n the child. "Me little one is not a pauper en- tirely," O'Shea would say, with tears in his good- looking Irish eyes. " If Providence in its wisdom should be pleased to sign my recall to-morrow, me angel Belinda would have her mother's fortune to stand between her and starvation." And so till she had reached the age of seven " me angel Belinda'' was indifferently boarded, at the rate of about forty pounds a year, and no holidays, in a Cork convent. Then O'Shea brought his face and lineage once more to the marriage market, on this occasion win- ning no faded scion of nobility, but the still bloom- 12 A VAGABOND HEROINE. ing widow of a well-to-do London lawyer, and Be- linda, for the first time since her birth, had to learn the meaning bitterer than sweet, poor little mortal, in her case of the word home. No young child, it may be safely asserted, was ever unhappy in a community of cloistered nuns. Screen a flower as persistently as you will from the wholesome kisses of sun and light, and if some straggling breath of heaven chance to reach it, not a poor, distorted, colorless petal but will assert nature in spite of you. Bring women's hearts to a state of moral anaemia by all the appliances priestly science can command, then let little children come near them, and from each pale vestal will blossom forth the instincts of maternity still! If Belinda had never known the exclusive passion of a mother's love, she had known what at seven years of age is prob- ably to the full as welcome petting and attention without limits. Before she had been a week under the roof of her father and his new wife, the cold iron of neglect, sharper to a child's sensitive nature than any alternation of harshness and affection, had enter- ed her soul. The second Mrs. O'Shea was a woman whom all the ladies of her acquaintance called " sweet" you know the kind of human creature she must be? A blonde skin, the least in the world inclined to freckle, blonde hair, blonde eyelashes, eyes of a dove, voice of a dying zephyr. A sweet little woman, a dear little woman, an admirably well-dressed, and, what is more, a well-condncted little woman, but not fond A VAGABOND HEROINE. 13 of children. Nothing could more beautifully befit her character and the occasion than her conduct to- ward her small stepdaughter. "I should never forgive myself if the poor darling grew up without regarding me as a mother," said Mrs. O'Shea, not wholly forgetful perhaps that the poor darling could call the Earl of Liskeard grandpapa. " And, though the Major is so sadly indifferent on the most vital of all subjects, I feel it my duty to bring her at once ander Protestant influences." But the Protestant influences established a grim London nurse in a London back-nursery ; the discovery made, too, that obdurate aristocratic connections were in no way to be softened through the child's agency and Belinda, on the score of love, could scarce have fared worse had she been one of the gutter children whom she watched and envied, through the prison-bars of her window, down in the court below. Had she been ornamental, the bolls of life might have broken differently for her ; a rose-and-white flaxen-curled puppet sitting beside, another rose-and- white flaxeu-chignoned puppet in a brougham, being scarcely less attractive, though on the whole more troublesome, than a good breed of pug. But she was very far indeed from ornamental : a skinny, dark-complexioned child, with over-big eyes looking wistfully from an over-small face, and hair cropped close to the head, coupe a rasoir, according to French fashion often adopted for the younger children in some Irish convents. And so, all fortuitous accidents working together and against her, Belinda was left 14: A VAGABOND HEROINE. to starve ! Her small body nourished on the accus- tomed roast mutton and rice pudding of the English nursery, and her soul eager, fervent; hungry little soul that it was left to starve ! She tried, impelled by the potent necessity of loving there was in her, to love her nurses. But Mrs. O' Shea's was a household in which, notwith- standing the sweetness of the mistress, the women servants shifted as perpetually as the characters in a pantomime. If Belinda loved a Sarah one month, she must perforce love a Mary the next, and then a new Sarah, and then a Hannah. She tried, casting longing eyes at them from her iron-bound prison- windows, to love the neighboring gutter children happy gutter children, free to make the most of such grimy fractions of earth and sky as fate had yielded them ! She tried no ; effort was not needed here ; with all the might of her ardent, keenly-strung na- ture, Belinda, throughout those early years of isola- tion and neglect, loved her father. Little enough she saw of him. O'Shea had come into a fortune of some thirty or forty thousand pounds by his second marriage, and was spending it like a man. (Like a monster ! Mrs. O'Shea would declare piteously, when the inevitable day of reckon- ing had overtaken them. AYould she ever have con- sented to a brougham and men servants and Sunday dinners Sunday dinners! with her principles! if she had known that Major O'Shea was a pauper, nut worth the coat he was married in !) Occasionally, twice in three months, perhaps, the fancy would A VAGABOND HEROINE. 15 strike Cornelius to lounge, his pipe in his mouth, into the child's nursery for a game of romps. Occa- sionally, after entertaining some extra fine friends at dinner, perhaps he would bid the servants bring Miss O'Sliea down to dessert, chiefly it would seem but Belinda \vas happily indiscriminative for the opportunity her presence afforded of airing his con- nection with the Earl of Liskeard's family. On a few blissful Sundays throughout the year, would take her out for a walk through the parks. This was all the sole approach to parental love that brightened Belinda's lonely child's life ; and as years went on even this scant intercourse between O'Shea and his daughter lessened. Difficulties mul- tiplied round the man ; truths of many kinds dawned upon the poor pink-and-white fool whose substance he had wasted. Recriminations, long absences, cruel retrenchments of expenditure, falling off of fair- weather friends, all followed in natural sequence. And then came the crash in earnest : Belinda's pit- tance their only certain support for the future ! The house in May Fair must be exchanged for one in Bayswater : the house in Bayswater must give place to lodgings ; the lodgings from " elegance," so called, must sink to respectability ; respectability to eighteen shillings a week, no extras, and dirt and discomfort unlimited. Belinda, instead of roast mut- ton and rice pudding, must eat whatever cold scraps chanced to be over from yesterday's meal, and no pudding at all ; instead of yawning over French verbs, or thrumming scales on the piano, must run 16 A VAGABOND HEROINE. errands, mend clothes, crimp chignons, plait false tresses, and generally make herself the milliner, lady's maid, and drudge of her stepmamma, Hose. Barring the hair-dressing duties, which, seeing the straits to which they were reduced, goaded her to desperation. I should say the change of fortune affected the girl's spirits but lightly. Children of a certain age rather like catastrophes that cut them adrift from all old landmarks, so long at least as the catastrophes wear the gloss of newness. Belinda, by temperament, craved for change, movement, ac- tion of any kind, and of these she had far more in Bohemia than Belgravia. She had also more of her father ! Not a very desirable acquisition, one would say, viewing matters with the eyes of reason ; but Belinda, you see, viewed them with the eyes of love enormous difference. Cornelius descended the ladder of life with a philosophic, gentlemanly grace, that added the last drop of bitterness to Mi's. O' Shea's cup. It was not his first experience of the kind, it must be remem- bered; and so long as abundant alcoholic resource fail not, 'tis curious with w 7 hat ease men of his stamp get used to these little social vicissitudes. O'Shea had worn a threadbare coat, had frequented a tavern instead of a club, had drunk gin and water instead of claret and champagne, before this, and fell back into the old, well-greased groove of insolvency almost with a sense of relief. Belinda, who could see no evil in what she loved, thought papa's resignation sublime! A VAGABOND HEROINE. 17 His dress from shabbiness degenerated to some- thing worse, his nose grew redder, his hours and his gait alike more uncertain. In Belinda's eyes he was still the best and dearest of fathers, the most incom- parably long-suffering of husbands. "Rose must have her chignons crimped, must put on her pearl powder and her silk dresses, just as if we were rich still," the girl would think with the blind injustice of her age, " while papa, poor papa, wears his oldest clothes and broken boots ; yes, and will sing a song at times to his little girl, and be gay and light-hearted through It all." And the wisdom of the whole world would not have convinced her that there could be courage, of a kind, in Rose's crimped chignon and silk dresses, and cowardice that worst coward- ice which springs from apathetic despair in her father's greasy coat and broken boots and gin-and- water joviality ! The truth was this : Cornelius knew that his last trick was made, Rose that she had the possibility of one still in her hand a certain Uncle Robert, crusty, vulgar, rich, " living retired " in his own villa at Brompton. Yery different would Belinda's story have turned out had this uncle chanced to be an aunt. The old lady never lived who could resist the blandishments of Cornelius O'Shea when he willed to fascinate. Upon the coarse, tough heart, the hardened, unbelieving ears of Uncle Robert, the Irishman's sentiments, repentance, touching allusions even to honor and high lineage, were alike wasted. Rosie had chosen to throw herself away upon a scoun- 18 A VAGABOND HEROINE. drel. Don't talk to him about birth ; Uncle Robert called a man a gentleman who acted as a gentleman. Rosie, poor fool, had made her bed and must lie upon it for Uncle Robert's language was no less coarse than his intelligence. Still, let her come to want, let the scoundrel of a husband decamp, take his worthless presence to any other country he chose, and keep there, and the door of Uncle Robert's house would never be closed against his sister's child. And as the old man had not another near relation upon the face of the earth, Mrs. Rose knew pretty well that, O 'Shea's disappearance once compassed, not only would the door of Uncle Robert's house, but a fair chance of a place in Uncle Robert's will, stand open to her. A last card, I repeat, was yet to be played by Mrs. O'Shea. She played it well with that in- stinctive knowledge of male human nature that you will find in the very shallowest feminine souls. Un- cle Robert was a democrat to the backbone ; tittle- tattle from the bloated upper ten must consequently be tasteful to him, were it but as proof of his own radical theories ; and Rose would prattle to him by the hour together about her ladyship's card debts, and his grace's peccadillos, and her poor dear O'Shea's intimate connection with the aristocracy. Uncle Robert was as proud of his purse as any self-made man in England. Nothing swelled him with the righteous sense of solvency like the sight of another's pauperism ; still, for his niece to have appeared dis- creditably dressed before the servants, a poor rela- A VAGABOND HEROINE. 19 tion in all the galling indecency of a merino gown or mended gloves, would have exasperated the old man beyond measure. So Rose took excellent care to do her pauperism genteelly. In the most becom- ing little bonnet, the most scrupulously neat silk dress " the last of all my pretty things, Uncle Rob- ert. Oh, if you knew can we poor women help being foolish ? if you knew how dreadful it is to one to give up the refinements of life ! " in the most becoming attire, 1 say, that woman could wear, this simple creature would pay her humble, tearful conciliator}' visits to the Bromptoii villa, and seldom return without a crisp piece of paper, never entirely empty-handed, to the bosom of her family. At last, one fine spring morning, came an over- ture of direct reconciliation, couched in the plainest possible language, from Uncle Robert's own lips. Let Major O'Shea betake himself to America, one of the colonies, anywhere out of England that he chose, solemnly swearing to keep away during the space of two years at least, and Uncle Robert prom- ised not only to receive back his niece to preside over his house and sit at the head of his table, but to pay O'Shea the sum of three hundred pounds before his departure. Enough, surely, to last, if the man had a man's heart within his breast, until such time as he could gain a decent independence for himself by work. Cornelius was absent from home, that is to say, from their dingy lodgings, for the time being, when this occurred : had been absent more than a fortnight, 20 A VAGABOND HEROINE. Heaven knows on what mission I believe he called it the Doncaster Spring Meeting to his wife and daughter. He returned late that same evening, rather more hiccoughing of speech than usual, and with just sixpence short for the payment of his cab- hire in his pocket. Rosie broke the news of her uncle's proffered generosity as O'Shea sat drinking his hot gin-and- water after supper, Belinda mending a very torn Blocking with very long stitches at his side. "Of course it is impossible/' sighed Mrs. O'Shea, with tears in her meek eyes. " I feel it a duty to mention the proposal, if only to show the Christian spirit of my relations ; but of course such a separa- tion would be impossible." "Impossible, Rose!" cried O'Shea, his sodden face brightening. Of so tine and discursive a na- ture was the creature's hopefulness, that the bare mention of three hundred pounds and of being rid of his domesticities sufficed to inspire him with the visions of a millionaire. " Who talks of impossible ? Am I the man, d'ye think is Cornelius O'Shea the man to let his own paltry feelings stand between his family and prosperity ? " And in less time than it has taken me to write, husband and wife had made up their minds heroically to the sacrifice. The details were not difficult to agree upon. Cornelius would seek his fortune in America, " the best country on earth for a man of resolution and ability." Poor, semi-widowed Rose took refuge at .Bi'ornpton. Belinda, with the hundred A VAGABOND HEROINE. 21 and twenty pounds a year derived from her mother's fortune, might be considered independent. She should be sent to some moderately expensive board- ing-school for the next two years, the term of her father's banishment, and Uncle Robert had consider- ately said that she might look upon his house as her home during the midsummer and Christmas holi- days. Belinda independent, Cornelius put upon his legs and offered his freedom, and Rose restored to a pew in church, fine clothes, and livery servants. "What a touch of the magician's wand was this ! Next day was Sunday. Major O'Shea dyed his whiskers, which he had suffered to grow grey under the cold shade of poverty, brushed up his coat, put on a pair of lavender gloves, and lounged away the afternoon in the park, his hat as rakishly set on his head, his whole air as jaunty as in the palmiest days of his youth. Madame, after duly attending morn- ing service for was it not her first duty, said Rosie, her eyes swimming, to offer thanksgiving for her own and her dear O'Shea's good fortune-? madame, after attending morning service, betook herself to Brompton, and employed the remainder of the day in talking over events and planning a thousand agreeable domestic comforts for herself with Uncle Robert. Belinda, poor little fool, cried herself white and sick with passionate grief. She did not want respectability, or boarding-schools, or a home in the holidays. She wanted all she loved on earth, her worthless old father, and was to lose him. 22 'A VAGABOND HEROINE. "We really have very different ways of show- ing our affection," said Mrs. O'Shea when she re- turned well dressed, blooming, full of hope in the future, and found the child crouched down, dinner- less, dirty, her face disfigured and swollen with tears, beside a fireless hearth. " I suppose I shall suffer more than any one else by your papa's absence, but I do what is right. I do not embitter the thorny path of duty still more to his feet" Rosie had al- ways a fine florid style of metaphor of her own when she tried to talk grand " by useless tears and lamentations." From that night on until the hour of final sep- aration, scarcely more than a week, Belinda kept her feelings better under control. She worked a little purse in secret, upon which you may be sure many a salt tear fell, put in it all her slender hoard of pocket money, and pushed it into her father's not unwilling hand on the day of his departure instinct telling her what kind of gift would to Cornelius be the welcomest token of filial love. When the su- preme moment of parting had arrived she clung to him, shivering, tearless, dumb ; while Rosie, whose only feeling was one of cheerful relief, cried almost to the verge of unbecomingness, and uttered every imaginable wifely platitude about the heart-rending cruelty of the situation, and the dreadful, dreadful pain that her devotion to duty and to her husband's interests was costing her. Then came the removal to Brompton ; fine rose- wood and mahogany, excellent dinners, city friends, A VAGABOND HEROINE. 23 Uncle Robert's vulgar, purse-proud talk all, it would seem, very tasteful to Mrs. O'Shea. And then, less than a twelvemonth after Belinda felt the last kiss oc her father's lips, came a New York paper, directed in a strange hand, to Uncle Robert, and containing the bald announcement of Cornelius O'Shea's death. The poor little girl, awaj at a second-class Brighton boarding-school, was summoned home in haste; the blinds of the Brompton villa were drawn decently close for four days, and partially lowered on the fifth, or imaginary funeral day; Rosie, for the second time in her life, veiled her sorrow under the most bewitching weeds. Uncle Robert talked about the mysterious ways of Providence, kept the corners of his mouth well down before the servants, and ere a week was over had made a new will leaving every shilling he possessed at the unconditional disposal of his dear niece Rose. O'Shea, in short, in dying had committed by far the best action of his half-century of life, and every- body in the house knew it. Everybody but Belinda ! Nature has compensation for us all gives a neg- lected little daughter to love, to mourn, even a Cor- nelius O'Shea. Fiercer than ever grew Belinda's rebellion now against Uncle Robert's smart furniture, dinners, butler, all of them bought, she would say, her dark eyes flashing fire through her tears, bought with papa's life, If they had not driven papa away from England he had not died, nor she been deso- late ! Lot them send her away anywhere on the face of the earth that was not Brompton. Yes, she 24 A VAGABOND HEROINE. would go to school abroad to Bologne, Berlin, as they chose. Only pathetic stipulation for her age let her remain away until she was old enough to see after herself in life, unaided, and let her have no holidays. And a charmingly opportune chance of gratifying the girl's perverse fancies was not long in presenting itself. Sedulously reading through the educational column of the "Times/ 5 Rose one morning, with a lighting of the stepmaternal bosom, came upon the following : RARE OPPORTUNITY FOR PARENTS AND GUARDIANS. A lady of literary attainments, socially unencumbered, and entertaining advanced ideas aa to the higher culture and des- tinies of her sex, offers her society and influence to any young girl of good birth, for whom improvement by continental travel may be desired. Terms moderate, and paid invariably in ad- vance. References exchanged. By the next post, Mrs. O'Shea and the lady hold- ing advanced ideas were in communication. They interviewed each other; they exchanged opinions on the destiny of the sex ; they exchanged references. After some battling, the commercial part of the trans- action was brought to a satisfactory close, and Be- linda, sullenly submissive to anything that divided her from Rose, Brompton, and Uncle Robert, made her next great step in life. The name of her new preceptress (of whom more hereafter) was Burke, Miss Lydia Burke a name not unknown to fame either in the speech-making or book-making world. And under, or oftener without A VAGABOND HEROINE. 25 this lady's care, Belinda's " culture" has been pro- gressing up to the present time ; no material change occurring meanwhile at Brompton save Uncle Rob- ert's death, which took place about three months before the date at which this little history opens. Some smattering of languages the girl, drifting hither and thither over Europe, has picked up ; some music and dancing, of a vagrant kind ; a good deal of premature acquaintance with human nature : life, opened, I fear, at somewhat tattered pages, for her class-book ; neglect, not invariably the worst educa- tor, for her master. A socially unencumbered lady, bent on correcting the mistakes made by her sex during the past six thousand years, and with the higher destinies of the future on her soul, could scarcely have time to waste on the training of the one unimportant unit imme- diately beneath her eyes. In few minds are broad- ness of vision and capacity for small detail coexistent. The mind of Miss Lydia Burke was of the visionary or far-embracing order an order quite beyond the wretched details of lawn dresses and darning needles. ]S"ewton forgot his dinner hour ; could a Miss Lydia Burke be expected to notice the holes But this brings me back exactly to the point at which a certain pride in my poor little heroine forced me into retrospection the holes in Belinda's stock- ings. CHAPTER II. AMBROSIAL CASH. T is but too obvious that they are a haphazard, unlawful pair. Belinda darns not, neither does she sew. Her clothes go uncounted to the washerwoman, and return or do not return as they list ; by natural processes of selection, such as are of toucher fibre than their fellows sur- o vive and come together in the end, irrespective of any primitive differences in color or design. Of these stockings that she now wears, one being grey, the other brown, both ragged, it would indeed be hard to conjecture the original stock ; nor is their in- congruous effect lessened by a well-worn pair of the sandals of the country, espargottes, in Basque par- lance, linen slippers, roughly embroidered in scarlet, and bound high above the instep by worsted sandals. Her frock is of rusty black, texture indescribable ; her hat of unbleached coarse straw, so battered out of shape that one must see it on a human head to recognize it as a hat at all. And she wears her hair in plaits, tight, hideous plaits, tied together at the A VAGABOND HEROINE. 27 ends, according to the fashion of the Spanish peas- ants, by a piece of frayed-out, once green ribbon. .Nothing lovely, nothing artistic even, about her. Yet 'tis a picture that a stranger of discriminative eye could scarce pass unnoticed this poor little girl with her tattered frock and illicit stockings, and sun- burnt, high-bred face, audaciously gay one minute as any Paris gamin's, sad the next as that of a woman who already has tasted the fruit of knowledge and found it bitter ! Spain or Clapham ? Raising herself lazily from the sward such mixture of dust and lifeless stalk as here in the south we dignify by the name of sward Belinda, after several more yawns, draws forth from her ragged pocket a letter, written on sea-green Eng- lish note-paper, that must certainly have cost the sender double postage, and in a characterless little boarding-school ladies' hand : " My dearest Belinda." "Dearest for her to call me 'dearest'! when papa himself used to think ' my dear little girl ' suffi- cient. But Hose must be a hypocrite, even in writ- ing." " You will be surprised, and / hope pleased, to hear that I am coming all the way to the south of France to see you. I am sure, when I look at St. Jean de Lnz on the map, it quite takes my breath away. I have always had a horror of the Bay of Bis- cay, and can never sleep in the train as most people do, and then I arn such a coward about strange beds ! But of course Spencer will be with me, and as there 28 A VAGABOND HEROINE. have been several cases of small-pox close at hand, and I am so frightened abont it, Doctor Pickney says the wisest thing I can do is to pack up my boxes and run. I have been vaccinated three times, and al- though the doctors say not, I think it always took a, little. I do hope there is no small-pox about in the south. If you have not been vaccinated already, you might get it done as a precaution before I arrive. I trust, dear, you will find me looking pretty well. I am in mourning still, but of course slight, for poor Uncle Robert has been dead three months ; indeed, the milliners scold me for wearing it any longer. But I consult feeling, not fashion, in such things ; and what can be more becoming than pale lavender silk richly trimmed, or a white Sultana polonaiso edged with black velvet and a deep fringe ! I wish I knew whether hats or bonnets were best style in foreign watering-places. I have written to ' The Queen' to ask, but I am afraid I shall not get the answer before I start. Nothing is seen in London but those large flat crowns, which never suited me ; and the Dolly Vardens have got so dreadfully com- mon ! Really, as I often say to Spencer, dress is one long trial. Were it not for those I love, I would but this is a subject on which I dare not trust my- self to speak. My dearest Belinda, I shall have news to tell you when we meet, of the most deeply inter- esting nature, affecting the future of us loth. I am glad you have made acquaintance with Augustus Jones. He is a prime favorite of mine indeed, he will make me correspond with him young meu are A VAGABOND HEROINE. 