Project Gutenberg's Kissing the Rod, Vol. 3 (of 3), by Edmund Yates This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you'll have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. Title: Kissing the Rod, Vol. 3 (of 3) A Novel Author: Edmund Yates Release Date: December 22, 2018 [EBook #58519] Language: English Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK KISSING THE ROD, VOL. 3 (OF 3) *** Produced by Charles Bowen from page scans provided by Google Books Transcriber's Notes: 1. Page scan source: Google Books https://books.google.com/books?id=5cgBAAAAQAAJ (Oxford University) KISSING THE ROD. A Novel. BY EDMUND YATES, AUTHOR OF "BROKEN TO HARNESS," "RUNNING THE GAUNTLET," "LAND AT LAST," ETC. "The heart knoweth its own bitterness." IN THREE VOLUMES. VOL. III. LONDON: TINSLEY BROTHERS, 18 CATHERINE ST. STRAND. 1866. [All rights of translation and reproduction reserved.] LONDON: ROBSON AND SON, GREAT NORTHERN PRINTING WORKS, PANCRAS ROAD, N.W. CONTENTS OF VOLUME III. I. "IN BATTALLIONS." II. DELIBERATION. III. HUSBAND AND WIFE. IV. WINGED IN FLIGHT. V. FAILURE. VI. HESTER IN POSSESSION. VII. A SPLIT IN THE CAMP. VIII. THE PLEDGE REDEEMED. IX. SUCCESS. X. COMING HOME. KISSING THE ROD CHAPTER I. "IN BATTALIONS." It was perhaps fortunate for Robert Streightley that the pressure of an immediate necessity for exertion was put upon him at the same time that he received his wife's letter. The blow was so frightful that it might have completely crushed him, had he not been forced to rouse himself from its first effect, to put the meaning of the terrible communication aside for a time, while he attended to the stern duties which were his, as the only representative of the dead man. The subdued bustle, the ceaseless coming and going, the people to be seen, the letters to be written, the innumerable demands upon his attention in reference to his deceased father-in-law, to say nothing of the exigencies of his own affairs, from which he had not an hour's respite, controlled him in spite of himself, and by suspending softened the intensity of the knowledge of the punishment that had overtaken him. The suspense and perplexity into which Katharine's unexplained absence from home had thrown the household on the preceding day had prepared them to expect that some important intelligence was contained in the letter which had reached their master that morning; and the unhappy man comprehended the necessity of making some communication on the subject. He briefly informed Katharine's maid that she had left town for the present; and on being asked whether the woman was to join her mistress at Middlemeads, he said Mrs. Streightley was not there; that she had better wait for orders, and in the mean time ask no more questions. An injudicious answer; but Robert neither knew nor cared what would have been the judicious course to pursue. He knew only that his sin had found him out; that the chastisement had come; and that the woman whom he had so loved and so wronged had left him for ever--left him hating and despising him. The hours of that dreadful day wore through somehow. Robert had been engaged during many of them in making arrangements consequent upon Mr. Guyon's death; he had been at Queen Anne Street, and at his office in the City, transacting business of different but invariably unpleasant kinds. He had seen several persons, but not any by whom the domestic calamity which had fallen upon him was suspected. He had written to his mother, informing her of Mr. Guyon's death, and requesting that Ellen would not come to Portland Place for the present; but giving no explanation of this request. All the day he had carried about with him the dreadful knowledge of what had befallen him--had been oppressed by its weight, darkened by its shadow; but he had not examined his burden--he had gone his appointed way, and done his relentless task, and the day had been got through somehow. Now he was going to look the truth in the face; he was going to force his mind to understand it, to take it in fully, and to suffer the torture at his leisure. He shut himself up in his "study," and gave orders that no one was to be admitted. Then, with the door locked and sure of solitude, he read Katharine's letter again,--not that he needed to do so; every one of its few remorseless words seemed to have burned themselves into his brain,--and then he read the letter which hers had enclosed--the letter endorsed "Shown to R. S." He had not looked at it in the morning; it had sufficed him to know that the letter which Mr. Guyon had shown him on the day which had witnessed their disgraceful compact--the letter which they had tacitly agreed to suppress, still existed, for his conviction, for his condemnation, and had reached the hands to which it had been addressed at last: he had put it away with a shudder. But now he read it--steadily, and with utter amazement. There it was; and on the blank side of the sheet, in Mr. Guyon's hand, were the words, "Shown to R.S." But this letter was sill in Mr. Guyon's hand, and Robert had never seen it--had never heard of it; this was not the letter from Gordon Frere to Katharine which her father had shown to him; there was a dreadful mistake somewhere. As Robert read the heartless words in which Mr. Guyon rejected Gordon Frere on his daughter's behalf, he understood for the first time how the conspiracy which had resulted in so sad a success had been carried out. This, then, was the method Mr. Guyon had adopted, and into which Robert had never inquired. He saw it all--he understood it all now; and he honestly recoiled at the baseness by which his triumph had been secured. He even thought he would not have consented, had he known how the thing was to be done; but his conscience was not so deadened as to accept that sophistry, and another moment's thought taught him that he was as guilty as ever. But how came the letter to be endorsed with words, intended by their writer only as a private memorandum, which were not true? This puzzled Robert, until he guessed, what really was the case, that Mr. Guyon had put Frere's letter and his reply away together, and had mistaken