Silver Chimes and Golden Fetters

I

Waldemar Falkenstein and Valérie L’Estrange

“A quarter to twelve! By Heaven if my luck don’t change before the year is out, I vow I’ll never touch a card in the next!” exclaimed one of several men playing lansquenet in Harry Godolphin’s rooms at Knightsbridge.

There were seven or eight of them, some with long rent-rolls, others within an ace of the Queen’s Bench; the poor devils losing in the long run much oftener and more recklessly than the rich fellows; all of them playing high, as that beau joueur of the Guards, Godolphin, always did.

Luck had been dead against the man who spoke ever since they had deserted the mess-room for the cartes in the privacy of Harry’s rooms. If Fortune is a woman, he ought to have found favor in her eyes. His age was between thirty and thirty-five, his figure with grace and strength combined, his features nobly and delicately cut, his head, like Canning’s, one of great intellectual beauty, and by the flash of his large dark eyes, and the additional paleness of his cheek, it was easy to see he was playing high once too often.

Five minutes passed—he lost still; ten minutes’ luck was yet against him. A little French clock began the Silver Chimes that rang out the Old Year; the twelfth stroke sounded, the New Year was come, and Waldemar Falkenstein rose and drank down some cognac—a ruined man.

“A happy New Year to you, and better luck, Falkenstein,” cried Godolphin, drinking his toast with a ringing laugh and a foaming bumper of Chambertin. “What shall I wish you? The richest wife in the kingdom, a cabal that will break all the banks, for Mistletoe to win the Oaks, or for your eyes to be opened to your sinful state, as the parson phrases it—which, eh?”

“Thank you, Harry,” laughed Falkenstein. (Like the old Spartans, we can laugh while the wolf gnaws our vitals.) “You remind me of what my holy-minded brother wrote to me when I broke my shoulder-bone down at Melton last season: ‘My dear Waldemar, I am sorry to hear of your sad accident; but all things are ordered for the best, and I trust that in your present hours of solitude your thoughts may be mercifully turned to higher and better things.’ Queer style of sympathy, wasn’t it? I preferred yours, when you sent me ‘Adélaïde Méran,’ and that splendid hock I wasn’t allowed to touch.”

“I should say so; but catch the Pharisees giving anybody anything warmer than texts and counsels, that cost them nothing,” said Tom Bevan of the Blues. “Apropos of Pharisees, have you heard that old Cash is going to build a chapel-of-ease in Belgravia, to endow that young owl Gus with as soon as he can pull himself through his ‘greats?’ It is thought that the dear Bella will be painted as St. Catherine for the altar-piece.”

“She’ll strychnine herself if we’re all so hard-hearted as to leave her to St. Catharine’s nightcap,” laughed Falkenstein.

“Why don’t you take up with her, old fellow?” said a man in Godolphin’s troop. “Not the sangue puro, you’d say; rather sallied with XXX. But what does that signify? you’ve quarterings enough for two.”

“Much good the quarterings do me. No, thank you,” said Falkenstein bitterly. “I’m not going to sell myself, though my dear friends would insinuate that I was sold already to a gentleman who never quits hold of his bargains. I’ve fetters enough now too heavy by half to add matrimonial handcuffs to them.”

“Right, old boy,” said Harry. “The Cashranger hops and vats, even done in the brightest parvenu or, would scarcely look well blazoned on the royal gules. Come, sit down. Where are you going?”

“He’s going to Eulalie Brown’s, I bet,” said Bevan. “Nonsense, Waldemar; throw her over, and stay and take your revenge—it’s so early.”

“No, thank you,” said Falkenstein briefly. “By the way, I suppose you all go to Cashranger’s to-morrow?”

“Make a point of it, answered Godolphin. I feel I’m sinning against my Order to visit him, but really his Lafitte’s so good——I’m sorry you will leave us, Waldemar, but I know I might as well try to move the Marble Arch as try to turn you.”

“Indeed I never set up for a Roman, Harry. The deuce take this pipe, it won’t light. Good night to you all.” And leaving them drinking hard, laughing loud, and telling grivois tales before they sat down to play in all its delirious delight, he sprang into a hanson, and drove, not to Eulalie Brown’s petit souper, but to his own rooms in Duke Street, St. James’s.

Falkenstein’s governor, some two-score years before, had got in mauvaise odeur in Vienna for some youthful escapade at court; powerful as his princely family was, had been obliged to fly the country; and, coming over here, entered himself at the Bar, and, setting himself to work with characteristic energy, had, wonderful to relate, made a fortune at it. A fine, gallant, courtly ancien noble was the Count, haughty and passionate at times, after the manner of the house; fond of his younger son Waldemar, who at school had tanned boys twice his size; rode his pony in at the finish; smoked, swam, and otherwise conducted himself, till all the rest of the boys worshipped him, though I believe the masters generally attributed to him more diablerie than divinity. But of late, unluckily, his father had been much dominated over by Waldemar’s three sisters, ladies of a chill and High Church turn of mind, and by his brother, who in early life had been a prize boy and a sap, and received severe buffetings from his junior at football; and now, being much the more conventional and unimpeachable of the two, took his revenge by carrying many tales to the old Count of his wilder son—tales to which Falkenstein gave strong foundation. For he was restless and reckless, strikingly original, and, above the common herd, too impatient to take any meddling with his affairs, and too proud to explain where he was misjudged; and, though he held a crack government place, good pay, and all but a sinecure, he often spent more than he had, for economy was a dead-letter to him, and if any man asked him a loan, he was too generous to say “No.” Life in all its phases he had seen from the time he left school, and you know, mon ami, we cannot see life on a groat—at least, through the bouquet of the wines at Véfours, and the brilliance of the gas-light in Casinos and Redoutes. The fascinations of play were over him—the iron hand of debt pressed upon him; altogether, as he sat through the first hours of the New Year, smoking, and gazing on the flickering fire gleams, there was not much light either in his past or future!

Keenly imaginative and susceptible, blasé and skeptical though he was, the weight of the Old Year and of many gone before it, weighed heavily on his thoughts. Scenes and deeds of his life, that he would willingly have blotted out, rose before him; vague regrets, unformed desires, floated to him on the midnight chimes.

The Old Year was drifting away on the dark clouds floating on to the sea, the New Year was dawning on the vast human life swarming in the costly palaces and crowded dens around him. The past was past, ineffaceable, and relentless; the future lay hid in the unborn days, and Falkenstein, his pipe out, his fire cold and black, took a sedative, and threw himself on his bed, to sleep heavily and restlessly through the struggling morning light of the New Year.

James Cashranger, Esq., of 133, Lowndes Square, was a millionnaire, and the million owed its being to the sale of his entire, which was of high celebrity, being patronised by all the messes and clubs, shipped to all the colonies, blessed by all the H. E. I. C.s, shouted by all the potmen as “Beer-r-r-how,” and consumed by all England generally. But Cashranger’s soul soared above the snobisms of malt and jack, and à la Jourdain, of bourgeois celebrity, he would have let any Dorante of the beau monde fleece him through thick and thin, and, en effet, gave dinners and drums unnumbered to men and women, who, like Godolphin, went there for the sake of his Lafitte, and quizzed him mercilessly behind his back. The first day Harry dined there with nine other spirits worse than himself—Cashranger having begged him to bring some of his particular chums—he looked at the eleventh seat, and asked, with consummate impudence, who it was for?

“Why, really, my dear Colonel, it is for—for myself,” faltered the luckless brewer.

“Oh?—ah?—I see,” drawled Harry; “you mistook me; I said I’d dine here—I didn’t say I’d dine with you.”

That, however, was four or five years before; now, Godolphin having proclaimed his cook and cellar worth countenancing, and his wife, the relict of a lieutenant in the navy, being an admirable adept in the snob’s art of “pushing,” plenty of exclusive dandies and extensive fine ladies crushed up the stairs on New Year’s-night to one of Cashranger’s numerous “At homes.” Among them, late enough, came Falkenstein. These sort of crushes bored him beyond measure, but he wanted to see Godolphin about some intelligence he had had of an intended illegitimate use of the twitch to Mistletoe, that sweet little chestnut who stood favorite for the Oaks. He soon paid his devoir to madame, who wasn’t quite accustomed even yet to all this grandeur after her early struggles on half-pay, and to her eldest daughter, the Bella aforesaid, a showy, flaunting girl with a peony color, and went on through the rooms seeking Harry, stopping, however, for a word to every pretty woman he knew; for though he began to find his game grow stale, he and the beau sexe have a mutual attraction. Little those women guessed, as they smiled in his handsome eyes, and laughed at his witty talk, and blushed at his soft voice, how heartily sick he was of their frivolities, and how often disappointment and sarcasm lurked in his mocking words. To be blasé was no affectation with Falkenstein; it was a very earnest reality, as with most of us who have knocked about in the world, not only from the variety of his manifold experiences, but from the trickery, and censure, and cold water with which the world had treated him.

“You here, old fellow?” said Bevan of the Blues, meeting him in the music-room, where some artistes were singing Traviata airs. “You don’t care for this row, do you? Come along with me, and I’ll show you something that will amuse you better.”

“Show me Godolphin, and I’ll thank you. I didn’t come to stay—did you?”

“No. Horrid bore, ain’t it? But since you are here, you may as well take a look at the dearest little actress I ever saw since I was a boy, and bewitched by Léontine Fay. Sit down.” Bevan went on, as they entered a room fitted up like a theatre, “There, it’s that one with blue eyes, got up like a Watteau’s huntress; isn’t she a brilliant little thing?”

“Very. She plays as well as Déjazet. Who is she?”

“Don’t know. Can you tell us, Forester?”

“She’s old Cash’s niece,” said Forester, not taking his eyes off the stage. “Come as a sort of companion to the beloved Bella; dangerous companion, I should say, for there’s no comparing the two.”

“What’s her name?”

“Viola—Violet—no, Valérie L’Estrange. L’Estrange, of the 10th, ran away with Cash’s sister. God knows why. Horrid low connexion, and no money. She went speedily to glory, and he drank himself to death two years ago in Lahore. I remember him, a big fellow, fourteen stone, pounded Bully Batson once at Moseley, and there wasn’t such another hard hitter among the fancy as Bully. When he departed this life, of course his daughter was left to her own devices, with scarcely a rap to buy her bonnets. Clever little animal she is, too; she wrote those proverbs they’re now playing; full of dash, and spice, ain’t they? especially when you think a girl wrote ’em.”

“Introduce me as soon as they’re over,” said Falkenstein, leaning back to study the young actress and author, who was an engaging study enough, being full of grace and vivacity, with animated features, mobile eyebrows, dark-blue eyes, and chestnut hair. “Anything original would be as great a wonder as to buy Cavendish in Regent-Street that wasn’t bird’s-eye.”

“Valérie’s original enough for anybody’s money. Hark how she’s firing away at Egerton. Pretty little soft voice she has. I do like a pretty voice for a woman,” said Forester, clapping softly, with many a murmured bravisima.

“You’re quite enthusiastic,” smiled Falkenstein. “Pity you haven’t a bouquet to throw at her.”

“Don’t you poke fun at me, you cynic,” growled Forester. “I’ve seen you throw bouquets at much plainer women.”

