Waverley Library (Quarto Edition) (v. 2) (1880 08 17)
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Published! Price, but 5 cents each. Tit HET it es >, y ‘ “in . The Only Young Ladies’ Library of First-Class Copyright Novels TON o a m - "4a =" Seon pad ye gi ———— NY ee ht ce $2.5 a year. Entered at the Post Office at New York, N. Y., at Second Class Mail Rates, Copyrighted in 1880 by BEADLE AND ADAMS. August 17, 1880. on LPLe NOE = ET Ee ““WHY, MISS ATTISON, YOU HAVE COME TO GRIEF!” ’ 3 : ‘5 as er Pledged to Marry; or, In Love's Bonds, | ssmes"teorie very setiom are om tier gentrbets wen ae anu you to promise it. Why on earth should he want you to marry this } stranger?” BY SARA CLAXTON. “Alberta, I think I will tell you,” said Aubrey, drawing nearer her oar a a chair, and raising her tearful, dark eyes. ‘‘ Papa, years ago, did this CHAPTER I. stranger’s father, Mr. Grey, great injury—cheated him—the sad voice Ye : 7 got bravely over the ugly word—‘‘of wealth that should have been his, _ “A bi eR ngs ype - and, through him, that of the girl he was about to marry. His poverty f ‘AUBREY, it is perfect lunacy!” said my lady. _ frightened her, and she discarded her lover. On his death-bed pa ‘i thought it would seem so to you, dear,” her cousin sorrowfully replied. | was troubled by remorse for those miserable remembrances, and could - To tell me you consider yourself engaged toa man you have never | not die, Alberta, until he had made what atonement there — seen, and of whose existence you were ignorant until asked to promise | was left to him to make—not to the man he had wronged (Mr. Grey Ps ate ¢ ‘ a wf . ey oT Sie ee Rane : , . ., BS ? , i : isk way - . Oa . vw ‘ ’ ta ®: a * I * a ian J iy: -
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i ee ‘imself ‘had died years before), but to his on. 7 pert ‘“‘Very right and proper, if the atonement iad confined itself to the restitution of the ill- gotten money.” Aubrey winced. “There was that other wrong to be com- pensated; at least, I know there was in papa’s mind (partly that, and partly fear of my pov- erty when he made the will that bequeathed ~ his whole property to Philip Grey, on the one 5 condition that he married me.” “fk pretty condition! Supposing he had been already married?” Fi “Then the A a Me was to be equally di- yided between us.” _ “Qh, really! And eubheline Mr. Grey re- fuses the one condition—likes the money, and objects to you?’ “He forfeits it, and I keep it.” “ And if you refuse?” ss * Every penny goes to him,” announced Miss Attison, calmly. “Uncle was out of his senses,” my lady de- _ clared, indignantly, ‘to throw his only daugh- terat the head of a needy stranger in that _ way. How in the world you, with your over- i strained ideas of modesty and retirement, could consent to such an outrageous disposal of yourself is past my imagination, I confess.” *¢ Papa implored me to comfort his last mo- ments by my promise to carry out his wishes,” a a: nei said Aubrey, with a break in her voice and her eo head turned away. ‘‘It was the first request he ever made to me, and he never denied me _’ anything. Alberta, in my place, you would ae have done as I did.” 4 - My lady shrugged her graceful shoulders, too annoyed for sympathy. ‘‘ How is it you’ve never told me a word of ll this until to-day—nearly a year since uncle’s death?” “ Becauso only to-day have I heard that the : piers “Mr. Robins, has discovered Philip _ Grey. He might have been married or dead, oyun ow; in which case I should have had tell you. Mr. Grey went out to ev Australia after his losses here, and his son is _ living there now. There has been a good deal of delay in finding him. Lawyers are very ae slow, I think; and his whereabouts was utter- _ ly vague. But my letter this morning tells ; me that Mr. Robins has communicated with him at las t, and bas forwarded the letters left owns aunt Robins’s) hands. One papa wrote ; the other I wrote at papa’s dicta- :: > ane tye «Making an obliging offer of yourself! No = dear but thatthe man willsnap youup! Well, I’m sorry for you, Aubrey, and wish uncle’s _ Fepentance had taken another form, or been delayed a little longer.’ se _“ Alberta!” y lady smiled at the flash of the dove-like Ly «That expression suits you, dear. You will | _ be sorry for yourself, some day, when you -* _ have sunk to the level of your clod-hopping _ spouse, and are enjoying the fullest delights of bush life and squatters’ (or whatever they are) . vulgarity. Sorry, when you know the value of the beauty and refinement you are so madly termined to throw away. And I had such rming plans for you, Aubrey; had sketch- ed out a matrimonial future you could so i easily have realized this autumn. I thought— as you arethe only creature I care a straw about—I should like to have you settled near me for life.” “The only creature you care a straw about, and you are married!” Aubrey echoed, shocked. | ‘My lady laughed; and, rising, trailed her -velvetacross to her cousin’s side. You are not stupid enough to fancy I care for Sir Edgar, are you? At least, I do care for him in a certain way; I care for his rent- roll and title, friends, position, and surround- generally. I merely object to bis pom- oe ‘Posity, ugliness, jea:ousy, and himself particu- larly. SOR oe “Aubrey put her hands to her ears, ‘1 will + eS hoe not listen to you, Alberta. You are saying what you do not mean.” My lady looked much amused. “T don’t tell him quite that story, you know; but I like to be candid occasionally, and it is only with you I can indulge in so dangerous a luxury; you always seem exactly my second self.” She looked it, too—for they were marvel- ously alike, those cousins, standing side by side on the fleecy rug. Taken for sisters were they over and over again, and had been remarked as twins, though there were plenty of points of dissimilarity visible ot any close observer. It was the style and general tout ensemble that was so strikingly alike. My lady was the handsomer of the two. Her beauty was per- fect asa Grecian statue’s, and no marble per- fection could be colder. The chiseled features and creamy skin suz- gested no touch of warmth; and the eyes, in their dark velvet loveliness, might flash, and lure, and dazzle, but could never soften in tenderness nor kindle in sympathy, as it was the nature of Aubrey’s to do. Miss Attison was slighter, shorter, altogether a less fine, although as graceful a woman as her cousin. Her complexion, too, was less perfect, though it had warmer coloring, and the expression of the two faces was utterly unlike; for there was haughty impenetrability in my ‘lady, there was winning sweetness in Aubrey. Still, there was a wonderful likeness, not only i in feature, but in richness of auburn. hair, in the proud carriage of the head, and in gen- eral stylo and manner; and Aubrey often laughingly declared it was no use having sep- arate photographs, for that it only led to the confusion of well-regulated albums, ‘* Our first installment of visitors to-morrow,” observed Lady Perriman, complacently, sip- ping her five o’clock tea; ‘‘and a matter of rea) rejoicing, I think it. ’Amiable as you are, Aubrey, aud exhilarating as Edgar’s society is, 1 should die if another week were to be as the last has been.” “Are there many people coming?” asked Miss Attison. “They will come till the house is crammed, I hope.. Ob! to-morrow, you mean? Well, the only individual of ncte is the one I had de- termined to try my hand at match-making on for you—Max Lydell; his place is only three miles from here.” “Why on earth ishe going to stop in this house, if his own is so near?” “Because his own is undergoing alterations; and because I—knowing nothing of this idiotic engagement of yours—deemed a month to- gether in a house under my supervision would be the only thing required to assist destiny, for you and he were made for each other. Oh, Aubrey! I could shake you!” Whereupon Miss Attison laughed. There were several ladies in elegant, and one or two gentlemen in regulation, evening cos- tume, grouped stiffly about the Perriman draw- ing-room, when Max Lydell entered it. His hostess, dazzling in black velvet and diamonds, made much of him; and when din- ner was announced, Miss Attison was assigned to his care. They were introduced as strangers, those two, or Aubrey’s quick glance might have been taken for one of displeased recognition. She was very lovely in black lace and snow- -drops, with pearls coiled among the ruddy masses twined about ber head; but for chilli- ness and reserve, Lydell thinks ho has never encountered her equal. “Uncommouly difficult to get on witb,” he voted her, feeling more than inclined to ‘give up the attempt. Feminine coldness or indifference is new ex- perience to him, for although far from what is termed a lady’s man, ladylike appreeiation did, as a rule, find something unquestionably at- tractive in the dark, refined face, with its grave eyes and rare charm of smile; still more Vo pieeCED Te Maen) oo a wae TO MARRY. eee eee eee ee so, perhaps, in the Phe Sah 6 fa SS a easy manner out of which, as from a contrasting frame, came at times such stirring bursts of eloquence, satire in keenest darts, or a power of subtly annihila- ting argument which proved the brains bebind the quiet, unreadable eyes to be of no meaner caliber than the close-cut silk that covers them. However, on second thoughts, Lydell rather exerted himself to be pleasant to this unap- proachable neighbor of his; and although, when she had glided away with the other ladies, he could not congratulate himself on the least success, he was not altogether certain that it might ‘not be worth his while to try again to soften her, He considered the matter as he followed his majestic host from dining to drawing-room again, and saw Aubrey seated in one of the low, luxurious chairs in which my lady de- lights, with her pretty hands clasped on its arm, and her eyes upturned to the black coat and diamond studs before her. Several other black coats and variously designed studs were dancing attendance, eager to enter the arena should the chance present itself. Lydell pre- ferred monopoly. Aubrey’s hair was just touching the dark velvet of the chair, and a lamp’s light caught its rare red tint; "there was cobwebby lace around her throat, and grace in her attitude. Lydell entered into a political discussion with an opposite neighbor at the dinner-table, gradually defeated his occupant, and watched Miss Attison all the while. i Smiles and dimples. suited her better than stiffness and disdain. She laughed out merrily once or twice, and her blue eyes sparkled and color vatied. Lydell joined the outer circle of that iGeltet chair. Its occupant was talking brilliantly and well, with a quick repattee here, a clever remark there, and sound common sense in the next observation, all uttered in the same mu- sical unraised tones. If there were a thing Lydell hated, it was a bigh- pitched voice ina woman. ‘‘ Aubrey, play something!” her ladyship begged; and Max Lydell found himself ad- ~ justing the piano-stool and candles. Miss At- tison did not play as well as she talked; hers was but a mediocre performance, breaking the instrument's ice, and showing greater talent the way it should go; but it spirited her from the low seat, upon which a watching old lady, with an eye for comfort, pounced. ‘¢ A miability rewarded after the customary manner of this world,” Mr. Lydell observed, with a smiling glance "from the lost chair to the stiff ottoman to which the girl was trying to resign herself. ‘TI don’t know about the amiability, but I dare say there was a little selfishness in mo- nopolizing so desirable a seat so long.” She turned to him, with no trace of the dim- — ples flashing out a moment after upon a sandy- haired specimen of gallantry making haste to aver, ina strong Irish brogue, ‘‘that no one who kcew Miss Attison but so slightly as he had the misfortune to do could credit, even from her own lips, the accusation of selfishness, or, indeed, of any other quality that might not be defined as charming.” And Lydell’s lip curled, “‘ Barefaced flattery is the style that pleases thee,” he said, scornfully, to himself. Then aloud, “ May I, though possessed of discern- ment so infinitely less profound than Major f Macarthy’s, be permitted to sécond that de- claration?” | ; / Aubrey looked up at him, steadily, straight, and, before the clear, contemptuous gaze, he, the first time in his life, felt convicted of un- | provoked impertinence. ; Not so entirely Unidovilled, though, as he ; noted how the bright friendliness and frank | smiles so impartially bestowed on others were denied to himself alone. How her very voice changed to address him, and how carefully she avoided even a chance cneounter of his glance, To say that ho was piqued would be be Pav dg = too. mildly.
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“‘T will find out the reason of the fair demoi- selle’s caprice, or conquer it,” was the resolu- tion with which he knocked out the ashes of his last pipe in the smoking-room that night. - “T congratulate you on your taste,” said my lady, satirically, when Aubrey, according to eustom, entered her dressing-room for an os- tensible good-night, but a real ten minutes’ gossip over the concluded evening. ‘‘ Thanks, dear,” returned the girl, provok- ingly. “Pretty taste, indeed, to snub the nicest fellow by encouraging the greatest cad in the room!” ‘Oh, poor Major Macarty! he is not a cad.” “A nuisance, then. just to annoy me.” “‘ You believe nothing of .the sort,” Aubrey contradicted. ‘‘I tried to snub Mr. Lydell (and Iam glad you think I succeeded) simply be- cause, from the bottom of my heart, I detest him.” My lady elevated her eyebrows, and waited. **Vll tell, you all about it, Alberta.” And Miss Attison placed her slippered feet on the fender, and leaned confidentially forward. ‘A little time ago, aunt and I were coming out of the Albert Hall—along those endless , corridors, you know. We were walking slow- jy, all muffled up, and two gentlemen passed us so closely that it was impossible to avoid f hearing a little of their conversation, especially as they scorned to lower their tones. Distinct- ly I heard one say, with a laugh, ‘Nailed you will be, old fellow, within six months! The pretty little Attison spends the autumn with her cousin, and Ill lay any odds that she knocks you over as easily as her ladyship did that old stick, Perriman!’ “Even more distinctly did I hear the an- aes swer to that pleasing speech. . “¢¢T have too much pity for the shallowness of your purse to take your bet. Granted the young lady’s charms, I tell you candidly the first decent flower-girl we meet would make in my eyes a far more desirable wife than the sd lovely Miss Attison!’ ; ‘As he uttered my name, he passed out into 7. the full light, and I looked at him; and to-day } I recognized him the moment he entered the ; drawing-room, and remembered his insult.” “Oh, you made a mistake! Identifying a j I believe you did it > ae ae . S « man in a moment’s glance like that—mufiled up, too! Absurd!” “Tt was I who was muffled—not he, Alberta. And if I had not seen the face, I could swear to the voice.” “There was no insult about it that I can see.” My lady changed her tactics. ‘ Listen- ers never hear good of themselves, and young men of the present day don’t pick and choose their expressions with the circumspection their friends could wish. Besides, granting those to be his true sentiments of the moment, they be only proved that he knew nothing at all ‘about you, or that it was a case of sour grapes, and : it would bea very interesting occupation for you now to Somes him to recant or repent those sentiments.” “Do you think I would deign—” “There, good-night, dear,” concluded Lady Perriman, with a yawn; ‘“‘and forget this thrilling anecdote. uf CHAPTER. II. FROST AND THAW. THERE was a dance at the Hall the second Lee evening after Max Lydell’s arrival. A good many of the young people of the neighborhood were invited to come up after dinner. Fairly good musicians were provided, and without much ceremony or preparation a most enjoy- able evening came off. Lady Perriman affected such impromptu gatherings. She liked dancing for the same reason that she liked or disliked anything—viz., Be her own ability or inability to shine therein. 3 > She was the belle, of course, this evening, Au- brey being second, in white silk and black lace; but greatly in request as this latter young lady :] PLEDGED TO Ca TO Wate ec ee was, and beautifully as she timnacd: she could not bestow her own gift upon her partners. “These dreadful, floundering countrymen!” she sighed, slowly recovering from a hardly- hit young squire’s trois temps. “1 wish I could dance with Alberta; there isn’t another decent step in the room. Yes, she has found one,” as her ladyship’s silken "skirts float by, steered smoothly and truly through the jog- ging and hopping, dashing and charging maze with which the room is filled; and then Au- brey’s envious eyes recognized her cousin’s partner, and she resolved that her own waltz- ing was at an end for that evening. She would not be bumped about, as those other men styled dancing, before Max Lydell’s quiet, supercilious watching. Major Macarthy pleaded for a galop; the smitten young Squire implored one valse; and the doctor par excellence of the neighborhood could not realize a mazourka refused; but pretty Miss Attison was firm. She kept Major, and Squire, and doctor be- side her; for it was no part of her programme to act the deserted wallflower, and she smiled and listened to each in turn, conscious the while of Alberta’s mauve train and musical laugh passing and repassing, and of the darkly handsome face bending over her cousin’s sunny hair—curiously conscious, too, of the exact ex- pression that face is wearing, and how seldom its glance is turned upon herself. “Have you and my cousin danced together yet?” asked my lady of Mr. Lydell, as the music struck up. ‘Ob, Aubrey, take one turn! Your steps will match exactly. He is such a relief after the aborigines,” she laughed in her cousin’s ear, and glided away. ‘*May I have the pleasure?’ inquired Ly- dell. How could he say less? “You must really excuse me. tired.” ‘* For just one turn?” “Certainly.” He stood there, still apparently waiting; and as Aubrey turned her attention pointedly toward the doctor, she was conscious that Ly- dell’s dark eyes were still resting on her face. As the consciousness grew unbearable, she flashed round to meet them haughtily. “For the last time of asking, Miss Attison,” he laughed. And the girl a moment after knew not what had prompted her, whether the magnetism of the steady gaze, or the irresis- tible strains of the weird ‘‘ Manolo;” but cer- tain it was that in the very faces of the re- jected valse, galop, and mazourka aspirants, she had laid her hand on their rival’s shoulder, surrendered her other to his close, warm clasp, and from among them floated away. Only one turn had Aubrey tacitly granted, but after the partners she has struggled with, and the music she has stood inactively listening to, the pleasure of a step even as her own, and a guidance as safe as smooth, was more than she could relinquish the moment it has begun. Only when the long-played valse ended with acrash did Aubrey reluctantly pause at the opposite end of the room to where still stood and glared the Major, the Squire, and the doctor. “There are upbraidings, stern, pathetic, and argumentative, awaiting you; no doubt about it,” laughed Lydell, with a glance across. “They all dance so fearfully bad,” she mur- mured, self-excusingly; ‘‘ the Major clearing the room like a cavalry charge; Mr. Donning- ton maintaining his own rights, irrespective of any other unfortunate couple’s; and Mr, Lan- don—well, he might not be so bad if he had an idea of time or tune. Still, I think I must go across and make my peace ‘with them if I can, for they are all great friends of mine out of a a ball-room,” “TI see. You like friendship with varia- tions, and by a division of your friends into distinct circles for separate uses, prevent all the monotony attaching to the thing as gene- rally understood. So many dancing friends, so many for flirting, such a number for town, I am too 3 5 y and such a number for country, ete. A very a good plan, I have no doubt, provided that eac fe favored individual knows his own place, and never presumes out of it, nor interferes with his neighbors. But, of course, yon arrange all that?” The keen sarcasm of the tone flushed Au- brey’s face, as she looked up and smiled. , “IT must complimeut you as you compli- J mented Major Macarthy last evening,” she : said, ‘‘upon the profundity of your discern- ment; and, of course, it is easy for you now to understand how I can find pleasure in dane- ing, say, with a man for whom, socially, I may entertain the greatest aversion. ‘9 : | “How pleasantly you put it!” he said, ad- a miringly. Then, after a pause, “‘ You learned dancing in- Germany, if I may judge from your step?’ ‘“*T was educated there. Were you?’ vet “‘ Not educated, but I bave had a good deal of - practice at one time or another in the Father- land.’ Heavy and clumsy as those Teutons are, they can dance, can’t they?’ And loiter- 3, - ing still at the further end of the room, buf ~ hidden by forming Lancers from: those irate 7 and ill-treated medical and martial eyes, Au- brey insensibly found herself drifting into » amicable conversation under the guise of Con- tinental discussion. he) Supper assuaged Mr. Donnington’s wounded ~ feelings, while a quadrille was a’sop in the pan to one, and a pretty speech to the other, of his companions in neglect; but, somehow or : other, it bappened also that before theevening had worn itself out, Miss Attison and Mr, Lydell had danced again, and more than once, ie together. 4 : ‘‘T have a plan for you all to-day,” an nounced my lady, a few mornings sequent- : ly. ‘‘Those who please may ride, a those is who please may walk; but no tru p wilt Re 38 allowed on any pretext whatever. reve ‘ a ; opinion is that the walkers will have, of it this lovely day, and they will ved to return by train.” fe “From where?” cried a chorus of ‘eager ie voices. i “From the curious old hermitage in Hound Wood; a grotto thronged with legends and % thrilling romances, and inhabited by a living > hermit of the nineteenth century, to be seem and spoken with.” Of course there arose delight and antioge 2 pa tion; and whoever failed to anticete must nevertheless go forth in search of it, for Sir Edgar was spending the day in town, and his lady’s will reigned law. oe ee Perriman Hall was filling as its mistress — wished, and it was a goodly party that sallied forth on the healthy, exhilarating walk over the heather and through the woods. No one rode, for the bridle-path was uncer~ — os, tain—moreover, longer. Ge Luncheon was conveyed by the Hall ser- ee vants, and spread in the room which the her- oe mit, in his own solitude, thoughtfully provided — for such public requirements. It was a merry meal, done justice to; and then followed the interviewing of the oracla and many truisms uttered in solemnity, with a few carefully guarded predictions that could offend no one and ran no risk of ever proving themselves false, but which took so long to declare, that when some one by chance ex- claimed, ‘‘ What time does our train go?’ the people who knew were astonished to find that there was barely time to catch it; and as it — was the only train that could help them on their homeward way, there set in a general rush toward the little country station. a It was twenty minutes’ walk there by the proper road; ten by a fly and a scramble over fields and gaps. A mad race, with the fleetest — runners ahead to stop the train. , im And not one of Aubrey’s admirers was near —an effect of wholesale snubbing for which she had herself to thank—when she caught her a3 flounces in some unseen wire netting, and each _ % effort she made to free herself neaiegnd her — but the closer pelaohary, ra .