the one for the other. Why had he kept them at all? thought Robert; why had he put such dangerous and useless documents aside, thus running the risk of detection now realised? "He never could have intended to use them as a weapon against me," thought Robert, who had arrived at a tolerably correct appreciation of the character of his deceased father-in-law. "They convict him directly; me, though conclusively to her, only indirectly to others. Why on earth did he keep them?" Ah, why? Why is half the mischief that is done in the world done by the instrumentality of letters, which ought to have been read and destroyed, being treasured up instead by foolish women, or read and left about by men whom experience has not availed to teach? If Robert Streightley had quite understood Mr. Guyon's character, he would have known, in the first place, that that gentleman had never been in the habit of contemplating the contingency of his own death, or of making any preparation, temporal or spiritual, for that event; in the second, that his vanity was of so ominous a kind that he liked to indulge in the recollection of successful enterprises, no matter what their nature, and treasured up the trophies of his fortunate coups, as other people might keep love-tokens or relics of departed friends,-- a ghastly perversion, it is true, but a characteristic trait of Mr. Guyon, as Robert came to learn, when he had to examine all the dead man's papers and personal effects. After all, it did not matter very much that this mistake had been made. Any one of the papers concerning this transaction, so endorsed, would have equally convicted her husband in Katharine's eyes. For a moment, when Robert perceived the error and recognised how it had occurred, a faint hope had sprung up in his heart that all might be explained, in explaining that he had never seen the draft of Mr. Guyon's letter to Gordon Frere; but it lasted only for a moment, and then left Robert more shame-stricken, more despairing than before. The bitter remembrance of his resolutions of the day before came to torment him now. How futile they were! made all too late, and useless; how ridiculous they seemed, too! Would he ever have had the courage to tell the woman he had wronged the truth concerning himself and her? Cowering as he was now under the blast of her scorn and anger, he could not believe that he would; he heaped upon himself all the reprobation which the sternest judge could have measured out to him. His sin had found him out indeed, and nothing could save him now from the fullest retribution. It had come in its worst form, complicated with the death of his accomplice, as a double horror. Robert Streightley was not a man who could coldly contemplate such an event as Mr. Guyon's death. He had indeed retained but little personal regard for him; but that fact, the growing knowledge of the man which rendered such regard impossible, invested his death with additional horror to Robert. That such should have been the manner of the detection and the punishment, impressed him with awe. Standing, as he had done that day, by the dead man's bed, he had bowed his head submissively to the tremendous lesson which the scene conveyed. Where was their fine scheme now? Where was the wealth for which the father had sold the daughter? Gone--almost all gone; and if it had remained a million times told, what could it avail to the form of clay which lay there waiting for the coffin and the grave? Where was the beautiful wife whom the father's accomplice had purchased at the price of his honour? Who was to tell that to the wretched husband, who knew nothing but that she had detected them both, and fled from them both,--from the living and the dead? As he thought these thoughts, and a thousand others which could find no utterance in words, no expression by the pen, the long hours of the night were wearing by. Up and down the room, long after the fire had died out, unnoticed, Robert Streightley walked, buried in his tormenting thoughts, full of horror, remorse, shame, the sense of righteous retribution and torturing grief. She was gone,--his darling, the one treasure of his life, the beautiful idol of his worship: the desolation of that knowledge had not come to him yet; he had had no time to think of the meaning of life without her; the fear, the excitement, the strangeness of the fact were all that he had as yet realised. The awful sorrow, the hopeless bereavement were for the future. The strokes of the rod were beginning to fall upon him; strokes which were to continue, ceaseless and stinging, until the end. Any one who has ever battled, quite alone, with a tremendous sorrow in its first hours of strife, knows how vain is the effort to collect his thoughts at the time, and to recall their order afterwards; knows how the merest trifles will intrude themselves on the attention at times, and at others how the faculties will seem to be suspended, and a kind of dull vacuity will succeed the access of raging pain. The story of Robert's suffering in no way differed from that of any other supreme agony. It had all the caprices, all the fantasies of pain; it had the dreadful vitality, and the intervals of numbness and wandering. Many times in the course of that night Robert sat down in a chair and fell asleep, to wake again--with a start, and an impression that some voice had uttered his name--to the renewed consciousness of his misery. It was very long before he began to think about the circumstances of Katharine's flight from her home, before he began to speculate upon how she had gone, and whither. From the moment he had read her assurance that in this world he should never see her face again, he had been seized with a horrible conviction that this was literally true: he would seek her, of course; he would find out where she had gone to,--he did not even stop to think whether there would be much, or any difficulty about that--but he should see her face no more. No such wild notion as that Katharine would relent and forgive him ever crossed Robert's mind. He knew how cold and proud she was--how cold and proud when she was ignorant of his sin against