“And the bouquets and the women were much alike in morning light—faded and colorless on their artificial stalks as soon as the gas glare was off them.”

“Hold your tongue, Juvenal,” laughed Forester, “or I vow I won’t introduce you. You’ll begin satirising poor little Val as soon as you’ve spoken to her.”

“Oh, I can be merciful to the weak; don’t I let you alone, Forester?” laughed Waldemar, as the curtain fell.

The proverbs were over, and having put herself in ball-room style, the author came among the audience. He amused himself with watching how she took her numerous compliments, and was astonished to detect neither vanity nor shyness, and to hear her turn most of them aside with a laugh. She was quite as attractive off as on the stage, especially with the aroma of her sparkling proverbs hanging about her; and Falkenstein got his introduction, and consigning Godolphin and Mistletoe to futurity, waltzed with her, and found her dancing as full of grace and lightness as an Andalusian’s or Arlésienne’s. Falkenstein cared little enough for the saltatory art, but this waltz did not bore him, and when it was over, regardless of some dozen names written on her tablets, he gave her his arm, and they strolled out of the ball-room into a cooler atmosphere. He found plenty of fun in her, as he had expected from her proverbs, and sat down beside her in the conservatory to let himself be amused for half an hour.

“Do you know many of the people here?” she asked him. “Is there anybody worth pointing out? There ought to be, in four or five hundred dwellers in the aristocratic west.”

“I know most of them personally or by report, but they are all of the same stamp, like the petals of that camellia, some larger and some smaller, but all cut in the same pattern. Most of them apostles of fashion, martyrs to debt, worshippers of the rising sun. All of them created by art, from the young ladies who owe their roses and lilies to Breidenbach, to the ci-devant jeunes hommes, who buy their figures in Bond Street and their faces from Isidore. All of them actors—and pretty good actors, too—from that pretty woman yonder, who knows her milliner may imprison her any day for the lace she is now drawing round her with a laugh, to that sleek old philanthropist playing whist through the doors there, whose guinea points are paid by the swindle of half England.”

She laughed.

“Lend me your lorgnon. I should like to see around me as you do.”

“Wait twenty years, you will have it; there are two glasses to it—experience and observation.”

“But your glasses are smoked, are they not?” said Valérie, with a quick glance at him; “for you seem to me to see everything en noir.”

He smiled.

“When I was a boy I had a Claude glass, but they break very soon; or rather, as you say, grow dark and dim with the smoke of society. But you ask me about these people. You know them, do you not, as they are your uncle’s guests?”

She shook her head.

“I have been here but a week or two. For the last two years I have been vegetating among the fens, with a maiden aunt of poor papa’s.”

“And did you like the country?”

“Like it!” cried Valérie, “I was buried alive. Everything was so dreadfully punctual and severe in that house, that I believe the very cat had forgotten how to purr. Breakfast at eight, drive at two, dinner at five, prayers at ten. Can’t you fancy the dreary diurnal round, with a pursy old rector or two, and three or four high-dried county princesses as callers once a quarter? Luckily, I can amuse myself, but oh, you cannot think how I sickened of the monotony, how I longed to live! At last, I grew so naughty, I was expelled.”

“May I inquire your sins?” asked Falkenstein, really amused for once.

She laughed at the remembrance.

“I read ‘Notre-Dame’ against orders, and I rode the fat old mare round the paddock without a saddle. I saw no harm in it; as a child, I read and rode everything I came near, but the rough-riding was condemned as unfeminine, and any French book, were it even the ‘Génie du Christianisme,’ or the ‘Petit Carême,’ would be regarded by Aunt Agatha, who doesn’t know a word of the language, as a powder magazine of immorality and infidelity.”

“C’est la profonde ignorance qui inspire le ton dogmatique,” laughed Falkenstein. “But surely you have been accustomed to society.”

“No, never; but I am made for it, I fancy,” said Valérie, with an unconscious compliment to herself. “When I was with the dear old Tenth, I used to enjoy myself, but I was a child then. The officers were very kind to me—gentlemen always are much more so than ladies”—(“Pour cause,” thought Waldemar, as she went on)—“but ever since then I have vegetated as I tell you, in much the same still life as the anemones in my vase.”

“Yet you could write those proverbs,” said he, involuntarily.

She laughed, and colored.

“Oh, I have written ever since I could make A B C, and I have not forgotten all I saw with the old Tenth. But come, tell me more of these people; I like to hear your satire.”

“I am glad you do,” said Falkenstein, with a smile; “for only those who have no foibles to hit have a relish for sarcasm. Do you think Messaline and Lélie had much admiration for La Bruyère’s periods, however well turned or justly pointed? but those whom the caps did not fit probably enjoyed them as you and I do. All satirists, from Martial downwards, most likely gain an enemy for each truth they utter, for in this bal masqué of life it is not permitted to tear the masks off our companions.”

“Do you wear one?” asked Valérie, quickly. “I fancy, like Monte Cristo, your pleasure is to ‘usurper les vices que vous n’avez pas, et de cacher les vertus que vous avez.’”

“Virtues? If you knew me better, you would know that I never pretend to any. If you compare me to Monte Cristo, say rather that I ‘prêche loyalement l’égoisme,’” laughed Falkenstein. “Upon my word, we are talking very seriously for a ball-room. I ought to be admiring your bouquet, Miss L’Estrange, or petitioning for another waltz.”

“Don’t trouble yourself. I like this best,” said Valérie, playing with the flowers round her. “And I ought to have my own way, for this is my birthday.”

“New Year’s-day? Indeed! Then I am sure I wish you most sincerely the realisation of all your ideals and desires, which, to the imaginative author of the proverbs, will be as good as wishing her Aladdin’s lamp,” smiled Falkenstein.

She smiled too, and sighed.

“And about as improbable as Aladdin’s lamp. Did you see the Old Year out last night?”

“Yes,” he answered, briefly; for the remembrance of what he had lost watching it out was not agreeable to him.

“There was a musical party here,” continued Valérie, “but I got away from it, for I like to be alone when the past and the future meet—do not you?”

“No; your past is pure, your future is bright. Mine are not so; I don’t want to be stopped to contemplate them.”

“Nor are mine, indeed; but the death of an Old Year is sad and solemn to me as the death of a friend, and I like to be alone in its last hour. I wonder,” she continued, suddenly, “what this year will bring. I wonder where you and I shall be next New Year’s-night?”

Falkenstein laughed, not merrily.

“I shall be in Kensal Green or the Queen’s Bench, very likely. Why do you look astonished Miss L’Estrange; one is the destination of everybody in these rooms, and the other probably of one-half of them.”

“Don’t speak so bitterly—don’t give me sad thoughts on my birthday. Oh, how tiresome!” cried Valérie, interrupting herself, “there comes Major D’Orwood.”

“To claim you?”

“Yes; I’d forgotten him entirely. I promised to waltz with him an hour ago.”

“What the devil brought you here to interrupt us?” thought Falkenstein, as the Guardsman lisped a reproof at Valérie’s cruelty, and gave her his arm back to the ball-room. Waldemar stopped her, however, engaged her for the next, and sauntered through the room on her other side. He waltzed a good deal with her, paying her that sort of attention which Falkenstein knew how to make the softest and subtlest homage a woman could have. Amused himself, he amused her with his brilliant and pointed wit, so well, that Valérie L’Estrange told him, when he bid her good night, that she had never enjoyed any birthday so much.

“Well,” said Bevan, as they drove away from 133, Lowndes Square, “did you find that wonderful little L’Estrange as charming a companion as actress? You ought to know, for you’ve been after her all night, like a ferret after a rabbit.”

“Yes,” said Falkenstein, taking out a little pet briarwood pipe, “I was very pleased with her: she’s worth no more than the others, probably, au fond, but she’s very entertaining and frank: she’ll tell you anything. Poor child! she can’t be over-comfortable in Cash’s house. She’s a lady by instinct; that odious ostentation and snobbish toadying must disgust her. Besides, Bella is not very likely to lead a girl a very nice life who is partially dependent on her father, and infinitely better style than herself.”

“The devil, no! That flaunting, flirting, over-dressed Cashranger girl is my detestation. She’ll soon find means to worry littil Valérie. Women have a great spice of the mosquito in ’em, and enjoy nothing more than stinging each other to death.”

“Well, she must get Forester or D’Orwood—some man who can afford it—to take compassion upon her. All of them finish so when they can; the rich ones marry for a title, and the poor ones for a home,” said the Count, stirring up his pipe. “Here’s my number; thank you for dropping me; and good night, old fellow.”

“Good night. Pleasant dreams of your author and actress, aux longs yeux bleus.”

Waldemar laughed as he took out his latch-key. “I’m afraid I couldn’t get up so much romance. You and I have done with all that, Tom. Confound it, I never saw Godolphin, after all. Well, I must go and breakfast with him to-morrow.”

II

Falkenstein Breaks Lances With the “Longs Yeux Bleus.”

He did breakfast with Godolphin, not, however, before he had held a small but disagreeable levee to one or two rather impatient callers whom he couldn’t satisfy, and a certain Amadeus Levi, who, having helped him to the payment of those debts of honor incurred in Harry’s rooms, held him by Golden Fetters as hard to unclasp as the chains that bound Prometheus. He shook himself free of them at last, drove to Knightsbridge, and had a chat with Godolphin, over coffee and chibouques, went to his two or three hours’ diplomatic work in the Deeds and Chronicles Office, and when he came out, instead of going to his club as usual, thought he might as well call on the Cashrangers, and turned his steps to Lowndes Square. Valérie L’Estrange was sitting at a Davenport, done out of her Watteau costume into very becoming English morning dress; he had only time to shake hands with her before Bella and her mamma set upon him. Miss Cashranger had a great admiration for him, and, though his want of money was a drawback, the royal gules of his blazonments, joined to his manifold attractions, fairly dazzled her, and she held him tight, talking over the palace concerts, till a dowager and her daughter, and a couple of men from Hounslow, being ushered in, he was at liberty, and sitting down by Valérie, gave her a book she had said the night before she wished to read.

“‘Goethe’s Autobiography!’ Oh, thank you—how kind you are!”

“Not at all,” laughed Falkenstein. “To merit such things I ought to have saved your life at least. What are you doing here; writing some more proverbs, I hope, to give me a part in one?”

She shook her head. “Nothing half so agreeable. I am writing dinner invitations, and answering Belle’s letters.”

“Why, can’t she answer them herself?”

“My motto here is ‘Ich Dien,’” she answered, with a flush on her cheeks.

Bella turned languidly round, and verified her words: “Val, Puppet’s scratching at the door; let him in, will you?”

Waldemar rose and opened the door for a little slate-colored greyhound, and while Bella lisped out her regrets for his trouble, smiled a smile that made Miss Cashranger color, and looked searchingly at Valérie to see how she took it. She turned a grateful, radiant look on him, and whispered, “Je m’affranchirai un jour.”

“Et comment?”

She raised her mobile eyebrows: “Dieu sait! Comme actrice, comme feuilletonniste—j’ai mes rêves, monsieur—mais pas comme institutrice: cela me tuerait bientôt.”