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“Soe ‘Pull, dear! Make haste!” articulated Miss Ley, straining every nerve after a certain ‘brown coat ahead. - “Qh, tear your dress, Aubrey. You'll never get it undone without,” advised my lady, gliding past with a captain of hussars in i - indefatigable attendance. ~ _ But good strong serge is little less substantial aig than wire, and Aubrey tried as vainly to tear the one as the other. To strip her dress of its -goultitudinous frills would certainly be a work _of time; but the girl began it bravely, and had demolished a yard or two by the time the train-catchers’ voices grew inaudible. “Can I be of any assistance?’ inquired a ‘ccol, unexpected voice from bebind. *¢ Yow’ll certainly lose your train,” was Miss Attison’s not irrelevant reply. “TJ never intended otherwise, though I must say my chance of catching it seems as good as “your own at present,” he rejoined, and smiled. “Have you a knife? Will you cut it? * ! ( ) Mjaick! cat Lydell drew out the useful weapon in pro- — voking hesitation. os * Isn’t it a pity?” B? The shrill railway whistle came clear on the ee and Aubrey’s foot stamped. Fy “ Will you let me be the judge of that, and : simply do as you are asked?” o. Without another word he drew the blade _ sharply across and across, and as the pretty kilt- ings lay wrecked on the ground, she was away like an arrow from a bow, breathlessly run- ning, when again the fatal wh'st'e sounded. “Too late, Miss Attisop. That wholesale destruction was useless,’ said the young man SA _-—- eoolly at her side. Sy “That may not be the train, or the others a may notall have caught it,” she urged; but, alas! they reached the platform only to find it . ‘deserted—not one companion in wisfortune visible. “Tam very sorry for you,” observed Ly- dell, forgivingly. ‘‘I always intended walk- “ing back myself, but you will be so fearfully tired, I’m afraid.” *T shall not be tired in the least. distance I mind.” “ But the company,” he rejoined, equably; “ which, I fear, is as inevitable as the walk. Unless,” as if struck by a sudden idea, ‘‘ we march "apart at a certain regulation distance— say just beyond sight or just within hail— which will render you still under my protec- tion, but relieved—” “Don’t tax your inventive powers any fur- _ Wher, » she interrupted, coldly, ‘‘unless they gan suggest something more useful than non- sense.” For some time they walked on, those two * Beeavess in a rigid silence, side by side. Au- brey’s eyes were riveted on the ground; her ‘companion’s as persistently upon herself; and in spite of the unprovoked rudenesses he had owinced under and resented, he could not help that glance from gradually growing an ap- proving one. The tall, lithe figure his own towered above ‘was sO easily graceful; the clear-cut profile had so rare a background in the tint of that massed hair; while the soft, downcast eyes and sweet pressed-together red lips seemed to - gontradict even his own practical experience, and give the lie to the looks and words that were sharper than blows. As the silence grew marked, they reached the stile leading into the wood; and, while ‘helping bis companion over, Lydell made some shght remark about English country life, _ and, the barrier once skilfully removed, kept the conversation as persistently afloat. Aubrey was difficult at first—taciturn and uninterested; but imperceptibly by and by the - yare charm of manner—Lydell’s own when he _ ¢hose—told upon her in spite of herself, He could be a brilliant conversationalist—a most fascinating one when he pleased. Gifted with easy command and perfect choice of language, vivid powers of descriptive memory es wore rerreeai light glancing satire—he ex- Tt is not erted each and all in that afternoon walk over the thick-strewn leaves, and soon saw the spell work, From monosyllables Aubrey deigned ques- tions, and the next transition was easy. By the time they entered the home plantation, and the girl stifled an exclamation of surprise at the apparent shortness of the walk, Max Lydell had known her as society generally found her—bright, sympathetic, winning. As she really was, no mere acquaintance ever knew her. The hidden depths of the character, Lydell’s penetration told him, was no common one; its truth unswerving, honor steadfast, unselfish- ness, faith and devotion he had yet to gauge. As they entered the Hall door, Aubrey froze again. From behind the heavy curtains cut- ting off the entrance from the further hall proceeded the chinking of cups and the laugh- ing chatter of tea-drinkers; and my lady’s voice cried sweetly, ‘Don’t go up-stairs, Au- brey. Come and have some tea, dear child; you must be exhausted.” ‘‘We had not one of us an idea you were not in the train,” observed vivacious Miss Ley. ‘We imagined you were with the others; the others, of course, thought you were with us. When we got out at this station and saw you nowhere, we were just dumbfounded; were we not, Mr. Paget?’ Mr. Paget, be it remarked, was the wearer of the brown coat. ‘‘ Dumbfounded,” echoed that original gen- tleman. “Tt was very sly of you, Miss Attison, you know; very sly indeed of you and my young friend Lydell here,” waggishly observed a dense old ’squire, one of Sir Edgar’s especial cronies. ‘‘ You might have stated your inten- tions handsomely, and spared some of us the anxiety we’ve been enduring. Macarthy bere was wanting to alter all the signals, and force the train back, or order a special to search for you; and as for Mr. Donnington—” “Tf Mr. Donnington’s anxiety, or yours shall we say, Mr. Turner,’? Aubrey laughingly carried the war into the enemy’s camp, ‘‘ had been aroused early enough to have come to my rescue when I was caught like a spider in a net, I should have been grateful, and you would have been spared such terrible suffer- ing.” “ Ha, ha! caught ina net, were you? You now, or Mr. Lydell? Ha, ha! a net! Capital joke!” Aubrey took her tea, and tossed aside her hat as she sunk into the chair by the logs leaping and crackling up the old-fashioned chim- ney. ‘Yours was very impossible advice about tearing my dress, Alberta. I should have been imprisoned in that gap to this hour if Mr. Lydell had not luckily come past with a knife.” “Sly dog—sly dog!” laughed the rubicund Mr. Turner, enjoying himself immensely. “ And there are my flounces left lamented,” continued Miss Attison, holding up her muti- lated skirt. ‘‘ Well, you are here now, dear; and the ad- venture might have ended worse,” my lady re- marked, placidly. “Most decidedly,” agreed Lydell’s quiet voice. ‘‘May I trouble you for another cup?’ *¢ Most decidedly, for Lydell, confound him!” muttered Mr. Donnington, in the loud aside of jealousy. ‘Miss Attison, I dare say, found the walk more pleasant than you or I should have done,” chimed in, with the sweetness of spite, a ma- ture young lady who had had views of her own regarding handsome Max Lydell—views which, unfortunately, he never seemed capable of understanding. ‘‘You are so fond of walk- ing, I know, dear” (with a honeyed turn to Aubrey); ‘‘and those woods in the eee must be charmingly romantic.” ‘And dreary,” Miss Attison finished, clear- ly. ‘It might have been a walk to your taste, Laura; for myself, I don’t see how my adven- ture, as Alberta calls it, could have ended é much worse, unless it had necessitated a longer : walk under the same circumstances.” She looked not at Miss Laura Bromley, but at her companion of that walk, as she spoke the last words, her eyes meeting his steadily, with a defiant flash in their beauty. ‘‘The statue itself again, with a vengeance!” he thought, watching the haughty girl repos- sessing herself of her hat to retire up-stairs. “T would give a year’s income to understand this woman,”—he paused a moment, with the contrasting remembrance of that frank glance upturned to his in the woods, then finished out the thought as once before—‘“‘ or conquer her.” CHAPTER III. FRIENDS OR FOES? ‘““We are all quite interested in this letter waiting for you,” laughed Lady Perriman, in her morning greeting to Mr. Lydell. “It has traveled about so perseveringly in search’ of you, and its complicity of directions so nearly occasioned old Bubbs, at the post-office here, a fit. Hesent up a touching message with the letter-bag this morning, hoping you would find it all satisfactory.” “Tt is satisfactory, thanks,” said Lydell, re- folding the foreign document. ‘‘Good news. An old friend, whom I bad not expected to see for years,” he continued, after pausing to ex- change a chilly greeting with Miss Attison, who came gliding in at the moment, elegant and blooming, ‘‘is on his way home from Aus- tralia. An unexpected stroke of good fortune having befallen him, his banishment from Eng- land has attained its end, and ended itself.’ “Ts he from this neighborhood? Any name we know?” inquired my lady, politely inter- ested. “No; he is a north-countryman—George Skipworth.” And as he uttered the name, it chanced that bis eyes strayed across to Aubrey opposite, and too well did he know ner counte- nance to mistake the signs of disturbance on it. now. He followed the direction of her glance to- ward her cousin, but no statue could be less suggestive of agitation than Lady Perriman pouring out tea and raising her bright face to greet a fresh entrance of laggard breakfasters. “Ah, you are north-country, Miss Attison, too!” Max Lydell said, quickly. ‘*‘Do you know the name at all?” “T knew a Mr. Skipworth once—slightly,” she stammered, taken unawares, and under that quiet gaze faintly coloring. “Jt is not such an uncommon name, cer- tainly. You told me once, if I remember rightly, that you took rather a special interest in Australia. You must let me introduce my friend and bis reliable information.” ‘¢He will be making some stay with you?’ And there was an accent in her voice that might indicate anxiety. ‘Some little siay, no doubt.” Later, on the terrace, Aubrey’s hand slipped through her cousin’s arm, and Aubrey’s anx- ious blue eyes were raised to her cousin’s face. “ Alberta, you heard Mr. Lydell at breakfast? You heard from whom he said his letter came?” ‘‘T hear you now, and your tragic tone; and know the absurd surmises you are going to in- flict upon me, if Vl listen, which I won’t. Au- brey, how can you be such a perfect goose?’ responded Alberta, very pleasantly, shaking herself free. “Tm convinced it is the same George Skip- worth,” persisted Aubrey’s low voice, ‘From the north he came, and went to Australia. He has gained his object, and is coming home to (as he thinks, poor fellow) claim you. Alberta, what shall you do?” ‘‘ Display a little more common sense than you are doing at present, I hope, my dear,” with her pretty laugh. ‘“Skipworth—the name is as common as stones on the road in- the north. There may be a hundred Skip- worths seeking fortuaes abroad at this identi-
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cal moment, for anything you or I know; an- other hundred successful searchers on their homeward way to join expectant friends. Don’t conjure up any more impossible horrors, I beg of you, my dear; but come and have a little tennis practice. Captain Fusell,’—to that gallant hussar officer appearing on the steps,—‘‘ we are organizing a return match; will you play?” Time certainly wends his flight pleasantly at Perriman Hall. if Sir Edgar be stiff, and slow, and crotch- ety, as some of his younger guests aver, no siren could be more bewitching than his wife. No hostess could be more unfailing in pleasant re- source and suggestion; no organizer could be more indefatigable or successful than Lady Per- riman; so time flies apace in rides and drives, shooting and billiards, strolls on the terrace, and tea in the hall. Musical evenings and: im- promptu dances or theatricals, with mirth and flirtation, pervading all. Guests came, and guests went; and Max Lydell yielded willingly enough to his host’s repeated entreaties that he would consider the Hall his home until his own place was thorough- ly ready to receive him. Naturally or arrangedly, he and Miss Atti- son were thrown very much together, but he had noti yet fathomed the secret of her per- plexing caprice—nor had he subdued it. He found it quite an engrossing study, though, that caprice; good to enliven what might be otherwise monotonous evenings, to diversify breakfasts and afternoon tea, and fill up many idle moments interestingly, for Au- brey had varied of late. Constant dropping, they say, wears away stone. Unremitting perseverance wins a smile now and again; and occasionally, and, as it generally seemed, in temporary forgetfulness, ‘the girl could not help being her natural, true- hearted self toward the man to whom in reac- tion the next minute she might be ice and in- solence, 4 Lady Perriman was in her element in the house filled by her own invitations. Admiration and homage was as necessary to her as air; and well-dressed, courteous puppets, obedient to her touch on the strings, formed the court her grace and beauty loved best to rule over, so that not many sparks of genius or weights of sense were as a rule to be found in Perriman Hall. Such frivolous assemblages, chattering away life, were hardly more to Aubrey’s taste than the one or two minds heavily stocked with agriculture and nothing else, in whose society alone Sir Edgar found delight. Max Lydell not unfrequently told himself the same fact; and yet those two, upon whom so many more congenial invitations were pressed, still lingered here, and Aubrey said it _ was because she had promised not to desert her cousin that autumn. Mr. Lydell knew it was from Perriman Hall alone that he could personally superintend the alterations in progress at his own place. They were grouped at tennis one afternoon; my lady, who was a splendid player, standing on one side of the net with Captain Fusell, her favored cavalier of the moment, and with whom she was carrying on as near an approach to flirtation as fear of her husband’s patent jealousy, and the uncertainty of the form that jealousy might take on emergency, would allow. Were it not for such wholesome fear, her ladyship would be what her nature prompted _ —a desperate flirt; and as it was, her inordinate love of and craving for admiration carried her pretty far that way, and put her diplomacy to severe tests now and again to avert the con- sequences of her own folly. Aubrey was standing on the opposite side of the net, with Max Lydell by her side; and Aubrey was cross, for she played tennis badly, and disliked it, and saw through her cousin’s inveiglement; of herself that afternoon. “You are prepared for another beating, of course?” was her cheering remark to ber part- het ie. i PLEDGED TO MARRY. ner. ‘You seem to find more pleasure in them than I can truthfully say I do.” “Tf the fight be a good one, I don’t mind its result,’ he laughed. ‘‘But I scarcely think our opponents will have it all their own way this time.” ‘As far as I am concerned, they certainly will,” she answered, disagreeably. Yet, in spite of herself, she got excited in the game as the balls bounced, and flew, and avoided the ground; and from admiration of the ease and dexterity with which her com- panion supplied all deficiencies on her part, was roused to exert herself in emulation; caught a ball or so cleverly; elicited commendation from Major Macarthy, who hurried eagerly up the terrace to look on; then flew after a higher ball Lydell was calculating to take, jumbled up against him, and, slipping, fell a pretty heap of cashmere on the asphalte floor. The bit of india-rubber rolled away unheed- ed, as he bent in instant solicitude over her. ‘“‘Tt was my confounded clumsiness! “I shall never forgive myself if you are hurt.” “T am not,” she said, promptly rising, with- out notice of his proffered hand. ‘“‘ At least, not much.” “Your wrist is bleeding; I have hurt you wretchedly!”? he persisted, in a tone suggesting a murderer’s depth of remorse. “Tt was not you in the least. It was my own awkwardness entirely ”—with those beauti- fu] eyes raised frankly to his. ‘‘Can you go on playing?’ asked my lady, averse to having her amusement interrupted. “Tf you think you can’t manage, Major Ma- carthy—” “Will be delighted to be of service,” fin- ished that buoyant gentleman, “ although well aware what an inferior substitute he will be.” “Perhaps Mr. Lydell may tell another story. He knows my tennis capabilities inti- amen now!” Aubrey laughed. “‘ Miss Attison at tennis is just what she is at everything else—perfection /” insisted the unscrupulous Irishman. “Ts that your verdict?’ Aubrey mischiev- ously turned to her late partner. ‘““With the reservation of tennis, yes!” he said, slowly fixing his eyes on hers, and his tone too low for any ears but hers to catch. She crimsoned furiously, and bent to ban- dage her wrist. ‘*T detest compliments!” in a hauteur osten- sibly intended as the Major’s rebuff. ‘‘ Who- ever troubles to pay me them only lowers whatever respect I hold him In.” ‘¢ And if already held in none! How do they affect his position, then?’ inquired Lydell, quietly, while the Major hastened to excuse himself. ‘* And what compliment can there be—I ap- peal to the company generally—in stating fact? In the face of your insinuation, Miss Attison, unjust as cruel, I hold to tny asser- tions, and prove them. You ride to perfection, you drive to perfection! Pray, where’s the compliment in that?” “Oh, ’'m not a bit deficient in self-appre- ciation,” the girl laughed. ‘‘I know exactly what I can do, and didn’t find fault with you for declaring I could ride or drive.” “Hear that, now!” turning triumphantly. “And if Isay you dance to perfection, dress to perfection, talk, flirt, charm to perfection, am I complimentary there?” “No; but shirking the point of dispute, which was tennis !” ‘Sure, and does every one think alike? Can’t there be two opinions about perfection in a paltry game like that? And if I can’t hold one and you the other, without any thought of compliments, this isn’t the free country you English rave about.” “Will you give us practical demonstration of your tennis opinions?” said my lady, laugh- ing, but tired of the interruption; and forth- with the warrior, with a wave of his racket, rushed into the melee. ‘Miss Attison, you have not yet deigned to 5 answer my question,” Max observed, standing by the corner, where she leaned with her ban- daged hand to watch the finish of the game. ‘‘Your question? I’m afraid I must trouble. you torepeat it.” “Very simple arithmetic. If a man grant- ed a certain quantity of respect lose so much by a certain number of compliments, how do the same compliments affect the man already held in no respect?” She shrugged her pretty shoulders. “T always hated arithmetic, and my expe-— rience is at fault here; for I do not know any one for whom I entertain no respect.” “No?” he questioned, skeptically. ‘Then disrespect and dislike are not synonymous?” But coloring deeply, she turned away. Dinner was later than usual that evening, to accommodate business of Sir Edgar’s, and the space between tea and the dressing-bell seem- ed unusually long. Aubrey, sauntering into the drawing-room, found it gloomy and unlighted, with melan- choly shadows in its vastness that, neverthe- less, accorded better with her present tone of mind than the giggling chatter floating from up-stairs, or the desultory knocking about of billiard-balls from across the hall. Passing through the larger, she seated herself at the piano in the smaller drawing-room, where, though the chandeliers were unlighted, the fire was brighter, and the dark corners nearer, and her fingers, wandering over the keys, played the accompaniment to her own © thoughts. They were sad ones, if the music told true— sweet, low, pathetic strains, played with a softness and depth of expression that will be wanting in that brilliant fantasia she will ac- — quit herself of at my lady’s customary request. three or four hours later, and so as much bet- ter worth hearing than that dashing public performance as three heartfelt words are to three hours’ head speech. > as The dreamy, white fingers told no fib;—Au- brey’s thoughts were sad. Bravely as she bore herself kefore her cousin, she was also too sweetly feminine not to feel acutely the un- pleasantness of the position she must perforce accept. The uncertainty, the possibilities, the bon- — dage of present and future, were pressing very — heavily on her mind just then; and did she not play, Aubrey might sit and cry—albeit that was an unsatisfactory weakness her brave na- ture utterly scorned. oa ' How long she had been notalone in the room — she knew not, when at length she rose to close _ the instrument with a sigh, and a voice from _ the fireside said, earnestly, ‘‘Must you really stop? Oh, please, one thing more!” “Mr. Lydell! When did you come in?” was her startled answer. OM He was stretched full length on the couch, — with his hands clasped above his head in an at- titude of luxurious and perfect enjoyment, in- terrupted as Miss Attison crossed to the fire and he rose slowly to his feet. } “TI beg your pardon; your music brought me, Thanks, so much, Miss Attison; it has been delicious.” “Twas playing for myself, and, as I imag- » ined, to myself,” she returned, civilly; and he _ laughed. ite ‘*T assure you I was quite conscious pf how __ little you thought you were conferring pleas- — ure on me; nevertheless, yon have done so, — as and I thank you all the same.” She to warm her hands, and he continued presen’ ly: “That was not your usual style of playing, and was a little mournful, wasn’t it?” : , “We cannot be alwaysin exuberant per. “Tt was as my mother used to play, in the twilight; and I, @ boy, stretched at her feet for _ hours, listening. Do you know, I could almost — have fancied it years ago again; myself with- out the knowledge of the world’s care or grief, _ a my guardian — Aubrey did not laugh at the arsinny See ( and the only woman I ever loved angel once again.” at the softened, intense look in the eyes ; x Rate \ PS ee ry ene eS 3 spirits.”
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PLEDGED TO MARRY. wee ee ee NL ee A oe ees 7 a. oo " 7s . > ‘. , 3 tee ae > ° .. oa . | Cotes aes aera a il PS ate ones : , f ; \ (2 ae Saas eB F upon her. Into her lovely face there sprung its greatest soul-subduing charm, sympathy ; __, and Lydell started at the wondrous beauty of _ the girl he had never seen asnow. r “You were very fond of your mother—tell me about her. I should like to hear!” _ In the soft, subtle light bathing her radiant ‘aie. end lingering in the gray folds of her =, dress, he talked and she listened, her glance frankly meeting his, her voice winning him out oe vi of himself, fear In the firelight they forgot; and when the party cal entered with lights, and Miss Bromley, f lowing, declared, meaningly, ‘‘We have been looking for you two separately every where; what a nice little firelit tete-a-tete I am _ disturbing, to be sure!” Aubrey answered, in full remembrance: “To me, at all events, a very welcome in- terruption, I assure you, Laura.” ‘‘4ubrey, do you mind driving to Bolton this morning?” Lady Perriman asked, a few days after. ‘Miss Bromley wants to catch + the express, and it does not stop at this station, you know. The luggage has gone on, and I meant to drive Laura myself, but find A can’t . very well leave home this morning.” Aubrey would do more than drive to Bolton t» get rid of Miss Bromley, her girlish affec- _ tations and her bitter tongue, so the pretty - arriage came around at the proper time, and _ my lady was left to profitably spend her morn- a ing on a couch with a novel, or on the terrace in foolish chatter, while Aubrey did the long, cold drive bravely, and congratulated herself when Miss Bromley said her amicable farewell on the Bolton platform. Then the girl did a _ few errands for her cousin in the town before she drove thoughtfully home through the lanes, _ whica, perfectly lovely in summer, were dreary slush now. _ Half-way home, in a lane whose ruts were _ deeper and its banks higher than ever, the young lady was startled by a jolt, a drop, and a frightened start forward of the pony she had Serre well in hand, and rolling away to the ditch before her, Aubrey saw neither more “nor less than one of her carriage-wheels. “Here is a predicament!” she sighed, when, +5 having succeeded in pulling up the startled _ pony, she-stood at its head in the mud, and looked vainly about for help, or sign of it. What in the world I am to do, except un- % — the pony and lead it home, 1 have no idea. And the mud and the distance—ugh! 4 She stood patting the shivering pony awhile, and regretting her scornful rejection of Al- rta’s tiger, then began in despair among the ‘aps and buckles, but her fingers were chilled, d Dido’s uneasiness was increasing every oment, juddenly on the still air came the bark ‘of a og, and the tones of a man shouting to the es | know that voice,” said Aubrey, with a ht accession of color, and a curious inde- on, considering her only wish a moment was for sign of some human presence. *Shall I call to him or not? He will pass on Ido not. ShallI? Quiet, Dido! Ob, dear! if it were but the Major or any one else! Shall bs call him? No, I don’t think I will.” | ‘Then the setter cleared the hedge before the _-pony’s very nose, and restless Dido gave a shrill neigh in recognition of a friend, _ “What are you upto now, Set?’ said her master, leisurely following tc ascertain where- * - fore his whistle was disregarded. et hy, Miss Attison, you have come to ith ite Was it a spill, or how did it hap- taht “The wheel rolled off of its own accord, I ire you; and we have been standing in this uteresting position, Dido and I, for an age, as it has seemed to me.” _ “Why in the world didn’t you call me?” he , depositing his gun safely against a tree making rapid work of that unharnessing. should not have seen you at all but for Set’s viousness; but you must have heard the row "Os i Why did not you call?’ v , “Were you going into Bolton by the foot- path?’ she asked, evading his question. He glanced up from the traces he was stoop- ing over, to the lovely face, with its haughty s.amp that he knew so well. ‘*Coming back, I’ve. been taking my gun to Locker’s—a little thing I wanted him to set right; and intended to strike across these fields into the fir-covers, and so join the other men.” ‘¢Tam sorry you should be so detained.” “ And Iam not at all sorry to be so detained,” he answered with peculiar emphasis, And she stood silently watching him as he fastened Dido to the nearest fence, and threw the fur rug over her, ere stooping to examine the car- riage. “ The linch-pin is broken, but I think I can manage a temporary substitute.” “Can I help at all?” she volunteered, rather confusedly. ‘That is dreadfully heavy for you to lift alone.” “Dreadfully heavy for you to attempt to handle; and is isso muddy here.” He raised his head concernedly. ‘‘Over there by Dido will be dryer for you, if you don’t mind; and I will have this all right—temporarily, that is tosay—in a few minutes.” Obediently she went, and obediently she waited, till he had put the pony again in the shafts, and assured her, “It is all safe now; and if you'll get in and hold the reins, I will walk by the side and keep an eye on that wheel. You won’t object to my gun; it isn’t loaded.” **T couldn’t think of taking you so complete- ly out of your way,” she said. ‘I am ex- tremely obliged to you for what you have done, and can get home now alone, just as well as I came.” “ With the chance of a few repetitions of the accident between here andhome. I have only managed a temporary repair, I told you.” Aubrey. was again about to speak, but Ly- dell went on, “Excuse me, Miss Attison, but these lanes are free to every one; and if I incline to pace slowly down them in your wake, I cannot see that you have any right to object.” She laughed, and got into the carriage, and for some time there reigned an awkward silence, broken abruptly by Lydell thus: ‘‘ And why did you prefer standing alone, and in mud, beside a disabled carriage and fidgety pony, with three good miles before you to be traversed somehow, to uttering one sound to bring me to your assistance?” The question was so: unexpected, that the girl, with no crushing answer ready, took re- fuge in evasion. ‘Did I declare my prefer- ence?” “Certainly; by your action—or, rather, in action. Had Macarthy, Donnington, Fusell, or even old Turner, been Set’s companion just now, you know you would have called either to. your aid unhesitatingly. To an _ utter stranger you would have done the same; to any one but the man you dislike most in the world.” Aubrey—whose ready speech so rarely de- serted her—could find no word to utter; and Max, after a glance at the fair, disturbed face, softened his tone. ‘How have I earned your invincible aver- sion? One takes dislikes involuntarily and without conscious reasoning, we know; but this aversion of yours to me seems something more than that, and yet Iam utterly ignorant of any offense given. _Ifthere has been such, I swear it has been unknowingly—I need hardly say unintentionally, for I would forfeit lands, wealth, name” (and the passion in the thrilling tones was but the stronger for ist sup- pression), ‘‘ay, life itself, rather than harm or displease you by word, look, or action; and—I think you know as much.” If to be pale and agitated said anything, she did know it; nay, more, believed it. In the tumult of her mind she argued, Should she tell bim how unwitting was his offense—how deep- ly the careless words, whose utterance he has uo doubt long forgotten, have been ringing in | the ears he never intended to hear them? Should she repeat them to him frankly now, and, for giving and forgetting, make friends as he evidently wished, and end this warfare, of which she was (ber traitor heart told her) so desperately weary? The confession is trembling on her tongue, when her evil genius whispers, “How mean and despicable he would think such malice borne so long, and from cause so trivial! should J, by so humiliating a confession, de- stroy the respect i have wrested from him at last.” Far better quietly to accept his overtures of friendship—more than friendship it must never be—and let such sorry bygones rest. So she turned with a light in her liquid eyes, and with her own bright smile, “‘I have no explanation to offer, Mr. Lydell; but I think, perhaps, if my pride will let me, a few apologies —nay, a good many—and cessation of hos- tilities—” “ And what do you offer in their place?’ he queried, with that quiet, unfathomable smile. “Friendship, if you like—sincere friend- ship.” She put out her hand, half timidly, as she uttered the words, smilingly; but did not look at him, even when he took it in his strong, warm clasp, that held it so much closer, so much longer, than even the importance of the occasion demanded. “T accept it most gratefully, most heartily, and never shall you have cause to repent your kindness.” Had her offer been of herself and her affec- tions, his thanks could not have been more chivalrous or more fervently uttered, she thought; and, to cover her embarrassment, said, with a laugh, ‘“‘ You catalogued my circle of friends once, do you remember? Under which heading now do you wish to enroll your- self—country driving?” “Don’t remind me of past rudeness,” he pleaded. ‘‘I assure you I am quite penitent enough,” Then they turned into the park, and the guns from the home plantations rung into the conversation. Only when Aubrey was divesting herself of her hat and jacket did it occur to her to wonder how much Max Lydeil knew respecting her engagement, or what version of the affair might have reached him; also, whether it would not have been wholesome candor on her part to have introduced that subject into the confidence, in case—‘‘in case,” she thought, abstractedly fingering the pretty things on the toilet table, “the might be ignorant of the whole affair. Not that it would matter one scrap if he were—of course not—only that friends should not have secrets from each other. ButIdare say Alberta has told him and everybody else her version of my engage- ment. I will ask her.” “Tndeed I have done no such thing,” said my lady, when Aubrey, with some hesitation, made that inquiry next day. ‘I see no necessity to publish my cousin’s lunacy so long as there is the chance of disinclination on the part of the bushranger, or whatever uncouth thing he may be; or the possibility of any accident between here and Aus- tralia, or something happy and unforeseen turn- ing up in time to save your social suicide. But why should I have confided in Max Lydell par- ticularly, pray?’ she mischievously questioned. ‘¢¥ don’t know,” stammeréd Aubrey, taken aback, ‘‘Noé in him particularly at all, only I think people generally may just as well know it now as later. It can never be more perfectly settled than. at this moment—for, Alberta, I had my answer from Mr, Grey this morning.” “Yon did not!” Aubrey rose, and stood examining the flow- ers in the window, with her back toward her cousin, “T did. He accepts me unconditicnally, and with much apparent delight.” “The wretch!” groaned her Jadyship; “of nae; a Why . 4 '
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4u * * ee ere dey. ee ae eee Se a Se - course he does. Oh, Aubrey, what a pity you weren’t born poor! Let him have your money, and save yourself that way.’? In a sudden happy burst of inspiration, ‘‘ You won’t want your fortune if you marry Max Ly—” “T tell you I adhere to my promise,” Au- brey interrupted, in a tone whose quickness may be temper or pain. “‘Show me your love-letter, dear.” ‘No; it would not be right,” excuses Au- brey, uneasily, destroying those flowers. My lady, in her quick perception, smiled. You would let me see it, dear, if it were one you were proud to show. Aubrey, I know I am right. It is to an uneducated, half-civilized boor you are so willfully determined to sacri- fice yourself. Now look me in the face” (and her ladyship puts a strong white hand on either wrist), ‘‘and say if that letter be such asa gentleman would write—such a gentleman, for instance, as Max Lydell?” ““What has Max Lydell to do with it?” cried goaded Aubrey, snatching herself away from her laughing tormentor. ‘‘ You have no right to suppose my future husband any less a gen- tleman than your own lord and master. He was born one, at any rate; and it is unfair to judge by such a trifle as a letter. He is com- ing over himself as soon as possible, he tells me, and then—” “And then,” finished my lady, promptly, “you will receive him in rapture, with prom- ises to love, honor and obey.” “‘T shall redeem my promise” (the sweet voice gathered firmness), ‘‘and do my duty by - my husband.” CHAPTER IV. A WOMAN'S VOWS. “TuHREs letters for you, my lady,” said Sir Edgar Perriman, courteously handing her share of the emptied bag across the breakfast- table; and my lady stifled a yawn as she turn- ed them languidly over with the tips of her ringed fingers, : “ Alberta, what are you doing?” Aubrey cried, so suddenly that Sir Edgar elevated his eyebrows significantly. Lady Perriman was only pouring, in a straightforward, steady manner, the contents _ of the silver tea-pot over the cup and around the cup, anywhere but into the cup before her, with her eyes fixed on the opened letter held in her other hand. At her cousin’s exclamation she started, and murmuring something about “this stupid tea- pot,” swept angrily across to the bell. As Captain Fusell and three other gentle- men flew, like propelled pellets, to intercept her trouble, the wide sheet of paper she held fluttered into the grate, the blaze leaped and caught it, and my lady returned to her seat smiling, as a servant, to rectify her mistake, and Mr. Lydell, from an ante-breakfast ride, entered simultaneously. But when Sir Edgar had gone pompously forth to his morning interview with his stew- ard and agent, my lady, crossing the drawing- room to attract Aubrey’s attention to her crewels ostensibly, whispered among the wools, “Come up to my boudoir in five minutes. There is something I must tell you at once.” And when, at the appointed time, Aubrey obediently followed to the luxurious flower- decked boudoir, she found her cousin standing by the window with a shade on the lovely face deeper than that cast by the rose silk hangings. __ “Aubrey, I had a horrible letter this morn- ing”—vehemently tossing a tassel,—‘‘from that stupid George Skipworth himself.” ‘And he is coming home?” Aubrey cried. “Worse than coming. He has come !” ss Oh, poor fellow! Alberta, what does he _ “Well, I burned the letter, as perhaps you saw, but I can tell you its contents, Bothera- tion! Stupidity!” she breaks off, rising angri- ly to pace the rose-strewn carpet, and looking _handsomer than ever as she does so. “ Why ot on earth should I be tormented in this way?” | ae : he Naet4 (a 6 ae " oh ee PLEDGED TO MARRY. Aubrey could tell the reason, but merely asked, ‘‘ What were the contents?’ “Why, would you believe any man could be so credulous, so foolish, as to imagine that I meant all I said before he left England,—said, you know, just in the pain of parting, and in the comforting belief that we two should never meet again? Thought T really meant it all, and has toiled and waited (so he says—I really don’t believe the half of it), obeying my com- mands about not writing, but thinking of me atevery moment of his life (more fool he!), and buoyed up by my parting vows, as he has the audacity to call them, until an wnexpected stroke of good fortune lifted him into a position of competency, and he flew toward home on the wings of love, never dreaming that I could be found in any position save the exact one in which he had left me!” “Alberta, I felt certain, as you know, that that friend of Mr, Lydell’s returning from Aus- tralia would prove to be the same George Skipworth you have treated so heartlessly. You laughed at my idea, but—” “Tt is no laughing matter now, I grant you. Australia seems full of evil for youand me. George has only just learned that which filled all the papers six months ago—Alberta Atti- son’s brilliant marriage. His toiling and wait- ing has been carried on in a remote region, it seems, where marriage announcements do not penetrate; but I wish some kind friend had given him the benefit of the bad tidings earlier, for the end of this letter, written under the sudden shock, I can make neither head nor tail of. Such a mixture of upbraiding, im- ploring and reminding. Oh, really, Aubrey, what a nuisance men are, after all!” And my lady, sinking exhausted into her velvet chair, looked a martyr. “You certainly treated this one shamefully, wickedly!” Aubrey said, a great pity mingled with her indignation. “‘My dear child, I don’t want to hear what I have done, but your advice as to what I should do now to calm this wronged individ- ual, The part of this letter that gave me that turn at breakfast was a threat of coming down here after me—whether for further upbraid- ings, or with some dim idea of an elopement, he does not say, but is not the interview a pleasant prospect?” “You deserve a far worse punishment,” under her breath. “Perhaps so, dear,”—stretching her little slippered foot to the blaze, and clasping her hands in a graceful negligence behind her head. ‘‘And if I were married to any style of husband but a jealous one, I should not grumble about the prospect of a little exciting novelty. I declare I should be rather pleased than otherwise to see poor old George again if I were not doubtful about Edgar’s welcome for him. By the way, did you notice how Edgar eyed that unfortunate Captain Fusell last evening, when he and I were singing that duet? I hope your bushman won’t have jeal- ousy among his other fascinations, Aubrey. It is’ a terrible quality for a husband to pos- sess. “‘ Are you going to answer Mr. Skipworth’s letter?” “T shall write him a cool three lines, so worded as to stop, I fondly hope, his threatened journey hither.” But the threatened journey was taken in spite of those carefully worded three lines. On a crisp, cold afternoon, my lady and her cousin—only my lady and her cousin, which the former declared afterward to be the most marvelous piece of good luck—walking toward the home plantation, encountered suddenly, at the corner where the station road diverged, a man, striding in the direction of the Hall— & man short, tand thick-set, and bronzed, yet, withal, as gentlemanly and good-looking as two-thirds of the favored guests then scattered in the Perriman preserves, and the reports of whose guns came sharply on the breeze to the ladies as they stood to greet the stranger. — My lady was a shade paler than her wont, a ‘ew > eo a es Se ¥ shade haughtier; by no other sign did she evince the slightest discomposure. Aubrey was far more nervous, unable to make a single even commonplace remark, and trembling as she stood before the wild, hag- gard desperation of the man she intuitively felt had lost his all. “ And so we meet again, at Jast, my lady !” said Skipworth, with a harsh, grating laugh. _ “Yes,” she assented, sweetly, with the sun-— light full on her calm face, but her eyes rest- ing anywhere than on the glistening bloodshot orbs confronting! them, ' ‘““This is the pleasure I have so long pro- mised myself!” he went on, roughly. ‘‘ One more look at the curse of my life—that is to say, one more gaze into your pretty face, my lady!” “T shall hear perfectly well, Mr. Skipworth, if you speak a little lower,” she returned, smil- ing, but with a quick, apprehensive glance around. ‘‘ What you can have to say to me to necessitate this visit, of whieh, of course, I duly appreciate the honor,” with a mocking © bow, that shatters his false composure, ‘‘I am at a ioss to imagine, but shall be glad to hear, if you will speak quickly,” glancing at her watch. ‘We dine early, and—” “ Alberta!” he burst in, hoarsely. “Do you remember our parting?” ' “No, really,” with a pretty shrug; “you cannot expect every one’s memory to be so per- fect as.your own,” ““You lie!” and Aubrey shuddered at the tempest in the face from which her cousin’s gaze was so studiously averted. “You lie, and you know it. As well as I do you recollect that summer afternoon, when, under the oak by the river, you twined your arms bout me, and with tears in those eyes on whose truth I © would have staked my life, the eyes that dare not now meet mine, swore—swore! do you hear, my lady?—to be true even unto death— to be mine, mine alone!” “‘ What a touching reminiscence!” languidly buttoned her glove. “Touching!” with teeth set hard, and words ~ hissed through them. “Are you a woman or fiend, to stand smiling there?’ “You are a pattern of politeness, at any — rate,” she laughed; and Aubrey put an entreat- ing hand forward. ** Alberta, do not—in merey, do not!” And she “Do not what, my dear? Not congratulate 7 Mr. Skipworth on his delicate choice of words? This repartee is very amusing,” she turned gracefully to him, “‘but does not bring us much nearer the real business of our interview. You have not surely taken this trouble and long journey merely to compare my memory with your own, or to pay me the compliment — of even so grateful and gentlemanly an insinu- e ; ation as your last?’ \ if Sir ys “Then I came to curse you!” he cried, un- ~ steadily grasping a tree for support, asa drunk-— en man might do. ruined me body and soul! And, if curses cling, as they say they do, then may mine—” “Oh, hush, Mr. Skipworth!—hush, I im- plore!” cried Aubrey, frantically, closing his lips, with her hand. ‘“ Alberta, how can you U so taunt and madden him? “You see his condi- tion. Say something kind, something concilia- — ting; just a word, I entreat you!” in an agita- ted whisper. Lady Perriman considered. All the wild words she had been bearing were but so many 7 “To curse the false beauty, — ; the lying lips, the devil’s smiles, that have ~ ca ‘ ae r nh Ais ie * € feathers on her well-regulated mind. A little | i excitement, and the first words that come uppermost; she knew George Skipworth of old. — Me * ¢ Still, as it is an inconvenient time for this sort of thing, and an inconvenient place—for those guns sound nearer and nearer, and there may be wisdom in Miss Attison’s suggestion—she is not above accepting ‘it. f “Talking in this wild way can do no good | now, George,” she said, bending nearer, and using the low, sweet tones that had haunted act him like never-to-be-forgotten music through tt be OEE bee or those long and weary, yet hopeful years, ‘Ib p mah! ; “es Din eae 4 fh .
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3 8. “4 is done now; and however you or I may re- f pent it, nothing can undo ‘he fact that I am another man’s wife. If you knew all, perhaps you would not blame me quite so cruelly; but Ido not complain. I deserve your anger, and submit to it, as 1 must do to the reproaches of my own conscience.” By, te My lady, at her wit’s end to continue the Baa speech so successfully begun, was saved trouble -——sé&@by:: Skipworth’s fal] to the ground in a sudden : . paroxy(m of almost childish sobs and anguish. 3 “JT loyed you so dearly, Alberta—so truly, | go wholly! I do not grudge you the heart y you have spurned and broken; but why did you not kill me outright when your love shanged? Why leave to me a life from which you had crushed out every hope?” Men Alberta’s quick ear caught the sound of other ae. voices approaching; recognized one, as also the ee slow, stately footstep, and knew there were 4 ‘ two paths the returning sportsmen might take, and that one would bring, in less than three minutes, Sir Edgar upon the spot where a stranger lay writhing upon the soft greensward of his park, and upbraiding his wife as none but a former lover could have the right to do, My lady is self-possessed and prompt. “ Aubrey, you will help me this once again?” ina fervent whisper. ‘‘ Coax him to rise, and goaway. You can doit much better than I, who would be lost if Edgar should hear this man, and see me near him.” Then, waiting no answer, the graceful figure glided among the trees, and was out of sight. It was a rather trying position for Miss Attison; but, true to her kindly, unselfish ‘ nature, she accepted it, and faltered, in a vain effort to imitate her cousin’s composure. “Tt is all over now, Mr. Skipworth. Do not give. way so utterly, I entreat. You are a man, remember; then bear this like one!”? “A man!” he laughed, horribly. ‘A tor- tured dog—a cur that, once petted and caressed, is now spurned and kicked aside! There is little enough manhood left in me, I assure you!” There was silence again around the spot, for Sir Edgar and his friends had chosen the right path, after all; and there was a long pause before Aubrey, with tears in her soft, sweet eyes, murmured, impulsively, ‘“‘I wish I could do anything to help you. I cannot tell you how sorry, how very sorry I am!” Skipworth made no rejoinder, and, as the minutes slipped by, the girl, in desperation, conquered her timidity sufficiently to urge, “Forgive me; I have no right to dictate, but is it wise of you to stay here? Would it not be better to go away, for it could only be fresh pain to see Alberta again, and—and—” : *¢ And—and,” he mocked, fiercely, ‘‘ to take _ myself out of her way is the best service I can __- render now to the woman who once vowed her life into my keeping. Well,” rising and shak- ing himself like the tortured animal he said he was, ‘I will act upon your friendly hint, and take myself out of your way—out of her way —out of—” But the last muttered words Au- brey failed to catch. As she watched the man’s swift, uncertain steps down the station-road, great pitiful tears dimmed her sight; and perhaps it was they, or perhaps the fast-creeping evening shades, that prevented her noticing another figure within a _ stone’s throw of where she was standing. A tall, slight figure, in velveteen shooting- coat, and leaning upon his gun, with his face paler than usual, and with a fixed, curious : look turned in her direction. Aubrey carried home through the dusk her _ aching remembrance of that other face’s pain, ¥ and the despairing words it would be long ere she forgot; but their recital failed at all to af- fect: her ladyship. ‘‘ Well, dear,” she said, cheerfully, glancing at her satin dinner dress spread out on the couch, and touching the bell for her maid,— _ well, there is one good thing in this wretched afternoon, at any rate; which is, that no crea- tare but ourselves knows anything about it. Nice talk one-half of the tale would make in PLEDGED TO MARRY. this gossiping neighborhood! How the wretch- es would hug and chuckle over it!” As Skipworth strode down the road, his steps mechanically bearing him toward the station he had so lately quitted, a hand touch- ed his shoulder, and a voice said, ‘‘ George, old fellow, I don’t want to intrude; but if you can stand a word or so of sympathy aud consola- tion from an old friend—” “T can’t,” replied the other hastily, shrink- ing aside as he quickened his steps. ‘Ah, Ly- dell, is it you?’ as the familiar face forced it- self upon his dazed senses. “‘I had forgotten you were in this part of the country. Don’t stop me now, there’s a good fellow. Look me up in town; I’m off there now.” “*Skipworth,”—Lydell hesitated, wringing the offered hand, with his honest, friendly look straight into the other’s eyes—“ forgive my impertinence; we have been friends, and fast ones, so long, you and I. Don’t take this mat- ter so to heart—she isn’t worth it; and you'll see it in that light yourself before long, old man, and bless your lucky escape from such a heartless, mercenary piece of selfishness, Meanwhile scorn her as she has scorned the honest man, too good for her.” “Fine talking!” groaned poor Skipworth, whose self-command vanished at touch of sympathy. ‘‘Easy for you, who don’t know what it is for one woman to be all the world to you. Wait till you have trusted and worship- ed as I have done, and have met with my re- ward! Wait till the lips that have given you kisses and vows throw you the stabs hers have dealt to me to-day! Wait till the light and hope of your life dies out suddenly, in a mo- ment, and then talk of taking matters to heart and scorning a perjured woman!” “You were engaged to—to Miss Attison?” Lydell forced the words from his lips, and shuddered as they awoke laughter that had no pretensions to mirth. “Engaged? Do vows and promises, with soft, twining arms, and eyes that wile your senses away, mean engagement? Ha, ha! Not a bit of it!—when a richer man presents him- self! What is love or honor to money nowa- days?” Then he checks the bitter wildness of his manner suddenly. “Forgive me, Lydell! This is a queer greeting to the old chum I have not seen for years; but you see how it is. ve just had a knock-down, and cannot pick myself up yet. Leave me to myself now, and look me up in town in a day or two.” “May I run up with you to-night?’ Max asks, impulsively. ‘‘ Let us have a chat over old times together?” ‘‘No, no!” uttered in a way there was no protesting against. ‘I am no company for any one just now, for I tell you I am nearly mad!” Then, with one more silent hand-gripe, the two friends part—for the last time on earth. Possibly that evening was not a particularly happy one for Lady Perriman, although she sung and smiled, and talked and flirted—the latter to as great an extent as Sir Edgar’s very suspicious eye allowed—as uninterrupted- ly and bewitchingly as usual. For Aubrey it was a very disappointing and distressing evening. For the first time since Max Lydell’s arrival at the Hall, the chair beside her white dress and her crewels was filled by Major Macarthy in bliss; and the girl, in her quick parrying of compliments and brilliancy even greater than usual, was not for one moment unaware of Lydell’s sudden attraction toward another chair—the chair of a girl only one degree less pretty than Aubrey herself, and who evinced no distaste for attentions she had long secretly coveted. Amid the Irishman’s volubility, Aubrey heard every word that other deep, languid voice exerted itself to utter to that other girl. To Aubrey, whose offer of friendship it ac- cepted so enthusiastically yesterday, it said only these words through the length of the ~ Bact ve evening—‘‘I am going up to town to-morrow to stay with that old friend of mine you heard me say I was expecting from Australia— George Skipworth. Do you remember?” Aubrey. faltered something as she flashed a fearful glance across to her cousin; but my lady, from amid her circle of satellites, be- trayed not by one eyelid’s flutter whether or no she had heard. In confidential dressing-room chat, a little later, more than one young lady remarked i an intimate friend that ‘“‘ Mr. Lydell’s attenti to Aubrey Attison seems cooling off, my dear, most unmistakably!” Nevertheless, in three days Mr. Lydell was back from London, and the first person he greeted was Miss Attison, whom he found alone in the drawing-room, ‘Just in time for tea, Mr. Lydell!” she smiled. ‘‘Sir Edgar has taken the other ladies for a nine-miles’ ride down those sloughs of lanes, but Alberta and I expect them back exhausted any moment now.” Then her ladyship glided in. “Ah, Mr. Lydell! I thought you could never have the heart to stay away from those birds so long as you wished us to believe!” “Tt is not the sport here that has made London hateful to me,” he rejoined, gravely; the while his steady gaze rested upon Aubrey, and he thought he knew the reason her color was varying from crimson to white. “T hardly dare ask what it may be after the tragedy of that tone!” my lady declared, lightly. ; “Tt is not exactly a tale with which to entertain a lady; but I should like to tell it if I might?” “Ob, certainly! We will brace our nerves heroically—won’t we, Aubrey?” “T told Miss Attison my trip to town was to meet an old college-chum—George Skipworth. He went to Australia a year or two ago to make a fortune, asso many fancy is an easy matter there; and he wanted it for the old reason—to share with another. He was en- gaged to some young lady, who had a mind above love’in a cottage.” My lady laughed, as she stooped to caress the cat. “By arare stroke of luck, such as does not fall to one in twenty out there, he did pick up, not a fortune, but enough to justify him in re- turning to the girl who had sent him out with the promise to wait for him; andcan you guess how she welcomed him—how she repaid the exile and toil to which he had devoted himself at her command, endured unflinchingly for her sake alone?” He paused, covering his face with his hand; then added, bitterly, hoarsely, ‘I saw him yesterday lying dead before me, shot through the heart by his own hand; and a few lines by his side, to tell the cause of that self-murder— to tell the poor old father, whose only child he was, how a false woman’s cruelty ”—and even my lady shrunk at that ringing sternness— “had driven his son mad; ruined him body and soul, as he put it; but to her name he left no clew—loyal, even in death, to the creature who had slain him as surely as if her finger had pulled that fatal trigger.” My lady turned aside, affected. Aubrey made the first sound she had uttered since Ly- dell began to speak. It was more of a wail than a cry, and the young man started for- ward to catch her, as she sunk, half-fainting, from her chair. ‘My smelling-bottle—thanks!—and a little cold water, She will be well again presently. She is subject to fainting, and you did tell it very suddenly, you know—such a_ terrible thing!” my lady reproached him. ‘‘ There, are you better now, dear? It was only a horrible tale, Aubrey, such as you may read in the > newspapers any day, if you look.” Then, as consciousness came back to Aubrey, and she opened her lips to speak, with a sign and a whisper, her cousin banished Max Ly- dell from theroom. —