29 BO foolish and, as I tell them all, an old woman like me ! What you say about his ' vulgarity ' is simply ridiculous. How can it matter whether his father sold patent stoves or not ? Has a young man money ? not How was his money made ? is the question the world asks. I only hope he will be still at St. Jean de Luz when I arrive, which may be almost as soon as this letter. Present my compliments to our excel- lent friend, Miss Burke, and believe me your own. affectionate mamma, ROSE. " P. S. Augustus Jones has a villa at Clapham, elegantly furnished everything in the first style ! I have often dined there in his father's time with poor dear Uncle Robert. Augustus will be an excellent parti, I can assure you, Belinda, for any girl who may be fortunate enough to win him." Belinda crushes the letter together contemptu- ously, flings it up twice or thrice, ball fashion, into the air, then thrusts it away, still in its crumpled state, out of sight, and lapses back into castle-build- ing. "Spain or Clapham." Just as she has for the third time asked herself this fateful question, an Englishman in full afternoon Hyde Park dress emerges from the Hotel d'Isabella, about fifty yards distant from the little place or square where the girl is sitting, and, espying her, approaches. The new-comer is young, florid, not distinctly ill- looking as far as features go, but most distinctly vul- gar. The way he wears his hat, his jewelry, his necktie everything about the man, in short jars on 30 A VAGABOND HEROINE. your taste, you know not wherefore. And then he is mosquito bitten ! And mosquito bites are not wont to improve the expression of the features, or to confer, even on worthier men than Mr. Jones, the air of distinction. " A villa at Ciapham elegantly furnished an ex- cellent parti for any girl who may be lucky enough to win him," thinks Belinda, as the hero of her air- built romance draws near. " What a pity Rose does not appropriate so much good fortune herself ! I must see about making the match up as soon as I get them together." And with this she laughs aloud ; not as young ladies who have learned to do all things prettily laugh, still less as the British school-girl giggles. Shrill rather, and impish, laughter savoring of mal- ice, not mirth, is the laughter of Belinda O'Shea ! Mr. Jones's face, a spot of warm color at all sea- sons, has grown to the hue of a well-ripened tomato by the time he reaches her. " Good afternoon, Miss Belinda. Upon my word, you have found out the only bit of shade in the place. Glad to see you find your own thoughts so amusing." Augustus attempts the drawl of the high- bred swell, as he has seen that personage depicted on the stage ; not with very marked success. Belinda pushes her ragged hat a little further back from her forehead, stretches out her shabby sandaled feet in the dust, then, glancing up at Mr. Jones much as one small boy glances at another with A VAGABOND HEROINE. 31 whom he is inclined to quarrel, but whose strength he measures, begins to whistle. " I thought yesterday you told me you meant to give up that that slightly imfeininine accomplish- ment of yours," he remarks after a minute. " And I," retorts the girl, " thought you prom- ised never again to make use of that shocking ' Miss Belinda.' If you had pluck enough to say ' Belinda' outright, I could bear it. But as you have not, and as you seem to think it necessary to call me some- thing, do say ' Miss O'Shea.' You have no idea how caddish ' Miss Belinda' sounds." The tomato hue extends itself over poor Mr. Jones's very ears and neck. " Oh ! For the future, then, it's to be ' Belinda' between us, is it ? Only too happy on my part, I am sure. But I must ask one thing back." He has taken a place beside her, after carefully selecting a comparatively clean patch of turf on which to deposit his Hyde Park splen- dor. " I must ask'one thing back that you always call me ' Augustus.' " She looked at him through and through with fearless child's eyes. " ' Augustus ! ' I hope you have brought me some maccaroons, Augustus? Augus- tus, try not to kick Costa when you think I am not looking. No, I could not. If I saw you every day till I died, and if I lived to be a hundred years old, I could never call you 'Augustus.' I might do it once," she corrects herself, "half a dozen times, even, if you bribed me handsomely ; but from my heart, never." 32 A VAGABOND HEROINE. "In other cases you don't appear to feel much shyness about doings," remarks Mr. Jones, cuttingly. " It seems to me that you call half the English and American fellows in the place by their Christian names." " Ah, they are only boys," says Belinda, with a smile brimful of unconscious coquetry. " You would not have me ' mister ' my chums the fellows I play paume with would you ? " " I would not have you play ' paume,' as you call it, at all," replies the young man, in a tone of delib- erate, half-tender patronage. " I like a dash of chio as well as any man.' 5 I am afraid poor Augustus pronounced it chick. "But it must be chic of the right kind, bong tong, and all that sort of thing. Now what what should we think in England of a girl who would be seen playing fives, as you do, and in such company ? " Belinda shoots a sharp glance at him from under her long lashes. I forgot to mention that the child has long lashes, black as night, too, and overshadow- ing iron-grey eyes. " Not play paume, not dance the bolero, not whistle, not take moonlight walks with Costa ! What would you have me do, I should like to know, Mr. Jones ? '' A London beauty of a couple of seasons' standing could not have brought an elder son more neatly and more innocently to the point. Mr. Jones examines the opera-dancer who reposes in silver on the end of his cane, the huge cameo ring that he wears upon his little finger; then he delivers himself of his sen- A VAGABOND HEROINE. 33 timents thus : " I should like, Miss Belinda Belinda I beg your pardon, Miss O'Shea." 1 For the life of him, he cannot get to the familiar Christian name as she sits there in her ragged frock, in her palpable, out- crying poverty, and with her little high-bred face held aloft, and her dark eyes mutely dissecting him and his speech to atoms. " I should like to see } T OU the model in all respects of your mamma. My beau ideal I mean," says Augustus, suddenly recalling recent French lessons and struggles with French genders, " iny belle ideal of everything most to be desired in an English lady is Mrs. O'Shea." "Belle ideal. "Why can you never let a word alone when by extraordinary accident you have got it right ? '' cries Belinda, cruelly. " Who ever heard of a belle ideal ? Ah, and so my stepmamma is your beau ideal of everything to be desired in an English lady, and you would advise me to take her as a model in all respects ! Thanks. Now I know ex- actly what courses to avoid and imitate. No more paume? " " Paume is the last game I should think an Eng- lish lady of tong would be seen playing," says Mr. Augustus Jones, oracularly, and giving a contemptu- ous glance towards the schistera which lies at the girl's side. A schistera, I should explain, is the spoon-shaped basket or hand-shield with which paume is played in the Basque provinces. "I am quite sure Mrs. O'Shea would think as I do about such a game.'' " But then you must remember, / love it passion- 2* 34 A VAGABOND HEROINE. atelj,'' cries Belinda, " passionately to distraction ! What do I care-about being lady-like ? if you could play, yourself, you would not be such a muff as to talk about * tong' ! Ah, the moment," cries the child, clasping her graceful dark hands, "the mo- ment of moments when you are twenty all the ball with the enemy you see it spinning through the air you know that the game is to be made off your own schistera you strike, you but of course," breaking off, with mild pity of her hearer's ignorance, " of course it's no use talking paume to people who don't understand paume ! "Well, then comes the bolero. Surely you would allow me one now and then, Mr. Jones, just between the lights, you know, and under the shadow of the trees ? " "I don't mind the bolero, or fandango, or any other of the native cancans, provided they are danced by the right people," answers Mr. Jones with his drawl. " Quite the reverse. When one of these Basque peasant wenches has gone through her bar- barous gesticulations, and brings me her tin cup for pavment, I put my sous into it with all the pleasure in life." Belinda's eyes flashed daggers at him. "I can- not imagine your giving a sou to any one on any occasion with pleasure," she exclaims with spiteful emphasis. " And you speak as you do because you know no better ! You don't understand the peasants or their dances^ You measure everything by your own Claphp.m tastes, sir! However, we will not argufy." The reader is asked to pardon this and A VAGABOND HEROINE. 35 other linguistic peculiarities on the part of Belinda. "I have my ideas, you yours, and no doubt Rose will back you up in them when she is here. You did not know, by the by, that my mamma was com- ing to St. Jean do Luz, did you, Mr. Jones?" Mr. Jones hesitates. Talleyrand's advice as to not following one's first impulse for fear it should be a good one, is, although I dare say he never heard of Talleyrand, a first principle with this excellent young man. Prudence, distrust, disbelief in impulse of all kinds, rather than special genius for the devel- opment of kitchen grates, raised Mr. Jones, senior, inch by inch, from a shakedown beneath the counter to a Clapham villa and liveries. Prudence, distrust, disbelief in impulse are qualities born and nurtured in the very life-blood of the son. "Rose corresponds with you, I know," cries Belinda, scanning his face. " Don't be ashamed of your little weaknesses, Mr. Jones. ' Young men are so foolish,' as Rose says. I can see you know, juss as well as I do, that my stepmarnma is coming to St. Jean de Luz." " Well, yes, I know that Mrs. O'Shea is coming here, certainly," says Augustus, deliberation having shown him, perhaps, that to tell the truth can for once cost nothing' " Indeed, I had a few lines from o * her, written from Paris, by to-day's post. I have her letter in my pocket," where, however, he has the discretion to let it rest. " As far as I can make out, we shall have the pleasure of seeing Mrs. O'Shea and Captain Temple arrive this evening." 36 A VAGABOND HEROINE. Up rushes the crimson in a flood over Belinda's face. " Captain Temple ! I don't know what you mean by Captain Temple ! " she exclaims, suspect- ing what he means only too well, and coloring with hot shame over her own suspicions. "Rose is com- ing here alone with her maid, of course." " Oh, of course ! " repeats Augustus, with the slow, affected drawl that irritates Belinda to such desperation. " I don't for a moment mean that Mrs. O'Shea, under these or any other circumstances, would act otherwise than with the most lady-like propriety. Still, when one considers everything, Miss Belinda, there is no great wonder in Captain Tem- ple happening to travel in the south of France, and in this particular district of the south of France, just at the time when Mrs. O'Shea and her maid happen to travel here too ! " His smile, his tone, a sudden scorching remem- brance of certain lachrymose allusions in more than one of Rose's recent letters, bring Belinda from sus- picion to certainty. " If I thought if I could believe such a thing ! " she exclaims, then stops short, both sunburnt tista tight clenched, her lips set together like a small fury's. " If you could believe that two people who loved each other in their youth I conclude you have heard the romantic story before this ? if you could believe that two people who were in love with each other some dozen or more years ago, were fated to marry and be happy at last, what then ? " asks Au- A VAGABOND HEROINE. 37 gustus. " Mrs. O'Shea's marrying again would not interfere with your life much, as far as I can see." " If Rose marries again, I swear never to speak to her or to her husband while I live," cries Belinda tempestuously. " I will not believe such disgraceful news until she tells it me with her own lips ; and I have not the very smallest curiosity in the matter. Is he dark or fair ? Good heavens, are you dumb, Mr. Jones? What kind of man, I ask you, is this miserable Captain Temple '\ " " Roger Temple is fair yellow rather, all these Indian fellows are alike ; shuts his eyes at you as he speaks deuced nasty trick for a man to shut his eyes at you as he speaks. 1 met him once or twice dining at your mamma's before I left town, and we had not two words to say to each other. I don't care for your 'haw-haw,' Dundreary, army men," says Augustus. '' Too much of the shop about them for my taste." " Too much of what for your taste ? " asked Be- linda, with profound disdain. Ah, was not the only human being she ever loved of this same Dundreary, army genus as Captain Temple ! " Too much of the shop their shop. Too much patronage of other fellows whose line doesn't happen, to be in ramrods and pipeclay like their own.' x " And I," says the girl, stoutly, " love soldiers, and if ever I marry anybody it shall be a soldier. How different you and I are in everything differ- ence of the blood, I suppose ! "We O'Sheas are a fighting family. Two great-uncles of mine fell side 38 A VAGABOND HEROINE. by side across the hills there, at Badajoz" she indi- cates by a nod of her head the distant ridge of Span- ish Pyrenees "and my papa was a soldier, and, though it happened he never came in for foreign ser- vice, did a great many brave acts, I can tell you, dur- ing the diiferent riots and electioneerings in Ireland. O O Most likely you have no connection with the army, Mr. Jones?" None, excepting a maternal nncle who was an army tailor, Mr. Jones might answer, if he had a mind to speak the truth. He waives the question adroitly enough, however, by returning to the mat- ter in hand. " "Well, then, as you are so fond of the fighting profession, Miss O'Shea, you will have an additional reason for loving your new papa." Belinda snatches up the schistera which lies at her side, and for a moment aifairs look threatening. Not much more provocation, evidently, would it need to fire the warlike blood of the O'Sheas that runs in her veins. " I I was going to ask you to come down to Harrambour's," says Mr. Jones, springing up hastily to his feet. "Don't be angry with me, Belinda!'' He can call her Belinda at the safe distance that sep- arates them now. " And let us make all our differ- ences up over some maccaroons." Every man, says the cynic, has his price. Be- linda's price, as a very short acquaintance has taught Mr. Jones, is maccaroons^ Sweet stuff generally may be said to be Belinda's price in the present scraggy, unfledged stage of her moral life. Angel A VAGABOND HEROINE. 39 hair cdbella de angel frozen apricots, chocolate creams, every varied confection, half-French, half- Spanish, with which the shops of St. Jean de Luz abound, is dear to her. But, above all, she adores maccaroons ; the specialty of the place, as history shows, even back to the days when the Great Napo- leon and the English Duke successively lodged here. And then she is so absolutely penniless ! The mis- erable pittance which comes to her quarterly, after Miss Burke has swallowed the lion's share of her small income the quarterly pittance, I say, which is vouchsafed to her for dress, postage, pocket-money, confectionery, goes so piteously soon leaves her so absolutely insolvent when it is gone ! A child of seventeen, without a sou in the world for maccaroons, and an Augustus Jones, his pockets lined with British bank-notes, ready to buy them for her! Does it require a very profound knowledge of human nature to foresee how things are likely to end unless, indeed, some other actor, offering some- thing sweeter than maccaroons, chance to cross the stage of Belinda's little life-drama ! She hesitates, relents, and a minute later they have quitted the Place, and are making their way down the principal street of the town toward the maccaroon shop. St. Jean de Luz is taking its wonted afternoon siesta at this hour. The awned balconies are deserted; the very churches, filled morning and evening to overflowing, with fans, prayer-books, and flirtatious, are empty. A bullock- dray or two are to be seen in the market-place, the 40 A VAGABOND HEROINE. bullocks in their brown liolland blouses patiently blinking, with bullock philosophy, at existence, the drivers asleep within the wineshops. A team ot close-shorn Spanish mules stand, viciously whisking at the flies with their rat tails, in the shade; the muleteer, his face prone to mother earth, reposes beside them. Other living forms are there none, save an occasional half-broiled Murray-guided Briton, and five or six ghostly cur-dogs the cur-dogs at St. Jean de Luz never sleep. It being low water, the river- mouth and harbor are sending forth " liberal smells of all the sunburned South." The distant mountain sides are absolutely painful to the eye in their shade- less ochre yellow. Heat, as if a very rain of fire, quivering, piercing, intolerable, is everywhere. And Mr. Jones does not bear heat gracefully. By the time they reach the maccaroon shop Mr. Jones is in a state of evaporation made visible, and anathematizes the climate, pavement, scenery, peo- ple, all in the very ugliest cockney vernacular, and with the ugliest cockney ignorance. " He is horribly, horribly vulgar ! " thinks Be- linda, as she bites her maccaroons and glances from beneath her eyelashes at the dewy, blistered, mos- quito-scarred face of her companion. " If maccaroons were only attainable through any other means ! " Which they are not. And the maccaroons are super-excellent, fresh made this morning ; and after the maccaroons come a vanilla ice, and a chocolate cream, and more maccaroons! And then of so generous a temper is Augustus this afternoon then A VAGABOND HEROINE. 4-1 they adjourn from the shop to the refreshing shade of the awning outside, and Belinda is told to call for whatever cooling drink she chooses, while Mr. Jones (who holds the firmest English belief as to alcohol and a thermometer at a hundred and ten in the shade going well together) orders himself oh, in what execrable French a brandy and seltzer, and prepares to smoke a cigar at her side. A bizarre love-making, it may be said, in which the lady's favor is to be won by lollypops. But any one who keeps his eyes open must know that what we call the bizarre differences of life are on the sur- face, merest accidental diversity of local coloring ; human nature being much the same whatever dress she wears, whatever quarter of the globe she inhabits. If Augustus Jones were courting some full-grown London Belinda, his offerings would have to be of bracelets, certainly bracelets, opera tickets, bou- quets, as the case might be, instead of sweet stuff'. And who, I should like to know, would consider that bizarre ! Mr. Jones smokes his cigar ; Belinda sips her iced orangeade, Spanish fashion, through a barquilo, be- side him ; and so a drowsy hour glides away. Then the sun slips westward behind the toppling old scar- let-roofed, many-storied houses that form the seaboard of St. Jean de Luz, and comparative coolness begins to make itself felt in the streets. Little by little shutters open ; sleepy faces peep out on balconies ; the bullock drivers come lazily forth from the wine shops; the muleteer rises as far as his elbow, rubs 42 A VAGABOND HEROINE. his handsome eyes, swears a little at his mules, crosses himself, and folds a cigarrito. The world is awak- ening. "And I must be off," says Belinda, jumping up as the clocks of the town strike tire. " We are all in for a match of paume as soon as the sun is off the upper Place." " ' We' ! and who are ' we' ? " asks Mr. Jones, with a tender smile. The brandy and seltzer has softened him but, unfortunately, tender smiles lose half their effect when they are associated with mos quito bites ! " Oh, the usual party, Jack Alston and Tom and me against the two Washingtons and Maurice la Ferte. Who will you back ? You must not judge by what you saw last night. Jack Alston and I can beat the lot when we play our best." " I should like to bet that you will let Mr. Jack Alston and his friends play their match without you." And now Augustus rises, now the mosquito- bitten face is affectionately, horribly near Belinda's. " I should like to think that you care just enough for me, Miss O'Shea, to give all these fellows, up for once, if I ask you ! " II is tone is more earnest than Belinda has ever heard it yet, and she wavers, or appears to waver. The remembrance of maccaroons that are past, the hope of maccaroons that are to come ; vanity grat- ified by a full-grown man, an Augustus Jones though he be, taking so deep an interest in her affairs all these considerations, and perhaps something a little A VAGABOND HEROINE. 43 deeper than these, sway the girl, and she wavers, easts down her eyelashes, plays irresolutely with the strings of her schistera. u You will promise me to play no more at that confounded game, either this evening or any other evening ! " whispers Augustus with growing em- phasis. Another moment, and Belinda will certainly have committed herself Heaven knows to what com- promising renunciations ! But even as the words rise to her lips, an unexpected ally, against Mr. Jones and on the side of paume-playing, bolero-dancing, and all the other sweet, unlawful pleasures of her vagabond life, appears on the scene. " Costa, why Costa, old boy, where have yon been all day ? Down, sir, down. When will you learn that Mr. Jones does not value your atten- tions?" Costa is a grand-looking old Spanish hound, not altogether of purest breed, perhaps, but a noble brute despite the blot upon his escutcheon, possessing much of his nation's grave dignity of demeanor, and a face brimful of fine dog intellect and feeling. You may see such a head as Costa's beside the knee of more than one of Velasquez's portraits. His acquaintance with Belinda came about hap- hazard as everything seems to come about in the girl's haphazard life. Some Madrid hidalgo to whom the poor brute belonged happening to be called away to Paris to- ward the close of last summer's bathing season, the 44 A VAGABOND HEROINE. dog, with true Spanish indifference, was left upon the streets of St. Jean de Luz to starve. For a time he kept body and soul what poor dog soul was in him together as best he might ; his lean carcass daily becoming leaner, kicks and blows from house- wives who found him unlawfully prowling .about their doorsteps more frequent. At last a bone or two came through the skin ; the creature's strength was gone just enough left to drag himself painfully along the gutters and look up with wistful, hungry supplication in the faces of the passers-by. And so Belinda found him Belinda, as it chanced, flush of money, her quarter's pittance just paid, and on her road at that moment to the macca- roon shop, with all the lightness of spirit a full purse begets. " What, Costa, my friend ! " She knew the dog and his name well ; had admired him often in his palmier days, striding majestically along at the hi- dalgo his master's heels. " Costa, my old friend, have you come to this? Has that T>rute left you alone here to starve ? " She forgot the maccaroons ; she took Costa round to the butcher's market, and she gave him to eat ; would have had him home and sheltered him but for Miss Burke's stern opposition. "It would better befit Belinda's immortal soul to take thought of the regeneration of humanity than be occupied with the life or death of a miserable cur-dog. A knock on the head and a plunge into the Nivelle were the greatest mercy in such a case. Miss Burke, for her part, A VAGABOND HEROINE. 45 would not mind hiring some man or boy to perform the deed, and " " At jour peril you get Costa murdered ! "' cried Belinda, with tragical, mutinous eyes. " Deny him shelter if you like. He must lodge as the beggars lodge, at least till winter comes, and I will feed him. What do I care for humanity ? I love the dog ! And as for you hire an assassin, make yourself ac- complice in a murder, madam, at your peril!" Thus doubly saving Costa's life, of such slender value as the poor life was ! And the creature repaid her with that absolute, blind, unstinted gratitude that is one of the cardinal dog virtues shall we say an exclusive dog virtue ? Without a word of explanation he understood the delicacy of the relations between himself and Miss Burke, yet, for Belinda's sake, never betrayed his knowledge otherwise than by a stealthy, ghastly roll of the eye or grin of the upper lip in that lady's pres- ence. Of a morning he would sit, demure of de- meanor as a bishop, outside the gateway of Miss Burke's lodgings, waiting for the light step of his lit- tle benefactress, but shifting his quarters instantly, and with an air of the most pharisaic innocence, if Miss Burke chanced to appear instead of Belinda. At night he wqjild guard the girl faithfully to the door of her home, but never, no, not even if Belinda in play invited him thereto, would cross the thresh- old. If it were possible for the quality of self-respect to exist in a dog's heart, one would say this gaunt, forsaken Spanish hound possessed it. 46 A VAGABOND HEROINE. Self-respect, gratitude, love ! I seem to be mak- ing a tolerably long list of Costa's virtues ; but he liad vices enough to counterbalance them. Society generally looked upon him as an abandoned, thievish 2'eprobate, and with good reason ; society always has good reason for its condemnatory verdict. How could it be otherwise? How could Costa, supperless, houseless, live the decent Philistine life that had been so easy to him in the well-fed days of the hi- dalgo his master ? As long as Belinda's funds lasted, he ate meat ; when these failed he had such crusts and scraps as the girl could save from her own meals and carry away, unseen by Miss Burke, in her pocket. But crusts and scraps were not enough for Costa's sus- tenance. He must be dishonest or die. And (some Christians have felt the same) he preferred being dishonest. In his youth he had been trained as a sporting dog, and in all the pride of untempted vir- tue had held by the code of honor of his peers, the arbitrary code which brands the slaughter of a barn- door fowl with indelible disgrace. But with other times, other manners. If nobility oblige, how much more so does an empty stomach ! Some lingering scruples, some remnants of the old finer sentiments, Costa had to get over ; at first woiJd only scare his victims, next pursue them, but not kill. At last, one autumn twilight, hunger sharp, Belinda, I regret to say, witness of the crime, he murdered a fat old hen asleep upon her roost, devoured, enjoyed her to A VAGABOND HEROINE. 