“Je le crois,” said Falkenstein, briefly, as he took up the autobiography, and began to talk on it.

“I don’t like Goethe for one thing,” said Valérie; “he loved a dozen women one after the other. That I would pardon him; most men do so; but I don’t believe he really loved any one of them.”

“Oh yes he did; quite enough, at least, to please himself. He wasn’t so silly as to go in for a never-ending, heart-burning, heart-breaking, absorbing passion. We don’t do those things.”

“Go in for it!” repeated Valérie, contemptuously, “I suppose if he had been of the nature to feel such, he couldn’t have helped it.”

“I can help going near the fire, can’t I, if I don’t wish to be burnt?”

“Yes; but a coal may fly out of the fire, and set you in flames, when you are sitting far away from it.”

“Then I ought to wear asbestos,” said Waldemar, with a merry quizzical smile. “You authors, and poets, and artists think ‘the world well lost, and all for love!’ but we rational people, who know the world, find it quite the contrary. Those are very pretty ideas for your proverbs, but they don’t suit real life. We, when we’re boys, worship some parterre divinity, till we see her some luckless day inebriate with eau-de-Cologne, or more unpoetic porter, are cured and disenchanted, wait ten years with Christines and Minna Herzliebs in the interim, and wind up with a rich widow, who keeps us straight and heads our table. You, fresh from the school-room, fasten on some lachrymose curate, or flirting dragoon, as the object of your early romances, walk with him under the limes, work him a smoking-cap, and write him tender little notes, till mamma whispers her hope that Mr. A. or B. is serious, and you, balancing, like a sensible girl, A. or B.’s tangible settlements with the others’ intangible love-speeches, forsake the limes, forswear the notes, and announce yourself as ‘sold.’ That’s the love of our day, Miss L’Estrange, and very wise and——”

“Love!” cried Valérie, with supreme scorn. “You don’t know the common A B C of love. You might as well call gilt leather-work pure gold.”

Falkenstein laughed heartily. “Well, there’s a good deal more leather-work than gold about in the world, isn’t there?”

“A good deal more, granted; but there is some gold to be found, I should hope.”

“Not without alloy; it can’t be worked, you know.”

“It can’t be worked for the base purposes of earth; but it may be found still undefiled before men’s touch has soiled it. So I believe in some hearts, undefiled by the breath of conventionality and cant, may lie the true love of the poets, ‘lasting, and knowing not change.’”

“Ah! you’re too ideal for me,” cried Waldemar, smiling at her impetuous earnestness. “You are all enthusiasm, imagination, effervescence——”

“I am not,” she answered, impatiently. “I can be very practical when I like; I made myself the loveliest wreath yesterday; quite as pretty as Bella buys at Mitchell’s for five times the sum mine cost me. That was very realistic, wasn’t it?”

“No. That exercised your fancy. You wouldn’t do—what do you call it?—plain work, with half the gusto; now, would you?”

Valérie made a moue mutine, expressive of entire repudiation of such employment.

“I thought so,” laughed Falkenstein. “You idealists are like the fire in the grate yonder; you flame up very hot and bright for a moment, but ‘the sparks fly upward and expire,’ and if they’re not fed with some fresh fuel they soon die out into lifeless cinders.”

“On the contrary,” said Valérie, quickly, “we are like wood fires, and burn red down to the last ash.”

“Mr. Falkenstein, come and look at this little ‘Ghirlandaio,’” said Bella, turning round, with an angry light in her eyes; “it is such a gem. Papa bought it the other day.”

Waldemar rose reluctantly enough to inspect the “Ghirlandaio,” manufactured in a back slum, and smoked into proper antiquity to pigeon, under the attractive title of an “Old Master,” the brewer and his species, and found Miss Cashranger’s ignorant dilettantism very tame after Valérie’s animated arguments and gesticulation. But he was too old a hand at such game not to know how to take advantage of even an enemy’s back-handed stroke, and he turned the discussion on art to an inspection of Valérie’s portfolio, over whose croquis and pastels, and water-colors, he lingered as long as he could, till the clock reminded him that it was time to walk on into Eaton Square, where he was going to dine at his father’s. The governor excepted, Falkenstein had little rapport with his family. His brother was as chilly disagreeable in private life as he was popularly considered irreproachable in public, and as pragmatical and uncharitable as your immaculate individuals ordinarily are. His sisters were cold, conventional women, as utterly incapable of appreciating him as of allowing the odor of his Latakia in their drawing-room, and so it chanced that Waldemar, a favorite in every other house he entered, received but a chill welcome at home. A prophet has no honor in his own country, and the hearth where a man’s own kin are seated is too often the one to nurture the cockatrice’s eggs of ill-nature and injustice against him. Thank Heaven there are others where the fire burns brighter, and the smiles are fonder for him. It were hard for some of us if we were dependent on the mercies of our “own family.”

The old Count gave him this night but a distant welcome, for Maximilian was there to “damn” his brother with “faint praise,” and had been pouring into his father’s ear tales of “poor Waldemar’s losses at play.” All that Falkenstein said, his sisters took up, contradicted, and jarred upon, till he, fairly out of patience, lapsed into silence, only broken by a sarcasm deftly flung at Maximillian to floor him completely in his orthodoxy or ethics. He was glad to bid the governor good night; and leaving them to hold a congress over his skepticism, radicalism, and other dangerous opinions, he walked through the streets, and swore slightly, with his pipe between his teeth, as he opened his own door.

“Since my father prefers Max to me, let him have him,” thought Waldemar, smoking, and undressing himself. “If people choose to dictate to me or misjudge me, let them go; and if they have not penetration enough to judge what I am, I shall not take the trouble to show them.”

But, nevertheless, as he thus resolved, Falkenstein smoked hard and fast, for he was fond of the old Count, and felt keenly his desertion; for, steel himself as he might, egotist as he might call himself, Waldemar was quick in his susceptibilities and tenacious in his attachments.

Since Falkenstein had got intimate with Valérie L’Estrange in one ball you are pretty sure that week after week did not lessen their friendship. He was amused, and past memories of women he had wooed, and won, and left, certain passages in his life where such had reproached him, not always deservedly, never presented themselves to check him in his new pursuit. It is pleasant to a naturalist to study a butterfly pinned to the wall; the rememberance that the butterfly may die of the sport does not occur to him, or, at least, never troubles him.

So Falkenstein called to Lowndes Square, and lent her books, and gave her a little Skye of his, and met her occasionally by accident on purpose in Kensington Gardens, where Valérie, according to Mrs. Cashranger’s request, sometimes took one of her cousins, a headstrong young demon of six or seven, for an early walk, to which early walks Valérie made no objection, preferring them to the drawing-rooms of No. 133, and liking them, you may guess, none the less after seeing somebody she knew standing by the pond throwing in sticks for his retriever, and Falkenstein had sat down with her under the bushes by the water, and talked of all the things in heaven and earth; while Julius Adolphus ran about and gobbled at the China geese, and wetted his silk stockings unreproved. He made no love to her, not a bit; he talked of it theoretically, but never practically. But he liked to talk to her, to argue with her, to see her demonstrative pleasure in his society, to watch her coming through the trees, and find the longs yeux bleus gleam and darken at his approach. All this amused him, pleased him as something original and out of the beaten track. She told him all she thought and felt; she pleased him, and beguiled him from his darker thoughts, and she began to reconcile him to human nature, which, with Faria, he had learnt to class into “les tigres et les crocodiles à deux pieds.”

It was well he had this amusement, for it was his only one. He was going to the bad, as we say; debts and entanglements imperceptibly gathered round him, held him tight, and only in Valérie’s lively society (lively, for when with him she was as happy as a bird) could exercise his dark spirit.

You remember the vow he made when the Silver Chimes rang in the New Year? So did not he. We cannot be always Medes and Persians, madam, to resist every temptation and keep unbroken every law, though you, sitting in your cushioned chair, in unattacked tranquillity, can tell us easily enough we should be. One night, when he was dining with Bevan, Tom produced those two little ivory fiends, whose rattle is in the ear of watchful deans and proctors as the singing of the rattlesnake, and whose witchery is more wily and irresistible than the witchery of woman. No beaux yeux, whether of the cassette or of one’s first love, ever subjugate a man so completely as the fascinations of play. Once yielded to the charm, the Circe that clasps us will not let us go. Falkenstein, though in much he had the strong will of his race, had no power to resist the beguilements of his Omphale; he played again and again, and five times out of seven lost.

“Well, Falkenstein,” cried Godolphin, after five games of écarté at a pony a side, three of which Falkenstein had lost, “I heard Max lamenting to old Straitlace in the lobby, the other night, that you were going to the devil, only the irreproachable member phrased it in more delicate periods.”

“Quite true,” said Falkenstein, with a short laugh, “if for devil you substitute Queen’s Bench.”

“Well, we’re en route together, old fellow,” interrupted Tom Bevan; “and, with all your sins, you’re a fat lot better than that brother of yours, who, I believe, don’t know Latakia from Maryland. Jesse Egerton told me the other day that his wife has an awful life of it; but who’d credit it of a man who patronises Exeter Hall, and gave the shoeblacks only yesterday such unlimited supply of weak tea, buns, and strong texts?”

“Who indeed! Max is such a moral man,” sneered Falkenstein; “though he has done one or two things in his life that I wouldn’t have stooped to do. But you may sin as much as you like as long as you sin under the rose. John Bull takes his vices as a ten pound voter takes a bribe; he stretches his hand out eagerly enough, but he turns his eyes away and looks innocent, and is the first to point at his neighbor and cry out against moral corruption. Melville’s quite right that there is an eleventh commandment—‘Thou shalt not be found out’—whose transgression is the only one society visits with impunity.”

“True enough,” laughed Jimmy Fitzroy. “Thank Heaven, nobody can accuse us of studying the law and the prophets overmuch. By the way, old fellow, who’s that stunning little girl you were walking with by the Serpentine yesterday morning, when I was waiting for the Metcalfe, who promised to meet me at twelve, and never came till half-past one—the most unpunctual woman going. Any new game? She’s a governess, ain’t she? She’d some sort of brat with her; but she’s deuced good style, anyhow.”

“That’s little L’Estrange,” laughed Godolphin: “the beloved Bella’s cousin. He’s met her there every day for the last three months. I don’t know how much further the affair may have gone, or if——”

“My dear Harry, your imagination is running away with you,” said Falkenstein, impatiently. “I never made an appointment with her in my life; she’s not the same style as Mrs. Metcalfe.”

Oh the jesuitism of the most candid men on occasion! He never made an appointment with her, because it was utterly unnecessary, he knowing perfectly that he should find her feeding the ducks with Julius Adolphus any morning he chose to look for her.

“All friendship is it, then?” laughed Godolphin. “Stick to it, my boy, if you can. Take care what you do, though, for to carry her off to Duke Street would give Max such a handle as he would not let go in a hurry; And to marry (though that of course, will never enter your wildest dreams) with anybody of the Cashranger’s race, were it the heiress instead of the companion, would be such a come-down to the princely house, as would infallibly strike you out of Count Ferdinand’s will.”