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PLEDGED TO MARRY. 9 CHAPTER V. A PHOTOGRAPH. PERRIMAN HALL was as full and as gay as ever, Some of the former guests had left, but others had taken their places. Max Lydell had insisted upon taking up his abode in his own house, unfinished though it was; and Major Macarthy, with his hopes blighted by Aubrey’s firm though kindly an- swer tothe question be had dared at last to put, had returned to his regiment, and was al- ready forgetting the wound he had declared to be incurable. Captain Fusell had gone to Paris; but Miss Attison, with one or two more of the first comers, was still at the Hall. Lady Perriman was more lively, more be- witching than ever, though she had: given up her plots for Aubrey’s matrimonial welfare, and apparently resigned herself to her cousin’s determination to carry out her father’s will. Miss Attison had received another letter from that ardent lover across the water—an epistle abounding in sentiment and professions, and containing the comforting assurance that he would be by her side early in the new year— an epistle that jarred on the delicate sensitive- ness that tried so hard to ignore the vulgarity and want of gentlemanly feeling shown in each line of that letter. Poor Aubrey! Life was not very bright to her just then. The future looked darker than the present, and the present had few sunbeams and many shadows. The cousin whom sbe had loved as a sister had proved herself heartless and cruel, while the man whom she had believed a steadfast model of honor and integrity had shown him- self mean and false. Aubrey’s offer of friendship, and Max Ly- dell’s grateful acceptance of it, had ended in a coldness on his side so marked as to be noticed by every one; and mean, indeed, did it seem to her of the man who had spared no effort to overcome her ayersion and compel her to like him, that he should, the moment he fancied his end achieved, turn the tables upon herself, and wound her with the very weapons of which he had disarmed her, How bitterly she repented that conversation in the Bolton lanes only she could know. To have been cajoled into owning herself defeated, and offering overtures to the foe who laughed in his sleeve as he pretended to accept them, and who, immediately her humiliation is gain- ed, throws off his mask and shows how he scorns her weakness, was a hard remembrance, Perriman Hall has grown hateful to her; for, go where she will, she meets the handsome young bachelor whom half the girls in the neighborhood are anxious to encounter; and knows that as he spoke of her to his friend in the Albert Hall, so does he think of her now. She hated him then. How much better might it have been for her if she had heard no other words from his lips than those she so long re- sented! Miss Attison had no true home to retire to —the nearest approach to a home since her father’s death was Perriman Hall; but as that place and its associations had become unbear- able, she had accepted an invitation to Brighton for Christmas, and after a month spent there, would go north to pay a long-promised visit to Laura Rogers, an old schoolmate. “T know how you love riding,” said Laura Rogers, a few mornings after Aubrey’s arrival. “The horses shall be round at eleven, and we ‘will have such a scamper together!” _ They did have a scamper, over moors and commons and through many lanes; and when pacing slowly up-hill to give the horses time to breathe, passed a small housé, so curiously built and so picturesquely surrounded, that Aubrey asked, ‘‘ Who lives in that romantic little spot, Laura?’ “Ohi one of the curiosities of the neighbor- hood; such an odd, gloomy, unsociable old man! Ill take you to visit him some day, if you like oddities. But I pity old Skipworth, too, for the shock that made him so queer was ts 4 or Win the sudden death of his only son, whom he nearly worshiped. He had been abroad, young George Skipworth, and died in some dreadful manner—I’m not sure that he was not murdered. I know this old man is always vowing vengeance upon the somebody who caused his death. There he is at the window! Look, Aubrey! Why, what an awful expression he has got! Do you think he is in a fit?” It nearly chilled Aubrey’s blood that face at the glass, more especially as the sunken, glar- ing eyes, with, as Laura said, their awful ex- pression, seemed to pass over Miss Rogers to rest on herself alone. “There is insanity in his family, I know,” whispered Laura, as involuntarily she touched her horse’s side with her whip; ‘‘and I should not wonder if brooding over his trouble is not sending old Skipworth mad. I amsure I shall be afraid to go near him now.” Not till long after the fair girls had swept out of sight did that old man move from his posture and gaze, then he went slowly across to a cabinet that was locked, and from its secret drawer took a locket that had evidently belonged to a gentleman’s watch-chain. Slowly he opened it, and gazed at the tress of auburn hair and photograph it surrounded. A pictured face, lovely in its perfect outline, with features and eyes that any glance might take for Aubrey’s own—that every glance that did not know by heart the sweet, candid ex- pression alone wanting would so take, And old Skipworth, lonely, imbittered, and half crazed, muttered, as he reclosed“the spring and replaced the trinket, ‘‘ I should know that face among a hundred, and I have seen it-at last!” The two girls were very pear home, when Miss Rogers began to fidget, and color, and an- swer her companion in the most astoundingly irrelevant manner, as swift-trotting hoofs were heard gaining upon them. “Mr. Edwardes!” then Laura whispered, all ina flutter; ‘‘and, I expect, Mr. Lydell. Yes. Let me introduce you to my friend, Miss Atti- son!” She turned to the two gentlemen reining in at her side, and then, either from Miss Rogers’s agitation, or Mr. Edwardes’s maneuvers, or from the fact that in absence of mind one is sure to do the exact thing one wishes to avoid, Aubrey found herself by Max Lydell’s side, turning down the narrow lane that would only admit of two abreast, and she thought, ‘Is this fate?” “Ts this your first visit to this county, Miss Attison?’ Mr. Lydell began, interestingly, and with no symptom of embarrassment in his easy manner—the exact manner Aubrey flattered herself she had forgotten, and knew now, in this startled moment, she could never forget. “My very first. I have been coming to stay with Laura ever since we left school, and never actually arrived here until last week. It is very surprising, though, to meet you in this neighborhood!” ‘“‘T have the same right here as yourself,” he laughed; “that of a visitor. I have been staying with Edwardes for a week now—no, ten days. I know you like exactness.” ‘¢On so important a matter, yes.” “Ah! you have not forgotten how to be sar- eastic. I have been fearful, once or twice during our separation. that, deprived of the constant practice I afforded you, you might insensibly lose some of your talent in that line.” “How relieved you must be to find such an awful fear groundless; though, had it been re- alized, I dare say I could soon have regained lost skill under so consummate a master of the art as yourself.” ‘You flatter me!” he said, quietly. “Do you intend to stay long here? Do your friends live very near the Rogers’s?” ‘Within a mile; and as to the length of ny visit, my own place is so uncomfortable just now, that Iam glad to burden my friends.” Then, as Mr. Rogers’s gate was reached, the equestrians in front caused a stoppage. Laura, still with a becoming color and fair vis ‘ . Pall’ abs: cae sar at amount of confusion, told her friend most in- teresting secrets about Mr. Edwardes during the privacy of a luncheon toilet; then went on in a more collected way to announce—‘ Mr. Lydell would be the exact match for you, Au- brey. Hehas often stayed at the Edwardes’s house before, and I have always had that idea in my mind. ‘You seem a couple just made for each other.” a “Ts it fate,” again wondered poor Aubrey, “that re-issues Alberta’s words from Laura’s lips in this weary way? How can people be so blind as to make such egregious mistakes?” Laura knew nothing as yet of Mr. Grey, or Aubrey’s engagement; and Aubrey hardly felt equal to making the confidence just then, espe- cially as it could only be a half-confidence; for how could she, by telling her real reason for giving that promise, betray her dead father’s misdeeds? Besides, it would be to revive all the endless unsatisfactory arguments she had suf- fered at Alberta’s hands, and which would be certain to repeat themselves at Laura’s. “Tt would be time enough when Philip Grey appeared in England for the fact of her engagement to announce itself,” she decided; and, in the tumult of such decision, answered Miss Rogers, sharply: ‘‘You are very kind, Laura, but of all the unlikely things that have ever entered into your head, this is the climax.” “*T don’t see that at all!” eagerly. ‘‘ You will be thrown together capitally here. wardes is sucha great friend of—of papa’s, is running in and out here constantly; and, of course, Mr. Lydell, too, comes a great deal; and you know people say—and I believe it— only opportunities are wanted for that’ kind of thing.” ‘No inclination?’ questioned the other, dry- ly. ‘Well, Mr. Lydell’s and my opportuni- ties are things of the past, for I have known him intimately for some months now. He lives close to my cousin’s.” Nothing disconcerted Laura. “‘So much the better. You have got a start.” “Yes, we have,” says Miss Attison; ‘a start of mutual dislike.” The opportunities came, surely enough. Mr. Lydell and Mr. Edwardes were invited to din- ner; Mr. Edwardes and his friend dropped in to luncheon; meetings on horseback multiplied themselves; there were social gatherings at houses in the neighborhood; now and thena dinner party; occasionally a dance; and at dinner, if fate decreed Max Lydell’s seat be- side Aubrey, their conversation might have edified the room generally. At luncheon he was civility personified and coldness; out of doors, easy, indifferent, gentlemanly. Ina friendly drawing-room his attentions belonged to the plainest girl or the most elder- ry ly dowager, rather than to the belle, Miss At- tison; and atadance he averted remark by asking her hand for one set of ‘‘ Lancers;” and there were plenty of other good dancers pres- ent only too anxious to valse with so perfect. a step as Aubrey’s. She did not flirt with others before his eyes, as a less scrupulous girl might have done. She was not the woman to run the risk of wound- ing one set of feelings for the chance of touch- ing another. She talked and laughed, and apparently en- joyed herself, while all the time there ran that undercurrent through her merriest _ thoughts—“ Is it fate that, in the very effort I | made to avoid him, has thrown this man across. my path again?’ “This is old Skipworth we are abou meet,” Miss Rogers announced, in a trepidatio: she was somewhat ashamed of, as she and Au- — brey were walking home from the village } Ling. ‘Ihope he won’t want to stop an speak.” Vain hope. The old man bowed, shook hands, and, after a few old-fashioned compliments to . Laura, begged for an introduction to her friend. = ‘Yours is an acquaintance I make glad Pe: a, cogs Miss Attison,” he said, in a strange though per- Mr. Ed- | ad 5 ee +
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40 PLEDGED: TO MARRY. fectly gentlemanly manner; ‘ as I should that of any friend of my poor boy’s—and you were _ that, were you not? “T knew Mr. George Skipworth, though * but'slightly,” faltered Aubrey. _“Slightly—ah! exactly. Before he went abroad, perhaps. But you saw him on his re- came, surely?” “Once, for a few moments only,” she owned, suneasy under those curiously fixed glittering eyes, and wondering how much this questioner _ knew or guessed of her cousin’s share in the e ¢ruel bereavement of his old age. 7 ‘ ' v | ‘ ae “ vas - ae . “He was my only son, Miss Attison—a son who never caused me one painful thought or one uneasy moment until— Perhaps you don’t know the particulars of his death?’ he broke off abruptly to question with that strange gaze growing wilder. “Yes, I heard them ”—with a shudder. Then he turned abruptly away, muttering to himself, leaving the young ladies there without bow or good-by; and Laura protested that he must be going crazy, and wondered Aubrey had never mentioned her acquaintanceship with George Skipworth before, asking many ques- tions about it now, and about the particulars of the death whose very remembrance so af- _ fected his father; and Aubrey parried those questions as best she might. Miss Attison thought very pitifully of that desolate, bitter old man—very pitifully of the loneliness and suffering one so near to herself | _ had caused. “T would give anything to be able to com- fort him,” she pondered, standing in the early loaming of a windy afternoon at the corner, waa two ways led from the village to Fair- view, the Rogers’s house—one the longer and the high-road, the other the narrow lane pass- ing old Skipworth’s cottage and garden. That garden was as remarkable as the build- ing itself. It ran along a steeply ascending bank, which, beginning on the level with, ulti- mately towered high above the lane itself; and instead of having any hedge, was bordered by a curious wall of loose, rugged stones, which the owner asserted were as safely put together as the walls of his house, but which skeptical passers by were wont to declare looked ready, with the merest suggestion of a shake, to de- scend on unlucky heads below. ‘Tf I thought I could comfort him ever so little, or if 1 were sure my visit would not be deemed an intrusion, I would go and see him this afternoon,” Aubrey continued, still stand- ing with the basket she had taken out laden toa poor womanin the village, empty in her hand. “But he might resent my sympathy—might resent myself, indeed, as so near a relative of hers; and, if he did, I should do harm rather than good, and open the wounds I would give sigh, Bie fis Max was star “Why on earth were you going to do that?” anything for power to heal. He said the other day that he was glad to make my acquaint- ance; but, as he said it, his look curdled my very blood. Is he mad, I wonder? Dare I go?’ A slight sound behind her caused her to turn sharply, and see some one regarding her—some- one who, after a vault over the gate from the neighboring copse, had paused to observe how sine vet was hesitation to Miss Attison, With the wind blowing loose her auburn hair, and making fine frolic among the long fur "pordering her jacket; with the brighter tint given by exercise and air to her cheeks, and her sweet eyes thoughtful and soft in their _ perplexed pity, Aubrey was a_ prettier picture than she believed, as she turned to ex- claim, with a smile, “ How you startled me, XM ir. Lydell! _Where have you sprung from?” Who ) was otherwise engaged,” he smiled, in re- ply. ‘‘And where are you going, may I ask, that requires either such thoughtful prepara- tion or such lengthy deliberation?’ “Tt takes both,” she agreed, with a little ‘*T was trying to summon courage to old Mr, Skipworth a visit.” tled:: ' She colored a little. ‘“‘T don’t know. I dare say I could do him no good; but it seems so sad for him to be liy- ing there day after day, with no creature to speak to—no one to divert his thoughts from brooding over his trouble.” “That idea has just struck you?” And the satire of the tone was so nearly akin to rudeness, that she turned haughtily away with a bow. He overtook her in one stride. “J have no right to offer advice, and don’t suppose it will be taken; nevertheless, I do presume, as much for your sake as for the poor old man’s peace of mind, _to protest against this rash idea of yours.” “You go to see him occasionally, do you not?” “That is hardly a case in point.” ‘‘T cannot see that there is much difference.” She is not looking at him, so is unconscious of the glance he gives her ere replying. “‘T am a man—you a lady; besides which, L have known him since I was a boy, and pet with a sudden repression in the tone—‘‘I was poor George’s friend.” ‘‘ Well,” she said, in assumed indifference, I think I must postpone it till to-morrow; that isall, All this argument has made it too late for any visit to-day.” “Much too late for you to be alone in these lanes,” he agreed, calmly turning by her side. She was vexed beyond measure. “T beg you will not comeso far out of your way. I am often out mucb later than this, and should never dream of being afraid, I as- sure you”—more hotly. .