her, and when he had lived only in the hope of winning her love some happy day before he died;--he knew how insensate any hope would now be, and he never cherished such a delusion for a moment. She was dead to him, and all the gorgeous fabric of the life he had built up for himself had crumbled away. The new day was dawning, when Robert Streightley went wearily upstairs, and stopped at the door of his wife's dressing-room. He had hardly courage to enter the deserted chamber,--it was as though she lay dead inside. There had been so strong a likeness to her face in that of the dead man he had stood beside that day, that it had had a double awe for him. When at length he opened the door and went in, the cold dim dawn was there before him, and the orderly emptiness of the splendid chamber struck him to the heart. No picturesque disarray was there, but the trimness of a swept and garnished apartment. He had not entered this room on the preceding night--he had not thought of looking for any explanation of Katharine's absence there. But now that she had furnished the explanation herself, he remembered the servants had told him she had been some time in her dressing-room after her return from Queen Anne Street. He drew back the curtains and admitted the misty light; he sat down on a sofa and leaned his head wearily upon his hands. Gradually fatigue overcame him, and he fell into a deep sleep, which gave him merciful forgetfulness until late in the morning. Robert was roused from his slumber by Katharine's maid, who told him that Lady Henmarsh had arrived and was waiting to see him. "There's another lady with her, sir," said the maid,--"Mrs. Frere." Robert started perceptibly. "I cannot see any one yet," he said. "Say I am not dressed, but will call on Lady Henmarsh as soon as possible." The woman hesitated. "Lady Henmarsh wants to know what day is fixed for the funeral, sir; and she has been asking about my mistress." "Just tell her what I have said," returned Robert impatiently, "and say no more." The maid left him, and Robert went to his own room. His injunction was useless. Lady Henmarsh, who had felt more discomposure when the news of Mr. Guyon's death had reached her than any other intelligence respecting her fellow- creatures could have caused her to experience, had hurried up to town, had gone to Queen Anne Street, and learned from the housekeeper the strange disappearance of Katharine. While her message was being conveyed to Robert, she was engaged in cross-examining the footman; and she had elicited all that any one, save Robert himself, could tell her before she went away, obliged to be contented with the promise of a speedy visit from Mr. Streightley. The news of Mr. Guyon's death had been received by Mrs. Streightley and her daughter as such news would naturally be received by such persons. They were shocked and sorry; shocked, because they knew Mr. Guyon to be a "worldly" man, and they could not but regard his unprepared death with awe; sorry, because he was Katharine's father, and Ellen at least loved Katharine, and grieved for her grief. Ellen would indeed have gone to her sister-in-law, and sought to soothe her in her simple fashion, had not Robert's note forbade her doing so. This note had excited no fresh alarm; the ladies agreed that Katharine was not able to see any one, not even Ellen, just yet, and were quite content to wait for the subsidence of a feeling so natural. Thus, when Robert made his appearance a little before noon on the day following the receipt of his note, they were wholly unprepared for the intelligence he had to communicate, and they received it with mingled horror and incredulity. "My wife had grave cause of complaint against me," Robert had said, "and she has left me." To this plain but not explanatory statement he limited his disclosure, and he left his mother and sister in much perplexity and distress. It did not occur to them that Robert was ignorant of his wife's plans; they accepted the situation as a simple separation; and Mrs. Streightley's comment upon it to her daughter, made after Robert had left them, was: "I don't care what her cause of complaint may be, nothing can justify her leaving Robert. Don't let us speak of her, my dear; time will bring things right, and at all events will console him." Thus Ellen had not any information to afford Mrs. Gordon Frere, when she surprised her by a visit that same afternoon. It was Hester who repeated to Ellen the particulars which Lady Henmarsh had extracted from the footman that morning, and Hester who suggested that Robert might find it more difficult than he imagined to open any communication with his wife. "Lady Henmarsh went to Mr. Guyon's solicitor," said Hester; "and he evidently can tell nothing. Mrs. Streightley had a long interview with him after her father's death, but he declares she never gave him a hint of her intention, and was singularly quiet and composed. He wondered, indeed, at the composure with which she bore her father's death. I believe Mr. Streightley expects her to communicate with him, or you, or some one, by letter?" "I suppose so. O, of course," said Ellen; "but the whole thing bewilders me. What fault can she have to find with Robert? Surely no woman ever had a better husband." Mrs. Frere assented to this proposition, and the two talked over the mysterious occurrence. With none the less goût that no amount of talking could render it less mysterious. Hester had a certain degree of knowledge, and a greater degree of suspicion; but she did not confide either to her guileless companion, who was distracted between her admiring affection for Katharine and her absolute belief in Robert's faultlessness. The interview between Robert and Lady Henmarsh was not more communicative on his part than that which had taken place at the Brixton villa, in so far as the motive of Katharine's flight was concerned. "Cousin Hetty" had so much to say about Mr. Guyon's death, and was so much agitated by it, that Robert's kindness of heart would, under any circumstances, have prevented his telling her any thing derogatory to the memory of the dead man. He therefore confined