Waldemar threw back his head like a thorough-bred impatient of the punishing. “The ‘princely house,’ as you call it, is not so extraordinarily stainless; but leave Valérie alone, she and I have nothing to do with other, and never shall have. I have enough on my hands, in all conscience, without plunging into another love affair.”

“I did hear,” continued Godolphin, “that Forester proposed to her, but I don’t suppose it’s true; he’d scarcely be such a fool.”

Falkenstein looked up quickly, but did not speak.

“I think it is true,” said Bevan; “and, moreover, I fancy she refused him, for he used to cry her up to the skies, and now he’s always snapping and sneering at her, which is beastly ungenerous, but after the manner of many fellows.”

“One would think you were an old woman, Tom, believing all the tales you hear,” said Godolphin. “She’d better know you disclaim her, Falkenstein, that she mayn’t waste her chances waiting for you.”

Waldemar cast a quick, annoyed, contemptuous glance upon him. “You are wonderfully careful over her interests,” he said, sharply, “but I never heard that having her on your lips, Harry, ever did a woman much good. Pass me that whisky, Conrad, will you?”

The next morning, however, though he “disclaimed” her, Waldemar, about ten, took his stick, whistled his dog, and walked down to Kensington Gardens. Under the beeches just budding their first leaves, he saw what he expected to see—Valérie L’Estrange. She turned—even at that distance he thought he saw the longs yeux bleus flash and sparkle—dropped the biscuits she was giving the ducks to the tender mercies of Julius Adolphus, and came to meet him. Spit, the little Skye he had given her, welcoming him noisily.

“Spit is as pleased to see you as I am,” said Valérie, laughing. “We have both been wondering whether you would come this morning. I am so glad you have, for I have been reading your ‘Pollnitz Memoirs,’ and want to talk to you about them. You know I can talk to no one as I can to you.”

“You do me much honor,” said Falkenstein, rather formally. He was wondering in his mind whether she had refused Forester or not.

“What a cold, distant speech! It is very unkind of you to answer me so. What is the matter with you, Count Waldemar?”

She always called him by the title he had dropped in English society; she had a fervent reverence for his historic antécédens; and besides, as she told him one day, “she liked to call him something no one else did.”

“Matter with me? Nothing at all, I assure you,” he answered, still distantly.

“You are not like yourself, at all events,” persisted Valérie. “You should be kind to me. I have so few who are.”

The tone touched him; he smiled, but did not speak, as he sat down by her poking up the turf with his stick.

“Count Waldemar,” said Valérie, suddenly, brushing Spit’s hair off his bright little eyes, “do tell me; hasn’t something vexed you?”

“Nothing new,” answered Falkenstein, with a short laugh. “The same entanglements and annoyances that have been netting their toils round me for many years—that is all. I am young enough, as time counts, yet I give you my word I have as little hope in my future, and I know as well what my life will be as if I were fourscore.”

“Hush, don’t say so,” said Valérie, with a gesture of pain. “You are so worthy of happiness; your nature was made to be happy; and if you are not, fate has misused you cruelly.”

“Fate? there is no such thing. I have been a fool, and my folly is now working itself out. I have made my own life, and I have nobody but myself to thank for it.”

“I don’t know that. Circumstances, temptation, education, opportunity, association, often take the place of the Parcæ, and gild or cut the threads of our destiny.”

“No. I don’t accept that doctrine,” said Falkenstein, always much sterner judge to himself than anybody would have been to him. “What I have done has been with my eyes open. I have known the price I should pay for my pleasures, but I never paused to count it. I never stopped for any obstacle, and for what I desired, I would, like the men in the old legends, have sold myself to the devil. Now, of course, I am hampered with ten thousand embarrassments. You are young; you are a woman; you cannot understand the reckless madness which will drink the wine to-day, though one’s life paid for it to-morrow. Screened from opportunity, fenced in by education, position, and society, you cannot know how impossible it is to a man, whose very energies and strength become his tempters, to put a check upon himself in the vortex of pleasure round him——”

“Yes,” interrupted Valérie, “I can. Feeling for you, I can sympathise in all things with you. Had I been a man, I should have done as you have done, drunk the ambrosia without heeding its cost. Go on—I love to hear you speak of yourself; and I know your real nature, Count Waldemar, into whatever errors or hasty acts repented of in cooler moments the hot spirit of your race may have led you.”

Falkenstein was pleased, despite himself, half amused, half saddened. He turned it off with a laugh. “By Heaven, I wish they had made a brewer of me—I might now be as rich and free from care as your uncle.”

“You a brewer!” cried Valérie. Her father, a poor gentleman, had left her his aristocratic leanings. “What an absurd idea! All the old Falkensteins would come out of their crypts, and chanceries, and cloisters, to see the coronet surmounting the beer vats!”

He smiled at her vehemence. “The coronet! I had better have full pockets than empty titles.”

“For shame!” cried Valérie. “Yes, bark at him, Spit dear; he is telling stories. You do not mean it; you know you are proud of your glorious name. Who would not rather be a Falkenstein on a hundred a year, than a Cashranger on a thousand?”

“I wouldn’t,” said Waldemar, wilfully. “If I had money, I could find oblivion for my past, and hope for my future. If I had money, what loads of friends would open their purses for me to borrow the money they’d know I did not need. As it is, if I except poor Tom Bevan, who’s as hard up as I am, and who’s a good-hearted, single-minded fellow, and likes me, I believe I haven’t a friend. Godolphin welcomes me as a companion, a bon vivant, a good card player; but if he heard I was in the Queen’s Bench, or had shot myself, he’d say, ‘Poor devil! I am not surprised,’ as he lighted his pipe and forgot me a second after. So they would all. I don’t blame them.”

“But I do,” cried Valérie, her cheeks burning; “they are wicked and heartless, and I hate them all. Oh! Count Waldemar, I would not do so. I would not desert you if all the world did!”

He smiled: he was accustomed to her passionate ebullitions. “Poor child, I believe you would be truer than the rest,” he muttered, half aloud, as he rose hastily and took out his watch. “I must be in Downing Street by eleven, and it only wants ten minutes. If you will walk with me to the gates, I have something to tell you about your MS.”

III

“Scarlet and White” Makes a Hit, and Falkenstein Feels the Weight of the Golden Fetters

“Tom, will you come to the theatre with me to-night?” said Falkenstein as they lounged by the rails one afternoon in May.

“The theatre! What for? Who’s that girl with a scarlet tie, on that roan there? I don’t know her face. The ballet is the only thing worth stirring a step for in town. Which theatre is it?”

“I am going to see the new piece Pomps and Vanities is bringing out, and I want you as a sort of claqueur.”

“Very well. I’ll come,” said Tom, who regarded Falkenstein, who had been his school and formfellow, still rather as a Highlandman his chief; “but, certainly, the first night of a play is the very last I should select. But if you wish it—— There’s that roan coming round again! Good action, hasn’t it?”

Obedient to his chiefs orders, Bevan brushed his whiskers, settled his tie, or rather let his valet do it for him, and accompanied Waldemar to one of the crack-up theatres, where Pomps and Vanities, as the manager was irreverently styled by the habitués of his green-room, reigned in a state of scenic magnificence, very different to the days when Garrick played Macbeth in wig and gaiters.

Bevan asked no questions; he was rather a silent man, and probably knew by experience that he would most likely get no answers, unless the information was volunteered. So settling in his own mind that it was the début of some protégée of Falkenstein’s, he followed him to the door of a private box. Waldemar opened it, and entered. In it sat two women: one, a middle-aged lady-like-looking person; the other a young one, in whom, as she turned round with a radiant smile, and gave Falkenstein her hand, Bevan recognised Valérie L’Estrange. “Keep up your courage,” whispered Waldemar, as he took the seat behind her, and leaned forward with a smile. Tom stared at them both. It was high Dutch to him; but being endowed with very little curiosity, and a lion’s share of British immovability, he waited without any impatience for the elucidation of the mystery, and seeing the Count and Valérie absorbed in earnest and low-toned conversation, he first studied the house, and finding not a single decent-looking woman, he dropped his glass and studied the play-bill. The bill announced the new piece as “Scarlet and White.” “Queer title,” thought Bevan, a little consoled for his self-immolation by seeing that Rosalie Rivers, a very pretty little brunette, was to fill the soubrette rôle. The curtain drew up. Tom, looking at Valérie instead of the stage, fancied she looked very pale, and her eyes were fixed, not on the actors, but on Falkenstein. The first act passed off in ominous silence. An audience is often afraid to compromise itself by applauding a new piece too quickly. Then the story began to develop itself—wit and passion, badinage and pathos, were well intermingled. It turned on the love of a Catholic girl, a fille d’honneur to Catherine de Médicis, for a Huguenot, Vicomte de Valère, a friend of Condé and Coligny. The despairing love of the woman, the fierce struggle of her lover between his passion and his faith, the intrigues of the court, the cruelty and weakness of Charles Neuf, were all strikingly and forcibly written. The actors, being warmly applauded as the plot thickened and the audience became interested, played with energy and spirit; and when the curtain fell the success of “Scarlet and White” was proclaimed through the house.

“Very good play—very good indeed,” said Tom, approvingly. “I hope you’ve been pleased, Miss L’Estrange.” Valérie did not hear him; she was trembling and breathless, her blue eyes almost black with excitement, while Falkenstein bent over her, his face more full of animation and pleasure than Bevan had seen it for many a day. “Well,” thought Tom, “Forester did say little Val was original. I should think that was a polite term for insane. I suppose Falkenstein’s keeper.”

At that minute the applause redoubled. Pomps and Vanities had announced “Scarlet and White” for repetition, and from the pit to the gods there was a cry for the author. Falkenstein bent his head till his lips touched her hair, and whispered a few words. She looked up in his face. “Do you wish me?”

“Certainly.”

His word was law. She rose and went to the front of the box, a burning color in her cheeks, smiles on her lips, and tears lying under her lashes.

“The devil, Waldemar! Do you mean that—that little thing?” began Bevan.

Falkenstein nodded, and Tom, for once in his life astonished, forgot to finish his sentence in staring at the author! Probably the audience also shared his surprise, in seeing her young face and girlish form, in lieu of the anticipated member of the Garrick or new Bourcicault, with inspiration drawn from Cavendish and Cognac; for there was a moment’s silence, and then they received her with such a welcome as had not sounded through the house for years.

She bowed two or three times to thank them; then Falkenstein, knowing that though she had no shyness, she was extremely excitable, drew her gently back to her seat behind the curtain. “Your success is too much for you,” he said, softly.

“No, no,” said Valérie, passionately, utterly forgetful that any one else was near her; “but I am so glad that I owe it all to you. It would be nothing to me, as you know, unless it pleased you; and it came to me through your hands.”

Falkenstein gave a short, quick sigh, and moved restlessly.

“You would like to go home now, wouldn’t you?” he said after a pause.

She assented, and he led her out of the box, poor victimised Tom following with her duenna, who was the daily governess at No. 133.

As their cab drove away, Valérie leaned out of the window, and watched Falkenstein as long as she could see him. He waved his hand to her, and walked on into Regent Street in silence.

“Hallo, Waldemar!” began Bevan, at length, “so your protégée’s turning out a star. Do you mean that she really wrote that play?”

