What on earth does this mean ?" I inquired. " It means taking Time by the forelock," answered Morgan, looking at me with a smile of spur satisfaction. " I've got the start of your young woman, Griffith, and I'm making the most of it." " But where, in Heaven's name, are you going?"! asked, as the head man of the procession disappeared with his firing up the staircase. " How high is this tower?" retorted Morgan. " Seven stories, to be sure," I replied. " Very good," said my eccentric brother, setting his foot on the first stair, " I'm going up to the seventh.'' " You can't," I shouted. "She can't, you mean," said Morgan, "and that's exactly why I'm going there." ' But the room is not furnished." ' It's out of her reach." ' One of the windows has fallen to pieces." ' It's out of her reach." ' There's a crow's nest in the corner." ' It's out of her reach." By the time this unanswerable argument had attained its third repetition, Morgan, in his turn, had disappeared up the winding stairs. I knew him too well to attempt any further protest. 12 THE QUEEN OF HEARTS. Here was my first difficulty, smoothed away most unexpect- edly, for here were the rooms in the lean-to placed by their own- er's free act and deed at my disposal. I wrote on the spot to the one upholsterer of our distant county town to come immediately and survey the premises, and sent off a mounted messenger with the letter. This done, and the necessary order also dispatched to the carpenter and glazier to set them at work on Morgan's sky- parlor in the seventh story, I began to feel, for the first time, as if my scattered wits were coming back to me. By the time the evening had closed in I had hit on no less than three excellent ideas, all providing for the future comfort and amusement of our fair guest. The first idea was to get her a Welsh pony; the second was to hire a piano from the county town; the third was to send for a boxful of novels from London. I must confess I thought these projects for pleasing her very happily conceived, and Owen agreed with me. Morgan, as usual, took the opposite view. He said she would yawn over the novels, turn up her nose at the piano, and fracture her skull with the pony. As for the housekeeper, she stuck to her text as stoutly in the evening as she had stuck to it in the morning. " Pianner or no pianner, story-book or no story-book, pony or no pony, you mark my words, sir that young woman will run away." Such were the housekeeper's parting vyords when she wished me good-night. When the next morning came, and brought with it that ter- rible waking time which sets a man's hopes and projects before him, the great as well as the small, stripped bare of every illu- sion, it is not to be concealed that I felt less sanguine of our success in entertaining the coming guest. So far as external preparations were concerned, there seemed, indeed, but little to improve; but, apart from these, what had we to offer, in our- selves and our society, to attract her? There lay the knotty point of the question, and there the grand difficulty of finding an answer. I fall into serious reflection, while I am dressing, on the pur- suits and occupations with which we three brothers have been accustomed, for years past, to beguile the time. Are they at all likely, in the case of any one of us, to interest or amuse her? My chief occupation, to begin with the youngest, consists in acting as steward on Owen's property. The routine of niy duties has never lost its sober attraction to my tastes, for it has always employed me in watching the best interests of my brother, and of my son also, who is one day to be his heir. But can I expect our fair guest to sympathize with such family con- cerns as these ? Clearly not. Morgan's pursuit comes next in order of review a pursuit of a far more ambitious nature than mine. It was always part of my second brother's whimsical, self-contradictory character to view with the profoundest contempt the learned profession by which he gained his livelihood, and he is now occupying the long leisure hours of his old age in composing a voluminous treatise, intended, one of these days, to eject the whole body corporate of doctors from the position which they have usurped QUEEN OF HEARTS. 13 in the estimation of their fellow-creatures. This daring work is entitled "An Examination of the Claims of Medicine on the Gratitude of Mankind. Decided in the Negative by a Retired Physician." So far as I can tell, the book is likely to ex- tend to the dimensions of an Encyclopedia; for it is Morgan's Elan to treat his comprehensive subject principally from the istorical point of view, and to run down all the doctors of an- tiquity, one after another, in regular succession, from the first of the tribe. When I last heard of his progress he was hard on the heels of Hippocrates, but had no immediate prospect of trip- ping up his successor. Is this the sort of occupation (I ask my- self) in which a modern young lady is likely to feel the slightest interest ? Once again, clearly not. Owen's favorite employment is, in its way, quite as character- istic as Morgan's, and it has the great additional advantage of appealing to a much larger variety of tastes. My eldest brother great at drawing and painting when he was a lad, always in- terested in artists and their works in after life has resumed, in his declining years, the holiday occupation of his schoolboy days. As an amateur landscape-painter, he works with more satisfac- tion to himself, uses more color, wears out more brushes, and makes a greater smell of paint in his studio than any artist by profession, native or foreign, whom I ever met with. In look, in manner, and in disposition, the gentlest of mankind, Owen, by some singular anomaly in his character, which he seems to have caught from Morgan, glories placidly in the wildest and most frightful range of subjects which his art is capable of rep- resenting. Immeasurable ruins, in howling wildernesses, with blood-red sunsets gleaming over them; thunder-clouds rent with lightning, hovering over splitting trees on the verges of awful precipices; hurricanes, shipwrecks, waves, and whirlpools fol- low each other on his canvas, without an intervening glimpse of quiet, every-day nature to relieve the succession of pictorial horrors. When I see him at his easel, so neat and quiet, so un- pretending