47 her very feathers, and murdered conscience with the act. The downward path lay smooth enough before Costa now. No man, it is remarked, becomes so finished a scamp as your scamp who was a gentle- man once. The rule is not without its parallel as regards the demoralization of do^s. Where an ordi- O O nary cur would have committed his highway thefts or murders in a gross sort of bungling way, certain of instant detection, Costa, aided by a hundred re membrances of his old greenwood craft, got through the work like an artist. He became " suspect," as you may imagine. Not a housewife within a couple of miles of St. Jean de Luz but knew him by sight or by reputation. And still he lived. These south- ern people combine with the most absolute callous- ness as to animal suffering a curious superstition as to taking animal life. They will see a starving dog die inch by inch, rather than knock him on the head ; will bury an obnoxious cat alive, not drown her. Costa lived a disreputable, idle, lawless ex- istence enough but with fidelity, love, gratitude to the little girl that had saved him ever strength, ening. So different of its kind is the deterioration of dog nature from that of man. AVlien Belinda was out late at night, as too often happened, Costa, with the strength. and will to pull down half a dozen Carlists at a time, would keep sentry by her side ; when she was playing paume among her not-too-gentle comrades, would sit, wink- 48 A VAGABOND HEROINE. ing his eyes with an air of dignified superiority, in the shade, not interesting himself in the frivolous details of the game, but ready at any time, should dispute arise, to put himself forward as judge and executor of the law on Belinda's side. He knew when the child was glad or sorry, rich or poor. He knew her enemies, knew her friends ; and from the first moment of meeting till the present one, had cast ugly looks at the calves of Augustus Jones's legs! " Try not to be frightened, Mr. Jones," says Belinda, glancing maliciously at the expression of her admirer's face. " Perhaps he won't bite if you keep very quiet. Dogs know so well when people are afraid of them ! Have you come for maccaroons, my old Costa, eh ? You have, have you ? Mr. Jones, Costa says he has come for maccaroons." It may be observed that Belinda has not a grain of false pride on the score of begging alms for her friends. " Costa has come for maccaroons, and I have not a single sou left in the world ! " She stoops down, and with one arm bent fondly round the old dog's neck, looks up, with the prettiest beseeching air imaginable, at Augustus Jones. But Jones buttons up his pockets. He is not altogether a miser, as different sections of the London world have practically learned ; will spend money freely enough on riding-horses, bracelets, opera stalls, churches that need showy \vindows, philanthropic effort that publishes printed lists ; on his vices, his virtues his anything. But maccaroons for a dog ! A VAGABOND HEROINE. 49 This absolute waste, this simple flinging of money for the sake of flinging it into the sea, Mr. Jones cannot stand. Looking upon the folly as a specula- tive investment, means to a possible end, 'twere different. " You desire to marry yourself, as you consider, well," could some voice whisper to him; " the ambition of your heart has been ever to wed your gold to aristocratic blood ; and despairing of better chances, you would fain win this out-at-elbows little Arab, the granddaughter of the great Earl of Liskeard, for your wife. Humor her whims, even this present babyish one, if you would hope to suc- ceed " could Mr. Jones realize this as truth, the maccaroons were Costa's. But he does not realize it. He is devoid alike of sympathy and of tact ; qualities, both of them, springing from imagination, not reason ; and goes no further than his own lights illume the path. He detests all dogs, detests Costa in particular with the bitterest hatred, that which springs from fear. And, as I have said, Mr. Jones buttons up his pockets. " Maccaroons for Costa ! " repeats Belinda, stretch- ing out to him a little suppliant sun-burned palm. " JS^ot like them ? You should see whether he likes them! Try the experiment. Why, when Maria Jose was here, we gave him two francs' worth all at once, and he ate them up before you could say ' Jack Robinson.' ' : " Did he indeed ! " says Augustus, looking dis- gusted, whether at the allusion to a rival or at the vulgarity of Belinda, who shall say ? " Then the 3 50 A VAGABOND HEROINE. only thing I can remark is, I am sorry Mr. Maria Jose had not better sense than to waste his money on such absurdity.'' Quitting her hold on Costa, Belinda starts to her feet, and stands upright and determined before Au- gustus; her small child's face flaming red as any pomegranate flower. "Mr, Jones," she exclaims, " if I asked you to give Costa two francs' worth of maccaroons at this moment, do you mean to tell me you would not do it ? " " I should prefer giving the money to the first worthy object of commiseration who happened to pass along the street," Mr. Jones answers, didacti- cally. " Will you give Costa one franc's worth of mac- caroons, now, this instant ? " " I I never heard of feeding a dog on macca- roons ; I think it a doosed ridiculous waste of money," stutters Jones, without offering to put his hand into his pocket. "I can be as liberal as most people, Miss Belinda, on the right occasion ; but if I have a predilection, and a very strong one, too, it's against seeing good money \vasted." Belinda looks at him, from his mosquito-bitten forehead down to the tips of his Bond-street boots ; looks at him, with those clear eyes of hers, not only up and down bodily, but morally through and through. " Oh ! I understand. I know now why Costa hated yon from the first. Dogs are not such fools. If you have a predilection, you say, 'tis against see- A VAGABOND HEROINE. 51 ing good money wasted. If I have a predilection, and a very strong one, too, 'tis for wasting it. Money ball ! what is money ? So many dirty bits of silver, stamped with this head or that, and good just for the quantity of sweet stuff it will bring you. To spend, to waste, to scatter money to the winds, is one of my predilections : paume-playing, bolero-danc- ing, liberty sweet liberty are the others ! And I am no more likely to change in my opinions than yon are in yours. Good-by, Mr. Jones." She turns on her heel, and, swinging her schistera to and fro, in a way to shock Mr. Jones' nicest sus- ceptibilities, walks off; Costa, his head well erect, as though he felt himself master of the situation, at her side. CHAPTER III. LIGHT WEDDED, LIGHT WIDOWED. T. JEAN DE LUZ is awakening from its afternoon siesta ; by the time, an hour later, that the Paris train arrives, every nook, every corner of the quaint little Basque town is full of life and color. Castilian nurses, in the gay scarlet bodices and silver buttons of their order, are airing olive-faced babies in the Place; water-sellers, with their sing-song " Agua quien quiere agua?" throng the streets ; men smoking their final cigarrito before dinner are to be seen under the awnings of the different cafes. The younger women are ogling from behind their fans, the old ones resuming their eternal tresillo on the balconies. Smoking, flirting, and card-playing in short, the three great occupa- tions of Spanish life going on actively. And St. Jean de Luz, at the height of its brief bathing season, is as completely Spanish as any town in the Peninsula; the natives vanishing like mice into cel- lars and attics the moment good Spanish dollars can be got in exchange for their first and second floors. A VAGABOND HEROINE. 53 As six o'clock strikes, a carriage draws up, with the extra flourishing of whips indicative of new arri- vals to be fleeced, before the Grand Hotel Isabella. Waiters, chambermaids, mine host himself, all come out, salaaming, to secure their prey ; and forth steps an elegant fool of the very first water English, and of the sex whose helplessness is its charm upon the pavement. A clothes-artist might know that this fair creature is dressed in what the profession have agreed to call " slight mourning." To the uninitia- ted eye her attire, a cunningly-devised combination of white and lilac, is suggestive of no other grief than the despairing envy of all other women who may behold it, and the absolute collapse and annihi- lation of man. " Mes bagages ou est mes ~bagages f " sighs a soft voice in that curious language known as French in suburban boarding-schools, but unintelligible south of the Channel. " Dix bagages, touts adresses, and a piece of blue ribbon on each. Dix, ten oh, would anybody make them understand ! Dix" Holding up ten helpless lavender-gloved fingers. "Really, Spencer, I think you might try to be of some little use." At this appeal another elegant fool (but of second water a cheap copy of the first, flimsy glace silk instead of richest cord) steps languidly forth from the carriage. She too is admirably helpless, and she too speaks a tongue incomprehensible out of Eng- land; the polyglot smatter of advertising abigails who " talk three languages with ease, and are will- 54 A VAGABOND HEROINE. ing to undertake any duties, not menial, while on the Continent." They address themselves to the host, to the waiters, to the coachman. Nobody understands them ; they understand nobody. " If I had only bespoken Belinda ! " sighs the lady piteously. " If you had had the slightest consideration, Spencer, you might have reminded me to telegraph to Miss O'Shea." The words have scarcely left her lips when a knot of little lads, English and French, shoulder their way along the street lads from about eleven to fourteen, sunburnt, dare-devil looking young Arabs enough ; barefooted, most of them, and with schis- teras in hand. At the word "Belinda," the fore- most of the gang turns, and nudges the boy who comes next. They all stop, they all stare ; one of them gives a low, meaning whistle across his shoul- der, and in another second or two Belinda appears upon the scene, her battered hat more battered than when we saw her first, two hours ago ; the flush of heat and victory on her brow, her espadrilles so kicked to pieces that how they keep upon her feet at all is miraculous. Belinda, like her associates, schis- tera in hand, with Costa, who has been rolling in the dust, and has a more disreputable look than usual, at her heels. She passes along, whistling, forgetful of Mr. Jones and their quarrel, of Rose's letter and threatened arrival, forgetful of everything except the game of paume she has just played and won, when A VAGABOND HEROINE. 55 suddenly the elegant fool number one looks full into the girl's face and, electrified, recognizes her. " What, Belinda, can that be you ? " " What, Rose, arrived already ! " " How dirty she is ! " (mentally). " How painted she is ! " (all but aloud.; And then the ladies kiss; hugely to the enter tainment of Belinda's comrades, who have certainly never before beheld Miss O'Shea engaged in any of these feminine amenities. "You you have grown, I think," says Hose, scrutinizing with horror-stricken eyes the girl's rag ged, dust-stained clothes, and remembering with all the shame of which her small soul is capable that the lady's maid scrutinizes them also. "And you are sunburnt you are very sunburnt, Belinda." " I should say I was, just ! If you had been playing paume under such a sun as this, you would be sunburnt, too. But where is your maid ? You don't mean to say you have travelled all the way from Brornpton to St. Jean de Luz alone ? " Rose on this gives a side-glance at her gorgeous abigail, and whispers in Belinda's ear : " That is my maid, my dear, and the most helpless, the most un- bearable creature in the world. Still, as I had her from Lady Harriet Howes and a particular favor her ladyship made of it I don't like to change. It's an immense thing," plaintively, " for one's maid to have lived in a good style of place, you know." " I know ? " repeats Belinda, with her mocking gamin laugh. " Yes, I am just the fellow to know 56 A VAGABOND HEROINE. about fine ladies and their maids, am I not ! But do you mean to say, Rose, that you and that magnifi- cently dressed young woman have travelled from one end of France to the other without getting run away with?" " I I have not been altogether without an es- cort,' 5 responds the widow, and blushes. Belinda thinks she must have been wrong about the paint ; not knowing that there are women who blush and paint too. " I was fortunate enough in Paris to come across a very old aud dear friend, who took me about a lit- tle, and then, somehow or another, I met with him again at Bordeaux. Curious coincidence, was it not ? '' laying her plump hand with girlish playful- ness upon Belinda's slender arm. " But I have more curious things still to tell you when we are alone. Mes bagrayes." This to the dignified Basque coach- man, who, with the air of a prince, his cap on his head, stands waiting to be paid. " Belinda, will you make that savage comprehend that I want my lug- gage ? I'm sure," says Rose, " my French must be better than most people's ; for I had the prize two halves following at Miss Ingrain's poor mamma cried, I had worked myself to such a shadow. But the French speak with such an extraordinary accent there's really no understanding them. Ten large boxes, tell him, each with a blue ribbon and oh, the awful dog ! Some one take the awful dog away ! " Costa has been critically examining the new-comers, mistress and maid, and conveys his poor opinion of A VAGABOND HEROINE. 57 them to Belinda by a short gruff bark. " I thought all the dogs in France had to be muzzled by law. Spencer, Spencer ! Get between me and that mon- ster!" It is long before Rose can be made to believe that her precious boxes will be brought from the station like all other people's boxes, on the hotel omnibus. Then, when rooms have to be selected for her, arise new troubles. She must have a bedroom communicating with a drawing-room (and the draw- ing-room must have a balcony covered with flowers), a bedroom near some one else's in case of fire a bedroom not too near some one else's in case of their talking in their sleep. And Spencer's must be on the same floor. And is there any way of ascertain- ing who slept in the rooms last ? Will Belinda re- quest the people of the house to swear that there has been no one here with the small-pox this summer? " Swear ? Why, a Basque will swear anything you ask him," cries the girl mischievously. " Of course people with small-pox have slept here this summer, as they have at every hotel in the place. What does it matter, Rose ? You will be so mos- quito-bitten, like our friend Augustus, by tomor- row morning, that you won't recognize yourself in the glass. A touch of small-pox more or less cannot matter/' With which scanty consolation Rose, the tears rising in her foolish, frightened eyes, has to be con- tented. " If I only knew where all these dreadful doors 58 A VAGABOND HEROINE. lead to," she sighs, looking round her with pretty timidity as soon as Mistress Spencer, lier nose well in the air, has retired to inspect her own apartment. " But I have heard such stories of what goes on in foreign hotels it was all in the papers once ; ' Judas doors' I think they called them ; and indeed the way Frenchmen stare at me in the street is enough. I declare nothing would ever tempt me to go out on the Continent alone." She languishes away to a mirror, and taking off her veil, begins to dust her delicate rose-and-white face with her cambric handkerchief. I use the word " dust" intentionally. Belinda, under the same cir- cumstances, would rub her sun-tanned skin as vigor- ously as a housemaid rubs mahogany. But women of fashion have complexions, not skins. Rose treats hers fearfully, tenderly, as you will see a connoisseur treat the surface of some fine enamel or other piece of perishable art ; not, it may be, without reason. " I have grown quite an old woman, have I not ? " She puts a smile on the corners of her lips, then turns and presents her face for the girl's admiration. " I dare say you would hardly have known me if you had met me, without warning, in the street ? Now, tell me the. honest truth, dear; I hate flattery." Rose, at this present time of her mortal life, has approached as near as it is possible for a good-looking woman ever to do to her fortieth year. But, if there be truth in that delightful French adage that a woman is the age she looks, we may call her nine and twenty ; A VAGABOND HEROINE. 59 of course I mean, after her art labors are over for the day. " Few sorrows hath she of her own," this comely, silver-tongued, bewitching widow, and no sorrows of others could by any possibility make her grieve. So she is without wrinkles. The lines in which strong love, strong grief, strong feelings of any kind grave their story on human faces, are all absent from hers. Round cheeks, breaking into dimples like a baby's when she smiles; wide-open eyes, of that unchanging yellow-hazel that ofteji accompanies flaxen lashes and eyebrows; the most charming, most insignificant little nose } r ou ever saw, and a mouth not altogether good-tempered by nature per- haps, but trained to every artificial " sweetness" of smile and word : such is Rose. Her hair, that once was palest hempen, is now as auriferous a copper as Bond-street chemistry can make it, and a marvel of luxuriance; such exquisite plaits and tresses, such sly-nestling, unexpected little ringlets ! (Has Belinda forgotten the old dinnerless days, when her tired fin- gers had to crimp and plait and curl in the shabby London lodgings ?) Her figure is plump would be over-plump, but for the corset-maker's torturing aid, and Rose's heroic resolve never to own a waist of more than twenty-two inches. Her complexion, fair naturally, improved by art, is well, a complexion, not a skin : need I say more ? Belinda examines her with eyes that would pierce all the enamel, all the rice powder in the world. kk We none of us get younger, Rose; you no more 60 A VAGABOND HEROINE. than other people. But you look well in health. I am surprised to see you out of mourning," she adds, giving a cold glance at her stepmother's white-and- lilac finery. " Has your Uncle Robert been dead six or eight weeks ? I do not remember exactly." " Eight weeks ! Oh, Belinda dear, how thought- less you are." Rose, to do her justice, feels far more amiably disposed towards Belinda than Belinda feels toward Rose. Life flows at its smoothest just at present with Cornelius O'Shea's widow. Dear Uncle Robert opportunely removed to a better world ; his will all that could be desired by surviv- ing relations ; good looks within the reach of one's own industry still, and a lover, handsome, young, well-born, to crown all. How can Rose feel any- thing but amiable, especially now that she sees how unfortunately plain this poor little alien stepdaugh- ter of hers has grown up ! " Uncle Robert has been dead more than three months, and 1 am only just in second mourning. The milliners tell me it's ridicu- lously deep, and indeed I remember seeing Lady Harriet wear scarlet less than six weeks after old Miss Howe's death ; but I I know what a friend I have lost! Of course, I could not enter upon these delicate subjects in a letter, Belinda, but Uncle Rob- ert has left me everything, unconditionally. Money, house, plate everything. I only hope I may be guided ! " says Rose, turning up her eyes, " guided to make a right use of what is intrusted to me." Colder and harder grows the expression of Be- A VAGABOND HEROINE. 61 linda's face. Can the girl forget by whose absence, whose death, Rose's good fortune was purchased ? "Oh, you are very lucky, Rose, very!' But, somehow, I cannot find words just now to wish you joy. What are your future plans? Are you going to live in that big house at Brompton all alone ? " Mrs. O'Shea's eyes sink to the ground. " I I have many things to talk to you about, Belinda, as I hinted in my letter. But when I have told all my little story I am sure you will feel for me in my position. The romance of two young lives ! " mur- murs Rose, modestly apologetic. "Love sacrificed io duty ! A heart slowly breaking during a dozen years ! Belinda, my dear girl, you have heard you must have heard of Roger Temple ? " But not by a word or look will Belinda assist the widow's bashfulness, or help her forward in her con- fession. " I believe that I have heard of such a per- son somewhere," she answers, in a tone of the most freezing indifference. " Your friend Mr. Jones men- tioned him, I think, Rose. But I pay so little atten- tion to anything Mr. Jones says ! " " Belinda, when we were both young the day will come, I hope, child, when you will sympathize more with the trials and temptations of others when we were both young, Roger Temple and I first met. And he cared for me." Dead silence ; the widow confused, and stroking down the folds of her silk dress with her white fin- gers; Belinda's slip of a figure standing upright beside the window, her arms folded, her lips and f}2 A VAGABOND HEROINE. eyes about as " sympathetic" as though they had been carved in granite. " He cared for me too much for his own peace but duty stood between us, and we parted ! " Of this the reader shall know more than by Rose's hazy utterances. "We parted. Fate was hard upon us both. And now Belinda, must I sa}>- more ? " " Say everything, please, if you want me to understand you." " Roger Temple has asked me to be his wife at last, and I" " And you are going to be married again ! " interrupts Belinda cruelly. " For the third time ! Then all I can remark is, you are very fond of being married, Rose." A heartless, unwomanly speech enough ; but Belinda, like many other raw girls of her age, is absolutely heartless in matters of love; and at this moment passionate, unreasoning jealousy against the rival of her dead father is sending the blood to her brain too quickly for her to be very nice in the choice of words. " I'm sure I don't know how you can be so un- feeling," says Rose, almost crying. " But you were always the same. Even when you were little, you had no more sensibility than a stone. And Roger always expresses himself so beautifully about you, and the Temples are such a good family, and every- thing ; and then to say that I /, of all women liv- ing, am fond of being married ! I do hope, Belinda, whatever your own opinions may be, you will not A VAGABOND HEROINE. 63 express yourself in this most heartless and indelicate manner before Captain Temple ! " " Captain Temple ? " repeats Belinda, all inno- cence. " Why, when am I ever likely to see Captain Temple ? " " You will see him in St. Jean de Luz to-day." " Captain Temple in St. Jean de Luz ! You mean to tell me, Rose, that you and a yoimg man are travelling about the world together ? " And Belinda, the first and last time in her life such hypocrisy can be recorded of her, puts on an air of outraged virtue edifying to behold. " Roger met me in Paris and again in Bordeaux," says poor Rose, blushing through her rouge with vexation. " Roger was the old friend I told you of. And there was always Spencer and we have taken care never to stop at the same hotel even. He has gone now to look for a lodging in quite another part of the town. If you knew, Belinda, if you only knew what a soul of honor Roger Temple has, you would not talk so lightly ! " "Ah, but you must remember I know nothing at all about him," retorts the girl, " and my educa- tion does not dispose me to take any man's honor on trust. Xever mind, Rosie," she goes on with an assumption of pitying complaisance ; " I am shocked, I own, but I will keep what I think to myself. I will not say a word, even to Burke." " And you will behave with feeling, with consid- eration to Roger Temple, for my sake I " 64: A VAGABOND HEROINE. Before the girl can answer, a man's step sounds in the corridor, a knock comes at the door. " Entrez" cries out Belinda, in her clear young voice. " My things ! " sighs the widow all in a tremor, her heart reverting to the possessions which lie nearer to it even than her lover her bandboxes. And the door opens. " Roger ! Yon have found your way already, then ? " Rose exclaims with rather a forced little laugh, and retreating hastily from the light that falls unbecomingly full upon her through the open win- dow. " Belinda, dearest, my very old acquaintance, Captain Temple. Now mind," with infantine candor, " I shall never forgive either of you if you don't fall in love with each other at once. I have been like that always Miss Ingram used to say I was quite absurd. Whoever I am fond of must be fond of all my friends!" But, long before Rose has ceased twittering her small falsities, Belinda's eyes and Roger Temple's have met met and spoken the truth. " In life as on railways," a master hand has writ- ten, "at certain points, whether you know it or not, there is but an inch, this way or that, into what train you are shunted." Into what train has Belinda's passionate heart been shunted, all unknowing, at this moment ! CHAPTER IY. WHAT MEN CALL LOVE. OSE spoke of the romance of two young lives, of love sacrificed to duty, of a heart slowly- breaking during a dozen years. This we may set down as the poetic form of the story about herself and Roger. Now let us have it in the prose. And in the first place, I would remark, that if Roger Temple's heart has been breaking during the length of time Rose imagines, either it must have been an extraordinarily tough heart when first the process was set up, or the process is one that slightly affects a man's outward strength and health. He is a well-knit, handsome-looking fellow ; a little sallow, perhaps, like most men whose digestions have been too long tried by climate and curry, and with a touch of Indian listlessness in his English honest blue eyes. But as to heart-break, wasting in despair, moral dys- pepsia of any kind! Ask his brother officers, the comrades who know him best, what man in the regi- ment they would consider the most absolutely free 66 A VAGABOND HEROINE. from all such disorders, and ten to one, the answer will be " Roger Temple." A first-rate shot, a bold rider, a capital fellow at the bivouac or mess table these are the things yon will hear respecting Roger among men. And as regards softer matters ? Oh, well, flirtation and young ladies are not very much in old Roger's line. If marriage is fated to overtake him, if the best fellow on earth is fated to be spoilt, it will have to be done by a coup de main. Roger might not have the heart to say "No" to a very pretty woman if she asked him outright to marry her ; but he would certainly never have the energy to undertake the preliminaries of courtship himself. Thus the coarse, indiscriminative voice of his fel- low men. How account for the discrepancy ? You remember Holmes's fancy as to the three distinct personalities to be found in every man : 1st. The man himself, the real veritable Thomas. 