‘‘I would ‘much rather go home by myself—infinitely rather.” “Then I will leave you at the end of this road. Is the news correct I heard to-day?’ he went on, pleasantly ignoring the extra erect- ness of the well-carried little head he glanced down upon. “Most likely not. News seldom is.” “Still, I am tempted to credit this from personal observation. Miss Rogers’s engage- ment to Edwardes?” “Oh, that is correct enough—yes. It was: settled ‘last evening. Dear Laura, I am so glad—unselfishly so, considering my lonely plight this afternoon, don’t you think?” She laughed, and was her sunny self again. ‘““No doubt Miss Rogers will act as consider- - et wh ness of the steadfast gaze bent upon her, the breathless absorption in which her companion drank in her every syJlable. “Witching him with her cursed wiles, now she is!” he muttered beneath his breath; ‘“ and making merry over his death next she will be! He was my boy’s friend—the only human be- ing whose face I have cared to see, since— since— Vile sorceress—murderess!” He broke off, his lips working, his hands: clenched in rising frenzy. ‘‘Shall another noble life be sacrificed to. your deviltry, when one effort of this feeble old arm can save him? One effort!” he mut- tered, and crept on with a rapidity one would scarcely expect to the highest point of the bank—the furthest limit of his wall, behind which he waited for those figures sauntering beneath. “One effort, and your cursed enchantment is at an end. No more lives at your door! It is the kindest thing I can do for you, madam. One effort!” Nearer, through the twilight, came the fig- ures—firmer Skipworth grasped the rugged stone his tottering arms could scarcely wield. Inch by inch he raised it, crouching behind its companions. ed round’ suddenly in Lydell’s arms, and her scream, as the missile came crashing down, was music to the old man’s ears above. Until a few hasty steps had put them com- pletely out of danger, Aubrey, pale and trem- bling, was as silent as her compan ion, then she whispered, thankfully, ‘‘What a merciful es- cape! Did you see that stone falling?” “T heard it, I think, as it began to roll. Excuse my handling you so roughly. There was no time for speech.” His voice sounded faint—his face, as Au- brey glanced up, was deadly white. He un- consciously grasped her arm, in an attempt to steady himself, then reeled and fell, and the girl, kneeling by his side, with the stunned pain at her heart whispered, “Can this be death?” made no outery, but rapidly felt in the pocket of his shooting-coat and found, as she had hoped, asmall flask, and poured some of its contents between his lips. “You are hurt, I fear?” she said, as the dark — gray eyes met hers again. ‘*This is very weak of me,” he returned, in a man’s scorn of physical helplessness. ‘It is. ately by you some day. When will that happy | only my arm—broken, I fancy. I shall be all some day be?” And his quiet eyes were on her face as he | uttered the light words, ‘‘ Perhaps it has already been. now.” With her glance clear and upraised straight | to his, even in the fading light, she saw the | remarked, in a constrained kind of way. flash that went over his face—saw it fade even. as it had come, and leave him paler, perhaps, but that was difficult to determine in uncertain dusk—and with his quiet, cynical voice giving the lie utterly to whatever sudden loss of con- trol was responsible for that fleeting expres- sion. Was it surprise, that flash? consternation? jealousy? pain? It might be either—it might be none of these. Far less likely either than none, the girl thought bitterly as he asked, “Am Ito understand, then, that I may offer you also congratulations?” “T am engaged. I have been for a long time,” she answered, simply. ‘‘ Would you like—would you care to hear ali about it?” ' He bent his head, and she heard him draw a | long breath hard. Then she nerved herself for the effort, and told the whole story she knew it would have been so much better to have told long ago, and he listened without comment or flagging attention to the end. They had passed, without noticing it, Mr. Skipworth’s cottage, and were walking under the shadow of his garden bank, Aubrey’s voice was too low for any listener to catch her words, and old Skipworth’s ears were dull; but watching from behind that sheltering wall, he saw with the keen sight age had failed to dim what Aubrey was unconscious of—the earn = : i right after a little more brandy.” He swallowed the little more brandy, and rose to pursue his way, with Aubrey’s anxious: Perhaps itis | eyes on his white lips and their repression of — pain. “You are suffering fearfully, I know,” she “Ty don’t think you will be able to walk home. If you would turn back into Mr. Skipworth’s, I could run to your place, and order a carriage, in less than twenty minutes.” “Not for worlds!” he replied, stiffly. “TI should never dream of putting you to such out- rageous trouble. I shallbe all right as long as the brandy holds out.” “The stone caught you instead of me,” “ Only my arm.” “J wish it had been mine!” And the wild crimson surging at the impul- sive utterance of those unguarded words fiood- ed hotter and hotter at the sudden passion of his rejoinder. “Yours! this pain!” Then he checked himself abruptly, and his — next remark, about the damages he would claim from ld: Skipworth and his unsafe style of building, was made laughingly in his usual style. “Go on, please, Miss Attison, with the nar- rative this little episode interrupted,” he con-— tinued, after a pause. ‘I was getting deeply interested. When do you say this Grey— lucky man!—is coming over to claim your” ‘He is on his way now,” faintly. _ “How it of ou must anticipate his - But of you have made his Then Aubrey felt herself whirl- © I would not have you suffering LU - ee ah
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PLEDGED TO MARRY ee to some extent already by let- $e Yes. » And Aubrey’s thoughts went miserably back to those three letters, and their coarse, doubt- ful style. “The temptation has never once crossed you to disobey your father’s commands, I sup- pose?” “Tt was not papa’s commands; it was my own promise,” she said, simply. And he was silent, thinking, was she false, this girl with clear, unfaltering eyes, and brave, sweet voice? Was it filial obedience and honor that held her to that detestable engagement with a man she had never seen, and of whom his quick percep- _ tion told him she had formed, as yet, no favor- _ able impression, or was it love for the gold she must sacrifice if she failed to sacrifice herself, that bound her to the wretched contract? The latter, he fancied; and Aubrey’s glance _. Noted the hardening expression the fancy brought. _. “You are in terrible pain, I know.” But it was too dark for him to see the sus- Picious moisture of the blue eyes. “Tf you would oniy let me run to the doc- tor’s or somewhere !”” “ And leave me in the lurch? Listen! Don’t T hear wheels this way at last?” A gamekeeper’s cart it proved to be, and _ Lydeli consented to accept its aid, on condition _ that they drove round by Fairview, and depos- ‘ited Miss Attison safely at home before pro- ceeding to the nearest surgeon’s. As they neared Fairview, and Lydell reiter- ated his thanks for Aubrey’s kindly attentions and consideration, she took her courage in both ‘hands and faltered, “‘Don’t think me so un- _&rateful as I seem, please. If I have not _ thanked you as I ought for what you have done for me, 1 am none the less conscious that you saved my life at risk of your own.” ‘Nothing of the sort!” he proceeded at once to snub her. ‘‘I am very glad I chanced to be - quick enough, but I assure you I did nothing - more than would have been my duty to do; nothing more than I should have been happy _ to do for any fellow-creature,” __ And in the face of that general philanthropy, Aubrey descended at Mrs. Rogers’s gate. CHAPTER VI. SKIPWORTH’S REVENGE.. __ THERE came to Miss Attison the excuse to Shorten her visit at Fairview, of which she had _ been earnestly desirous since her first ride out with Miss Rogers. _ It came in a letter from Lady Perriman, de- ‘Claring her ladyship so ill as to require her Cousin’s immediate return, and Aubrey made “her excuses to her friends, with the consolatory - promise to return and finish her visit before summer arrived. “When Max Lydell is at his own place I will come back here,” was the thought prompt- Ing such promise. _ Miss Rogers herself drove her friend to the _ Station, and on the way they encountered Mr. Lydeil, with his arm inasling. It was the first time Aubrey had seen him since the after- _ hoon of the accident. ' _ “Now, part friends, you two,” pleaded Laura. ‘Don’t be rude the very day you are going to leave him, and the poor fellow look- _ Ing so pale.” ‘We have not time to stop, Laura, We sball lose the train, ’m sure. Laura, if you _ love me,” in excited intensity, as the other turned to wonder and argue, ‘dri traight past, L implore!” “ee : _ Overpowered by Aubrey’s earnestness, and _ the strong hand she stretched toward the reins, _ Miss Rogers kept the pony at its fast trot, and ‘ se Lydell and the ladies. exchanged but a bow, _, Laura was not, as a rule, renowned for tact; ‘ but that morning, after a swift glance at her f © ion concerning Aubrey’s peculiar conduct. Y, a ¥ _ companion’s face, she forbore raed or ques- | “ You will have a friend in the train,” she announced, standing at the door of Aubrey’s carriage, while the engine puffed and waited ;— “no less a person than old Mr. Skipworth. I never knew he traveled before. Would you like him in here?’?—mischievotsly. He is only two carriages behind. I can bring him in one moment, if you like, and you can scold him about that dangerous wall of his, which I al- ways knew would tumble down upon some- body, sooner or later.” Aubrey smiled and shook her head as the train moved off. ; It was a tedious journey, and Miss Attison forgot all about the occupant of the carriage behind long before she had reached Perriman; therefore was her surprise great to behold in the only passenger besides herself alighting on that insignificant platform none other than Mr. Skipworth, and somehow the sight caused her ureasiness as well as surprise. Why should he be there? What could his errand be? Was he following herself?—(with an uncomfortable creep)—or had he come to see Alberta?—and, if so, for what? “How pale you look, Aubrey!” cried my lady’s laughing voice. ‘‘I think my invalidism must have devolved upon you. “You here to meet me!” responded Aubrey, amazed. ‘‘Why, I thought your were very il?” “So I was—for one day. Quite long enough for an excuse to get you back again, you see. The Hall was empty, and I can’t stand a matri- monial tete-a-tete for long, as you know. Jump in, dear; these little animals won’t stand a minute. Oh, bother it! I’ve dropped my letter. James!”—she turned to her servant. But a courteous old gentleman emerging through the station swing-door had picked up the crested envelope, and approached, with his keen eyes scanning its address. “Tam going into the village. May I put this into the post for you?” he said, raising his hat, and addressing Aubrey; then he caught sight of her ladyship, and stood as if trans- formed to stone. If the miniature tiger had lost one atom of his control over those fidgety little grays, either her ladyship or the stranger must inevi- tably have been upset. “Ts he mad?’ whispered Alberta, testily. But Mr. Skipworth recovered himself. “Excuse the apparent curiosity of the in- quiry, Miss Attison; but is this handwriting yours or your sister’s?” he asked, abruptly, in- dicating that on the letter in his hand, while those restless eyes of his were roving from one beautiful face to the other. ‘‘ Neither,” smiled my lady, amused. is mine.” “You are not, then, this lady’s sister! But the likeness is so extraordinary, I am bewil- dered!” He turned quickly to Alberta. “Your name, surely, must be Attison?” “Lady Perriman, at your service—nee Al- berta Attison,” she laughed, the whim taking her to find amusement in that old man, and unheedful of her cousin’s pressure of ber arm, and whisper, ‘‘Don’t talk to him, Alberta! Oh, do drive on!” “Tam most grateful for the information you have given me,” old Skipworth said, with a bow so low tbat his eyes were hidden. “ Alberta! A charming name—a most re- markable name! I was gratified to make your companion’s acquaintance a few days ago; I am a hundred times more delighted at making yours! Very like—very like indeed you are, ladies!”—lifting his searching glance again;— and her ladyship, tired of the novelty, care- lessly waved him aside. ‘‘ But Isee the differ- ence distinctly now; it lies in expression. Once again let me thank you for your obliging can- dor!”—raising his voice as the ponies dart for- ward. ‘It has saved me from an irreparable mistake!” he thought and muttered to himself in his slow walk to the village. ‘‘Have you otten another letter you wrote with that “Tt forg with ‘sa e hand, my lady—a letter which, stained ¥ s a ST S a, with the life-blood of the heart it rested on, is here on mine to demand its vengeance?” “T admire the style of acquaintance you've been picking up in the north, Aubrey,” said my lady, languidly. ‘Alberta, I’m horribly frightened!” Miss Aitison’s voice startled her cousin. ‘‘ That old man you talked to in that way was poor George Skipworth’s father.” My lady gave the off pony so sudden a lash that an old man breaking stones in the road — had hard work to avoid the bounding carriage, and solemnly prophesied a smash before her ladyship reached home. “T wish you had not told him your farmer name,” sighed Aubrey. “{ don’t see why I should disown myself because you’ve happened to make acquaintance with Mr. Skipworth, senior. How did you do it, Aubrey?” ; Aubrey related her introduction, and the old man’s peculiarities and morbid tempera- ment. ““Why should he come down here ?” she questioned, fearfully. “Doubtless you have bewitched him,” was the careless reply; ‘‘and he might have made you an offer just now if my unfortunate ap- parition had not bewildered him. I trust he won’t transfer his affections from you te me —that is all. Wm afraid he was a little struck by my superior beauty; but after all the scn’s affection has cost.me, I should not care about captivating the father.” 7 “Qh, Alberta! how can you dare”—in a tone of deep feeling—‘‘to joke on that sub- ject?” “We will change it then. What is the latest from your Grey fate ?” ‘“*T can hear nothing more till he arrives im ~ England, which may be very soon now,” she answered, unhesitatingly, but with her head turned away. “He is really on his way home?’? “Yes; in the Swallow.” “To claim you in person. ture you will deliver yourself to his keeping! — What is this I hear about Max Lydell! He has been saving your life, or you have been endangering his,” Aubrey described the incident in the most natural tone in the world, and her ladyship had only time to remark that old Skipworth seemed an. undesirable sort of neighbor, and she trusted he had not come down to Perri- man to introduce his peculiar system of wall building, ere they dashed up the Hall’s ap- proach, ' Some days passed on, and Aubrey was think- ing neither of old Skipworth nor her cousin, as she walked slowly, and alone, down the road skirting the home plantation, and leading alike | from the village and station. She had been visiting some of her village pensioners, an errand on which my lady inva- riably declined to accompany her, and was rather later than she had intended to be in returning. As she passed the spot where, stretched in such anguish, she last saw the unfortunate George Skipworth, she could not refrain from the shuddering glance she always gave it, and —was it fancy, or did she really see a form there now? Her heart almost stopped its beating as clearly a longer glance told her it was no fancy conjured up by morbid memory, but a human being, half-hidden in its crouching attitude, b: the trees’ dark shadows and the long grass. In the fascination of terror she gazed till the — figure made a movement. Its head was raised as if in observance of herself; and distinctly, as the light caught it, did she recegnize the white hair and harsh features of the man she had not seen since the encounter at the station— the father of him whom Alberta, on that very — spot, taunted almost to his death, Distinctly, as his head sunk again, did she see another motion—his white hand lowered, and the something it held; then fear gave : eae % “Tt has the charm of © peculiarity, at any rate.” re With what rap- h4