Falkenstein nodded.

“Well, it’s more than I could do. But what the deuce have you got to do with it? For a man who says he won’t entangle himself with another love affair, you seem pretty tolerably au mieux with her. How did it all come about?”

“Simply enough,” answered Falkenstein. “Of course I haven’t known her all these months without finding out her talents. She has a passion for writing, and writes well, as I saw at once by those New Year’s Night’s Proverbs. She has no money, as you know; she wants to turn her talents to account, and didn’t know how to set about it. She’d several conversations with me on the subject, so I took her play, looked it over, and gave it to Pomps and Vanities. He read it to oblige me, and put it on the stage to oblige himself, as he wanted something new for the season, and was pretty sure it would make a hit.”

“Do the Cashrangers know of it?”

“No; that is why she asked the governess to come with her to-night. That stingy old Pomps wouldn’t pay her much, but she thinks it an El Dorado, and I shall take care she commands her own price next time. I count on a treat on enlightening Miss Bella.”

“Yes, she’ll cut up rough. By George! I quite envy you your young genius.”

“She isn’t mine,” said Falkenstein, bitterly.

“She might be if you chose.”

“Poor little thing!—yes. But love is too expensive a luxury for a ruined man, even if—— The devil take this key, why won’t it unlock? You’re off to half a dozen parties I suppose, Tom?”

“And where are you going?”

“Nowhere.”

“What! going to bed at half-past ten?”

“There is no particular sin in going to bed at half-past ten, is there?” said Waldemar, impatiently. “I haven’t the stuff in me for balls and such things. I’m sick of them. Good-night, old fellow.”

He went up-stairs to his room, threw himself on his bed, and, lighting his pipe, lay smoking and thinking while the Abbey clock tolled the hours one after another. The longs yeux bleus haunted him, for Waldemar had already too many chains upon him not to shrink from adding to them the Golden Fetters of a fresh passion, and marriage, unless a rich one, was certain to bring about him all his entanglements. He resolved to seek her no more, to check the demonstrative affection which, like Esmeralda, “à la fois naïve et passionnée,” she had no thought of concealing from him, and which, as Falkenstein’s conscience told him, he had done everything to foster. “What is a man worth if he hasn’t strength of will?” he muttered, as he tossed on his bed. “And yet, poor little Valérie—— Pshaw! all women learn quickly enough to forget!”

Some ten days after he was calling in Lowndes Square. True as yet to his resolution, he had avoided the tête-à-tête walks in the Gardens; and Valérie keenly felt the change in his manner, though in what he did for her he was as kind as ever. The successful run of “Scarlet and White,” the praises of its talents, its promises of future triumphs—all the admiration which, despite Bella’s efforts to keep her back, the yeux bleus excited—all were valueless, if, as she vaguely feared, she had lost “Count Waldemar.” The play had made a great sensation, and the Cashrangers had taken a box the night before, as they made a point of following the lead and seeing everything, though they generally forswore theatres as not quite ton. Pah! these people, “qui se couchent roturiers et se lèvent nobles,” they paint their lilies with such superabundant coloring, that we see, at a glance, the flowers come not out of a conservatory but out of an atelier.

They were out, as it chanced, and Valérie was alone. She received him joyously, for unhappy as she was in his absence, the mere sight of his face recalled her old spirits, and Falkenstein, in all probability, never guessed a tithe she suffered, because she had always a smile for him.

“Oh! Count Waldemar,” she cried, “why have you never been to the Gardens this week? If you only knew how I miss you——”

“I have had no time,” he answered, coldly.

“You could make time if you wished,” said Valérie, passionately. “You are so cold, so unkind to me lately. Have I vexed you at all?”

“Vexed me, Miss L’Estrange? Certainly not.”

She was silent, chilled, despite herself.

“Why do you call me Miss L’Estrange?” she said, suddenly. “You know I cannot bear it from you.”

“What should I call you?”

“Valérie,” she answered, softly.

He got up and walked to the hearth-rug, playing with Spit and Puppet with his foot, and for once hailed, as a relief, the entrance of Bella, in an extensive morning toilet, fresh from “shopping.” She looked rapidly and angrily from him to Valérie, and attacked him at once. Seeing her cousin’s vivacity told, she went in for the same stakes, with but slight success, being a young lady of the heavy artillery stamp, with no light action about her.

“Oh! Mr. Falkenstein,” she began, “that exquisite play—you’ve seen it, of course? Captain Boville told me I should be delighted with it, and so I was. Don’t you think it enchanting?”

“It is very clever,” answered Falkenstein, gravely.

“Val missed a great treat,” continued Bella; “nothing would make her go last night; however, she never likes anything I like. I should love to know who wrote it; some people say a woman, but I would never believe it.”

“The witty raillery and unselfish devotion of the heroine might be dictated by a woman’s head and heart, but the passion, and vigor, and knowledge of human nature indicate a masculine genius,” replied Waldemar.

Valérie gave him such a grateful, rapturous glance, that, had Bella been looking, might have disclosed the secret; but she was studying her dainty gloves, and went on:

“Could it be Westland Marston—Sterling Coyne?”

Falkenstein shook his head. “If it were, they would put their name on the play-bills.”

“You naughty man! I do believe you could tell me if you chose. Are you not, now, in the author’s confidence?”

The corner of Falkenstein’s mouth went up in an irresistible smile as he telegraphed a glance at “the author.” “Well, perhaps I am.”

Bella clapped her hands with enchanting gaiety. “Then, tell me this moment; I am in agonies to know!”

“It is no great mystery,” smiled Falkenstein. “I fancy you are acquainted with the unknown.”

“You don’t mean it!” cried Bella, in a state of ecstasy. “Have you written it, then?”

“I’m afraid I can’t lay claim to the honor.”

“Who can it be? Oh, do tell me! How enchanting!” cried Miss Cashranger; “I am wild to hear. Somebody I know, you say? Is it—is it Captain Tweed?”

“No, it isn’t,” laughed Falkenstein. Elliot Tweed—Idiot Tweed, as they all call him—who was hanging after Bella, abhorred all caligraphy, and wrote his own name with one e.

“Mr. Dashaway, then?”

“Dash never scrawled anything but I. O. U.s.”

“Lord Flippertygibbett, perhaps?”

“Wrong again. Flip took up a pen once too often, when he signed his marriage register, to have any leanings to goose quills.”

“Charlie Montmorency, then?”

“Reads nothing but his betting-book and Bell’s Life.”

“Dear me! how tiresome. Who can it be? Wait a moment. Let me see. Is it Major Powell?”

“Guess again. He wouldn’t write, save in Indian fashion, with his tomahawk on his enemies’ scalps.”

“How provoking!” cried Bella, exasperated. “Stop: is it Mr. Beauchamp?”

“No; he scribbles for six-and-eightpences too perseveringly to have time for anything, except ruining his clients.”

“Dr. Montressor, then?”

“Try once more. His prescriptions bring him too many guineas for him to waste ink on any other purpose.”

“How stupid I am! Perhaps—perhaps—— Yet no, it can’t be, because he’s at the Cape, and most likely killed, poor fellow. Could it be Cecil Green?”

Falkenstein laughed. “You needn’t go so far as Kaffirland; try a little nearer home. Think over the ladies you know.”

“The ladies! Then it is a woman!” cried Bella. “Well, I should never have believed it. Who can she be? How I shall admire her, and envy her! A lady! Can it be darling Flora?”

“No. If your pet friend can get through an invitation-note of four lines, the exertion costs her at least a dram of sal volatile.”

“How wicked you are,” murmured Miss Cashranger, delighted, after the custom of women, to hear her friend pulled to pieces. “Is it Mrs. Lushington, then?”

“Wrong again. The Lushington has so much business on hand, inditing rose-hued notes to twenty men at once, and wording them differently, for fear they may ever be compared, that she’s no time for other composition.”

“Lady Mechlin, perhaps—she is a charming creature?”

Falkenstein shook his head. “Never could learn the simplest rule of grammar. When she was engaged to Mechlin, she wrote her love-letters out of ‘Henrietta Temple,’ and flattered him immensely by their pathos.”

“Was there ever such a sarcastic creature!” cried Bella, reprovingly; her interest rather flagged, since no man was the incognito author. “Well, let me see: there is Rosa Temple—she is immensely intellectual.”

“But immensely orthodox. Every minute of her life is spent in working slippers and Bible markers for interesting curates. It is to be hoped one of them may reward her some day, though, I believe, till they do propose, she is in the habit of advocating priestly celibacy, by way of assertion of her disinterestedness. No! Miss Cashranger, the talented writer of ‘Scarlet and White,’ is not only of your acquaintance, but your family.”

“My family!” almost screamed Bella. “Good gracious, Mr. Falkenstein, is it dear papa, or—or Augustus?”

The idea of the brewer, fat, and round, and innocent of literature as one of his own teams, or of his son just plucked for his “smalls” at Cambridge, for spelling Cæsar, Sesar, sitting down to indite the pathos and poetry of “Scarlet and White,” was so exquisitely absurd that Waldemar, forgetting courtesy, lay back in his arm-chair and laughed aloud. The contagion of his ringing laugh was irresistible; Valérie followed his example, and their united merriment rang in the astonished ears of Miss Cashranger, who looked from one to the other in wrathful surprise. As soon as he could control himself, Falkenstein turned towards her with his most courteous smile.

“You will forgive our laughter, I am sure, when I tell you what I am certain must give you great pleasure, that the play you so warmly and justly admire was written by your cousin.”

Bella stared at him, her face scarlet, all the envy and reasonless spite within her flaming up at the idea of her cousin’s success.

“Valérie—Valérie,” she stammered, “is it true? I had no idea she ever thought of——”

“No,” said Falkenstein, roused in his protégée’s defence; “I dare say you are astonished, as every one else would be, that any one so young, and, comparatively speaking, so inexperienced as your cousin, should have developed such extraordinary talent and power.”

“Oh, of course—to be sure—yes,” said Bella, her lips twitching nervously, “mamma will be astonished to hear of these new laurels for the family. I congratulate you, Valérie; I never knew you dreamt of writing, much less of making so public a début.”

“Nor should I ever have been able to do so unless my way had been pioneered for me,” said Valérie, resting her eyes fondly on Waldemar.

He stayed ten minutes longer, chatting on indifferent subjects, then left, making poor little Val happy with a touch of his hand, and a smile as “kind” as of old.

“You horrid, deceitful little thing!” began Bella, bursting with fury, as the door closed on him, “never to mention what you were doing. I can’t bear such sly people I hate——”

“My dear Bella, don’t disturb yourself,” said Valérie, quietly; “if you had testified any interest in my doings, you might have known them; as it was, I was glad to find warmer and kinder friends.”

“In Waldemar Falkenstein, I suppose,” sneered Bella, white with rage. “A nice friend you have, certainly; a man whom everybody knows may go to prison for debt any day.”

“Leave him alone,” said Valérie haughtily; “unless you speak well of him, in my presence, you shall not speak at all.”

“Oh, indeed,” laughed Bella, nervously; “how very much interested you are in him! more than he is in you, I’m afraid, dear. He’s famed for loving and leaving. Pray how long has this romantic affair been on the tapis?”