2d. Thomas's ideal Thomas. 3d. The ideal Thomas of Thomas's friends. To these I would add the ideal Thomas of Thomas's mistress a man in love, judged with a woman's power of judging, from a woman's standpoint, being a creature as totally strange to the poor fellow's male friends and acquaintances as to his own consciousness. The story, in the prose form, is simply this : Rose* married in her girlhood to an elderly London law yer (with whom, as an absolute nonentity, the con-' ventional husband of a charming wife, this little his- tory has no concern) and launched into a narrow cir- cle of dull professional respectability, was, at six-and- A VAGABOND HEROINE. 67 twenty, as really fresh and ingenuous a young per- son as ever breathed. Neither perruquier nor Bond street chemist needed then. Her flaxen hair, smooth- ly braided according to the fashion of the day, adorn- ed her youthful face. Her complexion, innocent of cosmetic, was, in spite of some few freckles, like a just opened dog-rose. Same order of intellect, samo depth of heart as now ; no knowledge of the world, save of -her own little pharisaical Bloomsbury Square world ; small scope for vanity, less for sentiment. So Roger Temple met and loved her. The Indian mutiny was just over at the time, and Roger, a fair-faced boy of nineteen, had come back, wounded, after his first dark taste of soldier's work, to England. He made Rose Shelmadeane's acquain- tance at an East London dinner party, to which a family lawyer of the Temples, or other unimportant agent, had led him ; made her acquaintance, sat oppo- site to her at table, and, not knowing, till dessert, at least, that she was the crown and blessing of another man's life already, conceived for her as wild a passion as ever foolish lad conceived for still more foolish woman since the world begun. The London season was at its height, even Rose's humdrum life enlivened by an unwonted share of parties, theatre-going, drives in the park, visits to the Zoological; country cousins who must be amused staying in the house. Roger saw her, dogged her, worshipped her everywhere. One of the country cousins being female and unmarried, it might be as- eumed that Mr. Temple's attentions were honorably 68 A VAGABOND HEROINE. matrimonial. Mr. Temple being well-born, young, handsome, of good expectations, was it not a manifest duty to offer him encouragement ? Thus Rose, with small platitudes, stifled her small conscience for a fortnight or so. Then the end came the end to the prologue, not the play. Watching the hippopotamus together one July Sunday afternoon at the Zoological, the country cousins, the nonentity of a husband, all but within earshot, young Master Roger made a fool of himself. In stammering, passionate whispers, told Mrs. Shel- madeane a secret which Mrs. Shelmadeane had been calmly aware of for some time past, but which it was shocking, oh, unendurably shocking, even to think of, the moment the confession happened to find its way into words. She walked away from him, her fair young matron face ablaze, and, with the air of a new Cor- nelia, laid her hand upon her husband's arm. Three evenings later Rose twenty-six, remember, Roger nineteen was waltzing with him at a ball to which duty bade her chaperone her country cousins at the Hanover Square rooms. Mr. Temple had been wicked so wicked that it really took one's breath away to think of it in daring to regard her, an honored wife, save with feel- ings of iciest respect and esteem. But then Rose, gentle soul, felt constrained to pity the poor mis- guided fellow, to lead him, if it might be, into better ways. And that Bloomsbury Square life and hus- band of hers, illumined by present experience, were A VAGABOND HEROINE. 69 so hideously monotonous, and the homage of a man, handsome, young, distinguished like Roger, was so honey-sweet to vanity. And then think how the papers had spoken of Mr. Temple's bravery in India ; think of all the horrid Sepoys he must have killed, his arm still in that interesting black sling. What could Rose do but accord the lad the friendship for which he pleaded, and agree to forget that fatal, erring, not altogether charmless, moment when they watched the hippopotamus together at the Zoo. A better woman, or a worse one, a woman inspired by imagination or guided by experience, might have been terrified at such a position. Good, passionless, unimaginative, self -saturated Rose, the first little cold shock of'the plunge over, felt no terror at all. What she did feel strongest, I think (when one can disinter it sufficiently for analysis from the mass of small vanities, triumphs before partnerless country cousins, etc., in which it was embedded), was gratified sense of power. " Scratch a slave's skin, you find a tyrant under- neath." Rose, like some other millions of her sisters, had been a slave from her birth, first as a girl then as a wife I speak of moral servitude, of course. All at once she found herself in the position of a ruler ; and she used her new prerogative as human beings who are not to power born are apt to use it. The young fellow gave up for her his time, his friends, his pleasures ; gave up for her his life, and received in return what ? Sermons, a soiled white 70 A VAGABOND HEROINE. glove or two, and enough half-dead flowers (he has some of these in his possession still) to fill a respect- able herbarium. By degrees the story got known, not in Hose's starched Bloomsbury Square circle, but among Roger Temple's bachelor friends, most of whom, indeed, contrived to gain a glimpse of Mrs. Shelmadeane. Heavens, what a common-place, dowdy little mortal poor Roger's divinity was pronounced to be by men not, like himself, under the glamour of passion! Pretty, if you will, the kind of red-and-white stupid beauty you will meet a dozen times a day in any provincial town ; but nothing, positively nothing more. And Roger of all others, with his fastidious tastes, his high-flown boyish ideal of feminine grace and refinement, to have lost his senses about this little Bloomsbury Square prude ! Roger, to whom half the best houses in town stood open, upon whom good and handsome and well-born women by the score would have smiled, had he so chosen ! The infatuation lasted out the London season. Then old Shelmadeane carried his wife off to Mar- gate tardily suspicious, perhaps, as to the kind of sacrifice she was making to duty and Roger's leave of absence came to an end. He was angry, bitter, sick at heart ; his divinity during their last interview having sermonized and sympathized, and altogether tortured him beyond measure ; determined to return to India without seeing her again, determined to despise, to forget her. He determined all this ; likelier than not would have carried it into execu- A VAGABOND HEROINE. 71 tion to the letter at nineteen so much is possible to the human heart had Mrs. Shelmadeane been will- ing. But Mrs. Shelmadeane was very far indeed from willing. She was (I make the statement advisedly, uncon- ditionally, so as not to have to go over the same ground again), both now and hereafter, one of the most rigidly virtuous women, as far as conduct goes, that ever breathed. She was not certainly at that early period of her life, in any ordinary sense of the word, a coquette. But she loved her new taste of power with all the faculties for loving nature had bestowed upon her, and for no consideration, short of saving her soul from actual transgression, would have given her slave back his freedom. He must look forward to nothing ; not even to the day when he might legitimately claim her hand. She would feel herself oh dear ! the guiltiest of creatures if she could encourage anybody to look forward with hope to anybody else's death. What is such hope, Rosie would say, piously shaking her blonde head, but another kind of murder? Mr. Temple must look forward to nothing in the future, must ask for nothing in the present, must always remember, please, that she was married to a man whose moral worth she respected, always speak and act as if Mr. Shelmadeane were present. But whether he re- mained in England, or whether he went back to India, Roger Temple must not regain his freedom ! She wrapped up her feelings, even to her own soul, in the very prettiest tinsel paper of all hypoc- 72 A VAGABOND HEROINE. risy's store. To let that poor boy depart in his present frame of mind, would be to let him depart desperate. He might even go arid marry some Dreadful Creature in revenge, as men with blighted affections have been known to do, and she would have the burthen on her conscience. Who should say what the effect of a perfect reconciliation, of a few solemn sisterly words at parting, might have upon all the poor young fellow's future career r ( And she wrote to him a sweet little plaintive kind of note, in her school-girl hand, with her school- girl phrases ; that, also, Roger Temple keeps still ! Accidentally Mr. Shelmadeane had heard in the city that Mr. Roger Temple was going back to India at once. Surely he did not mean to start without bid- ding his sincerest friends and well-wishers adieu ? They had gone to Margate for change, and Margate was rather dull, Rosie confessed ingenuously. But Mr. Shelmadeane, on the whole, complained less of his gout, so she must be grateful. And they dined at six. And Mr. Shelmadeane was always at home, except on Mondays and Tuesdays. When would Mr. Temple come \ Neither on a Monday or a Tuesday, as some older men, versed in the world's ways, might, after the receipt of such a note, have ventured upon do- ing. For no personal gratification would young Roger have abused the angelic, childlike simplicity of the woman he loved. Honorably, quixotically, on a day when he was certain of finding the husband A VAGABOND HEROINE. 73 at home, he went down to Margate, and for the last time held Mrs. Shelmadeane's white hand in his. What a parting scene it was to him ! Dinner first with the old lawyer prosing politics and grum- bling over the dressing of his turbot ; his wife, with her girlish innocent face, smiling nuptial smiles at him across the table. Then dessert, torture of tor- tures, when Rosie insisted upon leaving her husband and "his" friend alone. Finally the half hour's stroll on the beach, "just to smoke one last cigar with poor Mr. Shelmadeane," said Rosie, a tremor discernible to Roger, if to no one else, in her soft voice. For about three minutes out of this half hour divinest, crudest moments Roger's young life had experienced chance willed that they should be alone. And in these their farewells were spoken ; a madness of farewells, among the Margate bathing machines. And then old Shelmadeane pounced down upon them. "A quarter to nine, sir. Unless you mean to miss your train, you must be off."' And for a dozen shifting, fateful years they saw each other's faces no more. Long letters passed between them, with or without Mr. Shelmadeane's knowledge I refrain from speak- ing with certainty on this point but letters cer- tainly that Mr. Shelmadeane or any one else in the world might have read with safety. Rose, indeed, half thoiTght at times that her victim repressed all allusion to his tortures too successfully. Every mail, every second mail at first ; then once in three or four mouths ; then twice a year. So the correspondence 4 74 A VAGABOND HEROINE. attending Roger's ill-starred passion was carried on- At last Mr. Shelmadeane died. And Roger Temple, of course, flew to England to put in first claim for the possession of his beloved one's hand ? No, Roger Temple did nothing of the kind. He was away up the country, pig-sticking, when the letter containing the news of Rosie^s widowhood reached him, after some delay. And he loved sport passionately. And the two or three men who formed the party happened to be his closest friends. And must not weeds be worn a decent time before they are replaced by wedding favors ? Con- sidering Rosie's fine propriety of sentiment, her highly-strung, shrinking nature, could a man dare Well, 'twas a curious little imbroglio altogether, highly illustrative of human weakness in the matter of attainable and unattainable desires. But our busi- ness, at present, being rather with the chronicling of fact than the depiction of feeling or motive, I pro- ceed. Roger neither rushed to England nor wrote any letter designed to compromise his Rosie's newly- gained liberty. It must be remembered that he had now been wasting in despair during a good many years; also that men get into the habit of every- thing, even of hopeless passion, and against their better reason may feel disturbed by having to aban- don a settled mode of thought. Like the proverbial Frenchman who exclaims when, after a lifetime's separation, he is about to be lawfully united to the woman he loves, u But what shall I do with my A VAGABOND HEROINE. 75 evenings?" Roger Temple, on old Shelmadeane's dea.th, might have been tempted to ask himself, "But what shall I do with my despair?" " The greatest charm of a married woman,'' says a spiteful dramatist, " is invariably her husband ! " When Roger's foolish lips first stammered their secret in the Zoological Gardens, or trembled out their mad farewells upon the Margate beach, it would have been hard to convince him that Mrs. Shelma- deane's greatest charm was Mr. Shelmadeane. But time sharpens many an epigram that seems pointless to us in our youth. He wrote the widow as exquisitely-delicate a let- ter of condolence as was ever penned ; putting him- self and his own selfish hopes and fears utterly away in the background ; dwelling wholly on her and on her loss. He spoke tenderly, but with vagueness, of the long years of their separation ; he spoke with greater vagueness still of the day of their possible reunion. Of marriage, of anything that could by possibility be construed into a hint of marriage, he spoke not a word. An ordinarily intelligent woman, before she had read such a letter to the end, would have known that her lover's love for her was over. Rose, guided by the irrefragable logic of a fool, deduced from it only a new proof of her slave's devotion to her welfare. " There is one, far distant, who adores me, but who is too high-souled, too generous, to think of anything but my grief ! " she would say to Major O'Shea, who got an introduction to the pretty widow, 76 A VAGABOND HEROINE. and indeed set steadily to work love-making, before her crape was six weeks old. " Ah, Major O'Shea, if you had only the conscientiousness, the noble, for- bearing, unselfish nature of that poor fellow in India ! " And then Cornelius would respond to the effect of his heart being stronger than his reason, of his impetuous feelings (he was nearer fifty than forty at the time, and had been in love, after one fashion or another, since he wore jackets) his impetuous feel ings hurrying him beyond the cold bounds of con ventional decorum. And the widow would sigh and blush, and wipe a tear or two, and call him a sad, sad man, as she yielded her hand to be kissed. And the upshot of it all was, that the next news Roger Temple got of Rose Shelmadeane was a flaming announcement in the " Times" of her infidelity to him ; by special license, an archdeacon and three or four of the lesser clergy assisting, at St. George's, Hanover Square. Singular perversity of men's nature ! The news of this marriage cost him not only the most poignant jealousy, but a revival of his love in all its first fresh ardor. The existence of a husband, of any husband, seemed really some necessary, mysterious condition of Roger Temple's passion. You should have seen the letter of good wishes that he wrote the bride ; bitterest veiled reproach discernible through every courteous phrase, every pleasant little congratulatory message to Major O'Shea ! Rosie cried herself almost plain for the day after receiving it ; hid it A VAGABOND HEROINE. 77 jealously from Cornelius, to whose philosophic mind the whole matter, you may be sure, would have been one of profoundest indifference ; and wrote Roger a pleading, self-extenuating reply by return of mail, with three violets ah, did Captain Temple remem- ber the bunches of violets he used to bring her dur- ing the happy days of their friendship in Blooms- bury Square ? enclosed. And Captain Temple, Rose has had his own word for it since, kissed violets and letter both, and set up the writer on the old pedestal in his imagination I was very nearly writing his heart that she had ever held. Roger himself stands, hat in hand, all this time awaiting Belinda's reception of him, we will have done, in as few words as possible, with retrospect of the love story. Some slight insight into Rose's domestic grievances as Mrs. O'Shea, the reader has had already ; we need not further enlarge upon them. Cornelius spent her money, neglected her, went to America, where his fate awaited him. And Rose, on her Uncle Robert's death, found herself once more free free and with a handsome little income, villa at Brompton, plate, linen, and accessories, at her own disposal. And then it was that she and her old lover looked again upon each other's faces. Roger had 1 returned to England unexpected by his friends, his long leave having been given him some months earlier than he anticipated; and on a certain May night, Rose at that moment believing him to be thousands of miles 78 A VAGABOND HEROINE. away in India, knocked at the door of the Brompton villa and inquired, in a voice whose accents he vainly strove to command, if Mrs. O'Shea was at home. It was late for a visit of ceremony, between ten and eleven o'clock, and the starched-looking butler of occasion who answered his knock informed him pom- pously that Mrs. O'Shea was at home, but not visible to strangers. Mrs. O'Shea had had company to din- ner, and " Mrs. O'Shea will see me," interrupted Roger. " You need not even announce me. I am expected." And in another minute he found himself among the wax-lights and guests and brand-new gilding and upholstery of Rose's drawing-room. He slipped in, unannounced, as he desired, and looked round the assemblage in vain for Rose. Seven or eight women, of quasi-fashion, bare-shoul- dered, jewelled, flower-bedecked, were present. He looked among them in vain for the modest face and smoothly braided blonde head of Rose Shelmadeane. At last a fluffy-haired, brilliantly complexioned alas, that I must write it ! middle-aged lady came forward to him and bowed ; a lady extremely over- dressed or underdressed as you like to term it. " I am not aware that I have the honor " she began, looking at him strangely. And then he knew her voice. Poor Rose, if she could have seen into her quon- dam lover's heart just at that moment ! He watched her during the next hour or so with feelings about equally balanced of disappointment A VAGABOND HEROINE. 79 and blank surprise. Every woman's good looks must decline after the lapse of the twelve best years of her maturity, and Rose's had really, in the common acceptation of the phrase, " worn well." But it was not any fading due to age, it was not time's natural footprints on cheek or brow, that shocked him thus; it was the absolute, startling, transformation of her whole personality ! Soberest, most dove-like of young matrons at twenty -six, Rose, a dozen years later, had developed into the very friskiest of mature sirens, all her girlish promise of silliness ripened into a bounteous harvest of meridional folly. The lint-white, smooth-braided locks were copper-gold now, frizzled high in won- drous monstrous pyramids above her head, with out- lying curls and puffs and chignons that defy descrip- tion. The faint rose-bloom complexion had become definite pearl and carmine, the pale eyebrows grown dark ; the eyes, not wholly innocent of belladonna, were a little fixed and hard ; the decorous half-high dress of the old Bloomsbury Square days was replaced by well, by the drapery of a Greek statue. Roger, who had lived so long away from London, did not know that this is the received way in which the modern English matron of repute " grows old gracefully," and, as I said, gazed at poor Rose's full- blown charms with a sensation curiously blent of amazement and repulsion ; a sensation, let me add, of which he was himself heartily ashamed. This lasted till the departure of Rose's guests left them alone. Then, hearing more of the old, sweet, 80 A VAGABOND HEROINE. appealing voice no meretricious change had affected that and his eyes, it may be, growing accustomed to the outward plastering of his ruined idol, Roger's heart grew softer. He had not really dined, Mrs. O'Shea discovered ; had arrived in London late that afternoon, and, for- getful of bodily sustenance, had rushed away to call on her at once. So a little supper was organized, ac- companied by a bottle of Uncle Robert's best cham- pagne. And then this man and woman, who had played at love so long, began looking into each other's eyes, to talk of all that they had suffered (in imagina- tion or reality) since they parted. And the cruel in- tervening years faded away. Thtey were whispering beside the hippopotamus, they were murmuring fare- wells upon the Margate beach, again. And by and by Rose's hand, youthful and white still, found its' way into Captain Temple's. It trembled ; he pressed it to reassure her. Rose, with a sigh, made a feint of moving away. And then, for the first time in their lives, their lips met, and Roger's fate was sealed. The wax-lights had burnt low by now, and Rose kept her face well in shadow, nay, hid it bashfully out of sight, on her lover's breast. And when he kissed her beautiful golden hair it never occurred to him to think from what dead head it might have been sheared ; and when at ast she lifted up her face to falter out softest promises of life-long truth, he did not even see the deposit of rice powder it had left upon his waistcoat ! A VAGABOND HEROINE. gl Who loves, cavils not ; and Roger Temple, or Roger Temple's imagination, loved, during this hour's intoxication at least. "What he thought and felt next morning, when he had to review his position, and Mrs. O'Shea's complexion by daylight, none but Roger Temple ever knew. He was not, it must be borne in mind, a ladies' man, had associated little with women during the later years of his life, had studied them less. And his reverence for the whole sex was extreme based rather on ideal foundations, indeed, than on fact. If sometimes the sense of his mistake galled him, ii sometimes he felt the shame inseparable from the position of a lover who loves not, you may be sure that Rose and the world never found it out. Rosie loved him ! What matters some disparity of years if a woman's aifections be young ! When the fruit after which a man has longed for years drops between his lips at last, has he a right to complain because time has somewhat over-mellowed its flaver? So Roger would fain argue himself into good con- ceit with his bargain, so reconcile his heart to the at- tainment of its fondest desires. And still at times his spirit is heavy laden ; still through rouge, and bismuth, and pearl powder, old age will peer out at him from the face of his be- trothed, and turn his heart cold. " You really grow more and more foolish every day you live, my dear Roger," Rose will remark, prettily conscious of her own charms as she meets 4* 82 A VAGABOND HEROINE. his gaze. " What can it be, I wonder, that makes you look at me as you do ? " " The years of our separation, my love," is invari- ably Roger's answer. " I have to make up now, re- member, for the dozen years during which I never saw your face." And Rose, promptly satisfied by any appeal to vanity, asks no more. 3HAPTER V. COMPLIMENTS, NOT CARESSES. ! BLIND A'S eyes have met Roger's, and, in spite of ail her foregone jealous resolves, the girl finds it hard to steel herself against Rosie's future husband. Never in her whole vagabond, loveless life has such honest human sun- shine shone on her as shines now in Roger Temple's smile. " I don't know about falling in love, but I am sure Belinda and I mean to be friends, Rosie," he says, advancing. " Do we not, my dear?" And before she can find time to put herself on guard. Captain Temple's bronzed moustache has touch- ed her cheek. It is the kind of salutation that could scarce, by the very iciest prude, be stigmatized as a kiss, and yet it bears a sufficiently marked family re- semblance to one to be unpleasant in Rosie's sight. " I, I really, Roger Belinda looks so ridiculously younger than she is ! " "Not a bit," cries Roger, and now he rests his hand kindly on the little girl's shoulder. " Belinda 84 A VAGABOND HEROINE. is fifteen years old you told me, did you not, that she was fifteen? Well, and she looks it. Don't mind Rosie, Belinda. Rosie turns rusty at the thought of having a grown-up daughter." " I shall be seventeen the week after next," says Belinda, holding up her chin. " I don't know what people mean by taking me for a child. I have cer- tainly seen enough of the world and its wickedness to make me feel old," she adds, with the accustomed hard little rebellious ring in her voice. " Belinda will look different I trust Belinda will look totally different when she is properly dressed," says the widow, glancing down at her own elegantly flowing draperies. " I must really have a sjerious talk with Miss Burke about these short skirts.'' " Ah, but Miss Burke is not here to be talked with, Rosie," cries Belinda, bent, it would seem, on disclosing every obnoxious truth she can hit upon. " My natural guide and protector has been away in Spain a week or more, collecting facts for her book, and I am knocking about alone, as you see me and my dog Costa." " Alone ! " stammers Rose, shocked not so much, perhaps, at the fact itself, as at having the fact expos- ed before Roger. " You don't mean actually alone, my dear ? " " "Well, no ; I have my chums, of course, the fel- lows who were with me in the street when you arriv- ed. Now, Rose," she goes on, pitilessly, " tell the truth ! Were you or were you not ashamed when you first saw me \ " A VAGABOND HEROINE. 