himself to a general statement of the circumstances. Lady Henmarsh was genuinely astonished, and honestly concerned. She thought in her heart that Katharine was the "greatest fool" in existence. "The other man is married," said she to herself, "and therefore out of her reach. She has not run off with any one else; and unless she was really too well off, and bored to death by having every thing she wished for, I cannot understand her conduct." Her manner was perfect in its sympathy with Mr. Streightley, and in her condemnation of his wife, whose flight she, however, took care to represent as merely a caprice, a little bit of temper,--"she always had an ungovernable temper," said Lady Henmarsh, in a parenthesis,--but of the worst possible taste under the circumstances. "Did I understand you rightly, that Katharine was with her poor dear father when he died?" she asked. "Yes, she was with him," said Robert; "she was with him all night, and until near eleven o'clock next day." "How very extraordinary and how very shocking!" exclaimed Lady Henmarsh. "Well, Mr. Streightley, I am sure, no matter what you and she have quarrelled about, the fault is not yours; and her friend will speedily send her back to you." "Her friend?" said Robert, interrogatively. "Yes; Mrs. Stanbourne I mean. Of course she is gone to her. Do not you think so? She does not say so, I suppose, just to keep you in suspense, and make a sensation; but no doubt she is gone to her: she did so in all her troubles formerly; poor Ned and I were not good enough for her," and Lady Henmarsh sniffed spitefully. "My advice to you is to take no notice; she must come off her high horse when she wants money." Robert started. He had not thought of that; he had not thought of his wife being reduced to any material distress. The mere idea gave him acute pain; and yet what better chance for her communicating with him, and some faint hope arising out of such communication? The divided pain and relief of the thought struggled in his expressive face. "I have no idea," he replied; "there is no clue, no indication in her letter--nothing but the terrible, bare truth; and I don't know whether she has money with her or not." "She had a private banking account, I know, among the other luxuries of her vie de princesse," said Lady Henmarsh with a spiteful emphasis; "you had better see to its condition. I have no doubt she has gone to Mrs. Stanbourne. It is unfortunate; and she is foolish to have made such a scandal as, let us all keep the matter as close as we may, it must make, for it will not be easily lived down by her, or forgotten by the world. However, it cannot be helped; she must only come back, and propitiate society more than ever." Robert hardly heard her; his thoughts were far distant, in pursuit of the beloved fugitive. The trivial talk of the woman of the world passed him by unheeded. He roused himself to tell Lady Henmarsh what were the arrangements for the funeral of Mr. Guyon, and to utter a few sentences of kindness towards the dead man, and concern for her grief. Then he was going away, when he remembered something he had to say, and turned again to speak to her. "No papers can be removed until after the funeral," he said; "but I have looked over the greater part of poor Mr. Guyon's, and I have set aside a large packet which I consider you are the proper person to dispose of. I will send them to you carefully." Lady Henmarsh thanked him; but her manner was confused to a degree which did her habitual sang froid a great wrong, and a genuine blush dyed her face from the chin to the forehead. "To think of his being such an idiot as to keep those letters," she said, when Robert had left her. "Who could have believed it? I should not be surprised if he had kept some letter, some memorandum, which has opened Kate's eyes; and if so, knowing what a devil she is when she's roused, I'm not surprised at any thing." Robert found that Katharine had not drawn on her private banking account for more than a fortnight. More than ever puzzled by this discovery, he questioned her maid, inquiring if she could tell what money her mistress had had in her possession. She had only a few sovereigns in her purse, the maid knew, when she went out that fatal day in the carriage. Katharine had forgotten her purse, and sent her upstairs for it just as she reached the hall-door; so she had seen the purse, and taken particular notice of it, as it lay open on the dressing-table. Robert went with the woman to examine the drawers and wardrobes in Katharine's room. He was intensely anxious now to be assured that she had the equivalent of money with her; for he was far from really sharing Lady Henmarsh's confident anticipations, though he tried to persuade himself that he did so. All Katharine's possessions were in perfect order--not a trinket, not a jewel was missing,--not one, at least, that Robert had given her, or that she had bought since their marriage; nothing but the old-fashioned case containing her dead mother's diamonds, her sole dowry, was gone from its place. Then Robert despaired; then he seemed to understand the terrible and final meaning of this event. He was standing before the open doors of a cabinet in which Katharine's jewels were symmetrically arranged, and had just satisfied himself that only the case of jewels had been removed, when a servant came to seek him. "What is it?" said Robert. "I am busy: I cannot see any one." "It is one of the clerks from the City, sir," returned the man; "and he wants to see you on important business." Robert went down to the study, and saw the clerk from the City. His business was important, and his news serious. New and heavy loss had fallen on Streightley and Son. Troubles had indeed come to Robert, "not by single spies, but in battalions." CHAPTER II. DELIBERATION. It was eleven o'clock in the morning, and Mr. Charles Yeldham was hard at work, his oak rigidly closed, the sleeves of his dressing-gown turned up, his hair in a grand state of "towzle," caused by the frequent passage of his hands through it; a shower of fresh ink-splotches dotting the carpet close by his desk, and other