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‘ ——T lle Lae) * ; PLEDGED TO MARRY. a ot : _ wings to her feet, and she darted past, and hardly paused until the Hall steps were ained. she asked the butler opening the door. _ “No, miss; her ladyship-isn’t yet returned.” , “She drove Sir Edgar to the station, an “es hour ago, I should say it was, miss. He was And the man, well- trained though he was, 8 ‘ or te in surprise at the way his news affected HENS In a second, without pause or thought, Au- - ; eae. brey was flying to retrace her steps, in no well referred but to some scientific dinner or ponderous meeting, but in the thought, ‘‘ Al- sive certainty that for Lady Perriman’s return @ it was old Skipworth was crouching and wait- Clearly oi tha evening air as the girl ran ; she heard the wheels of the little carriage, and Nearer and faster they came; longer seemed the road, and slower her feet. anything to stay that carriage but for a min- ute! ; could see the pony! aa With what breath she had she essayed a —‘ Bang!”—there was the shot, and Alberta retaining unhurt her seat and reins as the across the park. Aubrey strained her eyes, after that mad tered trees, and among the stumps and roots. Her ladyship’s nerve was perfect, and the cape, and at the twenty-first there came a stumble, a crash, and Lady Perriman was “Ts Lady Perriman in the drawing-room?” ‘ “Returned! Where from?” telegraphed for up to London, 'T believe.” s hearer. alarm at Sir Edgar’s telegram, which she knew Be berta must pass that pistol!” and the impul- ing. = the pony’s hoofs and bells. Oh, for power to warn Alberta! ‘Oh, for On she flew. She could see the spot; she shout, waving her handkerchief the while, and startled pony swerved aside, to dash full speed ae ‘yush over the uneven grass, between the scat- Bi ‘ carriage strong. Twenty times did they es- thrown with terrific force to the ground. % CHAPTER VII. HER OWN LOVER. Sap days for Miss Attison while her cousin lay unconscious of her imminent danger, and ‘ Sir Edgar fidgeted and bemoaned, questioning, a Ne and ordering, and worrying, albeit grieving truly for the beautiful wife whose life hung in lance. All that money could give, Sir Edgar pro- vided; all that care and love could lavish, Aubrey bestowed; and inch by inch youth and strength gained the mastery, and the lips of the famous conclave of London physicians pro- nounced at last my lady out of danger—and a -_. eripple for life, Never to walk—never to stand sf upright again! ] ., But in the sad days before it was known that ---——s even such a half-life would be spared, Aubrey, hanging hour after hour over that couch, in the expectation that each one might be its occupant’s last, paid little heed to the reports and surmises as to who had fired that fatal shot, which, heard at the Hall, was known to have - been the thing that frightened the pony. = ae Did she heed, she would not grant the in- A € - formation she was capable of giving, for the sy ieartainty. that Alberta had earned her punish- te _ ment—that, severe as it was, if was but, humanly speaking, retribution for her own cruelty—was the sharpest point of loving Au- brey’s sorrow. ¢ Never glancing at the papers, she knew thing of the Swallow’s officially announced rrival; and a letter from Laura Rogers, which, after pages of horror at her ladyship’s accident, went on to say, ‘‘You remember old Mr. ws Skipworth traveling in your train? Well, he has just.come back as suddenly as he left home, 1 _ and is so nnmistakably insane now—violently et so, not harmlessly peculiar as he was before— fag tg that the Commissioner of Lunacy, or some such on, has ordered his removal to an asylum, nd there he is ‘going, or gone ”—this re but 3 augh Lets ghee ‘ eRe ae elicit another of the sighs so much more iat iehl to Aubrey just then than the smiles her face seemed made for. But the day before my lady was announced out of danger, a casual observation from some- body about Mr. Lydell’s having returned home at last penetrated Aubrey’s preoccupation. And the afternoon of that same day, when a whispered message was brought to her in the invalid’s chamber, that a gentleman was wait- ing in the drawing-room to see her—a gentle- man who would take no denial, but promised not to detain her long—a great flush came to the cheek that confinement and anxiety had made so pale; and the girl, hastily signing to the nurse to take her place, obeyed the sum- mons, without reflecting that the servant would have recognized Mr. Lydell and given hisname had the visitor been he. She did not reflect; she only felt; and her breath was quick, her hand trembling, as she entered the drawing-room, to confront—a stranger. He was a tall, dark, flashily-dressed man, with ungentlemanly hands and too much jewelry; and he did not attempt to repress the start of admiration the girl’s appearance elicited. Aubrey bowed, and hated herself for that quick throb of disappointment. Then she drew back her hand haughtily as the stranger advanced to possess himself of it in a con- fident and familiar manner. “You didn’t seem to be expecting me; but you got my letter this morning surely?’ he stopped, rather taken aback. **Your letter? Iam not aware.” ‘“What, you don’t know me! Come now, that’s too good a joke!” and the sound of his own laugh successfully reinstated him in his own opinion. ‘‘ That dunder-headed footman made a blunder over my name, I suppose, though it isn’t such a difficult one to catch, either. Your humble servant, P. M. Grey, my dear Aubrey,” and, smiling in her face, he again made a dive for the diamond-flashing hand. She gave him ber hand, and stood the shock, drawing aside, however, in a manner he could not mistake, from the endearments he would fain proceed with; and then she seated her- self in a mechanical, dazed kind of way at some little distance from the chair to which she motioned her lover. Her lover! The man she was pledged to marry! The man by whose side and under whose guardianship the remainder of her life should be passed! Those three sentences turned themselves over, and rung themselves together, and burned themselves into Aubrey’s brain the while she smiled upon him, and answered monosyllably his flow of talk. Anything but vulgarity, she told herself, she could have learned in time to endure. From that her innate soul revolted; and that man, alas! was more wholly vulgar, more utterly devoid of all pretensions to the title gentleman, than his letters had prepared her for. He was loud, confident, coarse, and would be very lover-like if the fair one were not so deucedly high and mighty, as he informed himself—so confoundedly cold to a fellow, as he hinted to her. x “T should have been down here yesterday if that blooming lawyer of yours hadn’t de- layed me, but I wrote to you directly I got to London, and I made sure it was the right address.” “‘T have had scarcely time to notice my letters the last day er two; my cousin, Lady Perriman, is so dangerously ill,” the girl fal- tered. “But my writing. I should have thought you would have known that, anyhow,” in an injured tone. ‘‘Doubtiless, if my thoughts had been less engrossed, I should have done.” He stared at her boldly awhile, studying, in satisfaction, and without ceremony, her rare beauty of feature and form, then broke forth admiringly, ‘‘’Pon my word, my dear, your photo does not do you justice not by one half —no, nor a quarter. I was regularly knocked backwards when you came in just now— knocked over, as they say, we amazement, Of course I thought the likeness a very pretty — girl, and me a lucky dog to get hold of such a one. But the original ’—leaning forward for another tender capture—‘‘is as superior as light to dark—out and out superior—coloring, style, everything.” Aubrey was but human, and despite the honorable resolutions with which her mind was made up, and which she was nobly trying to bring now to the fore, she could not help shrinking from that touch, and the coarse leer of the face so near her own. Mr. Grey’s physiognomy was not improved by an expression of marked displeasure. ‘‘ Dash it all, Isay, Aubrey, you are cool— devilish cool and stiff!” “T beg your pardon,” she began, trying with might and main to aid duty and vanquish inclination. ‘‘I don’t think I am quite my- self to-day; the anxiety and distress of my cousin’s illness have been so great, and her state is so critical to-day.” ‘““Of course, I’m very sorry for her lady- ship’s illness,” he interrupted, ungenerously pressing his advantage—“‘ shocked, and all that; but I can’t say that I see that is excuse enough for your treating a fellow so precious coldly and off-hand—a fellow, too, who has just come . such a long journey—and a beast of a one we had!—at your express invitation, Miss Attison.” ** You must excuse it all, please,” she plead- ed, with her lovely eyes raised for the first time to his. ‘‘ Your coming has been so sudden and unexpected; and, as I said, I am nervous, ill, to-day. I hope next time you see me you will be better satisfied.” “You ain’t going to dismiss me like this?’ hescomplained, taking the hint her rising and glance toward the door were intended to give. ‘** Of course, with illness in the house, I don’t expect, as I otherwise should, to be asked to regularly stay; but just for the day, you know, We have such lots to talk over, you and me, What made your father repent so all of a sudden, and you fall into his views so agreeably; how singularly I chanced to first cast my eyes on that advertisement of your lawyer chap; and what a delight your first sweet letter was to me, what you thought of mine, and—” “Will you step up-stairs, Miss Attison, as soon as possible?’ her ladyship’s maid asked, with a tap at the door, And Aubrey turned patie yt to her com- panion. “You must excuse me now, ‘plains I am afraid she is worse. J am very, very sorry to be so rude, but you see how it is.” “T suppose I must. Well, then, I tear my- self away for the present, and the best thing I can do is to run back to town and hurry those slow coaches of Jawyers on a bit—hasten things for the wedding as much as I can; for you'll let it be soon, won’t you, sweet? ‘Directly her ladyship’s better, we will say.” “T can’t decide anything about that to-day. I shall doubtless see you many times before then. Good-by.” He detained her hand. “Tf youll give me a measure, I can be getting the rings—the engaged one, anyhow— and bring it down next time I come. Have you got any fancy about the stones or pattern? Anything you suggest, you know.” “Oh, I leave it all to you!”—in a fever of impatience. “‘ Choose what you like, Mr, Grey; I shall be sure to be satisfied; and, forgive me, I, must go.” He have taken her in his arms, but somethi the proud, beautiful face with: held him; and contenting himself with oppres- sive kisses on the reluctant little hands, he let her go, and outside the Hall called himself a fool for his timidity; while Aubrey went back to her cousin’s room with an additional wei ht added upon her heart, already too grea A overburdened. 3
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CHAPTER VIII. FREED AND REJECTED, __ “Ts Max Lydell at home, do you know?” Lady Perriman questioned from the sofa, to which the doctor had that day allowed her to be removed. And Aubrey answered, ‘‘I think not. We were told he had returned a week or so ago, but it proved a false report.” Silence a little while; then my lady’s feeble white fingers picked up her cousin’s hand. “Where did this new ring come from, _ Aubrey?’ With the questioning bright eyes full on hers. Aubrey attempted no equivocation; merely preluding, ‘‘ You were too ill to be told it at the time, dear,” she related her be- trothed’s visit, and subsequent present of that sign of betrothal. My lady’s perception was as keen as ever; and, though no word of Miss Attison’s breathed disappointment or repulsion, none the less did -her hearer fathom how fatally her own pre- dictions of the:style of man this Australian lover would prove had fulfilled themselves. But, instead of triumph or teasing, she only murmured, with wistful pressure of the hand she held, ‘‘ Darling, I am sorry!” “Now for the old arguments, in renewed force!” Aubrey tried to laugh, lightly; but her ladyship shook her head. “Tm beginning to see that it would take Something infinitely more potent than words of mine to divert you from the straight course honor or duty point you out, and do not feel sure that Iam not also beginning ”—a pause; then she finished, with an effort—‘‘to wish that, in the days I can never undo, my own steps had been a trifle straighter, or that I had paid better heed to your counsels, dear old mentor.” This was a great deal for my lady to say, and Aubrey bent tearfully to kiss the face, so pale and changed, that met hers, with a warm- er caress than in those old days. “TI might have spared myself something, you are thinking, Aubrey,” whispered my lady, mournfully; “but I don’t see that I have much right to complain. I did not pay too much regard for other people’s sufferings, you know; and, if ever a hand prepared its own punishment, mine did. I have had time to think all that over these long, quiet days, you see; and there dawns upon me sometimes the fancy that”—and the whisper sunk lower— “in the highest sense, you know, this affliction may be the best thing that could have over- taken me; only—only there is always the past. If suffering could undo that!” There was a long pause, as the cousins sat with clasped hands; and Aubrey’s heart was raised in hopefulness that that dark cloud of trial might indeed have the brightest of all linings for Alberta. _ Then Lady Perriman said, slowly, “I want to see Max Lydell, though I am afraid it could do no good beyond relieving my own con- science. I must ask Edgar when he thinks him likely to return; and meanwhile, Aubrey ” —with a dash of her old manner her cousin was glad to see—“ when is Mr. Grey to favor you with another visit? I must be introduced to my inevitable cousin.” “You will have the chance before long, I have no doubt.” Aubrey tried hard to make her tone as light as her words. ‘In fact, he fixed to come to-morrow, but I fancy there is some little hitch in the business part of the affair, which may prevent’ him; for I had a letter from Mr. Robins this morning. Robi ; ing me to go up to his office, or proposing f coming down here without delay, as it is i perative he should see me at once on a most important - matter.” _ The girl imitated so exactly the precise little solicitor’s tone and manner in that last sentence, that my lady laughed as she inquired, ““Well, which are you going to do?” “Tm not decided. Edgar hates Mr. Robi coming here, does not he? I don’t li PLEDGED TO MARRY. idea of leaving you for a whole day, and it would take me nearly that, running up and down and discussing.” “Oh, nonsense!—it need not; and if it should, what matter? I can be left quite well to my own resources now.” _ And Aubrey thought how unlike Alberta that unselfish speech would have been a month ago. Miss Attison went up to town the following morning, and found Mr. Robins in greater perturbation than she had ever deemed it pos- sible he could evince. He closed the door with much caution and suspicion of impossible eavesdroppers, and stirred the fire with so many ominous clearings of his throat, that the young lady became deeply impressed with the importance, though not one whit wiser as to the nature, of the matter she had been summoned to discuss. “ My dear young lady,” Mr. Robins began at length, when procrastination would avail him no longer, “it is the most unpleasant thing I have to acquaint you with—a really, I must style it, humiliating confession for an old practitioner like myself to be obliged to make. But the long and short of it is, my dear Miss Attison, we have met the biggest rogue of our time rather late in our life, and he has outwit- ted us—outwitted us pro tem. that is to to say. I flatter myself we are returning the compli- ment now—ha, ha!” rubbing his hands in a revived and congratulatory way. “Tt is very astonishing to hear of your be- ing outwitted, Mr. Robins,” returned his client, politely. ‘‘ But does it concern me particular- ly?” “Unfortunately, it does. Unfortunately, my dear young lady, it does. Your estimable father’s will, and his peculiar clauses in refer- ence to yourself. I remonstrated with my late client upon those clauses, I assure you; but he was firm—firm and clear as he was upon all points. “To give you the gist of the matter in a nut- shell,”—the prosy old man suddenly changed his style, in view of his hearer’s unconcealed impatience, —‘‘the person who has represented himself as Philip Maximilian Grey, and, under your late father’s will, the authorized claimant of your hand, who on such pretenses obtained aninterview with you some short while ago, has been proved to us since unmistakably to be —the rankest impostor.” The keen little man’s eyes were fixed on his client, and twinkled as they beheld the effect of his words. Aubrey could have thrown her arms round his neck, and kissed the lips that had uttered open sesame to her fetters; or she could have whirled the prim little man in a mad valse round the dingy wails that had heard the words she scarcely dared believe. She longed to do something wilder and more startling than her lady-like life had ever been guilty of; and though, by dint of great self- command, she subdued such longings and re- tained her seat and silence, her expressive face was easy for less sharp eyes to read than those of the solicitor, chuckling in relief, and pro- ceeding to narrate the facts of the case as lately brought to light, and the cunning which had outwitted his own shrewdness, Divested of legal phraseology and condensed, his narrative was as follows:— “Philip Grey, the man wronged by Mr. At- tison, died when his son was but two years old; and this Aubrey’s father knew, as also that Mrs, Grey and her son then changed their place of residence; but he seems to have been ignorant or careless of the fact that eight years later the mother married again, and that her boy accompanied herself and her second husband to England. ‘She had only one child by her second hus- band, a boy, who died young, and upon his death the desolate father adopted little Philip Grey as his own, and from that time, at home and at school, the boy was far more generally known by his stepfather’s surname than his | own. “ On his stepfather’s death, the young man, acd i en ae, a 13 in accordance with his will, succeeded to his name as well as his property. “The first advertisement inserted by Mr. Robins in an Australian paper met by chance the eyes of a young man to whom it suggested at once the idea he so cleverly, in part, carried out—viz., to personate the Philip Grey sought for. ee te “Mr. Robins’s first letter was a tempting bait x —the heiress and her fortune, or the fortune without the heiress. on ‘‘Cunning as clever, and unscrupulous as cunning, Hughes craftily prepared bis course by bribing and cajoling confederates, among ae whom was his mother, Mrs. Grey’s old nurse | and confidante. “This woman happened to be in possession iS of several old letters and diaries of that lady’s, ‘ which naturally proved invaluable for her e son’s present purpose, and Hughes managed to 4 hoodwink the lawyer, whose eyes—though this Mr. Robins hinted not—might be rendered ar. less keen and flaw-discerning by a natural de- : ; sire to obtain the substantial legacy Mr. At- tison had decreed his reward for successful dis- covery’of Philip Grey. “‘Rendered bolder and bolder by success, Hughes took his next step—came over to Eng- G land, interviewed the lawyer, and visited his ; betrothed, trusting to his luck and daring: to | carry him safely over the very dangerous ground he now knew himself to be treading, and ; anxious to secure his bride and her gold with pam as much expedition and secrecy as- possible, and retreat with them into safety abroad. A ‘¢ But on his quitting Perriman Hall after the not wholly unsatisfactory interview he had held with Miss Attison—not wholly unsatis- factory, because if Aubrey should retract her promise, her money must still be his—his pleasant meditations were interrupted sudden- ly by the last man on earth he expected or aap wished to find himself face to face with—the 4 man he was impersonating—the veritable Philip “J Grey. oe, as What bold inventions and unscrupulous lies oem tided Hughes over such an apparently fatal Pei encounter need not be detailed here; enough that the other’s suspicions were more aroused than he permitted Hughes to perceive. “He is an acquaintance of yours, the bona fide Philip Maximilian Grey, or Philip Maxi- milian Grey Lydell, as is his present title,” Mr. Robins continued to his breathless listener; “and from some words of yours had gained an inkling of the imposture attempted. ig “Mr. Lydell came straight up to us, and, after consultation, acted upon our advice in ob- : ae taining a private interview with the rascal . | Hughes, and dragging from him, by means of inp tt alittle whip he already held over him, a full confession and renunciation of his impostures; and, to make a long matter short, my dear young lady, the affair is now as straight and _ clear as noonday. és “Mr, Lydell’s identity is proved as incon- trovertibly as Ralph Hughes’s imposture. That latter gentleman is now in our hands, and his fate will be as you choose to decide it. “Perhaps you will talk it over privately with Mr. Lydell, whom I am expecting every moment,” glancing at his watch. ‘¢T can stay no longer to-day,” said Aubrey, — rising as suddenly as if her seat had caught. fire; but punctuality was too quick for her, A clerk entered to announce Mr. Lydell; and Mr. Robins observed, as he bustled to the door, ‘‘ Talk it over quietly between yourselves, Miss Attison, and favor me with your instruc- _ tions on my return from a little pressing busi- ness in the next room.” sealer The door closed, and among the scattered aaa papers and musty books Aubrey and Max Ly- dell were left alone. ee. A man of the world and a woman of the world were they, however; and so, though the position for either was embarrassing as could well be possible, society’s Sais was not ab, eer | fault. Cs : a Z ; 2) . : ieee ry They shook hands calmly, and Miss Attiaom a made pretty inquiries after Mr. Lydell’s enue FE Be * i 9 A ie ey F : , a i