85 " I I was surprised, Belinda," says Rose, in her sweetest little feminine treble. " It is not usual in England, you know, to see a girl of seventeen wear- ing her dress above her ankles. And then those fear- O ful what must I call them, Belinda ? what do they call those fearful door-mat things you have on your feet ? " They call those fearful things alpargetas in Spanish, espadriMes in French," answers Belinda, coolly holding out a ragged sandalled foot for inspec- tion. " If you played paume on the hot sand for hours together as I do, you would be glad to wear espadrilles, Rose ; yes, or to go barefoot altogether, as I do oftener than not." A blush of burning shame rises over the widow's o face. She has made a good deal of small capital, one way or another, out of Belinda's high birth to Roger, who is somewhat unduly sensitive about his future wife's connections, generally. The Earl of Lisk- eard's granddaughter so like the Yansitart family without being regularly pretty, a great air of breed- ing, of distinction about our poor little Belinda, et cetera. And now to find her, what ? Ragged, dirty with the speech and manner (this is Rose's verdict, not mine) of a charity school child, and mentioning, actually mentioning before a gentleman, the indeli- cate word " barefoot." " Our dear Belinda wants a year or two of sound English training," she remarks, in a tone that to Roger sounds dove-nice, but that Belinda remembers and interprets onlv too well. " That is the worst of 86 A VAGABOND IIEROINE. continental education ! One has to sacrifice so many good solid English qualities for accomplishments. Still in these days a girl must be accomplished. A couple of years in a select English boarding-school will, I have no doubt, render Belinda all that our fondest wishes could desire." Belinda, on the conclusion of this little tirade, looks hard into her stepmother's eyes for a moment or two ; then, shouldering her schist era, she moves across to the door. " I must be off," turning and bestowing a nod full of caustic meaning on the lovers. " And unless you want me to join some gang of wandering gypsy players, as I have often thought of doing, you had better not talk about boarding-schools any more. My accomplishments, Captain Temple," looking with an air of mock modesty " Rose talks of my accomplish- ments, for which the good solid English qualities have been sacrificed ! I will tell you what they are, and you shall say which I am best suited for a booth in a Basque fair, or a select English boarding-school ! Paume playing 'tis the same game, Mr. Jones tells me, as your English fives paume," checking off each accomplishment on her dark, slim fingers as she pro- ceeds, "bolero dancing, a tolerable acquaintance with slang in four languages " " Belinda ! " " Oh ! let me finish the list, Rose ! Let me make the best of myself that I can in Captain Temple's eyes. Bolero-dancing, slang, paume^of each a lit- tle. Knowledge, learnt practically, of how to keep A VAGABOND HEROINE. 87 myself and dog on twenty sous a day board-wages. And a taste for bull-fights so strong, oh ! so strong," this with unaffected enthusiasm, "that I would sooner go without meat for a fortnight and church for a year than miss the chance of going to one. For further particulars apply to Mr. Augustus Jones." And so exit Belinda, whistling yes, Rose, whist- ling; keep from fainting if you can as she goes. " A quaint little original, our future daughter," says Roger, whose eyes have certainly opened wider during the conclusion of Belinda's tirade. " But a good-hearted child, I'll be bound. You must not be too hard on her, Rose." " I hard ! " sighs the widow, looking at him re- proachfully. " When was I ever hard on any one 2 If you knew, Roger .but of course men never under- stand these things the trial that poor girl has al- ways been! I can assure you I lo'ok upon Belinda as a chastisement, sent to rne for some wise purpose by Providence." She seats herself on a sofa, discreetly away in the half light, and with an air of resignation takes out her pocket-handkerchief. " I have made sacrifices no real mother would have made for her can I ever forget the devoted, blind attachment of her poor dear papa for me? Sending her away, heaven knows at what expense, to the continent, and always writing that she should have the best of masters, and every- thing; and now this is the result. How painfully plain she is." "Plain? No, Rosie, anything but plain. Belin- 88 A VAGABOND HEROINE. da is just at that awkward age when one does not know what to make of girls, and her dress is not quite like other people's, is it ? But she has magnifi- cent eyes, a-nd a pretty hand." " A pretty hand ! Belinda's hands pretty ! Why. they are enormous, six and three-quarters at least, two sizes bigger than mine, and as brown, but you think every one you see lovely, Roger," says Rose pettishly. " I declare one might just as well be ugly one's self. I have never heard you speak of any woman yet that you could not find something to admire in her." " And all because of you, my dearest ! " cries Captain Temple, with warmth. " "When a man ad- mires one woman supremely, can you not imagine that every other woman, yes, even the plainest, must possess something fair in his sight for her sake ? " He comes across to her, stoops, and rests his hand on his betrothed's fair head. It is a favorite action of Roger's, and one that Rose would be exceedingly well pleased to see him abandon. Who can tell what horrible trick postiche or plait may not play one in some unguarded moment of more than com- mon tenderness ? " Oh, Roger, how can you ? " She shifts a little uneasily from his touch. " Really you get sillier and sillier every day." It is a fixed idea of the widow's that Roger Temple's feelings for her are precisely of the same irrepressible and rapturous nature as they were when he was a boy of nineteen a happy, fixed idea, lightening Roger's courtship more than he wots A VAGABOND HEROINE. 89 of. " Lucky, I am sure, that Belinda is gone. Do von know I was so afraid you would say or do some- thing embarrassing before her! How do I look, Eoger dear? Tired and hideous, don't I ? Now I insist upon your telling me the truth." How do I look, Roger dear ? is the burden ever of their love scenes. Compliments, not caresses, are what Rose's heart of hearts yearns for ; and Roger, after the past few weeks' apprenticeship, finds it no very difficult task to frame them. To have to pay compliments to the same woman during six or eight hours of every consecutive day, would, in most cases, be a tolerably severe strain on a man's imaginative faculty. Rose, who is absolutely without imagina- tion herself, requires the exercise of none in others. A parrot gets no more wearied with its own eternal " Pretty Poll/' than does poor Rosie of the eternal, pointless, stereotyped commonplaces of flattery. "You look charming, Rose. I never saw you look better. Your eyes are as bright " Roger does not find a simile come readily to his hand, but Rose is content to take his good intentions on trust. " And your dress all these lavender frills and this white lace ! Rosie, how is it that you always man- age to wear prettier dresses than any other woman in the world ? " He must have asked her the same question, on a moderate calculation, about two hundred times since they were first engaged. At this moment he knows how often he has asked it, and the precise fluttering of denial, and little bewitching, foolish laugh with 00 A VAGABOND HEROINE. which Rosie will respond. And he sighs ; if he had courage to relieve his soul in the way nature prompts, would yawn. Terrible point in a love affair when we have learned to disguise a yawn under a sigh ; terrible point in a love affair when we have learned to disguise anything ! " I shall be quite unhappy about my dresses if they do not arrive soon," Rose goes on presently " Ten large cases, you remember.'' Does not Roger remember those awful ten cases well ; in Paris, Bor- deaux, everywhere ? " And a bit of blue ribbon on each. There can be no mistake if the railway peo- ple are honest, but abroad one never knows. I'm sure nothing would have been easier than for Be- linda to run back to the station ; still, she did not offer, and in my delicate position as a stepmother, I have never required the slightest attention from the poor girl. Oh, Roger," Rose's hand is in her lover's now, and he is beside her on the sofa, " if I dared, how much I should like to tell you a secret some- thing we are all concerned in ! " Roger's natural reply is, what should prevent her telling it ? Ought there to be any secret, present or to come, between persons whose lives, like theirs, are to be spent in one long, delightful confidence? " Well, then I'm a very naughty girl, I know," Rose avows kittenishly, "and I dare say you will scold me sadly, but I've been match-making ! It is not quite by accident that Mr. Augustus Jones is in St. Jean de Luz ! " "Accident or no accident, the fact is a deuced A VAGABOND HEROINE. 91 unpleasant one," remarks Captain Temple. " How or why Mr. Jones came here is Mr. Jones's own con- cern, but the bore of having to encounter him ! I really did hope, Rose, that we had seen the last of that atrocious man when we left London." "You are prejudiced against him, sir. I'm afraid you don't like poor Augustus because he was a little too attentive to me." " Eose ! " " Oh, come, Roger, I know what your ruling passion is, and always has been. The green-eyed monster, sir " " Rosie, I swear r " Well, we cannot help these things, my dear; I am ridiculously without jealousy myself. Poor Major O'Shea often said he wished he could see me a little more jealous, but I can make every allowance for it in others. I ought, I am sure," adds Rose, with a reminiscent sigh. " I ought to be able to bear all the jealous suspiciousness of men's natures after the experience I have had ! '' There is silence for a minute, and any one watch- ing Roger Temple's face attentively might discern there a good deal the look of a man who is trying to repress his weariness under the perpetual, exacting babble of a child. "I don't think you judge of me quite correctly, Rose," he remarks after a time. '' Who ever judges another correctly ? Who can read but by his own light ? We were talking of Mr. Jones, were we not? Ah, yes, and you think me jealous of Jones ! So be it my dear. Poor little 92 A VAGABOND HEROINE. Rosie," he bends forward and salutes the widow's cheek very tenderly, I may almost say fearfully. Roger is better acquainted with feminine weakness, as regards rice powder especially, than he was on that first fatal night at Brompton. " And now what about this grand secret of yours ? You have been match-making, have you ? I hope you don't mean to marry our litle daughter Belinda to Mr. Augustus Jones ? " " He would be an extremely nice husband for her, from a worldly point of view," says Rose, turning over and over the diamond, a gift of Roger's that rests on her plump third finger. " And as to educa- tion old Mr. Jones was sensible of his own deficien- cies, and had his son coached up by the most expen- sive tutors. Any one hearing Augustus talk would say that he was quite well educated enough for a married man." " And presentable enough, refined enough ? The sort of husband a girl could not only love, but be proud of? Well, Rosie, manage it as you choose. If you like Mr. Jones, and if Belinda likes Mr. Jones, you may be sure that I shall not forbid the banns." " Ah, there is the difficulty. Belinda does not like Mr. Jones. Belinda and I never liked the same thing or person yet." Poor Rosie, if the mantle of prophecy could but fall upon her shoulders at this moment ! " But you could help me so much, dear, if you would and you will, I know? '' upraising her eyes coaxingly to her lover's. " You will help me in my plans for Belinda's happiness? It was all A VAGABOND HEROINE. 93 through me, Roger don't be cross with me if I con- fess the truth it was all through me that Mr. Jones came to St. Jean de Luz. " Through you that Mr. Jones came to St. Jean de Luz ! And why should I be cross with you, you little goose ? '' Rosie talks like a girl of sixteen : Roger treats her like a girl of sixteen yet is sensible, mournfully sensible, ever, of the grotesqueness of so doing. " You see, I knew that Augustus was anxious to marry. I suspected, feared," says Rose, with modest grace, " that his hopes in same directions might have been just a little blighted, and the thought struck me as he was going abroad and had asked me to plan his tour for him the thought struck me to bring him and Belinda together. What he wants is connection, what she wants is money " " But Belinda is a child still," interrupts Roger Temple. " You are building all these castles in the air, dear, kind little soul that you are, Rosie, for her good, but the thing is ridiculous. Belinda's home must be with us for the next three or four years. Ample time, then, to begin match-making. How could a child of her age possibly decide," goes on honest Roger " how could an innocent-hearted child of Belinda's age possibly decide whether she ought or ought not to sell herself for the so many thousands a year of a snob like Jones ? " " Roger, my dear," answers Rose in her sweetest, most angelic tones whenever she is annoyed, Mrs. O'Shea's angelic proclivities become more marked j 94 A VAGABOND HEROINE. " excuse me if I tell you that all those romantic ideas about ' selling one's self for money ' are out of date. Belinda never was a' child. Belinda has not one youthful sentiment belonging to her ; and as to inno- cence, poor thing! you heard what she said about bull-fights, without fainting! Those fine, interest- ing-looking fellows in such danger, and the horrid bulls goring everybody. I'm sure to see a picture, to read a description of one, is sickening enough." " A matter of custom and nerve, Rosie. I have known some English women capable of worse cruelty than being present at a bull-fight." " And the very best thing for the girl's safety and our peace of mind will be to get her respectably settled as quickly as possible. My own opinion of Belinda I would say so to no one but you, Roger is that she is without heart. And a woman without heart" But the generalization is opportunely cut short by the arrival of the boxes and blue ribbons. In her joy over her recovered finery, Rosie forgets all other human considerations ; and her lover, with orders only to smoke one cigar, and to be back at the post of duty in an hour at latest, recovers a breathing space of liberty. CHAPTER VI. " MRS. GRUNDY, SIR ! " PINE-WOOD ballroom, wide open on three sides to the sea, an orchestra composed of harp and piano, a second smaller room for ecarte and tresillio; such is the St. Jean de Luz Cas- ino. Hither evening after evening resorts as motley a crowd as you will anywhere meet in your travels ; the bluest blood of Castile side by side with Jew shop- keepers from Burgos, heads crowned and decrowned, wandering artists, respectabilities and other-respect- abiliti&3, all jostled together in the delightful repub- licanism of watering-place life. Hither, when the absence of Miss Burke gives her freedom by night as well as by day, comes Belinda. Not within the precincts, sacred to payers, of the ballroom. A terrace of sand extends round the whole area of the building; and from this terrace Belinda, with other waifs and estrays like herself, is accus- tomed to watch the dancers, the dresses, the pretty women, the flirtations inside I am afraid not with- out some occasional sharp pangs of envy at her heart. 96 A VAGABOND HEROINE. Once, and once only, has the poor little girl been asked to dance. Maria Jose de Seballos, the bering- ed and bergamotted young Seville wine merchant, who, as we have seen, still holds a place in her dreams, did on one never-to-be-forgotten evening, the last before he left St. Jean de Luz, invite her for a waltz. And Belinda, in her shabby dress and espa- drilles, was for the space of about eight minutes in paradise, whirling, blissfully whirling, among ladies in silks and flowers and jewels, the arm of the real grown-up partner supporting her, the whispers, sweet to vanity though redolent of garlic to the senses, of a real grown-up partner in her ear ! Such a stroke of fortune, she knows, is not likely to befall her again. Maria Jose talked nonsense to her in plenty (such nonsense as men of all nations do talk when they dance with unfledged girls), bade her remember him in her prayers till the day came when he should return and carry her away for good to Seville, and so on. But Maria Jose, let Belinda dream as she may, is gone forever. Mr. Jones, the only other young man she knows in the world, does not dance round dances, and certainly would not choose a partner in a black frock and frayed-out san- dals if he did. Her lot in life is to look on a wall- flower not yet seventeen with pulses beating madly to the music, and nimble feet that will not hold themselves still, and eyes that say "Dance with me, dance with me," to ah 1 the smart young gentlemen, as they lounge up and down the ball-room ! Smart young gentlemen who, if they see Belinda at all. see A VAGABOND HEROINE. 97 in her only an ugly child in pigtails and a torn frock, and whose coldly indifferent glances her heart, older than her looks, is not slow to interpret. She haunts the terrace, as is her wont, Costa at her heels, between nine and ten o'clock of the first evening of Rose's arrival. It is an unusually gay little ball at the Casino ; some near connection of ex-Spanish royalty present ; and the dancing-room is thronged. Swan-like throats and delicate complexions from Madrid, oriental eyes and Titian-like coloring from Seville, marble whiteness and chiselled Grecian features from Cadiz. Oh, what pretty women these Spaniards are, what a jest is life to them ! A song, a waltz, a flirtation in their earlier years, and then tre- sillio and prayers to the end. As responsible, exam- ination-passing, degree-taking human creatures, wom- en of Anglo-Saxon race have everything to be proud of, thankful for. But knowing nothing, like children, and like children enjoying everything, how thorough- ly, unconsciously charming are these soft-faced wom- en of the South ! They are in full dress, almost without exception, this evening. On occasion, when a Parisian woman of fashion will drape her meagre charms to the chin, a Spanish one will invariably appear bravely bare- shouldered. And this not in the ballroom or on the balcony only. Of a moonlight night, here in St. Jean de Luz, you will meet them by dozens, full dressed, yes, and in satin slippers, with flowers in their hair, calmly promenading along the streets or in the public gardens of the town. And what a be- . 5 98 A VAGABOND HEROINE. coming full dress it is ! The national veil and high comb, a la manola, which a short time back were things well-nigh of the past throughout the Penin- sula, are the highest mode among the Spanish aris- tocracy to-day. So can the party whose motto is " Fuera d estrangero '' mutely protest against the in- truder now profaning the sacred throne of the Cas- tiles. How fervently every painter must hope that no political revulsion will send graceful malcontents back to the trailing skirts and towering head-gear and ever-changing milliners' modes, each one more inartistic than the last, of Paris and London. " They are not exactly bad-looking," says Rose, glancing about her coldly ; " not quite such an orange yellow as I expected. But their style is distressingly theatrical, is it not, Mr. Jones ! " Rosie has come to the Casino ball well escorted ; Mr. Jones, who is also staying at the Hotel Isabella, on one side, hei legitimate slave I mean her future lord and master on the other. " Captain Temple," she runs on to Roger, " you say you think these creatures hand- some ! How would you like to see any one you cared for, any English woman, dance in public with a bare neck and short skirt, as they do ? " " The short skirts display admirable ankles, Rose," replies Roger. "Are introductions necessary in these parts of the world, I wonder? I should like to tempt my fate with that little blonde in pink satin, if I dared. Or will you waltz with me your- self, Rosie ? '' In a whisper this. " For the sake of old days, my love ! We have never waltzed together A VAGABOND HEROINE. 99 since that night you remember ? at the Hanover Square Rooms." But Rosie, a good many years ago, gave up round dancing, finding that exercise, indeed, phys- ically incompatible with the maintenance of a waist of twenty-two inches. She enforces her position now upon the very rigidest moral and aesthetic grounds. " I never waltz, on principle, Roger. I do not approve of fast dances. I think it the worst possible taste for a woman who has experienced the serious sorrows of life to take part in such frivolity. But dance, pray, if you like. Think of your own amuse- ment, not of mine. I understood that we came here to look on. But it does not matter. Nothing mat- ters. Amuse yourself ! I dare say Mr. Jones will not mind having to take care of me while you are away." Tears are in Mrs. O'Shea's eyes, and Roger, of course, remains. It is no very great sacrifice for him to make. The little blonde in pink satin is distractingly pretty; she is glancing at him above her fan at this moment. But a man who has passed the dozen best years of his life in Madras can scarcely be enthusiastic about waltzing with the thermometer at ninety-eight. And it is better a dozen times daily Roger tells himself this better far to get bro- ken thoroughly and at once to the bit which he has O v voluntarily taken between his teeth. A man choos- ing a bride of Rosie ? s age must learn to " look on" at most of life's amusements, and by her side. Poor 100 A VAGABOND HEROINE. Rosie ! Would the dear little woman be as dear, as lovable, as thoroughly a woman as she is, if she pos- sessed strength of mind sufficient to be devoid of jealousy ? Is he not only too lucky a fellow to have won her, charming feminine weaknesses and all, as his own ? The dear little woman, though she will not accord the objectionable pleasure of waltzing to her lover, sees no evil in an occasional mild flirtation or two on her own account. Augustus Jones is her devoted attendant. Augustus introduces ere long some other young Britons, much of his own stamp, picked up at the table d'hote of the Hotel Isabella. Rose is "surrounded;' 5 Frenchmen and Spaniards turning to look at the passee pretty English woman as she smiles and chirrups, and casts up her eyes with all the well-considered airs and graces of mature coquetry, at her loud-talking young compatriots. Roger takes himself quietly off among the crowd. Waltz he will not, as Rosie on such high grounds disapproves of waltzing; but though his limbs be fettered, no embargo as yet is laid upon his eyesight. For a short time longer in this mortal life Roger Temple may at least admire. He comes across the blonde in pink satin, whose eyes and fan make play at him as only the eyes and fan of a Spanish woman can ; comes across other blondes, other brunettes. Finally he reaches the end of the room that stands open to the seashore, goes outside for a breath of cooler air, probably not without dreams of a consola- A VAGABOND HEROINE. 1Q1 tory pipe under the starlight, and finds himself face to face with his future daughter. " What, Belinda, my dear ! Alone in the dark and no partner ? Let me take you in to Eosie." " Not if I know it, sir ! I come here to watch the amusement of my betters, not to show myself. Think of Eose's face of horror if I walked across the ballroom to her like this ! " holding out a fold of her ragged frock with a gesture in which there is to the full as much pride as humility. " Eose is much too kind-hearted to take notice of your dress," says Eoger. " All Eosie cares for is to see other people made happy." " H'm. I see you are an excellent judge of char- acter, Captain Temple ! " " And then she could introduce you to partners I take it for granted you like dancing ? Eosie has got hold of some young men from the hotel, who would, I am sure, be only too happy " " To take pity on my forlorn condition, if my mamma did her best to make them ! Captain Tem- ple, do you think seriously I would dance with any of those horrible English snobs Eose is talking to ? " " One of those horrible English snobs is the rich Mr. Jones," says Eoger, stroking his moustache, and remembering the lesson in match-making he received before dinner from Eose. "I thought Mr. Jones was an admirer of yours, Belinda ? " he adds, looking inquiringly into the girl's upturned face. "An admirer I suppose Eose told you that? 102 A VAGABOND HEROINE. As if I went in for admirers I ! Do I look as if that kind of rubbish was in my line of life ? " Roger hesitates. His heart goes out toward this poor neglected child, with her tattered clothes and shaky morals, and sweet, imploring woman's eyes ; but with the best will in the world he linds it diffi- cult to be kind to her every look, every tone, every smallest gesture of Belinda O'Skea's so utterly sets patronage or compassion at defiance. "And Mr. Jones cannot dance round dances," she goes on presently ; " they send the blood to his 'ead. Captain Temple," her voice softening in a moment, a wistful, pleading expression coming round her lips, " do round dances send the blood to your 'ead, I wonder ? " Roger has a flower in his button-hole, an oleander bud, abstracted for him by the fair lingers of his betrothed from one of the bouquets upon the dinner table. And as she speaks, Belinda, \vith all a child's ignprance of shame, removes this flower from its place, raises it an instant to her face, then fastens it in the waist belt of her own dress. " Do round dances send the blood to your 'ead, Captain Temple ? I should so like a waltz if you will have one with me ! " " If why of course I will, my dear child ! You should have asked me sooner. Hark, there is a waltz beginning now. We shall be just in time." He forgets Rose and Rosie's strong opinion as to fast dancing, forgets that Belinda is still in the dis- graceful frock and ill-matched stockings, forgets A VAGABOND HEROINE. 