indubitable signs of a hard case of "treadmill." It had occurred to Mr. Yeldham, in the midst of applying a wise saw to a modern instance, that somebody was tapping at his outer door; but entirely engrossed by the vastness of the application, he had given himself to rubbing his hands together under his desk, and had wholly ignored the knocker. In the act of taking a fresh dip of ink, preparatory to the elaboration of a sentence which should utterly confound his adversary the opposition chamber- counsel, Mr. Yeldham paused, and, recognising the peculiar taps at the door as those only known to the affiliated, Charley, with some faint idea that it might be Gordon Frere coming in for a chat and a smoke, laid down his pen, and unbolting the door, admitted Robert Streightley. Very pale, with a bright hectic flush under the eyes, and with an unnatural brightness in the eyes themselves; with his hat drawn over his brow, and his shoulders far more rounded than when Yeldham had last seen him, Robert Streightley wrung his friend's hand, entered the room, and without invitation flung himself into a chair by the desk. The appearance of the man was so changed, the action was so contrary to his usual custom, that Charles Yeldham looked hard at him, and looking, noticed the restless quivering of his lips, the odd manner in which he plucked at his chin with his hand, the way in which from time to time he pressed his side, as though to check the beating of his heart. Yeldham noticed all these points; but his voice never betrayed him, and he said perfectly calmly, "Well, Robert, old man, it's not often you venture into my quarters--afraid of the law, eh, old fellow?--think that I shall entangle you into a dispute with Rothschild, or show how easily you could promote a claim against the Barings? However, I'm glad to see you now you are come." "I'm sure you are, Charley; and I know you'll be more glad to see me--I mean more ready with your sympathy and advice--when you learn that I have come to you--in trouble." "In trouble? O yes, I recollect; I saw in the papers. Dreadful thing about Mr. Guyon; so sudden, and at such a place! Dreadful for your wife too; I suppose she feels it acutely?" "I suppose she does. I can't say--I don't know!" "You can't say--you don't know! Why, Hubert, old fellow, Mr. Guyon's death must--" "I didn't come here to talk to you about Mr. Guyon's death, Yeldham; I came to speak of my own affairs." "Why, Robert, how you--what on earth's the matter with you, man?" "What on earth's the matter with a man whose wife--whom he adores and worships--has left him for ever?" "Has left him for ever? Good God, Streightley, what's the matter with you; you've not been----" "No, I'm not drunk, Charley, if you mean that; and grief has not turned my brain yet; at all events I know what I said, and I mean it--read that!" and he handed him Katharine's note. Yeldham read it through with contracting brows and pursing lips. He read it twice; then Streightley said, "That note was posted to me, and reached me the morning after my wife left her home. You see that it does not give the slightest clue to her whereabouts." "It does not--it----" "Why do you hesitate?" "Well--there was no occasion for you to show me that letter; and you would not have shown it to me, I presume, if you intended your confidence to end there." "I have come here to ask your advice and help, and with the full intention of concealing nothing from you." "That is the only condition under which advice, to be worth any thing, can be given. Mrs. Streightley in that letter speaks of some plot or conspiracy of which you were cognisant, by which her whole life was warped and spoiled. I'm not quoting exact words, but that remains upon my mind as the sense of the passage. What does she mean by that?" "She means that I, whom you have always known as an honourable man, acted on one occasion like a sneak and a scoundrel!--she means that I was so mad in my pursuit of her before we were married, that I descended to the use of foul means to carry my point; that I was base enough to be party to an arrangement which, as she says, warped and spoiled her life, for the sake of getting her for myself." "This is strong language, Robert! Knowing you as I do, I should think your conduct even in this matter can hardly have been such as to justify this self-condemnation." "Wait and hear the story before you judge. You know how I loved Katharine Guyon. I told you all about it that first day we went down to Middlemeads; I told you how, the first time in my life, I was passionately, madly in love with her. We spoke, if you recollect, of your friend Gordon Frere; but I did not tell you what I then knew--that he had paid great attention to Miss Guyon; that these attentions had been very well received by her, and that there was a very strong flirtation--if not an understood engagement--between them." "You did not tell me, but I knew it. I had been told of it by Gordon himself." "You knew of it, and yet listened to my love-ravings? However, the flirtation, engagement--whatever it was--was gall and wormwood to me. I had seen them together on several occasions, and the recollection of the pleasure which she always showed in his society used to madden me. I made all kinds of excuses to go to her house; I lent her father money whenever he asked for it; each time I saw her I was more madly in love, but she was no nearer to me than before. One morning her father wrote to me to come to him on urgent business. I thought he wanted more money, but he explained that it was to consult me--I who was so calm and clever and far-seeing, God help me!