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which she regretted to see yet in its sling; and Mr. lLydell made corresponding ones accident, and rejoiced over her partial re- a aha y. So far, so good. Then came a suspicion of Pry eg which, woman-like, Aubrey was st to surmount. » “The subject Mr. Robins has left us to dis- is this horrible impostor’s ‘fate, Mr. Ly- . Of course he deserves all the punishment t the law could give him; but I think that the relief of finding him to be an impos- or I really feel more disposed to reward than punish,” Then she stopped.’ She had begun so well, ' and was conscious she had ended as badly, as her fingers nervously busied themselves among ‘Mr. Robins’s red tape, and she felt the color mounting hotly to her face. Society’s ease was failing. “Your wish settles the matter,” he respond- ed, gravely. ‘‘ Hughes shall be quietly dis- patched from this country, and there is little fear of his troubling it again; as little fear also, I think, of his failing ere long to get the deserts he misses to-day.” A pause, during which Aubrey would give worlds for any idea that she could turn into words, and only such as she would die rather than utter came crowding into her head, while her heart throbbed noisily as it seemed to her- self, and her eyes and fingers clung ,to Mr. Robins’s papers. Then Max Lydell continued—he was stand- ing by the window, and turned his head as if to get a better view of a something important in the street below:—“I am thoroughly glad to have been the means of discovering and crushing that flagrant, outrageous imposture; thoroughly glad to have delivered you from the toils of such a scoundrel—such a low- minded, vulgar scamp, too. I don’t know how, for even that one brief interview, you could have tolerated him in the role he assumed.” Something in the tone of that last’ sentence raised Aubrey’s eyes with a flash. The sun was shining full on the handsome face opposite —the cold, dark face, with its impenetrable eyes fixed on herself in a quiet, chilling steadi- ness, that, alas! her own blue ones, at the mercy of their traitor heart, were no match for. “<T tell you, I cannot describe the relief it is to know that he can appear in that role no more,” she faltered, “Yet had he been the person he declared himself to be, you would, at whatever cost, whatever repugnance to your feelings, have - gone through with the affair?” “ “Tecould not retract my promise given to the dead,”—almost inaudibly. He looked at her fixedly awhile longer; then turned away to say, in the restrained tone that marks an effort, “‘My knowledge of your father’s will is almost as recent as yours of my identity; but I believe—Mr. Robins inform- ed me—the will isso worded, is it not, that you retain the property if J decline the contract proposed?” She bowed assent. Sagem . “Then »_hurriedly, and in accents no casual hearer would recognize as Max Lydell’s—‘ it only remains for me to restore to you, who its, “have the indisputable right to claim it, the fortune to which I have no claim whatever; and release you at the same time from the irksome fetters you have borne so patiently for so long; and I need intrude upon you no Ry arther,”’—moving slowly. Hat esis in courteous language; uttered in a delicate, gentlemanly way; yet, withal, a posi- te rejection of herself—an unhesitating re- fusal to take her at any price—a scorning of ’ gold weighted with her hand! ’ Aubrey felt that she had, indeed, descended to the lowest depths; that’ humiliation could he mold, nothing more bitter for her than this mo- iF a ment, and in the poignancy of the stab she : prung to ee a; To speak would be to q 4X ty ' about Lady Perriman’s health, lamented her oe t . . t n ed - 7 te ets : Ho a ; ie ry! ay res 34 PLEDGED * TO MARRY. ‘“‘Hear my voice on the subject before you so coolly conclude it, Mr. Lydell,” she exclaim- ed, arresting his hand on thedoor, ‘I was bound by my word so unfortunately and rash- ly pledged—(a bond which, regretted the mo- ment it was entered into, has never been so bitterly repented as within the Jast ten min- utes)—to let you be the spokesman of the words I longed for power to utter. But those words have, as you say, set me free, and I can return the insult you have dared to put upon me. You shall take the money that ought to be yours! I will not have one penny of it! Do you hear? I will not!” Though her voice was not raised one tone above the low, sweetness Lydell had so often admired, she faced him, agitated and excited, nevertheless, with burning cheeks and quiver- ing lips, and eyes that, in their passionate scorn and brightness, rose unflinchingly to his. She faced him with hands tightly clasped to still their trembling, and he stood in wonder that grew with each syllable he heard. “Insult, Miss Attison! I assure you noth- ing on earth could be further from my thoughts; and, if my words are capable of such interpre- tation, I humbly retract each andall. Ican say no more.” ‘But you shall say more! You shall say that you will take back the hateful money it would kill me to keep! Take it, Mr. Lydell, I implore, I entreat!”—with ber hand unconsci- ously grasping his arm. His demeanor changed suddenly under the touch of those cold little fingers. His face crimsoned, then paled, and he freed himself hastily from their clasp. “‘ Aubrey ”—and too agitated were they both to notice the involuntary utterance of her Christian name—‘‘ you have changed, or I have strangely misunderstood you. I thought wealth had an attraction for you.” “T hate it! Idetest it!” she responded, with a vehemencs that paused not to consider its words. ‘Poor, I should have been free. Itis money alone that I have to thank for the hate- fal bonds I have borne, as you say, patiently, for so long—for the crowning humiliation I have been fated to endure at your hands to- day!” ‘‘ Humiliation at my hands! I tell you I would die rather than—” He checked himself - with partial recovery of self-command, and a gaze into her eyes that in excitement’s strength unfalteringly met it—a gaze that seemed as.if it would penetrate those pure blue depths to read the very soul beyond. “Tell me just this, Aubrey,” he commanded, his face lighting with a sudden flash of possi- bility or hope. ‘‘ Answer this one question honestly, without trifling or prevarication: Was it this promise to your father, or dread of poverty, that made you throw poor George Skipworth over?’ She neither trifled nor prevaricated, nor did she attempt any honest answer; merely stared him back in the face in blank bewilderment. “You are keeping me in torture,” he said, hoarsely. “TI don’t understand you in the least. I throw George Skipworth over? What was he ever to me?” ‘Only a man you had promised to marry!” Then she freed her hands, and turned in haughtiest indignation. ‘Mr. Lydell, is it possible you have been thinking that of me?” In the proud, hurt scorn he felt truth’s ring; but be could not trust his feelings in this mat- ter, and their very efforts for the mastery made him the more cautious and doubting. ‘His own lips told me. My own eyes saw you with him in the park at Perriman. My own ears heard you utter some of the words that goaded him to his death. Aubrey, cannot you be truthful once? Is suffering nothing to you that you play with it thus, for the very love of deception?” “T think you are losing your senses, Mr. Ly- dell,” she retorted, quietly, her self-command returning as fast as his deserted him; ‘and so are perhaps not accountable for the rudeness | you are uttering. What Mr. Skipworth told you, or what you saw or heard, I do not know. I only know that I can assure you solemnly, as if on my oath—truthfully, as if these were | the last words my lips should speak—ithat in) this fancy of yours you wrong me most ut- | terly. George Skipworth was never lover of | mine,” “Tsaw you with him,” he repeated. | _ “For a few minutes only, and as Saree: one | else’s deputy.” “ Whose?” Pas 7 **T cannot betray another's secret,’ <e =e R proudly. “Believe me or not, as you 3 ite is a matter of indifference, It you dot word, I can condescend to no further proof, ™ Lydell’s answer was prevented by Mr. Robins’s step outside, and Mr. Robins’s quick glance from one to another of the clients he left for amicable discussion. In feminine quickness Miss Attison was again her own gracious self. ‘¢Mr. Lydell will tell you the conclusions he and 1 have arrived at.” She turned to the lawyer smilingly. ‘If I stop another moment I shall lose the down-train I want most particu- larly to catch. Good-by, Mr. Robins. Good- by, Mr. Lydell.” And she had bowed, and was gone. CHAPTER IX. IN LOVE’S BONDS. ‘¢‘Her ladyship is waiting tea for you, | miss.” Her maid brought the message to Aubrey — directly she entered the Hall, and before ten minutes had been spent in her cousin’s company the girl knew it was vain to attempt to hide anything from her searching eyes and intuitive perception. And it was some relief to tell it all, humili-_ ating recital though it was, to so sympathizing a listener as Alberta proved herself now. Lady Perriman’s delight, unfeigned at Au brey’s first revelation, was some kind of solace te the girl for the pain of putting into words of her own the bitter humiliation that followed it so quickly, and under which her sensitive feelings were quivering, fo When it was all told, my lady smiled, and — drew down the hot crimson face to her own, “T shall be able to congratulate you yet, dear—really congratulate you heartily upon your engagement, Aubrey, after all our argu- — ments and disputes on the knotty point. But I am glad you have left me one little atonement to make for my own hideous selfishness. Now, there is the gong, darling; run away, and get dressed, and look bright.” And while Aubrey and Sir Edgar went tete-a-tete through the ponderous dinner, my lady wrote a little penciled note, which she gave-to her maid with the order to dispatch a groom with it to Mr. Lydell’s house first thing to-morrow morning. Aubrey came in next morning froin a walk to the village, and catching a glimpse of a strange horse being promenaded before the stables, and a murmur of conversation from — her cousin's boudoir, imagined the doctor to be. paying his daily visit, so divested herself quiet- — ly of her walking things, and went down to the drawing-room to await his departure, é By the time her patience was exhausted she - heard him taking leave and coming down the stairs; but standing before the fire, with her back ‘to the drawing-room door, she was sur- prised to hear his steps pause outside it, and then slowly enter. \ As she turned quickly, she found herself face : to face with Max Lydell. Sa ee to crave forgiveness, Miss Atti- | son,’’ so ell began. ‘I have just had a long conversation with Lady Perriman, and — her lips have told me what my own reason would have done long ago had I not been too stubborn a fool to listen to it. How basely I _ wronged you in that matter of poor George Skipworth’s! How grossly my unworthy, cow- _ ardly sails aint paael bent you yesterday! ‘i
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: tre s ) ; > ae et Bs . eet ‘ PLEDGED TO MARRY. 16s | ‘ should not have dared to force myself into | make, in your eyes, a far more desirable wife BEADLE & ADAMS’ your presence again,” be continued, in the | than pretty Miss Attison?” Same low, ronan tone, after vainly waiting There came a perplexed memory into his STANDARD DIME PUBLICATIONS. qi for movement or response, “but for her lady- | mind. —- ship’s express stipulation that I should tell you the amends she has made you at last; and now it is presumptuous, it is hopeless, I know, to ask you to look charitably on such aggravated insolence as mine has been.” He paused, and there was no sound. His eyes, kindled and impassioned as their dark depths were, could win no glance for hope or despair, for Aubrey’s auburn head was buried in | ands. fon a few moments, the clock ticked on, then Lydell’s voice grew hoarse in the agony _ stronger than his iron will. - “¥Forgiveness is too much to expect. I _ thought so; and to offer you apologies is but. a mockery. Ihave no right—no excuse for an- noying you further; and yet J ask you to bear with me, Aubrey, a few moments longer—lis- ' ten to the confession my yesterday’s madness has rendered such a hopeless one. That my punishment is as bitter, as complete as even you could wish it, you shall know, for the mad- ness of my insults was the madness of love—a love that, as the first of my life, will be the last—a love as strong as. my life, and that Means now despair.” Silence as his voice broke, and he strode to ; ae window and back with an effort at con- .! trol, __ “To see you daily, hourly; to fight against _ the spell of your sweetness, and with each struggle succumb the deeper; to be haunted day and night by your face, and your voice ringing in my ears; to know you are all the world to me, and to madly declare that such you should not be; to believe you unworthy an honest man’s life and love, and to feel that mine were as utterly at your mercy as my pride and will were helpless to prevent it— _ that has been my punishment so far, Aubrey. What it is to be is a something keener—a full _ knowledge of the perfection of the prize that might have been mine, and a never-failing consciousness that it is lost to me through my _ own cursed, conceited idiocy.” He broke off, and the next words were wist- 5 ful and low, with a despair in their forced calm that rung straight to Aubrey’s heart. “YI willmake you the one compensation I _ can. I will take myself out of your sight _ forever, and whatever your wishes may be I Swear to fulfill them.” With one last lingering look, he crossed the Toom, and paused at the door; and then Au. brey, extending her arms toward him, cried, almost shrieked out, ‘‘Max!” es turned, saw her face, and the tale that it Two strides, and her hands were in his. “ Aubrey, is it possible? Can you forgive?” _ She raised her eyes to his—her eyes with _ their depths so much deeper than forgiveness, _ and smiled, but he hesitated still. _ “Don’t trifle with me, child!” in urgent _ passion of appeal. “I told youI knew how _ utterly I had wrecked the bliss I might have _ once dared to hope possible. Don’t raise the wild tempest of thoughts of what might have been, My control is less than I fancied—my _ will nowhere. You offered me friendship once, Aubrey. It is friendship you mean to-day, is | i not?” / She shook her head archly. “That is for you to decide.” “My dearest !—my love!” | arms were round her then, and the au- i burn head was pillowed happily at last. “if there be the hope —if there be the _ caance, tell me plainly at once, u don’t know what the love is I have tind go long. You cannot guess its power if once urcurbed. preeets an love, my darling, may I give it Then, for answer, she raised her face, laugh- ing in very rapture. { And how about that candidly avowed ‘opinion that any decent flower-girl would } am 7. ae ‘Were those my words? of wonder—” “Did IT hear them? Mr. Lydell, let this be a warning to you to distrust Albert Hall core ridors and the muffled strangers you pass.” ‘“T have adim remembrance now. I have been a more consummate idiot than I even knew. Are you equal to forgiving that also?” But though the tone was penitent, the smile was confident, for the face he bent to see was nestling again on his breast. ‘¢T have not decided yet. I rather fancy that rash, rude speech was punished in those days you found me so very unpleasant to get on with; but I should like to know, if you have no objection to tell, why you thus expressed yourself so determinedly about a young lady of whom you knew nothing?” ‘*T had seen youand had admired you rather more than I liked to own to myself I could ad- mire the daughter of the man whose name I had been taught from childhood to detest as that of an underhand injurer of me and mine. Forgive the explanation, Aubrey, as you forgive that ungentlemanly, hasty speech, which was but a beginning of this end, and which I many a time would have given nouch to recall, though I knew not that it had fallen on any ears but those of the man whose jests provoked it, and by whom I knew it would be forgotten as soon as heard.” Then he bent lower, and whispered again. * Aubrey, until I hear it from your lips, I shall fancy this happiness too great to be any thing but a tantalizing dream with a rude awakening in store for me. Have I gained your love?” And she twined her arms timidly around his neck, and out from her blushes her eyes met his, true as blue. How, in the name ‘Max, I only learned myself yesterday how dearly, and deeply, and wholly I do love you!” THE END. 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