“He’s met her every day in the Gardens,” cried Julius Adolphus, just come in with that fatal apropos of “enfans terribles,” much oftener the result of méchanceté than of innocence; “he’s met her every day, Bella, while I fed the ducks.”

Bella rose, inflated with fury, and summoning all her dignity:

“I suppose, Valérie, you know the sort of reputation you will get through these morning assignations.”

Valérie bent over Spit with a smile.

“Of course, it is nothing to me,” continued Bella, spitefully; “but I shall consider it my duty to inform mamma.”

Valérie fairly laughed out.

“Do your duty, by all means.”

“And,” continued Bella, a third time, “I dare say she will find some means to put a stop to this absurd friendship with an unmarried and unprincipled man.”

Valérie was roused; she lifted her head like a little Pythoness, and her blue eyes flashed angry scorn.

“Tell your mamma what you please, but—listen to me, Bella—if you venture to harm him in any way with your pitiful venom, I, girl as I am, will never let you go till I have revenged myself and him.”

Bella, like most bullies, was a terrible coward. There was an earnestness in Valérie’s words, and a dangerous light in her eyes, that frightened her, and she left the room in silence, while Valérie leaned her forehead on Spit’s silky back, and cried bitterly, tears that for her life she wouldn’t have shed while her cousin was there.

The next time Falkenstein called at Lowndes Square, the footman told him, “Not at home,” and Waldemar swore, mentally, as he turned from the door, for though he could keep himself from seeking her, it was something new not to find her when he wished.

“She’s like all the rest,” he thought bitterly; “She’s used me, and now she’s gone to newer friends. I was a fool to suppose any woman would do otherwise. They’ll tell her I can’t marry; of course she’ll go over to D’Orwood, or some of those confounded fools that are dangling after her.”

So in his skeptical haste judged Falkenstein, on the strength of a single “Not at home,” due to Cashranger malice, and the fierce throbs the mere suspicion gave him showed him that he loved Valérie too much to be able to deceive himself any longer with the assurance that his feelings towards his protégée was simple “friendship.” He knew it, but he was loth to give way to it. He had long held as a doctrine that a man could forget if he chose. He had been wearied of so many, been disappointed in so much, he had had idols of the hour, in which, their first gloss off, he had found no beauty, he could not tell; it might not be the same with Valérie. Warm and passionate as a Southern, haughty and reserved as a Northern, he held many a bitter conflict in his solitary vigils at night over his pipe, after evenings spent in society which no longer amused him, or excitement with which he vainly sought to drown his cares. When he did meet Valérie out, which was rarely, as he refused most invitations now, his struggle against his ill-timed passion made his manner so cold and capricious, that Valérie, who could not divine the workings of his heart, began, despite her vehement faith in him, and conviction that he was not wholly indifferent to her, to dread that Bella might be right, and that as he had left others so would he leave her. He gave her no opportunity of questioning him as to his sudden change, for when he did call in Lowndes Square, Bella and her aunt always stationed themselves as a sort of detective police, and Falkenstein now never sought a tête-à-tête.

One evening she met him at a dinner-party. With undisguised delight she watched his entrance, and Waldemar, seeing her radiant face, thought in his haste, “She is happy enough, what does she care for me?” If he had looked at her after he had shaken hands carelessly with her, and turned away to talk to another woman, he would have discovered his mistake. But when do we ever discover half our errors before it is too late? She signed to him to come to her under pretext of looking at some croquis, and whispered hurriedly,

“Count Waldemar, what have I done—why do you never come to see me? You are so changed, so altered——”

“I was not aware of it.”

“But I never see you in the Gardens now. You never talk to me, you never call on me.”

“I have other engagements.”

Valérie breathed hard between her set teeth.

“That are more agreeable to you, I suppose. You should not have accustomed me to what you intended to withdraw when it ceased to amuse you. I am not so capricious. Your kindness about my play——”

“It was no kindness; I would have done the same for any one.”

She looked at him fixedly.

“General kindness is no kindness,” said Valérie, passionately. “If you would do for a mere acquaintance what you would do for your friend, what value attaches to your friendship?”

“I attach none to it,” said the Count, coldly.

Valérie’s little hands clenched hard. She did not speak, lest her self-possession should give way, and just then D’Orwood came to give her his arm in to dinner; and at dinner Valérie, demonstrative and candid as she was, was gay and animated, for she could wear a mask in the bal d’Opéra of life as well as he; and though she could not believe the coldness he testified was really meant, she felt bitterly the neglect of his manner before others, at sight of which Bella’s small eyes sparkled with malicious satisfaction.

IV

Some Golden Fetters Are Shaken Off and Others Are Put On

“Mrs. Boville told me last night that Waldemar Falkenstein is so dreadfully in debt, that she thinks he’ll have to go into court—don’t they call it?” lisped Bella, the next morning; “be arrested, or bankrupt, or something dreadful. Should you think it is true?”

“I know it’s true,” said Idiot Tweed, who was there, having a little music before luncheon. “He’s confoundedly hard up, poor devil.”

“But I thought he was in such a good position—so well off?” said Bella, observing with secret delight that her cousin’s head was raised, and that the pen with which she was writing had stopped in its rapid gallop.

“Ah! so one thinks of a good many fellows,” answered the Guardsman; “or, at least, you ladies do, who don’t look at a man’s ins and outs, and the fifty hundred things there are to bother him. Lots of people—householders, and all that sort of thing—that one would fancy worth no end, go smash when nobody’s expecting it.”

“And Mr. Falkenstein really is embarrassed?”

The Guardsman laughed outright. “That is a mild term, Miss Cashranger. I heard down at Windsor yesterday, from a man that knows his family very well, that if he don’t pay his debts this week, Amadeus Levi will arrest him. I dare say he will. Jews do when they can’t bleed you any longer, and think your family will come down handsomely. But they say the old Count won’t give Falkenstein a rap, so most likely he’ll cut the country.”

That afternoon, on his return from the Deeds and Chronicles Office, whose slow red-tapeism ill suited his impatient and vigorous intellect, Waldemar sat down deliberately to investigate his affairs. It was true that Amadeus Levi’s patience was waning fast; his debts of honor had put him deep in that worthy’s books, and Falkenstein, as he sat in his lodgings, with the August sun streaming full on the relentless figures that showed him, with cruel mathematical ruthlessness, that he was fast chained in the Golden Fetters of debt, leaned his head upon his arms with the bitter despair of a man whose own hand has blotted his past and ruined his future.

The turning of the handle of his door roused him from his reverie. He looked up quickly.

“A lady wants to speak to you, sir,” said the servant who waited on him.

“What name?”

“She’d rather not give it, sir.”

“Very well,” said Falkenstein, consigning all women to the devil; “show her up.”

Resigning himself to his fate, he rose, leaning his hand on the arm of the chair. He started involuntarily as the door opened again.

“Valérie!”

She looked up at him half hesitatingly. “Count Waldemar, don’t be angry with me——”

“Angry! no, Heaven knows; but——”

Her face and her voice were fast thawing his chill reserve, and he stopped abruptly.

“You wonder why I have come here,” Valérie went on singularly shyly for her, “but—but I heard that you—you have much to trouble you just now. Is it true?”

“True enough, Heaven knows.”

“Then—then,” said Valérie, with all her old impetuosity, “let me do something for you—let me help you in some way—you who have done everything for me, who have been the only person kind to me on earth. Do let me—do not refuse me. I would die to serve you.”

He breathed fast as he gazed on her expressive eyes. It was a hard struggle to him to preserve his self-control.

“No one can help me,” he answered, hurriedly. “I have made my own fate—leave me to it.”

“I will not!” cried Valérie, passionately. “Do not send me away—do not refuse me. What happiness would there be for me so great as serving you—you to whom I owe all the pleasure I have known! Take them. Count Waldemar—pray take them; they have often told me they are worth a good deal, and I will thank Heaven every hour for having enabled me to aid you ever so little.” She pressed into his hands a jewel-case.

Falkenstein could not answer her. He stood looking down at her, his lips white as death. She mistook his silence for displeasure, and laid her hands on his arm.

“Do not be offended—do not be annoyed with me. They are my own—an old heirloom of the L’Estranges that only came to me the other day. Take them, Count Waldemar. Do, for Heaven’s sake. I spoke passionately to you last night; I have been unhappy ever since. If you will not take them, I shall think you have not yet forgiven me?”

He seized her hands and drew her close to him: “Good Heavens! do you love me like this?”

She did not answer, but she looked up at him. That look shivered to atoms Falkenstein’s resolves, and cast his pride and prudence to the winds. He pressed her fiercely against his heart, he kissed her again and again, bitter tears rushing to his burning eyes.

“Valérie! Valérie!” he whispered, wildly, “my fate is at its darkest. Will you share it?”

She leaned her brow on his shoulder, trembling with hysterical joy.

“You do care for me, then?” she murmured, at last.

“Oh! thank Heaven.”

In the delirium of his happiness, in the vehemence of feelings touched to the core by sight of the intense love he had awakened, Falkenstein poured out on her all the passion of his impetuous and reserved nature, and in the paradise of the moment forgot every cloud that hung on his horizon.

“Valérie!” he whispered, at length, “I have now nothing to offer you. I can give you none of the riches, and power, and position that other men can——”

She stopped him, putting her hands on his lips. “Hush! I shall have everything that life can give me in having your love.”

“My darling, Heaven bless you!” cried Falkenstein, passionately; “but think twice, Valérie—pause before you decide. I am a ruined man—embarrassments fetter me on every side. To-morrow, for aught I know, I may be arrested for debt. I would not lead you into what, in older years, you may regret.”

“Regret!” cried Valérie, clinging to him. “How can I ever regret that I have won the one heaven I crave. If you love me, life will always be beautiful in my eyes; and, Count Waldemar, I can work for you—I can help you, be it ever so little. I cannot make much money now, but you have said that I shall gain more year after year. Only let me be with you; let me know your sorrows and lighten them if I can, and I could ask no greater happiness——”

Falkenstein bent over her, and covered with caresses the lips that to him seemed so eloquent; he had no words to thank her for a love that, to his warm and solitary heart, came like water in the wilderness. The sound of voices gay and laughing, on the stairs, startled him.

“That is Bevan and Godolphin; I forgot they were coming for me to go down to the Castle. Good Heavens! they mustn’t see you here, love, to jest about you over their mess-tables. Stay,” said Falkenstein, hastily, as the men entered the front room, “wait here a moment; they cannot see you in this window, and I will come to you again. Hallo! old fellows!” said he, passing through the folding-doors. “You’re wonderfully punctual, Tom. I always give you half an hour’s grace; but I suppose Harry’s such an awful martinet, that he kept you up to time for once.”

“All the credit’s due to my mare,” laughed Godolphin. “She did the distance from Knightsbridge in four minutes, and I don’t think Musjid himself could beat that. Are you ready, I say? because we’re to be at the Castle by six, and Fitz don’t like waiting for his turbot.”

“Give me a brace of seconds, and I shall be with you,” said Waldemar.