--as to the future of his child. He had that morning had a letter from Mr. Gordon Frere making a formal proposal for Miss Guyon's hand, and enclosing another letter to Miss Guyon herself." Here Charles Yeldham shifted his position, leaning forward in his chair, and fixing his eyes on Streightley's face. "I did not read either of these letters," continued Robert; "but Mr. Guyon explained to me their purport, and I knew at once my doom. Mr. Guyon expressed his dislike to the proposed connection, stating that Mr. Frere was too young, too frivolous, and too poor to be intrusted with Miss Guyon's future. In an instant, and almost without knowing what I did, I proposed to Mr. Guyon for his daughter. He accepted me instantly, declared himself delighted, and assured me that he would smooth matters for me with Miss Guyon. But there was Frere's letter. We both knew that she was fond of the young man; we both knew that she would accept his offer; we--yes, we both agreed that the letter should be kept back from her, and that she should never be informed of Frere's proposal." "Good God!" exclaimed Yeldham, "and that intention was carried out?" "At once. Frere was answered by Mr. Guyon that his daughter was engaged to me, and--there! I cannot go through the sickening details of that time again, nor describe the manner in which that girl was cheated of her lover and made over to me. Since then the knowledge of my treachery has never left me, I may fairly say I haven't had one happy hour, and--could I only get my wife back, and prove to her how sincere is my desire to atone for my part in this plot, I should not repine at its having come to light. You don't speak, Yeldham; you despise me--you----" "I don't despise you, Robert; I pity you from the bottom of my soul," said Yeldham in a hard dry voice. "I don't think, much as I have heard it talked of, that I ever believed in what men call the power of passion before. That it made whole idiots of the half-brained people who chose to let it get the mastery of them, I understood; but that under its influence you should have permitted yourself to have your sense of right and wrong warped and degraded--that you should have suffered yourself to become a conspirator with, if not the tool of, such a thorough-paced scoundrel as old Guyon, is to me most marvellous. I confess I thought there was something queer in the case; but I never dreamed of this." Yeldham stopped speaking for a minute; but as Robert Streightley remained silent, his head buried in his hands, Charley rose to his feet and began striding up and down the room, as was his fashion when very much excited. "I should be no true friend to you, Streightley, if I did not tell you all I feel in this matter," he said, "though I cannot express in strong enough terms my horror at what has been done. When I recollect how that poor fellow Gordon Frere went away almost heart-broken, and soured in temper, at the way in which he thought he had been treated by Miss Guyon--his visits unacknowledged, his letters unreplied to, his proposal rejected,--when I think how he stormed about her conduct and cursed her--yes, cursed her, poor girl, as a heartless coquette; cursed her for what it now appears she not merely had nothing to do with, but was a fellow-victim in,--when I think of all this, I feel I must be drunk or dreaming when connecting my old friend Robert Streightley with such a deliberate piece of villainy! Don't start, Robert; it was a hard word, but it was the right one. I'm not a friend of yesterday; we've been like brothers since we were boys, and you know I'd give my life for you if it were wanted; but I claim the right to speak out plainly in this matter. Why, it was but the other day that Frere, who, thank God, came home quite cured of all that early romance, was here talking of you and your wife, and saying how lucky she was to have chosen for her helpmate in life such an honest, genuine, sterling good fellow." "Charley," pleaded Streightley, crossing his hands behind his head, "for heaven's sake spare me this! To know what I was, what I seem to be, and what I am, is too much!" "There then," said Yeldham, pausing by his friend and laying his hand on Robert's shoulder--"I've done. No talk will mend the matter, and besides, immediate action is needed. You say Mrs. Streightley had left your house?" "She had; that letter came by the post the day after her father's death--the day on which she went away." "And at present you have no clue to her whereabouts?" "Not the slightest." Charles Yeldham sat down at his desk, and leaning his head on his hands, remained for a minute or two in deep thought. Then he turned to his friend and said: "Mrs. Streightley was, I should imagine from the little I saw of her, a woman of great force of character, and not likely to do a thing on the spur of the moment without calculating results. You see this letter, by its postmark, must have been written some hours after she left home. During those hours she was deliberating and forming her plan; and whatever that was, she'll hold to it, I'm sure. She has determined that you sha'n't trace her; and it's my opinion you'll have the greatest difficulty in doing it." "We might employ the detectives, don't you think?" asked Robert. "Detectives! There's been no detection done by the detectives since they were made the heroes of sensation novels; and, besides, we don't quite want to place your domestic history among the archives of Scotland Yard. No; whatever is to be done--and, as I said before, I fear the chance is small enough--must be done amongst ourselves. Who were her female friends? intimates, I mean; dear and dearest, and all those things that women say and write to each other?" "I--I scarcely know," said Robert, looking blank. "She never appeared to me to have what one could call an intimate friend. There was Lady Henmarsh, who used to take her about before we were married; but there's not been over much cordiality between them lately, I should say; and Mrs. Stanbourne, who is a relative of Katharine's, and a very charming woman, the kindest and best--so particularly nice to me, made me feel quite at home--but she's not in England, or I would have sent to her at once; and there's my sister Ellen, and Hester Gould--Mrs. Frere, I mean--but of course, under the circumstances, she would not go to either of them." "Of course not," said Yeldham, rubbing his head. "It's a tremendous knot--a most tremendous knot. I don't see my way in it the least. Motive for leaving plain enough--discovery of this plot. Inducement for her to go any where in particular? none. 