1Q3 everything but the child's wistful, pleading face! One waltz, poor little girl I Ay, and as many more as she chooses, thinks kind-hearted Roger. And takes her hand and leads her bravely within under the gas lights, and among the silks and satins yes, close to the owner of the pink satin and the fan, whose blue eyes glance at him no longer. " I may as well ,take iny hat off though," cries Belinda, preparing to start without loss of time. "Hi! Costa boy, guard !" She flings back her ragged hat to the old dog, who ever since Roger's appearance upon the scene has been watching matters suspiciously, and is now peering with jealous eyes round a corner of one of the doors. Then she puts her slim, sunburnt hand upon Captain Temple's arm. ' I asked you to dance just to try you," she whis- pers, when they have gone once or twice round the room. "I thought yes, and I hoped you would be too ashamed to be seen with me, and then I should have had a good excuse for hating you. But you were not. You are a better fellow at heart than I took you for, although you are '' "Although I am what, my dear?" " I wish you would leave off calling me my dear, and and I can never talk when I am dancing," says Belinda illogical ly. " At all events you have not made up your mind to hate me yet ? " whispers Roger in her ear. Fate lands them, when the waltz is over, exactly opposite Rosie and her train of attendants. And 104: A VAGABOND HEROINE. Roger Temple, for the first time certainly in his life, feels himself a coward. Something about the lips of the little pink and white woman who owns him makes him tremble ; yes, tremble ! Let men who are not lovers laugh, in the flippant levity of their souls, if they will ! " What a wax Rosie is in," says Belinda, who possesses to the full the cruel acumen of her age. " I remember that particular smile of hers so well. It always came before my worst whippings." Roger is silent. That his Rose possesses some few thorns he knows ; innocuous feminine prickles of jealousy, vanity, and the like. How if little tem- pers be added to the list ? The little tempers of an exacting woman of for . But no, not even in im- agination will Roger's chivalrous heart go within a hundred miles of that obnoxious numeral ! He shifts the subject, and puts off the lecture that he knows to be in store for him by proposing that they shall go outside again. " Does Belinda mind the smell of a pipe ? If not " " Mind ! '' the girl interrupts him. " Now, just once and for all, Captain Temple, understand this Belinda minds nothing ! What do you pay for to- bacco in England ? Sixteen shillings, twenty francs, a pound ? Well, the next time I go to Truro, if I can only run the custom-house, I shall bring you back some real Spanish in my pocket. Cheating the government ? Oh, we don't trouble our heads about governments in this country. We smuggle what- ever we can, and are thankful. You save one franc A VAGABOND HEROINE. 105 fifty on the pound of tobacco, and get a better weed, sir, into the bargain.'' They go outside, where Costa, bearing the hat between his teeth, joins them : he lays it down at the feet of his little mistress, and with a low, half- impatient, half-loving bark, thrusts his nose beneath her hand for a caress. " This is the best friend I have on earth, Captain Temple. He would pull you down oh, as soon as look at you, if I held up my finger. Would you not, Costa?" Costa, at this appeal, moves stealthily round to Roger Temple and criticises his heels dog fashion. " Here, poor fellow, here, Costa ! '' says Roger, holding out his hand. And, wonder of wonders to Belinda, Costa crouches, fawns, licks it. Evidently, whether she likes her father's successor or not and she is doing her best, yes, did her best, throughout every moment of the waltz, to detest him Costa means to accept Roger Temple as a friend. She calls the dog off instantly. " I did not think you would fawn on new-comers, Costa down with you, down ! I want none of your hypocritical atten- tions. You are the first of my stepmamma's favor- ites I have ever known Costa speak to, sir. You should see his delicious hatred of Burke and Mr. Jones." " Ah, dogs understand some matters better than we understand them, Belinda. Costa has seen too 5* 106 A VAGABOND HEROINE. much of life to put all men in the same category, as you do." They saunter forth into the night, side by side ; this southern night which is but a whiter, more vo- luptuous day, balmy as an English summer noon air so clearly lustrous that every remotest object on sea and land stands out, as though 'twere chiselled in sil- ver, against the profound purple of the sky. Roger Temple lights his pipe and begins a lit- tle way Roger has in most feminine's society to feel his heart grow soft. Belinda whistles. " "Will you take my arm, my dear ? I beg your pardon, I must try not to disobey orders again, but you see I cannot help forestalling events, somewhat/' " Forestalling what do you mean by forestall- ing? " says Belinda, turning on him sharply. " At what time pray of my life, or your life, or anybody's life, are Captain Temple and Belinda O'Shea going to be so wonderfully affectionate to each other, so wonderfully familiar ? " " "Well, I should hope when they live under the same roof together," answers Roger kindly. " Be- fore very long, yes, before many more weeks are past, you must know that I look forward to 3 T our staying with us for good, Belinda. You have had quite enough, I think, I I mean Rosie thinks of Miss Burke's protection. Surely you will allow me to speak to you as I should to my own little daugh- ter then ? " " Your daughter ! I am nobodv's daughter ! " she cries quickly. " I hate the sound of the word. A VAGABOND HEROINE. 107 I hate step-relationships. There was a time, once but now I have no one on the face of the earth I love I want no one ! And as to living with you and Rose I prefer knocking about the world with Burke, by long odds thank you. We are ' Miss Burke ' and 'Miss O'Shea' always. We don't like each other, and we don't pretend we do ! We are not any kind of relations, or step-relations, heaven be thanked ! " The bitterness, the suppressed passion of her childish voice, do but soften Roger's heart toward her more and more. " Allow me to offer you my arm, Miss O'Shea, will you ? " " No, I thank you, Captain Temple. I find it quite hot enough walking alone. We are not used to such fine manners, are we, Costa, in our class of life? " Pour toute la nature Quand boire a tant d'appas ? Pourquoi la creature Ne boirait-elle pas ? Buvons, chantons, et fetons tour a tour, Et 1'ivresse, 1'ivresse, 1'ivresse et 1'amour." Belinda sings out these delightful optimist senti- ments at the very top of her voice ; then races away with Costa along the sandy slopes. When Roger catches her up, a hundred yards or so further on, all the gravity of her mood has melted into the wildest spirits. " It was good fun, that waltz we had, down at the Casino, Roger if you call me 'my dear,' why should 1 not call you Roger, ' steppapa Roger?' I enjoyed it all the more because I knew how my es- 108 A VAGABOND HEROINE. pargottes and my stockings and everything about me riled Rosie ! But for real dancing bah ! if you want to see that, you should come with me to the Place Ithurbida and see how the peasant girls dance the bolero. It is not the third of a kilo away, I can hear the tambourines from this, and I'll promise to bring you back, safe and sound, Roger, and Rosie is so happy with her young men ! " She pleads to him, the soft night shining on her lips and eyes, and for the first time it occurs to Roger Temple that this wild little Arab child will be a pretty girl some day. " Take me where yon will, Belinda. I do not be- lieve in you overmuch, but I will believe in Costa. I am sure Costa would not stand quietly by and see me murdered." " Ah, that shows how much you know Cos- ta. Did I not say you were a good judge of character ? However, you need not be afraid. If I owed my enemy a grudge mind, I only say 'if " but even as she qualities her speech thus, malice in- describable lurks in her voice " if I owed my worst enemy a grudge, I would sooner let him live his fate out than put an end to his sufferings quickly 1 However, these are affairs of Spain, Roger, not of yours or mine. How sentimentally you gaze at everything!' 1 He is gazing, if the truth be told, at her face. " You think this a most romantic spot where you are standing, no doubt ? " The spot is romantic in its own rugged way, and seen by this starlight, which flatters old nature as a A VAGABOND HEROINE. 1Q9 court portrait-painter flatters women's faces. A broad Salvator-Rosa-looking sierra of arid turf, dotted here and there by a low white cross or stunted cypress, and with the dead unbroken blue of the Atlantic for background. " You are standing over one great vault, sir. St. Jean de Luz is healthy to a proverb, the Basque people say except when we get the pestilence-! Un- fortunately we get the pestilence pretty often, and then we have to be buried, not by ones and twos, but dozens, just wherever our friends can find room to dig trenches. I shall bring Rose and Mr. Jones up here some h'ne evening, make them sit down on one of these dear little mounds, and go into dear little raptures about the beauties of the climate and the scenery, and then inform them that they are sitting on dead men's bones. Bones ? whole skeletons, by scores ! Only yesterday I saw the children playing 'fossette,' I don't know how you say it in English, into a skull.'' " And so, naturally, the place is a favorite haunt of yours," remarks Roger. " Just the kind of taste I should have expected from a person of your grave and melancholy character." "I would sooner keep company with skulls than fools, any day," retorts the girl, with a shrug of her shoulders. " Perhaps in years to come, when you have had as much experience of of different varie- ties of intellect as I have, you will come to the same opinion." She liads the way down a rough bullock-track or HO A "VAGABOND HEROINE. gully, that diverges at this point from the shore, and a few minutes' walking brings them out upon the main road ; ere railroads were, the world's highway to Spain, but seldom traversed now save by outlying bands of Carlists, or by the baggage mules and ox drays of the country people. Straight before them are the mountains, transparent wondrous violet in the shadows, faint alabaster (for the moon will be here anon) along the crests. The river, the lights of the town gleam beneath. From the Place Ithurbida, a thicket of olives and cork-trees close at hand, rise sounds of music; barbaric, blood-stirring dance- music, about as much like the threadbare Parisian tinkle-tinkle of the Casino waltzes as the smell of the moorlands in September is like a barber's shop. "Now you shall see dancing in earnest," says Belinda, arching her slender arms cachuca fashion above her head, and her whole lithe figure seeming to become instinct on the moment with life and music. " Tra, la la la la, lira, la lira, lira ! " The orchestra is composed of a Basque tambo- rine and bagpipe, both instruments played by one old woman in rags ; with castanet accompaniment, ad libitum, from the fingers of the performers. The corps de ballet consists of three couples of men and girls, all of the lowest order of the people, not a shoe or stocking among them, but "artistes," everyone, if originality and fire, joined to the most perfect power of expression, the most finished neatness in execution, may be said to constitute art. These Basques dance as they smuggle, drink, gamble, with A VAGABOND HEROINE. HI passion. Money-seeking as the French, pleasure- loving as the Spaniards, every hour of these people's vivid lives, they live. Imagine northern peasants, for pleasure, after a summer day's toil, dancing cachucas and fandangos till midnight ! Belinda, at Roger's side, remains a silent specta- tor throughout one dance. With the first notes of the next her feet begin to twinkle. " This is the Basque bolero, the national dance," she whispers to him ; " but there are none of the best dancers here to-night. You should see the Gitanas who come down from the hill country at fair- time, or " little witch, as if the thought had sud- denly struck her ! as if it were not expressly for this that she had lured him hither ! " or you should see me. Will you see me dance a bolero, Captain Tem- ple?" " Some time or another, my dear child. Some evening at Rosie's hotel, when " " Now, this moment, out-of-doors, to real Basque music, or never ! What, do you think I would dance a bolero on a floor, with Rose shaking her head and describing how nicely the young ladies used to turn their toes out at Miss Ingrain's ? I dance for you, sir, now or never ! If you are shocked, you know you can easily walk off in another direction and pretend you don't belong to me." Her slight little form trips away into an open space between the trees, six or eight yards distant from the principal performers; and there, partner- less, unashamed as was ever court duchess during 112 A VAGABOND HEROINE. the stately performance of a minuet, the Earl of Lisk- eard's granddaughter dances her bolero. All the originality of gesture, the supple strength, the stay- ing power of the peasants Belinda possesses to the full ; but she possesses something more, poor child ! the graces born of mind as well as matter, the delicate exquisite alternations of fire and languor which are the very poetry of true dancing and of whose seductive charm she is only too profoundly ignorant ! Roger watches her with pleasure as regards the gratification of his artistic sense, and at the same time with curiously poignant pain. He has lived too long in India not to be reminded of Nautch girls and their performances by this kind of exhi- bition ; and Rosie's animadversions on the subject of Belinda return, with unpleasant clearness, to his mind. The peasants, with the perfect natural breed- ing that characterizes their race, take no further notice of the child than by a smile or a nod as they pass her in the evolutions of the dance. When it is over they seat themselves on the turf, the girls together, the men a little apart, and all begin chat- ting in that liquid bastard Sanscrit of theirs which of itself is music. Belinda trips gayly back to Ro- ger's side. " I dance tolerably well I dance better than any of those fine die away Hermiones and Dolores at the Casino, don't I?" she exclaims, holding up her eager face within about a foot of Roger's in the moonlight. A VAGABOND HEROINE. H3 The bolero has lent new animation to Belinda's expressive features. Her deep Irish eyes are all aglow; her parted lips tremble. Roger Temple discovers that there are materials not only for a pretty, but for a very pretty girl in his future step- daughter, and can by no means bring himself up to the sternly virtuous spirit of admonition which would befit the occasion. " You dance a vast deal too well, Belinda too well for the present company, I mean." " Ah, those are your English prejudices Mrs. Grundy, sir ! I heard the same story from poor Mr. Jones this morning. My ' company,' as you call it, is every bit as good as that mob of Madrid shop- keepers we danced among at the Casino. Don't you know that the Basques are a people of nobles ? Why, the very beggars wear their rags with an air that makes you feel the vulgarity of soap and water ; and as to the bullock-drivers there is not one of them but has a pedigree so long ! and who feels, yes, and looks noble, every inch of him.'' " Then let the Basque nobles dance boleros by themselves," says Hoger. " I am of a jealous dispo- sition, child. It does not please me that your pretty dances and your pretty self should be at the mercy of every stranger who may happen to pass along a public roadway." Up leaps the blood into her brown cheeks. The reproof, if reproof it be, savors of a tenderness to which she has been so long unused, a tenderness that sinks with such dangerous sweetness on her heart. A VAGABOND HEROINE. " Do I dance prettily ? " Her eyes for the first time fall beneath his ; she trifles, a little abashed, with the pomegranate bud in her waist-belt. u I made you come here because oh, because I wanted to shock you, as I shock Mr. Jones and Rose. But do I really dance prettily better than the peasant girls?" "So much better, Belinda, that I should like to bid yon never dance another bolero or cachuca while you live." " She stands a moment irresolute, then turns from him without a word. Yanity, childish triumph, and a burning, perfectly new sense of womanly shame are holding the oddest conflict imaginable in Belin- da's heart, and keep her dumb. " If I had only the right to exact a promise of you," goes on Roger, possessing himself, as he speaks, of her hand, and pressing it with kindly warmth. " But you have not the right ; no, not as much as Augustus Jones lias ! " she exclaims, snatching her hand away abruptly and bursting into a peal of laugh- ter. ""Augustus might have bought me, perhaps, with a franc's worth of maccaroons : but you you ! Reserve your jealousy, Captain Temple, for the time when Rose takes to dancing boleros with the peas- ants ! And as for me " Buvous, chantons, Et f etons, tour a tour, Et 1'ivresse, 1'ivresse, L'ivresse, et 1'amour." She sings the bacchanal chorus with greater spirit A VAGABOND HEROINE. 115 than ever ; then, pirouetting the step of the bolero as she goes, disappears among the olives, nor joins Cap- tain Temple again until he is within a dozen paces of the Casino. Mrs. O'Shea, star-gazing on the terrace with Au- gustus, receives them with honeyed smiles. Admi- ration acts upon Rosie's moral faculties like wine ; and she has really been a good deal admired this evening or a good deal stared at, which comes to very much the same thing. When one reaches a certain age, is it not wisest to accept " attention " just as one receives it, without criticising its quality too closely ? " Oh, you naughty, naughty children ! " She nestles her hand at once under Roger's arm, nor takes it away again. " We have been looking for you everywhere. What .a nice waltz you had ! I was so glad to see Captain Temple dancing with you, Belinda ! But I am afraid you found those sandal- things dreadfully inconvenient to dance in, dear ?*" The italics, the plentiful notes of admiration, con- vey venom, trebly distilled, to Belinda's sensitive ear. Roger hears only the soft veiled voice, feels only the plump pressure of his beloved one's hand upon his arm ; and he " blesses her unaware.'' Dear, gentle, timid Rose ! How sweet these womanly women are, even if a trifle silly. The pungent piquancy of a little semi-barbarian like Belinda may be tasteful, as sherry and bitters are tasteful, on occasion. But for honest every-day consumption, morning, noon and night, what can be compared to the wholesomeness 116 A VAGABOND HEROINE. of table beer table beer with only just the least lit- tle suspicion of a tendency to turn sour ! " This is really not half a bad sort of view," says Augustus, pulling at his wristbands with the self- consciousness of a man who wants to be unconcerned, and addressing the Alantic. " On the right we have the ruins of St. Barbe, still bearing marks of the English guns of 'thirteen, on the left the coast of Spain, while closer at hand " " Rises the gloomy church-tower of St. Jean de Luz," cries Belinda, imitating the poor wretch's pedantic company-voice to admiration. " That sacred edifice in which Louis XIY. was formally betrothed to Maria Theresa, Infanta of Spain, in the year of our Lord sixteen hundred and sixty. How long will it be, Mr. Jones, before your great book of travels is published ? 'Twould be a pity, upon my word, that so much valuable research should be wasted ! '' " Belinda Belinda, my dear, how can you ! " says Rose admonishingly. " Mr. Jones, why do you let her ? I am sure it is all most interesting. Poor dear Louis XIV. and Marie Antoinette we read the Peninsular War straight through at Miss Ingrain's. But Belinda is such a quiz ! Really it seems like something in a novel doesn't it, Roger to be so near Spain ? " This is literally Rose's conversational style re- duced to orthography : style that one may call the absolute, perfected vacuity of human speech ; but yet that, lisped by a pretty woman, now making play with her eyes, now suffering giggling eclipses behind A VAGABOND HEROINE. 117 her pocket-handkerchief, DOW pressing her fingers confidentially on your arm, is not without its charm to the superior intellect of man. Roger replies, " Yes indeed, Rosie," a safe un- meaning answer that he keeps always ready for the foolish little babble of his beloved one. Augustus, who, like other unhappy young men of his class, regards silence as a lapse of breeding, once more starts a subject. How many persons would Captain Temple suppose, now, this Casino might be capable of holding ? He suspects that Roger dislikes him ; he knows that he detests Roger ; and shifts from one leg to another, and fidgets at his glove button (Augustus Jones wears yellow gloves at these Casino balls) as he addresses him. " How many people ? Really, Mr. Jones, I have not the very smallest notion." Capital fellow though Roger be to those who know him and whom he likes, I feel that when he addresses men like Mr. Jones I cannot altogether clear him from the imputa- tion of ' ; shutting his eyes as he talks ! " " Kind of thing I never guessed in my life. Belinda, can you tell Mr. Jones how many people the St. Jean de Luz Casino holds ? " " Of course I cannot,'' answers Belinda, with her crushing brusquerie. "Who in their senses would ask such a question unless they were collecting materials for a guide-book ? Xow if you wanted to know about the people themselves, I might enlighten you." " Enlighten us by all means," says Roger Temple. A VAGABOND HEROINE. And he moves, despite a slight unwillingness in Rosie's fingers, nearer to the girl's side. " Begin with the little lady in pink satin. There she is oppo- site, looking over her fan at the gentleman with the ferocious moustache. Do you know anything about her?" " Anything ? I should just say I did. And about the man with the moustache too ! Why those are the people from Burgos, who " And "then, such a story as Rosie, straight-laced, over-scrupulous Rosie, is forced to listen to ! Such a story succeeded by such a dozen others! Con- stantly frequenting the society of gamins younger than herself, Belinda has picked up all the watering- place wickedness afloat, simply as a gamin picks up wickedness, and details it without a blush. And she tells her stories well; dramatizing a scene in Spanish here, throwing in some caustic bit of mimicry there, keeping her characters vivid and living before her audience, always. " We have had enough, more than enough scan- dal," cries Rose at last. "You have quite taken my breath away, Belinda. These may be the moralities of foreign watering-places, the subjects of foreign conversation, but they are not English. I declare, when we were girls we did not know the meaning of evil ! " "How hard of comprehension you must have been, my dear,'' observes Belinda cheerfully. "I suppose that was in the innocent days when you first met Captain Temple ? '' A VAGABOND HEROINE. 119 The taunt makes Roger himself wince. The innocent days when he first whispered his passion to old Shelmadeane's young wife beside the hippopo- tamus! " You are severe this evening, Belinda," he remarks coldly. " You make no distinction between friend and foe. Rose, my dear/' bending over the widow and whispering yet not so low but that Belinda's ear can catch every lover-like syllable " is it not late for you to be out, after all the fatigues of your journey ? Let me take you back to the hotel, dearest. You look pale." " Oh, but Belinda," says Rose generously, and making a feint of quitting her lover's arm. " Don't anybody think of me ! See Belinda home first." " Thanks, very much, Rose," cries the girl. " As Belinda has been seeing myself home (only she never had a home) during the last four years, she will prob- ably be quite capable of doing the same to-night.'' "If if I may be allowed?" And Mr. Jones puts himself forward in obedience to a glance he received from Rose. " It is too late for Miss O'Shea to pass through the town without an escort." " Miss O'Shea has got Costa for her escort," begins Belinda with her usual sturdy independence ; then abruptly she discovers that Roger Temple is watching her face, and a new freak of perversity takes possession of her. " Miss O'Shea has got Costa, but she will be only too glad of your protection, no\v and at all times, Mr. Jones ! " smiling affectionately 120 A VAGABOND HEROINE. at Jones with her lips, and mocking him, ridiculing him, despising him with her eyes. " You will see if that is not a match," remarks Hose, as the two figures walk away together in the moonlight. "I was so much obliged to you, my dear, for taking her off my hands this evening. It gave me such a nice long talk with Mr. Jones, and I am convinced he is serious. What is more, Roger, in spite of all her flighty manner, I am convinced that Belinda will accept him ; indeed, my only fear is that he will be shocked by her over-readiness. A young girl telling an eligible man that she would be glad ' now and at all times' of his protection ! " " Recollect her age, Rose. You must not take, au pied de la lettre, every word that a madcap child like Belinda chooses to utter." " I take people's speeches and their actions, too, as I find them," answers Rose, ignoring the quota- tion ; Rosie ignores everything in the universe that she does not understand. " And I do not forget that Belinda is of Yansittart blood. Like mother, like daughter." Proud though she is of the connection, Cornelius O'Shea's widow can never refrain from flinging her little pebble at poor dead Lady Eliza- beth's memory. " We all know what kind of repu- tation the Yansittart women have." " The reputation of more than common beauty, I have been told," remarks Roger, with an air of in- nocence. " She has taken his arm actually ! When we were girls such a thing was never thought of until A VAGABOND HEROINE. 121 one was formally engaged. Belinda has taken Mr. Jones's arm do you see ? " " Yes, I see, I see ! " answers Roger Temple, not without impatience. Curious anomaly if anything pertaining to the relations of men and women can ever be called anomalous ! Rosie's lover is sensible of a distinct pang of jealousy at this moment. " Any girl of seventeen would encourage any fellow who had carriages and diamonds to offer her, as you ought to know, Rose."- "Belinda, most of all," acquiesces the widow, with one of her pretty sighs. " It has gone out of fashion for young girls to sacrifice interest to the affections, as we used.' Roger thinks of Mr. Shelmadeane, and is silent. 