and modest in himself, with such a composed ex- pression on his attentive face, with such a weak, white hand to guide such bold, big brushes, and when I look at the frightful canvasful of terrors which he is serenely aggravating in fierce- ness and intensity with every successive touch, I find it diffi- cult to realize the connection between my brother and his work, though I see them before me not six inches apart. Will thto quaint spectacle possess any humorous attractions for Miss Jessie? Perhaps it may. There is some slight chance that Owen's employment will be lucky enough to interest her. Thus far my morning cogitations advance doubtfully enough, but they altogether fail in carrying me beyond the narrow circle of the Glen Tower. I try hard, in our visitor's interest, to look into the resources .of the little world around us, and I find my efforts rewarded by the prospect of a total blank. Is there any presentable, living soul in the neighborhood whom we can invite to meet her ? Not one. There are, as J have already said, no country seats near us; and society in country town has long since learned to regard us as thre> ' 14 THE QUEEN OF HEARTS. anthropes, strongly suspected, from our monastic way of life and our dismal black costume, of being popish priests in dis- guise. In other parts of England the clergymen of the parish might help us out of our difficulty; but here, in South Wales, and in this latter half of the nineteenth century, we have the old-type parson of the days of Fielding still in a state of perfect preservation. Our local clergyman receives a stipend which is too paltry to bear comparison with the wages of an ordinary mechanic. In dress, manners, and tastes he is about on a level with the upper class of agricultural laborer. When attempts have been made by well-meaning gentlefolks to recognize the claims of his profession by asking him to their houses, he has been known, on more than one occasion, to leave his plowman's pair of shoes in the hall, and to enter the drawing-room respect- fully in his stockings. Where he preaches, miles and miles away from us and from the poor cottage in which he lives, if he sees any of the company in the squire's pew yawn or fidget in their places, he takes it a? a hint that they are tired of listening, and closes his sermon instantly at the end of the sentence. Can we ask this most irreverend and unclerical of men to meet a young lady? I doubt, even if we made the attempt, whether we should succeed, by fair means, in getting him beyond the servants' hall. Dismissing, therefore, any idea of inviting visitors to entertain our guest, and feeling at the same time, more than doubtful of her chance of discovering any attraction in the sober society of the inmates of the house, I finish my dressing and go down to breakfast, secretly veering round to the housekeeper's opinion that Miss Jessie will really bring matters to an abrupt conclusion by running away. I find Morgan as bitterly resigned to his des- tiny as ever, and Owen so affectionately anxious to make him- self of some use, and so lamentably ignorant of how to begin, that I am driven to disembarrass myself of him at the outset by a stratagem. I suggest to him that our visitor is sure to be interested in pict- ures, and that it would be a pretty attention, on his part, to paint her a landscape to hang up in her room. Owen brightens directly, informs me in his softest tones that he is then at work on the Earthquake at Lisbon, and inquires whether I think she would like that subject. I preserve my gravity sufficiently to answ r er in the affirmative, and my brother retires meekly to his studio, to depict the engulfing of a city and the destruction of a population. Morgan withdraws in his turn to the top of the tower, threatening, when our guest comes, to draw all his meals up to his new residence by means of a basket and string. I am left alone for an hour, and the upholsterer arrives from the county town. This worthy man, on being informed of our emergency, sees his way, apparently, to a good stroke of business, and thereupon wins my lasting gratitude by taking, in opposition to every one else, a bright and hopeful view of existing circumstances. " You'll excuse me, sir," he says, confidentially, when I show trim the rooms in the lean-to, " but this is a matter of experience, THE V OF 15 family man m\self, with grown-up datigi my own, anl tlif > ' well knov. Make idle ami you make Vm 1 .Stable at f 1'uniii nplaint drop from their lip-. ample, sir you pi; in that comer, with curlai: Tillable (hint/; you put on that bedstead \vliat 1 will term a sul1i< '. Idiiig: and you top up with a sweet little eider-down quilt, quilt, as light as roses, and similar in color. You do that, and what, follows? You plea-.' her eye wli. lies down at night, and you please her eye when \ up in the morning all right so far, and \ \vill not dwell, on the toilet-table, nor will 1 seek to detain you about the w her figure, and the other ghss to show lier face. T have (lie ariic!e> in stock, and will be myself answerable for ell'ect on the lady's mind and per !ed the way into the next room as he spoke, and arrai and decorations, as he had already pla OIP. with the strictest r id shown him to exist 1 mfortable furni- 1 female happin- Thus far. in my helpless -tate of mind, the man's con fid- liad impre-sed me in spite of myself, and I had listened to him in super -ilence. But as he continued to rise, by regular rom one climax of upholstery to another, warning bill disclosed themselves in the remote background of th of luxury and magnificence which my friend was conjuring up. Certain sharp professional instincts of by-gone iimed their influence over me: I began to start doubts i necessary con-'equence, the inter- -i us soon assumed something like a practical I ertained what the \ expense of furnishing nd bavin-- discovered that the process of ning the le-iii-to (allowing for the time reiiuired to ]ro- cure certain articles of rarity from .Bristol) would occupy nearly hK I dismissed the upholsterer with the understanding that 1 -hould take a day or two for consideration, and let him know the result. It was the fifth of September, and our <; of Hearts was to arrive on the twentieth. The work, then -Aim on the seventh or eighth, would be U-ULI in In making all - dations with a ce to tl tieth 1 re!ie