“Make haste, there’s a good fellow. By George!” said Harry, catching sight of the jewel-case, “for a fellow who’s so deucedly hard up, you’ve been pretty extravagant in getting those diamonds, Waldemar. Who are they for—Rosalie Rivers, or the Deloraine; or that last love of yours, that wonderful little L’Estrange?”

Falkenstein’s brow grew dark; he snatched the case from the table, with a suppressed oath, and went back to the inner room, slamming the folding-doors after him. Godolphin lounged to the window looking on the street, where he stood for five minutes, whistling A te, o cara. “The devil! what’s that fellow about?” he said, yawning. “How impatient Bonbon’s growing! Why don’t that fool Roberts drive her up and down? By Jove! come here, Tom. Who’s that girl Falkenstein’s now putting into a cab? That’s what he wanted his brace of seconds for! Confound that portico! I can’t see her face, and women dress so much alike now, there’s no telling one from another. What an infernal while he is bidding her good-by. I shall know another time what his two seconds mean. There, the cab’s off at last, thank Heaven!—Very pretty, Falkenstein,” he began, as the Count entered. “That’s your game, is it? I think you might have confided in your bosom friend. Who is the fair one? Come, make a clean breast of it.”

Falkenstein shook his head. “My dear Harry, spare your words. Don’t you know of old that you never get anything out of me unless I choose?”

“Oh yes, confound you, I know that pretty well. One question, though—was she pretty?”

“Do you suppose I entertain plain women?”

“No; never was such a man for the beaux yeux. It looked uncommonly like little L’Estrange; but I don’t suppose she could get out of the durance vile of Lowndes Square, to come and pay you a tête-à-tête call. Well, are you ready now? because Bonbon’s tired of waiting, and so are we. A man in love makes an abominable friend.”

“A man in love with himself makes a worse one,” said Waldemar; which hit Harry in a vulnerable spot, Godolphin being generally chaffed about the affection he bore his own person.

“That was the little L’Estrange, wasn’t it?” asked Godolphin, as they leaned out of the window after dinner, apart from the others.

“Yes,” said Waldemar, curtly; “but I beg you to keep silence on it to every one.”

“To be sure; I’ve kept plenty of your confidences. I had no idea you’d push it so far. Of course you won’t be fool enough to marry her?”

Falkenstein’s dark eyes flashed fire. “I shall not be fool enough to consult or confide in any man upon my private affairs.”

Godolphin shrugged his shoulders with commiseration, and left Waldemar alone in his window.

Falkenstein called in Lowndes Square the morning after and had an interview with old Cash in the library of gaudy books that were never opened, and told him concisely that he loved his niece, and—that ever I should live to record it!—that little snob, with not two ideas in his head, who couldn’t, if put to it, tell you who his own grandfather was, and who owed his tolerance in society to his banking account, refused an alliance with the refined intellect and the blue blood of one of the proud, courtly, historic Falkensteins! He’d been tutored by his wife, and said his lesson properly, refusing to sanction “any such connexion;” of course his niece must act for herself.

Waldemar bowed himself out with all his haughtiest high-breeding; he knew Valérie would act for herself, but the insult cut him to the quick. He threw himself into the train, and went down to Fairlie, his governor’s place in Devonshire, determining to sacrifice his pride, and ask his father to aid him in his effort for freedom. In the drawing-room he found his sister Virginia, a cold, proud woman of the world. She scarcely let him sit down and inquire for the governor, before she pounced on him.

“Waldemar, I have heard the most absurd report about you.”

“Most reports are absurd.”

“Yes, of course; but this is too ridiculous. What do you think it is?”

“I am sure I can’t say.”

“That you are going to marry.”

“Well?”

“Well! You take it very quietly. If you were going to make a good match I should be the first to rejoice; but they say that you are engaged to some niece of that odious, vulgar parvenu, Cashranger, the brewer; that little bold thing who wrote that play that made a noise a little while ago. Pray set me at rest at once, and say it is not true.”

“I should be very sorry if it were not.”

His sister looked at him in haughty horror. “Waldemar! you must be mad. If you were rich, it would be intolerable to stoop to such a connexion; but, laden with debts as you are, to disgrace the family with such——”

“Disgrace?” repeated Falkenstein, scornfully. “She would honor any family she entered.”

“You talk like a boy of twenty,” said Virginia, impatiently. “To load yourself with a penniless wife when you are on the brink of ruin—to introduce to us the niece of a low-bred, pushing plebeian—to give your name to a bold manœuvring girl, who has the impudence to take her stand before a crowded theatre——”

“Hold!” broke out Waldemar, fiercely: “you might thank Heaven, Virginia, if you were as frank-hearted and as free from guile as she is. She thinks no ill, and therefore she is not, like you fine ladies, on the constant qui vive lest it should be attributed to her. I have found at last a woman too generous to be mistrustful, too fond to wait for the world’s advantages, and, moreover, untainted by the breath of your conventionalities, and pride, and cant.”

Virginia threw back her head with a curl on her lip. “You are mad, as I said before. I suppose you do not expect me to countenance your infatuation?”

He shrugged his shoulder. “Really, whether you do or not is perfectly immaterial to me.”

Virginia was silent, pale with anger, for they were all (pardonably enough) proud. She turned with a sneer to Josephine, a younger and less decided woman, just entering. “Josephine, you are come in time to be congratulated on your sister-in-law.”

“Is it true?” murmured Josephine, aghast. “Oh! my dear Waldemar, pause; consider how dreadful for us—a person who is so horribly connected; the man’s beer wagon is now standing at the door. Oh, do reflect—a girl, whose name is before the public——”

“By talent that would grace a queen!” interrupted Waldemar, rising impatiently. “You waste your words; you might know that I am not so weak as to give up my sole chance of happiness to please your pitiful prejudices.”

“Very well. I shall never speak to her,” said Virginia, between her teeth.

“That you will do as you please; you will be the loser.”

“But, Waldemar, do consider,” began Josephine.

“Your women’s tongues would drive a man mad,” muttered Falkenstein. “Tell me where my father is.”

“In his study,” answered Virginia briefly. And in his study Falkenstein found him. He saw at once that something was wrong by his reception; but he plunged at once into his affairs, showing him plainly his position, and asking him frankly for help to discharge his debts.

Count Ferdinand heard him in silence. “Waldemar,” he answered, after a long pause, “you shall have all you wish. I will sign you a check for the amount this instant if you give me your word to break off this miserable affair.”

Falkenstein’s cheek flushed with annoyance; he had expected sympathy from his father, or at least toleration. “That is impossible. You ask me to give up the one thing that binds me to life—the one love I have given me—the one chance of redeeming the future, that lies in my grasp. I am not a boy led away by a passing caprice. I have known and tried everything, and I can judge what will make my happiness. What unfortunate prejudice have you all formed against my poor little Valérie——”

“Enough” said his father, sternly. “I address you as a man of the world, and a man of sense; you answer me with infatuated folly. I give you your choice: my aid and esteem, in everything you can desire, or the madman’s gratification of the ill-placed caprice of the hour.”

Falkenstein rose as haughtily as the Count.

“Virtually, then, you give me no choice. I am sorry I troubled you with my concerns. I know whose interference I have to thank for it, and am only astonished you are so easily influenced,” said Falkenstein, setting his teeth hard as he closed the door; for his father’s easy desertion of him hit him hard, and he attributed it, rightly enough, to Maximilian, who, industriously gathering every grain of evil report against his brother, had taken such a character of Valérie—whom, unluckily, he had seen coming out of Duke street—down to Fairlee, that his father vowed to disinherit him, and his sisters never to speak to him. The doors both of his own home and Lowndes Square were closed to him; and in his adversity the only one that clung to him was Valérie.

If he had been willing to ask them, none of his friends could have helped him. Godolphin, with 20,000l. a year, spent every shilling on himself; Tom Bevan, but that he stood for a pocket borough of his governor’s, would have been in quod long ago; and for the others, men very willing to take your money at écarté are not very willing to lend you theirs when you can play écarté no longer. Amadeus Levi grew more and more importunate; down on him at once, as Falkenstein knew, would come the Jew’s griffes if he took any such unprofitable step as a marriage for love; and with all the passion in the world, mesdemoiselles, a man thinks twice before he throws himself into the Insolvent Court.

One night, nolens volens, decision was forced on him. He had seen Valérie that morning in the Pantheon, and they had parted to meet again at a ball, one of the lingering stragglers of the past season. About twelve he dressed and walked down Duke Street, looking for a cab to take him to Park Lane. Under a lamp at the corner, standing reading, he saw a man whom he knew by sight, and whose errand he guessed without hesitation. He paused unnoticed close beside him; he stood a moment and glanced over his shoulder; he saw a warrant for his own apprehension at Levi’s suit. The man looking, to make sure of the dress, never raised his eyes. Falkenstein walked on, hailed a hansom in Regent street, and in a quarter of an hour was chatting with his hostess.

“Where is Miss L’Estrange?” he asked, carelessly.

“She was waltzing with Tom a moment ago,” answered Mrs. Eden. “If you run after her so, I shall believe report. But is anything the matter, Falkenstein? How ill you look!”

“Too much champagne,” laughed Waldemar. “I’ve been dining with Gourmet, and all the Falkensteins inherit the desire of obtaining that gentlemanlike curse, the gout.”

“It’s not the gout, mon ami,” smiled Mrs. Eden.

“Break your engagement and waltz with me,” he whispered, ten minutes after, to Valérie.

“I have none. I kept them all free for you!”

He put his arm round her and whirled her into the circle.

“Count Waldemar, you are not well. Has anything fresh occurred?” she asked anxiously, as she felt the quick throbs of his heart, and saw the dark circles of his eyes and the deepened lines round his haughty mouth.

“Not much, dearest. I will tell you in a moment.”

She was silent, and he led her through the different rooms into Mrs. Eden’s boudoir, which he knew was generally deserted; and there, holding her close to him, but not looking into her eyes lest his strength should fail him, he told her that he must leave England, and asked her if he should go alone.

She caught both his hands and kissed them passionately. “No, no; do not leave me—take me with you, wherever it be. Oh, that I were rich for your sake! I, who would die for you, can do nothing to help you—”

He pressed her fiercely to him. “Oh, Valérie! Heaven bless you for your love, that renders the darkest hour of my life the brightest. But weigh well what you do, my darling. I am utterly ruined. I cannot insure you from privation in the future, perhaps not from absolute want; if I make money, much must go in honor year by year to the payment of my debts, by instalments. I shall take you from all the luxuries and the society that you are formed for; do not sacrifice yourself blindly——”

“Sacrifice myself!” interrupted Valérie. “Oh! Waldemar, if it is no sacrifice to you, let me be with you wherever it be; and if you have cares, and toil, and sorrow, let me share them. I will write for you, work for you, do anything for you, only let me be with you——”

He pressed his lips to hers, silent with the tumult of passion, happiness, delirious joy, regret, remorse, that arose in him at her words.

“My guardian angel, be it as you will!” he said, at length. “I must be out of England to-morrow, Valérie. Will you come with me as my wife?”