6 MAMMON WINS HIS WAT. HITE with moonlight, astir with the life and joyousness of the southern night, are the narrow streets of St. Jean de Luz, as Belinda and her companion proceed toward what may by courtesy be called Belinda's home. Ladies with fan and mantilla returning bare-headed from the Casino ball ; itinerant serenaders twanging guitars for money alas, is there to be no poetry left in life I beneath the projecting iron balconies; stately hidalgos in cloaks ; statelier beggars in tatters ; every here and there a patio, or garden, odorous with cit- ron flowers, pomegranate, myrtle; and for back- ground the mountains, just one shade deeper iris than the arch of tremulous heaven overhead. Could hour or scene be more auspicious for a lover ? Could hour or scene better dispose a girl's imagination toward a declaration of love ? They walk for a considerable time in silence, Be- linda and Mr. Jones. At last, "I hope you have for- given me for not feeding Costa on maccaroons ? '' A VAGABOND HEROINE. 123 whispers the young man, pressing her unresponsive hand ever so little to his side. " Do you, Mr. Jones ? why ? " She accepts his arm out of sheerest perversity, and because she guessed that certain eyes were watching her; but her heart feels wicked against poor Augustus, wicked against the whole bright world which forms a back- ground for Roger Temple and for Rose. " When / know people detest me, I would much rather be without their forgiveness than with it." Not an encouraging answer for a man on the eve of proposing. But Mrs. O'Shea's wary arts during that starlit conversation on the terrace have brought up Mr. Jones's resolution to the sticking point. So much familiar talk of Lady Althea and Lord Lionel. " Belinda's nearest relations, Mr. Jones the people, whenever our dear Belinda does settle in London, with whom she and her husband must be constantly and intimately thrown" so much familiar talk, I say, about possible cousins in the peerage, not un- mingled with suggestions that, in our dear Belinda's position, a happy early union rather than large set- tlements is what Rose's step-maternal heart yearns after, has made Mr. Jones resolute to win or give up all to-night. He does not love, he sees no remotest chance of bringing himself to love this meagre, dark-skinned, bitter-tongued mite of an earl's granddaughter. But Jones is not a man to 'be turned from any project, commercial or matrimonial, by obstacle so paltry as personal likes or dislikes. The earliest sacred truth 124 A VAGABOND HEROINE. instilled into his childish soul, his highest mature conception of moral law, is that Christians and Eng- lishmen should buy in the cheapest market what- ever article they require. He, Jones, requires the article birth ; has hunted it up and down many Eng- lish watering-places, as men of the Cornelius O'Shea genus hunt money ; and now has it under his hand, to be bought for a song (did not Rosie wisely throw in the hint about modest settlements?), the only diffi- culty being as to the article's consent. But after sunning himself in the widow's smile, and listening to the widow's silky flatteries during the past hour and a half, Mr. Jones cannot but feel that he is a very captivating fellow indeed in women's eyes, and entertains but little fear as to that. " I have never been fortunate enough to find you at home yet, Miss O'Shea." He makes this next attempt at tender talk just as they reach the Maison Lohobiague, on the third floor of which Miss Burke and Belinda lodge. "I should like," sentimentally, " to see the apartment where you spend your time, if I might ? " It seems to him that the task of bringing her to terms will be easier of accomplishment indoors than out. Never yet has he seen Belinda within four walls, and the idea strikes him that she may prove more manageable within a restricted space; like a squirrel in a cage, a colt within a pound, or any other inferior animal whom it is man's supreme pleas- ure to tame and subjugate. " The apartment where I spend my time. Burke's A VAGABOND HEROINE. 125 den ! "Well, if you want to see it, you had better use your legs and walk up now. Miss Burke, as you know, is away ; our servant actually we have a ser- vant, Mr. Jones, just to set our soup going of a morning went off' to the bull-tight at Fontarabia yesterday, and has not appeared since. So you must not expect to see things in apple-pie order." She quits his arm, bestows a series of hugs and farewells on Costa the poor old dog, well trained, stopping discreetly three or four paces away from Miss Burke's threshold then vanishes out of sight beneath an overhanging stone portecochere or arch- way, whither Mr. Jones, his dapper feet tortured by the stones, his yellow-kidded hands extended to save his nose from collision with the wall, follows her. The Maison Lohobiague is one of those towering fifteenth-century Basque palaces of which three or four still stand, tast crumbling, alas ! into dust, beside the harbor of St. Jean de Luz. The Infanta of Spain lodged in the Lohobiague, says oral history, on the occasion of her betrothal to Louis XIV. Now 'tis tenanted out in sets of furnished lodgings, low-rented, on account of rats, dry rot, mould, and other such drawbacks to mediaeval romance, but deliciously cool in summer by reason of the narrow, semi-Moorish windows, thick walls, and vaulted balconies, and with the noblest panorama of river, fertile plain, and distant lonely mountain sierra for outlook. The dark, winding staircase seems trebly dark after the intense moonlight of the streets ; and Mr. 126 A VAGABOND HEROINE. Jones, a careful man not only as regards moral but bodily risks, pauses at the bottom. " Come along, if you are coming," rings out Be- linda's voice from airy heights overhead. " There is plenty of light when once you get up here, only look out after your shins meanwhile." The " plenty of light " proceeds from a solitary oil lamp, which sheds its dim religious rays before the figure of a saint on the landing of the second floor. A grotesquely tawdry female saint, of Basque or Spanish origin, life-sized, ghastly-hued ; with a lace pocket handkerchief, with blood streaming from her martyred brow and hands, a necklace of huge mock brilliants on the throat, a pair of satin slippers that may have been white once say at the betrothal of Louis XIY. upon her feet. "We live one stoiy higher still," says Belinda, Mr. Jones stopping to turn up his British nose at this work of sacerdotal art. " And unless Juanita happens to have left a candle, I shall have to enter- tain you in the dark. However, there is the moon." " And and the brightness of your eyes, Belin- da ! '' says Jones, groping his way up the steep stair- case after her. " And what ? " shouts the girl sharply, through the darkness. " There is such an echo, Mr. Jones no hearing a word, unless you speak more distinctly. What did you say would light us ? " But something, either in the tone of her voice or in the distance that separates them, restrains Mr. A VAGABOND HEROINE. 127 Jones from again launching into the hazardous re- gion of compliment. Under the lawful regime of Miss Burke the outer door of the apartment is always kept virtuously lock- ed after dark ; but this, like other precautionary rules of life, is set at naught when Belinda, as at present, holds the rudder of government. Half ajar stands a huge oaken door, blackened with time, crusted with dirt, a door as old, probably, as the solid masonry of the house. On a vigorous push from the ghTs hand, it creaks slowly back upon its hinges, and Mr. Jones is introduced to " Burke's den," a room bigger than an Isle of Wight church, the roof joisted and innocent of all modern refinement of lath and plaster, the walls of the indescribable smoky grey of ages. Vast pictures of saints and martyrs in different stages of burning or mutilation, French studies, probably after Ribera, exaggerations, nightmares of that mas- ter's most repulsive realism, hang around. Saints and cobwebs may, indeed, be said to furnish the room. Of furniture proper there is a table that was once carved and gilt, now in the last stage of rickety decay, and of which one leg is propped up by a pile of battered books ; a lofty pier glass, overdim with antiquity for purposes of reflection ; three crip- pled chairs, piled pell-mell at the present moment in a corner: and a shelf containing in all about twelve pieces of crockery, of different sizes and patterns. " I am an Ishmaelite by choice," Miss Burke will say, with the conscious proud humility of intellect, to such straggling acquaintance as chance ever gives her 128 A VAGABOND HEROINE. to entertain. " The frivolous details of upholstery do not concern me. Climate, nature ; association with the mighty minds of the past these to me are the necessities of life ? " Mr. Jones looks round him open-mouthed, Be- linda having been fortunate enough to find a candle whose solitary light barely pierces from end to end of the sombre, shadowy room. And yon you live here?" he exclaims with unaffected amazement. "What a place what pic- tures ! It, gives one the horrors to look at them." Only Mr. Jones is thinking a little nervously over what he is going to say next, and calls it " 'errors." " Well, yes the Maison Lohobiague is not fur- nished according to Clapham taste," retorts Belinda, with her frank impertinence. " But it suits me better. I like the old shabby room, Mr. Jones, and the 'orrid pictures and the cobwebs ; yes, and I should be very sorry to exchange them for any stuccoed cockney gentility. I have lived here two years off and on ; Miss Burke has made it a sort of headquarters in all her comings and goings ; and I have grown to the place. If Burke would only get killed on a railway or made a professoress, or any- thing, I should be quite content to stop in the Loho- biague with Costa, always ! " And now Augustus feels is the time for him to crash down on this poor pauper eh Id with the mag- nificence of his offer. " Miss O'Shea Belinda," he cries, coming up beside her very close, " there is no necessity for you to spend your days in these miser- A VAGABOND HEROINE. able foreign places any longer. Since I saw you this afternoon I ahein I have been talking to your mamma.'' " Stepmamma. If you are not accurate, you are nothing." "And I have made my mind up! I have made my mind np fully," says Jones, with magnanimity, "as to my line of conduct. There may seem, there are disparities." He glances with an air of conde- scension at the girl's dress, at the appointments of the meagre room. " Still, as Mrs. O'Shea says, six months of the first educational advantages in Eng- land would work wonders, and, at our age, we can afford to wait, can we not ? " *' I should answer better if I had a glimmering notion of what you mean by ' we.' Are you going to school again, Mr. Jones? Mind your 'h's,' you know, if you do." "Belinda," his voice shakes, his color rises. (How hideous he is, communes Belinda within her- self ! How the mosquito-bites glow and radiate from out that purple blush ! ) " Do you think you ever I mean, I know I never " confound it all, why will the girl fix those hard eyes of hers upon his face ! " never saw any one so likely to make me happy. Oh, come, you mustn't take your hand away -" which she does, with unmistakable energy, the moment she feels his touch. " I will not let you go till you answer me. Belinda, could you ever care for me enough to be my wife ? " He has stumbled through it as well, perhaps, as 6* 130 A VAGABOND HEROINE. the majority of men stumble through the most momentous question of their lives. Belinda, who has never before heard a declaration, or read of a declaration, or imagined a declaration, thinks the exhibition pitiable, and tells him so. " You are a more complete fool than I took you for, Mr. Jones. If you really want me, me, to marry you, why not say so like a rational being, instead of stammering and hesitating and blushing like a school- boy ashamed to speak the truth ? " Mr. Jones stands silently recovering his nerve after the plunge. " It will, I know, meet the wishes of Mrs. O'Shea and of Captain Temple," he remarks at last, almost humbly. " What will ? " " Our marriage, Belinda." "Did they tell you so?" "Mrs. O'Shea led me to believe " " Rose leads everybody to believe everything. And he Captain Temple ? " "It can be no interest of Captain Temple's to put himself in the way of your settlement, I should eay." She turns from him, she walks quickly to the further end of the room ; a certain dignity, child though she be, in every movement of her poor little ragged figure. Then she conies back to the young man's side and looks steadily with her honest eyes into his. " A thing like this can't be decided in a moment, Mr. Jones. If you want really and truly, to marry A VAGABOND HEROINE. 131 me, you must, I suppose, have some good reasons for doing so. That is not my business, however. Every one is free to have his own crotchets about happiness ! But what I do want to know, and what I dare say you can tell me, is why should I marry you?" " I should hope, a little because you like me," suggests Augustus, trying with imperfect success to throw a lover-like warmth into his voice. " That is the reason generally, I believe, for which young ladies accept men." " Is it, indeed ? I thought liking had nothing whatever to do with such things. I thought the lover said, ' I can aiford such a house, carriage, ser- vants, diamonds, on condition that you take me for a husband ! ' And then that the young lady reckoned up the sweets and the sour together, and answered yes or no, according to whether she found the bar- gain good." " Is that the kind of way you wish me to address you, Miss O'Shea ? " " It is the best way for you to address me if you want to get a sensible answer, Mr. Jones." She perches herself on a corner of the rickety table, tilts her hat back on her head, and swinging her sandalled feet to and fro in the air, begins as coolly as though she were scoring up the points at paume to reckon the items of the projected " bar- gain." " Carriage, so much ; diamonds, so much ; house, BO much. We will begin with the house. How 132 A VAGABOND HEROINE. large a house, exactly, should you and I have to live in at Clapham ? " " I am not joking, and yon are/' replied Jones sullenly. " Of course, if you do not choose to take the thing seriously, I have nothing more to say." " Well would you mind my having my supper first ? I am as hungry as a wolf, sir ! Burke leaves me on a kind of board-wages when she goes off liter- aturing, and I have not eaten a mouthful since your maccaroons. You will not mind ? Thanks. And while I eat, yon know, you can make yourself agree- able, tell me all the delightful projects you and Eosie have been laying out for my future welfare." Belinda's supper consists of a big slice of house- hold bread, and another rather bigger one of melon, washed down by cold water. Having produced these refreshments from the shelf, which at once answers as dresser, larder, and pantry, she resumes her for- mer place on the corner of the table, and, unincum- bered by knife, fork, or plate, sups. Mr. Jones, who, like other unwholesome-blooded city -bred persons, distrusts all wholesome, natural, simple food, watches her with a kind of pitying hor- ror. Melon, at night ! cold water ! brown bread, devoured in half-pound slices 1 " Yes, my living does not cost much," cries Belin- da, interpreting his looks correctly. " That will be one blessing, at least, for my husband. And if he liked to pitch his tent further south, it would cost less. Talk of a Clapham villa ! Why, you need not have a house at all for more than three months in A VAGABOND HEROINE. 133 the year down at Granada, there are such lots of jolly arches and walls to sleep under. And the wine of the country, fine strong wine, that gets in your head directly, is as cheap as water, and you can buy a day's fruit for five gramos. 1 should say,'' medi- tatively, " a married pair of quiet habits and unam- bitious minds could live handsomely in Granada on twenty-five francs a week ; yes, and be able to treat themselves to a theatre or bull-fight of a Sunday as well/' " Twenty-five francs a week ! Fifty pounds a year ! " says Augustus. " Not the quarter of what I should allow my wife for pin-money." A sharply-contrasted picture they make at this moment, reader these two people who are discuss- ing the propriety of spending their lives together: Belinda, with her mischievous, Murillo eyes and gleaming teeth, devouring melon and swinging her ragged feet to and fro as she philosophizes on the nothingness of wealth ; Mr. Jones, yellow-gloved, London-coated, and with his smug, calculating, Lead- enhall-street face, watching her. He is cleverish, worldly-cleverish, at least ; the sons of most very successful men are that ; but he has not a chance against the gamin astuteness, the keen mother wit of Belinda O'Shea. Devouring her bread and melon, rattling on with wild panegyrics of the delights of beggary, she sets herself to find out from him the precise extent of Rosie's little intrigues on her behalf, the precise goodness of the "bargain" ottered to her acceptance, and succeeds ; yes, even as 13-i A VAGABOND HEROINE. regards details. Such a carriage, such liveries; such a set of diamonds as her wedding-gift. Rose, to the utmost of her power, has sold her, and sold her advantageously ; Captain Temple well, Captain Temple, a not unwilling witness to the transaction. Now for her reply. " I cannot imagine what put it into your head to think of me, Mr. Jones. Oh, I know why you came to St. Jean de Luz ; of course Rosie planned your tour for you ! But what first put it into your head to think of me in that sort of light ? " For a moment her long eyelashes shade her cheek, the cheek that neither pales nor reddens under his gaze. " I have not made myself over-and-above civil to you, have I?" " Well, no, not anything very particular," Mr. Jones assents. " And I am sure I am not what you, with your fastidious tastes, would think lady -like" oh ! the curl, imperceptible perhaps to Augustus, of her upper lip ! " nor what any one," with a thoroughly sincere sigh this, " would think pretty. Now what in the name of heaven can make you wish to marry me ? " " I I because I love you," begins Jones, stam- mering. " Tell that Hague to some one else," interrupts the girl with sudden passion, " not to me ! If you loved me, I should feel it here ! " clasping her graceful brown hands to her breast, "just as I feel that Costa loves me, and I would marry you yes, A VAGABOND HEROINE. 135 even you to-morrow out of gratitude, and if you had only a hundred a year instead of all the thousands you talk of. But you do not. You care no more for me than I for you, and so " 41 And so I suppose you will not marry me," says Jones, with mortification that he would fain hide under an air of banter. Belinda hesitates looks away from him. She is a child, with all a child's instinctive craving for the sweets of liberty; but she is a Bohemian as well, with all a Bohemian's keen appreciation of money and what money will bring. It would it would be sweet, she feels, to wear finer dresses, richer jewels than Rosie's, to invite Rosie and Captain Temple condescendingly to dinner, lend them one's opera box, take them for a drive occasionally in one's car- riage. And then to bid good-by forever to Miss Bnrke! The thought of Augustus Jones as a life- companion may be hideous, but half its hideousness vanishes, surely if one remembers this he would replace Miss Burke. " I am certain I shall make you wretched, Mr. Jones; but as you seem, you and Rosie, to have set your minds on this engagement stop, though, I must ask one thing first : is your name on the door- plate, I mean of the Clapham villa 't That I could not stand." " My name on a door-plate f " says Jones, as indignantly as though the blood of all the Howards ran in his veins. " "NVhy, what do you take me for? No one but professional men, apothecaries, or that 136 A VAGABOND HEROINE. sort of thing, ever ticket their names outside on a door plate." " Well, then, I could never suit you nor you me, the whole thing is preposterous ; still, if you would like to try it, just as an experiment " He rushes forward rapturously. " Oh, I thank you very much obliged indeed ! " Belinda springs upon her feet and puts herself in a not altogether unscientific attitude of self-defence. " We may be engaged if you like, but I will have no fooleries of that kind. Do you hear me I will not ! Mr. Jones, you shall never kiss me." And then, quick as thought itself, flashes on her the remembrance of the moment when her eyes fir*t met Roger's this afternoon, of the hour spent with Roger alone under the stars, of the moment when he praised her ah, with praise how unlike the ful- some compliments of this legitimate lover ! and when vanity, shame, a minglemeni; of feelings such as her life had never known before, held her dumb. " Never kiss you ! Not even when we are mar- ried, I suppose ? " remarks Mr. Jones, unwisely jocular. " Married who talks of being married ? '' cries Belinda ; such mutiny against her own weakness, such disdain, such mockery of her captor in her eyes ! "You talked a moment ago about trying the experiment, did you not? " "I said that we might try being lovers no, not lovers either that we might try being engaged ; and A VAGABOND HEROINE. 137 I keep to it. You are going away to visit the Pas de Roland, you know, to-morrow " " Not now. I shall have no spare time for sight- seeing now," interrupts Augustus amatively. " Why not ? Because Rose is here ? Oh, Rose has quite enough on her hands without you. You will go to the mountains to-morrow, and you will stay away four days, as yon intended, and admire every waterfall and rock and ruin Murray bids you. By that time I shall be used to the thought of of Clapham, perhaps. Miss Burke will be back for one thing, and I shall have had a good deal," with a sigh this, "of Rose. I shall feel better disposed toward any change. Mr. Jones, if you will promise never, as long as you live, to kiss me, I dare say I shall not be very sorry to see you come back." And not one other warmer word or promise can Augustus wring from her. She will try being engaged, minus love-making, as an experiment ; and if h will promise never as long as he lives .to kiss her, perhaps after four days' absence she may not be very sorry to see him return. So much for his present chance of an alliance with the noble family of Van sit tart. As Mr. Jones walks back to the Hotel Isabella in the moonlight, he does not feel sure that he will have bought the article birth quite so cheaply after all. CHAPTER VANITY VERSUS CONSCIENCE. RS. AUGUSTUS JONES. Belinda Jones. Mr. and Mrs. Jones, Clapham. So Belinda, when she is alone, rings every possible change upon her future titles as a matron, and finds each tuneless. But then the dia- monds ! reflection that ere this has governed the con duct of so many a wiser, older, better woman. Be- linda's life of late years has not brought her into per- sonal contact with many of the outward belongings of wealth. One tremendously showy and massive brilliant was wont to sparkle in Major O'Shea's neck- tie, but that, likelier than not, thinks the girl with a sigh, was paste. Papa used to say, when he was in a moralizing mood, that everything was paste in this degenerate nineteenth century. " There has been a bronze age, my child, and an iron age," Cornelius would tell her. " This is the age of paste. And, in the long run, the counterfeit answers just as well as the reality." If paste diamonds, in the long run, would answer as well as real ones, why become A VAGABOND HEROINE. 