'Never will forgive you--never will look on your face again'--that means concealment, or I don't know but she's just the woman whose spirit would induce her to--no, not that either. Too much pride; hates the world's talk and pity--no, no. What does she say about having taken nothing of yours? Hadn't she any money?" "She had a private banking account of her own, but I find she has not drawn a cheque for weeks. She has only taken with her some jewels which belonged to her mother, and which--ah, my darling! my darling!" and the strong man, who had borne up with such fortitude hitherto, broke down and wept like a child. "Robert--old fellow--for God's sake, any thing but that! Have some brandy; have some----" "If she should be in want--she, who never yet knew an ungratified wish--if she--O Charley, I know I'm making a fool of myself, old friend, but I love her so! O Heaven, I love her so!" There were tears in honest Charley Yeldham's eyes as he sat himself down by his friend, and took his hand and said, "Come, Robert--be a man. I know it's hard to bear, horribly hard, and no preaching, and no attempt at consolation will make it any better. It must be faced and battled with. She's gone, and we must find her. It's one consolation to know that wherever she may be, she'll be certain, by that wonderful something which I have often felt, but which I can't explain, and which is innate in her, to command the respect of those she is thrown among. But the money-test is decidedly an awkward one. She has some jewels, you say; but she'll know nothing of the way to convert them into cash, and she's sure to be awfully done; and I suppose she was like most women, had not the least knowledge of the value of money?" "Well, no, poor child--not much, I think; you see, she has never had to----" "Of course not; I know. Look here, Robert; you must take a blunt question from a blunt man, and give a blunt answer if you choose. Is what is beginning to be murmured about you in the City true?" The colour flushed up into Robert Streightley's pale face at the question. The pride in his wife, in his position, had been things of later days; the pride in his City stability had been born in him, and nurtured in his youth. "I will answer you, Charley, in all truth," he said, with quivering lips; "but you must tell me first what the report is." "The report is, that, hit heavily by the failure of Hicks' bank, you have been trying to recover leeway by--well, what they call wild speculation; that you've got some tremendous bills in hand, and that----" "There; quite enough. Public rumour is, as usual, considerably in advance of the truth. We were hit by Hicks' failure, but you'll find that Streightley and Son will weather the gale yet. Pshaw!" Streightley exclaimed, suddenly changing his tone--"I got relief from one confession, why should not I from another? I won't disguise from you, my dear Charley, that we have been very heavily hit, and that our present situation is--well, what may be called precarious; but I hope, and think, we shall pull through." "Has this state of things been for long?" "Well--for some months." "And Mrs. Streightley knew nothing of it?" "God forbid! Knowing how she had been purchased, was I to yield up the sole influence I possessed over her by telling her that the gold for which she had been sacrificed was only dross and dead leaves, and that the 'merchant prince' was on the brink of ruin? Not I. And what has it come to now? She is gone, and I am left alone in my misery and desolation." His head fell on his breast as he said this, and the big tears rolled down his cheeks. "Look here, Robert," said Yeldham, laying his hand heavily on his friend's shoulder; "this won't do at all. You're all unstrung and out of health. Get you home--if you're not absolutely wanted in the City--and rest a bit; you need it, heaven knows. Leave this business to me--you know I'm a capital ferret--and I'll take it in hand at once, and you shall see me to-morrow with my report." Robert Streightley wrung his friend's hand, and very shortly left the chambers; but Charley Yeldham remained for more than an hour with his chin buried in his hands, and his mind full of all he had heard. At length he put on his hat, and walked into Fleet Street, where, close by the top of Middle Temple Lane, he encountered Mr. Daniel Thacker. It is scarcely necessary to say that, though they were acquainted, there was very little friendship between Mr. Yeldham and Mr. Thacker. The Hebrew gentleman regarded the lawyer as a plodding snob; the conveyancing barrister regarded the West-end money-lender as an unscrupulous scoundrel; but they had met and been introduced, and were in the habit of stopping to exchange verbal civilities; and they did so on this occasion. After the first compliments had passed, Mr. Thacker expressed his regret at not seeing more of Mr. Yeldham in society, but added that he perfectly well understood how it was; there must be bees as well as drones--and Mr. Yeldham had the credit of being one of the most hardworking as well as one of the most deservedly successful bees in the legal hive. Mr. Yeldham--in his coldly formal politeness one could scarcely have recognised the warm-hearted Charley, Robert Streightley's friend--Mr. Yeldham was compelled to leave society to those who adorned it, like Mr. Thacker; and, "talking of society," said Mr. Yeldham, "this is very sad news about our poor friend Mr. Guyon." "Sad enough for me," said Mr. Thacker with charming frankness. "Mr. Guyon was a client of mine; a client for whom I--like a soft fool as I was--however, that's neither here nor there--I shall have to stand the racket in that quarter, and be a considerable loser, I can tell you." Mr. Yeldham expressed his concern, and attempted to terminate the interview; but Mr. Thacker caught him by the lapel of his coat. "And talking of that," said he, "this is a pretty business in Portland Place!" In Portland Place? You would have gathered from the expression of Mr. Yeldham's face that it was the first time he had ever heard of that locality. "Yes, yes; you know what I mean," said Mr. Thacker impatiently; "Guyon's son-in-law--Streightley, the City man." "Streightley, the City