Early on Sunday morning Falkenstein was married, and out of his host of friends, and relatives, and acquaintance, honest Tom Bevan was the only man who turned him off, as Tom phrased it, and bid him good bye, with few words but much regret, concealed, after the manner of Britons, for the loss of his old chum. Tom’s congratulations were the only ones that fell on Valérie’s ear in the empty church that morning; but I question if Valérie ever noticed the absence of the marriage paraphernalia, so entirely were her heart, and eyes, and mind, fixed on the one whom she followed into exile. They were out of London before their part of it had begun to lounge down to their late breakfasts; and as they crossed the Channel, and the noon sun streamed on the white line of cliffs, Falkenstein, holding her hands in his and looking down into her eyes, forgot the follies of his past, the insecurity of his future, the tale of his ruin and his flight, that would be on the tongues of his friends on the morrow, and only remembered the love that came to him when all others forsook him.

V

The Silver Chimes Ring in a Happy New Year

One December evening Falkenstein sat in his lodgings in Vienna; the wood fire burnt brightly, and if its flames lighted up a room whose appanages were rather different to the palace his grandfather had owned in the imperial city, they at least shone on waving hair and violet eyes that were very dear to him, and helped to teach him to forget much that he had forfeited. From England he had come to Vienna, where, as he had projected, his uncle, one of the cabinet, had been able to help him to a diplomatic situation, for which his keen judgment and varied information fitted him; and in Austria his name gave him at once a brevet of the highest nobility. Of course the knowledge that he was virtually outlawed, and that he was deep in the debt of such sharps as Amadeus Levi, often galled his proud and sensitive nature; but Valérie knew how to soften and to soothe him, and, under her caressing affection or her ready vivacity, the dark hours passed away.

He was smoking his favorite briar-wood pipe, with Valérie sitting at his feet, reading him some copy just going to her publishers in England, and little Spit, not forgotten in their flight, lying on the hearth, when a deep English voice startled them, singing out, “Here you are at last! I give you my word, I’ve been driving over this blessed city two hours to find you!”

“Tom!” cried Falkenstein.

“Captain Bevan!” echoed Valérie, springing to her feet, while Spit began barking furiously.

Bevan shook hands with them; heartily glad to see his friend again, though, of course he grumbled more about the snow and the stupidity of the Viennese than anything else. “Very jolly rooms you’ve got,” said he at last; “and, ’pon my life, you look better than I’ve seen you do a long time, Waldemar. Madame has done wonders for you.”

“Madame” laughed, and glanced up at Falkenstein, who smiled half sadly.

“She has taught me how to find happiness, Tom. I wish you may get such a teacher.”

“Thank you, so do I, if my time ever comes; but geniuses aux longs yeux bleus are rare in the world. But you’re wondering why I’m here, ain’t you?”

“I was flattering myself you were here to see us.”

“Well, of course and very glad to see you, too; but I’m come in part as your governor’s messenger.”

Valérie saw him look up quickly, a flush on his face. “My father?”

“Yes, that rascal—(you know I always said he was good for nothing, a fool that couldn’t smoke a Queen without being sick)—I mean, your brother Maximillian—was at the bottom of the Count’s row with you. Last week I was dining at old Fitz’s, and your father and sisters were there, and when the women were gone I asked him when he’d last heard of you; of course he looked tempestuous, and said, ‘Never.’ Happily, I’m not easily shut up, so I told him it was a pity, then, for if he did he’d hear you were jollier than ever, and I said your wife was—— Well, I won’t say what, for fear we spoil this young lady, and make her vain of herself. The old boy turned pale, and said nothing; but two days after I got a line from him, saying he wasn’t quite well; would I go down and speak to him. I found him chained with the gout, and he began to talk about you. I like that old man, Waldemar, I do, uncommonly. He said he’d been too hasty, but that it was a family failing, and that Max had brought him such—well, such confounded lies—about Valérie, that he would have shot you rather than see you give her your name; now he wants to have you back. I’d nothing to do, so I said I’d come and ask you to forgive the poor old boy, and come and see him, for he isn’t well. I know you will, Falkenstein, because you never did bear malice.”

“Oh yes, he will,” murmured Valérie, tears in her eyes. “I separated you, Waldemar; you will let me see you reconciled?”

“My darling, yes! Poor old governor!” And Falkenstein stopped and smoked vigorously, for kindness always touched him to the heart.

Bevan looked at him and was silent. “I say,” he whispered, when he was a moment alone with Valérie. “I didn’t tell Waldemar, because I thought you’d break it to him less blunderingly than I should, but the old Count’s breaking fast. I doubt if he’ll live another week.”

Bevan was right. In another week Falkenstein stood by the death-bed of his father. He had a long interview with him alone, in which the old Count detailed to him the fabricated slanders with which his brother had blackened Valérie’s name. With all his old passion he disowned the son capable of such baseness, and constituted Waldemar his sole heir, save the legacies left his daughters. He died in Waldemar’s arms the night they arrived in England, with his last word to him and Valérie, whom, despite Virginia’s opposition, he insisted on seeing. Falkenstein’s sorrow for his father was deep and unfeigned, like his character; but his guardian angel, as he used to call her, was there to console him, and, under the light of her smile, sorrow could not long pursue him.

On his brother, always his own enemy, and now the traducer of the woman he loved, Waldemar’s wrath fell heavily, and would, to a certainty, have found some means of wreaking itself, but for the last wishes of his father. As it was, he took a nobler, yet a more complete revenge. The day of the funeral, when they were assembled for the reading of the will, Maximilian, unconscious of his doom, came with his gentle face, and tender melancholy air, to inherit, as he believed, Fairlie, and all the personal property.

Stunned as by a spent ball, horror-struck, disbelieving his senses, he heard his younger brother proclaimed the heir. It was a serious thing to him, moreover, for—for a man of large expenses and great ostentation—his own means were small. To secure every shilling he had schemed, and planned, and lied; and now every shilling was taken from him. Like the dog of Æsopian memory, trying to catch two pieces of meat, he had lost his own!

After the last words were read, Waldemar stood a moment irresolute; then he lifted his head, his dark eyes bright and clear, his mouth fixed and firm, a proud calm displacing his old look of passion and of care.

He went up to his brother with a generous impulse, and held out his hand.

“Maximilian, from our boyhood you never liked me, and of late you have done me a great wrong; but I am willing to believe that you did it from a mistaken motive, and by me, at least, it shall never be recalled. My father, in his wish to make amends for the one harsh act of his life to me, has made a will which I know you consider unjust. I cannot dispute his last desire that I should inherit Fairlie, but I can do what I know he would sanction—divide with you the wealth his energy collected. Take the half of the property, as if he had left it to you, and over his grave let us forget the past!”

On the last day of the year, so eventful to them both, Falkenstein and Valérie drove through the park at Fairlie. The rôle of a country gentleman would have been the last into which Waldemar, with his independent opinions and fastidious intellect, would have sunk; but he was fond of the place from early associations, and he came down to take possession. The tenantry and servants welcomed him heartily, for they had often used to wish that the wild high-spirited child, who rode his Shetland over the country at a headlong pace, and if he sometimes teased their lives out, always gave them a kind word and merry laugh, had been the heir instead of the one to whom they applied the old proverb “still and ill.”

The tenantry had been dismissed, the dinner finished, even the briarwood pipe smoked out, and in the wide Elizabethan window of the library Falkenstein stood, looking on the clear bright night, and watching the Old Year out.

“You sent the deed of gift to-day to Maximilian?” said Valérie, clasping both her hands on his arm.

“Yes. He does not take it very graciously; but perhaps we can hardly expect that from a man who has been disinherited. I question if I should accept it at all.”

“But you could never have wronged another as he wronged you,” cried Valérie. “Oh, Waldemar! I think I never realised fully, till the day you took your generous revenge, how noble, how good, how above all others you are.”

He smiled, and put his hand on her lips.

“Good, noble, silly child! those words may do for some spotless Gahlahad or Folko, not for me, who, a month ago, was in debt to some of the greatest blackguards in town, who have yielded to every temptation, given way to every weakness; not with the excuse of a boy new to life, but willfully and recklessly, knowing both the pleasures and their price—I, who but for your love and my father’s, should now be a solitary exile, paying for my past follies with——”

“Be quiet,” interrupted Valérie, with her passionate vivacity. “As different as was ‘Mirabeau jugé par sa famille et Mirabeau jugé par le peuple,’ are you judged by your enemies, and judged by those who love you. Granted you have had temptations, follies, errors; so has every man of high spirit and generous temper, and I value you far more coming out of a fiery furnace with so much of pure gold that the flames could not destroy, than if you were some ascetic Pharisee, who has never succumbed because he has never been tempted, and, born with no weaknesses, is born with no warmer virtues either!”

Falkenstein laughed, as he looked down at her.

“You little goose! Well, at least you have eloquence, Valérie, if not truth, on your side; and your sophistry is dear to me, as it springs out of your love.”

“But it is not sophistry,” she cried, with an energetic stamp of her foot. “If you will not listen to philosophy, concede, at least, to fact. Which is most worthy of my epithets—’noble and good’—Waldemar Falkenstein, or Maximillian? And yet Maximillian has been quiet and virtuous from his youth upwards, and always wins white balls from the ballot of society.”

“Well, you shall have the privilege of your sex—the last word,” smiled Waldemar, “more especially as the last word is on my side.”

“Hark!” interrupted Valérie, quiet and subdued in a second, “the clock is striking twelve.”

Silently, with her arms round his neck, they listened to the parting knell of the Old Year, stealing quietly away from its place among men. From the church towers through England tolled the twelve strokes, with a melancholy echo, telling a world that its dead past was laid in a sealed grave, and the stone of Never More was rolled to the door of the sepulchre. The Old Year was gone, with all its sins and errors, its golden gleams and midnight storms, its midsummer days of sunshine for some, its winter nights of starless gloom for others. Its last knell echoed; and then, from the old grey belfries in villages and towns, over the stirring cities and the sleeping hamlets, over the quiet meadows and stretching woodlands and grand old forest trees, rang the Silver Chimes of the New Year.

“It shall be a happy New Year to you, my darling, if my love can make it so,” whispered Waldemar, as the musical bells clashed out in wild harmony under the winter stars.

She looked up into his eyes. “I must be happy, since it will be passed with you. Do you remember, Waldemar, the night I saw you first, my telling you New Year’s-day was my birthday, and wondering where you and I should spend the next? I liked you strangely from the first, but how little I foresaw that my whole life was to hang on yours!”

“As little as I foresaw when, after heavy losses at Godolphin’s, I watched the Old Year out in my chambers, a tired, ruined, hopeless, aimless man, with not one on whom I could rely for help or sympathy in my need, that I should stand here now, free, clear from debt, with all my old entanglements shaken off, my old scores wiped out, my darker errors forgotten, my worst enemy humbled, and my own future bright. Oh! Valérie! Heaven bless you for the love that followed me into exile!”

He drew her closer to him as he spoke, and as he felt the beating of the heart that was always true to him, and the soft caress of the lips that had always a smile for him, Falkenstein looked out over the wide woodland that called him master, glistening in the clear starlight, and as he listened to the Silver Chimes—joyous herald of the New-born Year—he blessed in his inmost heart the Golden Fetters of Love.

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