139 the wife of Mr. Jones and live at Clapham for the sake of them ? Ah, but there are the riding horses as well the riding horses, the silk dresses, the opera box. Wistfully gazing through the open window at the sky, Belinda thinks of the remote Belgravian days when her papa was in the first delightful flush of Rose's money, the days of dinner parties and balls, when even she, Belinda, wore pretty frocks, and occasionally tasted the society of lovely, bare-necked beings, with flowers in their hair, silken trains, fans, lovers, instead of watching them forlornly from with- out, as she did to-night. How would she look bare- necked, with flowers in her hair, with a train, a fan, lovers ? How if she should attempt a rehearsal of the effect (lovers excepted) with such rough materials as she may have at hand ! Miss Burke, as it chances, has left the key of her travelling-case in the lock alas, the frame of mind for wrong-doing given, and when does the demon opportunity fail any of us? and in Miss Burke's travelling-case lies, neatly folded, that lady's best black silk dress. In shorter time than it has taken me to write, Belinda, candle in hand, glides into the adjoining room, the sanctuary of Miss Burke's maiden charms, opens the case, gazes, vacillates handles ! The skirt is too long, for Miss Burke is of loftier stature than herself. So much the grander will be her train. And the sleeves must be tucked up, and the bodice pinned down, and white lace, also of Miss 140 A VAGABOND HEROINE. Burke's, added here and there, for lightness. Never in her life before has Belinda touched thread or nee- dle save under stress of direst necessity. But with the very first awakening of love in a young girl's heart awaken the instincts of millinery. She collects together such dislocated sewing implements as the household can boast, with absorbed interest stitches down a fold here, puckers up a plait there ; finally skips lightly out of her own dingy Cinderella frock, and a minute later stands radiant, in the majesty of rustling silk, short sleeves, bare throat, and train a young lady. She is not an ugly girl, after all. So much the tarnished glass upon Miss Burke's dressing-table assures her promptly. Pier neck and shoulders look lily fair, compared to the sun tan of her face ; her arms are delicately fashioned and tolerably plump for seventeen. But the pig-tails ! She snatches off the hideous frayed-ont green ribbons, unplaits them, and behold ! the ill-kempt, neglected hair falls round her slender figure in waves of silky chestnut. A pair of gloves of Miss Burke's supplies an impromptu cush- ion, over which she coifs it high above her forehead, as the little Spanish blonde in pink (the blonde Roger Temple admired) was coiffed to-night. A scarlet passion-flower, wet with dew from the bal cony, finishes the picture. Not ugly ? Why, she is pretty already a year or two hence will be admirably so, prettier than was even Rose in her prime, thinks Belinda, gazing at her own transfigured self in a kind of rapture. The A VAGABOND HEROINE. only thing she lacks now is jewelry ear-rings, brace- lets, a necklace for her throat: the Jones diamonds, in short. Pending the possessing of these, could no substitute be found to give one some imperfect fore- shadowing of their splendor ? To the female conscience, once fairly deadened by vanity, all successive downward steps come easily enough. If a necklace be wanting, a necklace must be got : honestly, if one can, but got ! On the landing of the second floor stands, as we know, the life-sized figure of a saint ; martyred, sat- in-slippered, glittering with gorgeous paste adorn- ments. If the good old Beata would only lend that necklace of hers for half an hour, ten minutes, long enough to yield one some faint foretaste of the sweets of brilliants ! If assuming her permission one were to borrow it, say ! The glass case can be open- ed by a cunning hand from the back : this fact Be- linda discovered when the first floor lodger presented the saint with a new lace handkerchief at Easter. And no living soul is about ; and it could not surely be much of a sin, considering that the saint is but a big wax doll with bead eyes and indeed if it were a sin, is it not all-important, Mr. Jones and his suit impending, for Belinda to ascertain, practically, whether diamonds are becoming to the complex o.i, and so worth the sacrifice of a life or not ? She creeps down the echoing stone stairs, her heart beating, her unaccustomed feet entangling themselves at every movement in her trailing skirts ; she reaches the landing of the second floor. There 142 A VAGABOND HEROINE. stands the Beata, her livid hands crossed on her breast, her bead eyes awfully wide open. There are the paste brilliants. A straggling moonbeam rests on them : they glitter with a deathly, horrible fascina- tion. Belinda's heart and courage wax chill. Suppose the outraged saint should come some night, and, standing beside her bed, lay an icy, re- tributive hand upon her face ? To meddle with these holy pel-sons' beads, for aught she knows, may be the most mortal of crimes ; and " crime, or no crime, 1 will do it ! " decides the girl with the spasmodic coward's courage of her sex. Now, may fortune be her friend : may no inmate of the house pass from floor to floor while the sacrilegious act is being car- ried into effect. The cranky fastening of the glass door gives a groan as she opens it, causing Belinda's guilty con- science to quake again ; but no ear save her own hears the sound. She unclasps the necklace, shiver- ing as her fingers come in contact with the clammy wax throat ; then bears away her booty, her legs trembling under her at every step up stairs. She takes it to the light of her solitary candle ; admires its mock effulgence; clasps it, trembling, around her little warm, soft neck; surveys herself on tiptoe in the tarnished mirror above the chimney-piece; and where is conscience now, where remorse ? Admirable monitors of men the moment possession has brought satiety, why is it that conscience and remorse hold their peace as long as the taste of the apple continues sweet between our teeth ? A VAGABOND HEROINE. 143 She surveys herself, M*ell uigh awe-stricken by her own fairness. She feels that to be the possessor of real diamonds she would cheerfully become Mrs. Augustus Jones and start for Clapham to-morrow. Now, nothing is wanting but a fan and lovers. The fan can be had ; a huge gilt-and-black structure of the date of thirty years ago, which lies for ornament on the mantel-shelf: and of this Belinda possesses herself. But the lovers ? Bah, some unimportant details are sure to be wanting at every rehearsal ! When the prologue is over, the play played out in earnest, the lovers, it may be supposed, will come of themselves. She struts up and down the room, her train out- stretched, her fan in motion, her eyes glancing com- placently at the mignon little figure the glass gives her duskily back. "If Captain Temple could see me if Captain Temple could see me now ! " thinks \-anity. "If he knew I could be anything but rag- ged, and hideous, and a gamin. And if he did know this, what would Captain Temple care ? " says another eterner voice than that of vanity. " Of what account is the whole world to him by the side of Rose, and Rose's beauty ? " A sudden leaden weight sinks dead on Belinda's heart. She is nothing to Roger Temple ; holds no more place in his present than in his future. She seems to stifle. The saint's paste diamonds must surely be too heavy, so painful is the choking feeling in her throat. Turning abruptly away from the sight of her finery and of herself, she extinguishes 144 A VAGABOND HEROINE. the candle ; then goes out, bare-armed, bare-necked, in her diamond necklace and train, upon the balcony. It is now past midnight, and something like cooler air begins to stir across the sleeping country. Balmy sweet is the air ; every floor of the vast old house has its balcony, every balcony its flowers ; the gky is all a-quiver with stars ; mountains, river, plains, are lying in one great hush of purple sleep. Belinda rests her arm against the iron balustrade, and, gazing away westward toward the rugged line of Spanish coast, muses. Spain or Clapham ? She has learned much since she asked herself the same question this afternoon ; unknowingly has pass- ed the traditional brook, perhaps, where woman- hood and childhood meet; for very certain has ac- cepted Mr. Jones, elected in cold blood for Clapham Clapham, respectability, riches. And yet and yet, if Maria Jose (or some one else) were to appear before her just now, and Click, click ! goes the sharp sound of a vesuvian close, as it seems, beside Belinda's ear. She turns with a start, and there, on the adjoining baleon} 7 , on robe de chambre, and placidly lighting his midnight pipe of peace, stands Roger Temple. Roger may breakfast with Rose, dine with Rose, walk with Rose, spend any number of hours during the day that he chooses alone with Rose ; but it would be the acme of indiscretion for him to lodge under the same roof with her. Thus the widow well versed in the minutice of surface morals, decides. And so from A VAGABOND HEROINE. 14-5 Scylla to Charybdis fate, and the landlord of the Hotel Isabella together, have contrived to lodge him under the same roof with Belinda. The Maison Lohobiague has two flights of stairs, in these modern times has indeed been converted into two distinct houses, one of which is rented by the people of the Isabella as a succursale, or wing for overflowing guests, during the bathing season. Belinda sees him, grasps the whole dramatic capabilities of the situation in a moment, but gives no sign. I have said that nature has endowed the child with abundant imitative talent ; every-day asso- ciation with the Basques, the most excitement-seek- ing, play-loving people in Europe, has stimulated the talent into a kind of passion. Now, she feels, is a magnificent opportunity for her to act and with a purpose ! A glance at Roger Temple's face convin- ces her that he does not recognize Rose's vagrant, out-at-elbows stepdaughter under the disguise of civilization. Now she will have a rare opportunity of arriving at a truth or two ; now may she even test the practical worth of a " lifelong fidelity," see if this devoted lover cannot be led into a passing flirtation moonlight, loneliness, the certainty of the crime remaining undetected, favoring. "With an unconsciousness the most perfect she resumes her former attitude, and after a minute or two of silence sings, in that undertone for which we have no word in English, the whisper of singing, a stanza of the mendicant student serenade, familiar from one end of the Peninsula to the other : 7 146 -A- VAGABOND HEROINE. Desde que soy estudiante, Desde que llevo manteo, No he comido mas que sopas Con suelas de zapatero. She has a sweet, a sympathetic voice in posse, like the beauty of her face ; and melody and voice alike harmonize deliciously with e\ 7 ery external acces- sory of the scene. " Brava, brava ! " exclaims Roger, when she has finished. " That first verse was so excellently sung that it makes me eager for the second." Belinda, thus unceremoniously accosted, turns upon him in all the conscious virtue of a trained dress and paste necklace. " Senor ! " she exclaims, holding her head up with dignity, and in such a position that the moon shines upon its soft young outline full. " I beg a thousand pardons,'' says Roger, putting his pipe hastily out of sight. " But the senora's song was so charming that I forgot that we had no master of the ceremonies to introduce us. Has it not a sec- ond verse ? " " My song has a second and a third verse," replies Belinda, in English, strongly flavored with Castilian gutturals. " I must acquaint his lordship, however, that I believed myself to be alone. I never sing for the pleasure of strangers except when I am on the stage." " The stage ! " repeats Roger Temple, scrutinizing the girlish face and figure critically. " Why, is it possible '. " A VAGABOND HEROINE. 147 " I have acted as long as I can remember," says Belinda, with all the effrontery conceivable. " If his English excellency has travelled through any of the principal Spanish towns, he must have heard me." " When the seuora favors me with her name I shall be able to question my memory more accurate- ly," answers Roger. Belinda pauses for a minute or two ; then, " My name on the stage is Lagrimas," she tells him, " or, as you would say it in English, ' Tears.' Doleful, is it not ; but I do not wish it changed ? Who would not sooner be called tears than laughter ? " She sighs, and, half turning from him, rests her cheek down upon the graceful bare arms that lie folded on the balcony. Seen thus in the moonlight, her bright hair falling around her shoulders, her childish face grown pensive, she seems to Roger as fair a little creature as ever blessed man's vision in this prosaic world ; and his pulse quickens. The balconies are distant about four or five feet from each other. Leaning across the giddy intervening space, two persons of steady nerves might easily clasp hands, or at least touch fingers, if they so minded. They are alone together, he and this girl, absolutely alone, as were the first pair of lovers in Eden ; and yet impassably divided, as their lives are destined in very fact to be forevermore. And Roger's pulse quickens. During a great many years in India, I believe firmly (without endorsing Rosie's sentimentalities in general) that the image of his first love did blind 148 A VAGABOND HEROINE. Roger Temple to most other women's attractions. But that was during the lifetime of the successive husbands, his rivals; while his passion remained hopeless, theoretic, intangible. Free, he continued faithful ; bound well, we will not say that his fideli- ty for a moment runs any serious danger, but he is undeniably more open to alien impressions than he used to be in his Indian days. Every man living, above the level of the savage, has a craving after contrast, as strong pretty nearly as the mere physi- cal one for food and drink. In India, Rose Shelina- deane, the modest, flower-faced Rose of his imagina- tion, was his contrast, the delightful ideal reverse to all the women he lived among. R"ow, alas ! now, every woman who is fresh and natural, who does not wear pearl powder, does not demand tawdry compli- ments as a right, possesses for Roger Temple all the fatal charm of antithesis ! " Your philosophy is beyond your years, senora. Surely nothing should seem so good as laughter in one's youth." " Youth ! " echoes Belinda, raising her head quickly, and forgetting the Spanish accent and her assumed character together. " What have I to do with youth, sir ? "When was I young ? Why, from the time I was thirteen " And there her eyes meet Roger's full, full in the moonlight. She stops, and droops her face, crimson- ing. " Plenty of hard training has come to me in my life, seflor," she goes on after a space, but without A VAGABOND HEROINE. 149 lifting her eyes again to his. " Sometimes I feel, a little too keenly, how well my name Lagrimas fits me. But why should I talk of such things to-night ! You know rny country, Spain ? " turning to him with the most irresistible of all coquetry, the coquetry of ig- norance. " No ? Well, you should run down there some day, now that you are so near. I will be your guide if you choose." " Done," says Roger gayly. " It is a bargain that we take a Spanish tour together, Senora Lagri- mas, is it not ? " " I don't think I said anything about ' together/ did I? But never mind about that. Yes, we can go down to Granada first, if you like. It will take us about a week to see the Alhambra, and then But is his Excellency quite sure," pointedly, "that his time is his own, that his friends will give him leave of absence ? " " Oh, no question of that," says Roger, with the airy assurance of an unfettered man. " The doubt is rather, will the Senora Lagrimas keep her prom- ise?" No question of that ! Ready, after three minutes' temptation, to be led captive by the first strolling actress who accosts him from a balcony ! So much for engaged men, thinks Belinda. So much for the romance of two young hearts, the fidelity of a life- time, etc. Let us try this devoted lover of Rose's a little further. " I mentioned your friends, senor, because I know that you are not alone here. You may not have 150 A VAGABOND HEROINE. noticed me, but I certainly saw you to-night at the Casino with ladies." Roger Temple looks the very picture of inno- cence. "At the Casino?" he repeats. "With ladies? Ah, to be sure, I believe I did speak to some English acquaintances of mine for a few min- utes." " There was an ugly little girl for one ; a girl very sunburnt, very ill-dressed ; you danced a waltz with her, and another lady not so young. Your mamma, probably, senor ? " " Stepmamma,' 1 assents Roger unblushingly, " and the stepmamma also of the little sunburnt girl with whom I danced.' 3 " Consequently you and the girl are are " " Ah, that is a knotty point, the precise relation- ship between that young lady and myself. I will not allow you to call her ugly though, Seuora Lagri- mas. Sunburnt she is; ill-dressed she may be; ugly never." " Well, for my part, I do not see a good feature in the young person's tace,'' says " Lagrimas," with a contemptuous shrug of her shoulders. "A skin like a gypsy's, a wide mouth, a low forehead ! " " Magnificent eyes and eyelashes, teeth like ivory, graceful little hands and feet, and the sweetest smile, when she chooses to smile, in the world." " I should think her a vile temper, judging by her expression ; and as to her manners ! I have been here some time, senor. I know the girl by sight, and by reputation. She plays boys' games A VAGABOND HEROINE. J51 with boys; robs henroosts after dusk, with that dog of hers ; she talks swears, some people will tell you like a gamin of the streets, and " " And for each and all of these small oddities I like her the better," interrupts Roger warmly. " Belinda is just the kind of girl to grow into the most charming of women, in time." " A charming woman ! After the pattern of the other lady who is not so young, the stepmamma ? " " Xo, not after that pattern precisely, senora. Your vast experience must have taught you, surely, that there are more kinds of charming women in the world than one. Belinda has been ueg allowed to run a little too wild, hitherto ; but circumstances, I am happy to say, will place her under my guidance no\v. ; ' " Will they, will they indeed, Captain Temple ! " interpolates Belinda mentally. " We shall see more about that by and by ! " " She will live in my house, will stand to me in the position of a daughter, and I mean to reform her." " Ah, heavens, how praiseworthy ! How Chris- tian ! Reform Belinda ( With the aid of a prim English governess and a staff of attendant pastors and masters, of course ? " "Well, no," answers Roger. "I have no great belief in prim English governesses, neither are pas- tors or masters very much more to my taste. I shall reform Belinda, as much as she needs reforming, by 152 A VAGABOND HEROINE. kindness alone. It strikes me that what the poor lit- tle girl wants is not sternness, but love." Belinda turns her head away with a jerk ; her throat swells, the big tears rise in her eyes. If he had said anything but this, if he had called her ugly, wicked, any hard name he chose, she could have borne it better ! " Belinda should be extremely grateful for your your pity ! " she remarks, as soon as she can com- mand her voice enough to speak. " For my part, I don't in the least value that kind of regard." " No ? And what kind of regard do you value, may I ask ? " says Roger Temple, his tone softening. " Ah what kind ? when I have known you a lit- tle longer than ten minutes I will tell you.'' " The day we visit the Alhambra together, for instance ? " " Perhaps. Meantime, in Belinda's name, I .thank you a thousand times for the pity you are charitable enough to bestow upon her ! Good-night, senor. I leave you to think over your fine projects of reforma- tion alone." And with a mocking reverence "Lagrimas" sa- lutes him ; then, assuming the air of a princess at least, and with a grand sweep of her rustling silken train, leaves the balcony. She quits him, I say, with the air of a princess ; the moment she is out of sight, turns, peeps through a rent in the dilapidated Venetian blind, listens with eager, breathless curiosity to find out what Koger Temple will do next. A VAGABOND HEROINE. 153 Captain Temple for a minute or two keeps silence. Then " Senora, Senora Lagrimas," he cries softly. But no answer comes to his appeal. " Only one word do you live here? Is there any chance of my seeing you again to-morrow night ? " Belinda is mute as fate. " I shall listen for your voice toward eleven O'clock. If you do not take pity on me, I shall remain out here all night, remember, heart-broken." "So much for engaged men, I say," thinks Belinda. " Oh, if I was really wicked if I was half as bad as they give me credit ibr could we not have a comedy in earnest out of all this ? '' She retreats toward the middle of the room, and, under her voice, sings another verse of the serenade : Es tanta la hambre que tengo, Que ahora mismo me comiera Los bierros de ese balcon, Y el cuerpo de mi morena 1 Then she steals back to the window to listen ; her heart beating till she can hear its beats, her very finger-tips tingling with excitement, so carried away is she by this role of temptress that she is playing the most fascinating role (save one, perhaps) of the whole little repertory of woman's life ! " The balconies are not very far apart, seiiora," remarks Roger presently. " It would be quite pos- sible for a desperate man to leap from one to the other." 7* 154- A VAGABOND HEROINE. A half-suppressed malicious laugh is the senora's only reply to this thrilling suggestion. " I shall certainly make the attempt before long, and if I fail, mind if I fall, and am stifled down in all that harbor mud below, my death" plaintively " will be upon your conscience." A laugh, rather more malicious, rather louder than before, is her reply. " Seiiora Lagrimas ! for the last time, will you or will you not come out and speak to me ? " And once more Belinda's silence says " No" " I give you three chances, Senora Lagrimas." Silence. " Lagrimas 1 " Silence. " Belinda, my dear ! " She flashes out upon him like a storm-wind ; her lips apart, her eyes gleaming, so that they eclipse the saint's diamonds on her throat. " You you dare to say yon recognized me all the time?" This she asks him as soon as her indig- nation gives her breath to speak. " I recognized you all the time," Roger confesses humbly. " I knew you when I was lighting my pipe ; I believe, before you saw me at all. Why in the world should I not recognize you, my dear child?" " Because I had been fool enough to disguise myself under this rubbish." "With a fierce little gesture she apostrophizes Miss Burke's fine silk. "Because oh, if I had known, if I could have VAGABOND HEROINE. 155 guessed that you, of all people, would see me ! And the nonsense you talked, sir; the nonsense you dared to talk, knowing it to be me ! " " We have been talking very pleasantly," answers Roger Temple. " I cannot say I remember talking any particular nonsense." " What, not when you told me to my face that circumstances had put me under your guidance, that you meant to reform me ? You to reform me ! " " It was a rash speech, I admit. I am not so sure that it was nonsense." " And then our tour in Spain but you shall keep to that, you shall keep to that, Captain Temple! "Whatever Rose says, and whether the scheme is up to the Miss Ingram standard of propriety or beneath it, I mean to hold you to your word. We are going to spend a week in Granada together, you and I." " Of course ; Rosie with us. What could be pleasanter ? Rosie with us, and " And Augustus Jones, too, if you please," inter- rupts Belinda, a curiously abrupt transition in her voice. "In the selfishness of your own happiness, you and Rose, you seem entirely to forget other people's. I go nowhere without Augustus, now." " Without Augustus," repeats Roger blankly. " Why, Belinda, is it possible can you mean " " I mean that I will go nowhere without Mr. Jones. ISTow come, Captain Temple, or, as we are discussing family matters, let me call you by a sweeter future name come now, steppapa, don't pretend! No concealment between near and dear 156 A VAGABOND HEROINE. relatives. As if you and Rosie did not know every- thing about my poor Augustus just as well as I do ! " " I should be very sorry to know one thing," says Roger, culpably negligent of his future match-mak- ing duties as a parent. u I should be very sorry to know that you cared seriously, young, ignorant of life as you are, for a person like Jones ! " It seemed as though the obnoxious monosyllable would nearly choke him. " Care ! And, pray, who said anything about caring, sir ? I am going to marry Mr. Jones we settled the whole affair to-night marry, not care for him." Marry, not care for him. .As much repulsion as a man can feel, theoretically, toward a distractingly pretty little girl, not five feet distant from him in the moonlight, Roger feels at this moment toward Belin- da O'Shea. Rose was right. The Yansittart blood runs in her veins, poor child, and the blood is bad ! Scarce seventeen yet and she has the cold, mercenary instincts of a woman of thirty, and not by any means a good woman of thirty, either ! " You are slow with your congratulations and the match is really a desirable one, steppapa ; not of course, for a moment, speaking of Augustus person- ally. Bran-new villar at Clapham if he does leave out a few of his h's, poor fellow, he makes up amply for them with his r's villar at Clapham, opera box, diamonds. My appearance is greatly improved by diamonds, is it not ?" Holding up a pendant of the saint's necklace between her fingers. A VAGABOND HEROINE. 157 " Certainly. What lily is not improved b j a lit- tle paint ? All that glittering finery is Mr. Jones's first offering, I presume." " No,'' answers Belinda calmly. " There has not been time, I am sorry to say, for offerings yet. He walked home with me after I left you and Rose at the Casino (poor Augustus felt, as I did, that our company was not wanted), and I invited him in, just to keep me company while I ate my supper. And he proposed*" " He proposed. And you " " Accepted him, steppapa what else should I do? And then, when I was alone again, the thought struck me of borrowing Burke's Sunday silk, just to see how I liked the taste of fine clothes ; and I stole this necklace, sir, from the throat of old Beata who lives on our second landing a paste necklace only, not real diamonds such as I shall have when I am Mrs. Augustus Jones ! Was it wicked, I wonder ? " sudden compunction for the sacrilege she has com- mitted coming back upon her. " Captain Temple, do you think now the blessed old saints, when they are once safe in heaven, ever trouble themselves about the jewels they have left behind them OB. earth ? " Roger is silent. Belinda's worldliness has re- pulsed him to such a degree that he can no longer smile at her rattling talk ; and still she fascinates him more and more. Girlish she is not : deliberately, in cold blood, has she not sold herself to a man she de- spises, openly glorying in the bargain \ Feminine 158 A VAGABOND HEROINE. she is not: right well can he imagine those eyes of hers flashing, those lips quivering with the fierce ex- citement of a bull-fight. Innocent she is not : wit- ness the stories she told them at the Casino, the gus- to with which, ten minutes ago, she sustained her part of Lagrimas? And still, devoid though she be of every virtue that can be catalogued, there is in her a charm more potent than all the cardinal virtues put together. Some few exceptional people exist in this world who are a law unto themselves ; people endowed with that rarest of gifts, the fine flavor of perfect originality, and whose qualities are not to be measured out by the common foot-rule of good and evil. Belinda is one of them. And Roger Temple, cruel malice of fate, is precisely the man to appreciate the wild bitter-sweetness of her character to the utter- most. Men of his semi-poetic stamp fall in love often with conventional dolls, as he has done; many conven- tional dolls, as he will do ; and, pathetically conscious that the nearest relations of thi-ir lives have been in- complete, go to their grave without tasting the nec- tar of true passion once, for sheer lack of opportuni- ty. But let opportunity come ! Let. a woman, fresh and faulty from nature's hand, cross their path Well, our little story of elective affinities has not progressed as far as that yet. Roger is engaged fr> Rose, Belinda to Mr. Jones ; and Belinda and Roger are nothing to each other, for one more quarter of an hour at all events. They talked on and on, and presently Augustus is forgotten, and presently Rose. Belinda is Lagri- A VAGABOND HEROINE. 159 mas again, and Roger the wandering Englishman who lias fallen but too quickly a victim to Lagrimas's charms. By and by the air, all at once, grows fresh ; a flicker of pink light begins to show above the glori- ous chain of mountain peak toward the east, and with a start Belinda realizes that it is morning that Miss Burke will be back before noon, that Ro:er is the lov- '