man?" repeated Yeldham; "ah, of course, dreadfully cut up at the sudden death." "Dreadfully cut up at the sudden death! I hope that's the only way in which he'll be cut up dreadfully. Haven't you heard the news?" By a shoulder-shrug which would have done credit to Frederic Lemaitre, Mr. Yeldham intimated his ignorance. "Well, then, Mrs. Streightley has gone away from her home--left her husband, sir; and no one knows where she's gone to." "That's a very awkward statement to make, Mr. Thacker," said Yeldham; "Mrs. Streightley, too, of all persons in the world! I suppose you have--you must have--excellent authority for such a story, or you would scarcely venture, a man of your perspicacity, to repeat it." "All I know is, that a--well, in point of fact, a client of mine, Mrs. Frere, was with Lady Henmarsh, Mr. Streightley's great friend, and heard it when they called in Portland Place." "Mrs. Frere--a client of yours? ay, ay! ay, ay! a strange story indeed, but one which we lawyers must take cum grano, as we say. Good morning, Mr. Thacker." And Yeldham bowed to his acquaintance, and passed on. "A dry stick that," said Thacker, looking after him; "a very dry stick. How much of that story did he know? Every bit; more than any of us are acquainted with, for he was an old friend of Streightley's, and has doubtless been consulted about the business. I've underrated that chap hitherto, I imagine; he did that very neatly, very neatly indeed. Shook me off at the right instant too, at the very moment when I intended to pump him about Streightley's liabilities; a deuced cool, clever hand. I'll remember you, my friend, when I want clear-headed advice." "'In point of fact, a client of mine,'" said Yeldham to himself as he went his way. "That's it, is it? Mrs. Frere a client of Thacker's! Fishy that--deuced fishy, considering her relations with the Guyon-cum-Streightley case. Something to be made out of that, I fancy. I'll just take a turn round the Regent's Park before going back to head-work, and think that out." CHAPTER III. HUSBAND AND WIFE. The return of Mr. and Mrs. Gordon Frere to England had been almost simultaneous with the double catastrophe of Mr. Guyon's death and Katharine's flight. They had returned to Hester's house in Palace Gardens, and had no intention of leaving London during the winter. Gordon was excessively tired of Continental life, and had conceded to fashion rather than consulted his own inclination by spending his honeymoon out of England. Hester, who had never seen any foreign country until after her marriage, had been enchanted with every thing, and would have prolonged her stay with much pleasure, but that she had perceived her husband's weariness, and desire to find himself in England again. Gordon was too essentially sweet-tempered and good-humoured to thwart any one, or to press his own wishes unduly; but his wife was as keen of perception as she was devotedly attached to him, and she read him like a book. A glance at the page, on which incipient boredom was written, was enough for her. With admirable tact and grace she discovered a score of good and sufficient reasons for returning to England; and no one would have guessed, who saw her step gaily into the railway-train at the Embarcadère du Nord, that she was experiencing a keen disappointment, and renouncing a pleasure to which she had ardently aspired. Quiet and persistent self-will, which never failed in its object, but rarely hurt other people in attaining it, was a strong characteristic of Hester; but the stronger had come in--Love, the conqueror, the invincible--and self-will had promptly surrendered. There was a good deal of unconscious selfishness in Gordon Frere's nature--the light, airy, pleasant selfishness which is frequently combined with a large capacity for enjoyment and constitutional indolence, but which in his case would have been easily dispelled on any given occasion by a remonstrance, and never made itself offensive. To this quality his wife's excessive love was particularly calculated to minister, detrimentally to his general character; for her devotion knew no bounds. It was not unnatural that, having departed from the rule and practice of her previous life, by allowing a passion to gain possession of her, Hester should have departed from it by the widest possible divergence. It would have been touching as well as curious to watch the subjugation of the proud, calculating, intellectual woman to the love that filled her whole soul and ruled her whole life. From her wedding-day to that which saw her return to London, and her acquisition of the knowledge of Mr. Guyon's death, by a note despatched from Lady Henmarsh's half-dismantled house in Cavendish Square, on the chance of her arrival, she had never bestowed a thought on Middlemeads, on the embarrassments of Robert Streightley, or the equivocal confidence which existed between herself and Daniel Thacker. She had indeed thought much and often of Katharine--thought of her with exultation; occasionally with a touch of pity, when she satisfied her jealous, passionate soul that no remembrance of her, except in the most ordinary casual way, ever cropped up in Gordon Frere's mind. Hester was destined to learn the truth of a certain proverb about "the letting in of water;" for having opened the floodgates for the admittance of love, she had no power to stop the tide, and the tumbling waves of jealousy thundered in the distance. But, as Hester was, above all things, a reasonable woman, the danger was still far off; indeed, its foretaste was sweet. She liked to assure herself that she had no rival with her husband, whose character, in all but one or two points, she really did understand as thoroughly as she believed she understood it on all. She liked to remember that his was a light, gay--if it must be so called, shallow nature; that all traces of a former rule had passed away, and the sceptre of this kingdom was securely in her hand. How safely she would hold it! how tender and watchful her rule should be! She felt, when this great love laid its grasp upon her, as though she grew ever so many years older in its hold. She mentally c...