← Oui,---yes sare, certainly. She is poor---not un liard; she is old---pas un trait de beauté ! Oh, yes, oui, she is, of course, abandoned." “Well, here are ten sovereigns. You have a lodging, I suppose? You must bring her to your own home, not to your room, I do not mean that, but she must be in the next chamber to yours, apart from every one. There keep her, let her want for nothing. I will direct my surgeon to attend her. Stay, ten may not be enough, there are fifteen. Take care of her, let no one see her---no one, mind that, and find out whatever more she knows of the history of this man,---and, above all, Madame, keep your own council." The French woman's gratitude knew no bounds. She screamed with joy: not allowing herself time to inquire why Uncle Horace had been so interested in her story. She only saw the evidence of his generosity, and felt extreme delight at the prospect of being able to oblige him. With the natural disinterestedness of woman, she never thought of the inconvenience that must arise to herself from this arrangement. She only felt that she had now the power to evince her gratitude and esteem to the patron and friend of her children, and to afford relief to a desolate and dying woman. After sundry bounds, skips, and exclamations, she fell on her knees, and, in despite of Uncle Horace's efforts to prevent it, pressed his hand (upon which her warm tears dropped) to her lips. In the midst of this demonstration of gratitude the door opened,---and the astonished Major Blaney stood before them. CHAPTER XIX. O, what a tangled web we weave, "A PRETTY piece of work you have made of it,” said Muskito, in a careless, yet bitter tone of voice to D'Oraine, who was seated opposite to him in a long narrow room, where there was little light and less furniture: the light came from a fire of mingled wood and coal, and there was also a candle, one solitary candle, burning on a table, which, for length and narrowness, suited admirably with the apartment. D'Oraine looked worn and haggard; he appeared to have suffered either from illness or anxiety; but his eye, though sunken, was as vivid as ever, and it glared upon his companion with no kindly or gentle feeling. Muskito's English was slightly imperfect: when in society he affected this imperfection, so as to render it matter of observation; but D'Oraine spoke only with a foreign accent; so slight indeed, that it would be impossible to determine what country had given him birth. He looked at Muskito, but made no reply to his observation. 66 'I say this is a very pretty job," repeated the latter. "You have made the remark before,---it is---very," said D'Oraine; "a job, the failure of which the father of lies and mischief ought to lament, for it was a pretty plan, and promised better things than to be foiled by a girl who has not had twenty winters over her head yet!” "It's all your faint-heartedness---Sacre! why undertake what you had not the spirit to perfect? to keep her here when---but there is no use in repeating what I have said before--you have botched the whole affair, and we are ruined, unless you do what I propose." "The fiend has caught us!" exclaimed D'Oraine. "If I could but have seen, or discovered the mother, I could have brought her to work upon this impracticable girl; but God, or the devil, knows where she is!" Fool!-to be blinded by the tale of an idle waiting maid!" "Idle waiting-maid!" he repeated: "I would rather have faced a thousand devils, than have met that girl, with her icicle eyes and marble brow-and her voicelike the voice which has been long silent in the grave! I don't know what hangs over me; my bones ache, and my flesh trembles: it is those damps—those fogs--those -I dared enough too, to get to the island; but I knew, if I could see the mother, assure her of Mary's safety, and name my price and place of payment, she would have got it out of Brown or Lord Norley." "Lord Norley," interrupted Muskito, no, not Lord Norley; he is not the one to do anything of the sort; no, he is one made good by accident, not intent. It was fool ish, too, for it will spread the report that you, at all events, are in England, and that once determined, we must run for it. Peste! if you had only suffered my will to have its way, you are one who have all your life been within an inch of achieving your purpose, and yet, what purpose have you ever achieved?" D'Oraine smiled bitterly. "That," he said, "is as much as to say that I have arrived only at the distinction of being a little villain. I wish she had been suffered to proceed to London; then to secure this reputation (which, bauble as it is, stands so many instead of what is really sterling,) she would have got us half her uncle's gold-half! ay, more than that! But you, trained as you have been, in all species of foreign traffic, whether of mind or body, you forgot the English character,-you thought that she was a willow, a rush that would bend to serve our purpose---you forgot "That, as I said before, I had to deal with one who, having been all his life within an inch of achieving his purpose---never passed the inch, which would have made his fortune! You never yet had the courage to plunge into sin or danger---you creep into it, faint-hearted as you are." "I cannot lie and bully as---as others do." "But "As I do, you would say," retorted his friend. you underrate your capabilities-you can do both, when you are safe from danger!" "S'death!" replied DO'raine, "you had better not provoke me now; it is you who are so timorous; there cannot be much need for courage to frighten a young girl: but "There again---your one-inch destiny preserves her, and destroys you?" "What can I do? I had one single hold on her; most strong, it is true; yet but one---her mother's reputation. I have told you this so often, that I need not repeat it. Το save the fair and brilliant name which her mother had gained, she would have beggared herself, and every one she loved; but now she seems to dwell upon the idea, that this act of ours will destroy that purity of name to which she attached so much importance; besides, she seems to have an idea which did not occur to her before, that there might be some difficulty in my substantiating my accusation." "Indeed!" Ay, but this is certain---there she sits, rigid in mind and body, a fair automaton." "Not so, you can move an automaton, by the power of its interior mechanism." "It is the strength of that interior mechanism which makes her so; it needs another key than mine to wind it up. I have threatened-reasoned-goaded her,-I might as well speak to an iceberg !" "But what are we to do?" exclaimed Muskito. "I had a thousand plans, which, if they had but time, would yield a thousand fortunes: but you see, circumstanced as we have been, and above all, circumstanced as we now are, there is no one- 99 "Would trust you or your schemes an atom," said D'Oraine. "Do not, mon bon ami, attempt to deceive yourself; you would not have thought of this desperate plan, if you were not hard up,---why there is not a gambling-house, in London or Paris, that would not (were you to appear in any one of the characters you have assumed to gull the public, during the last four years,) shut the door in your face!" Muskito laughed, and then suddenly pausing, in the midst of his unhallowed merriment, said, "What would that dainty Miss up stairs take to exchange reputations with me?" “Death—death, sooner! You may believe it or not, just as you please,—I have lived, I believe, fifty years among all sorts and classes of men and women, and I have observed, that when women get what is called virtue, really grafted into them, they stick to it, or it to them, in a way that defies all separation. I wish the devil had her, ere she entered this house. What are we to do with her?" "What rhyme is that in English, about going up the hill, and so coming down again? If we lived in the time of the war, nothing more easy than to ship her off; but now, set her adrift in a boat on the river-or carry her into the New Forest at midnight, and leave her therethat would be a romance, would it not? Stay, you tried pistols, and threatened to take poison before her eyes, if she would not attend to what you wished." "Ay, and I might as well practise these stage-tricks before a statue of Minerva or Juno!" "Arrêtez done!-What did that woman whom you frightened last midnight at Mrs. Lorton's say?" D'Oraine shivered, and, after trying to recover himself, replied, "I cannot tell. I went to the window which I knew led into Mrs. Lorton's drawing-room; I knocked three or four times; suddenly it opened, and Magdalene Marsden stood before me. I had long known she resided with the Lortons, and I had reason to think that she knew me-all too well; but as she stood in the cold silent moonlight, she looked like a spectre. Had she time to recollect her senses, before she replied to my inquiry, she would have instantly alarmed the household; but she never could frame a lie!" "God bless my soul!" interrupted Muskito, "how very extraordinary." "And so told the truth," continued D'Oraine, without. heeding his interruption; "then she entreated me, with all the eloquence of her high nature, if I knew anything of Mary or her mother, to disclose it: but finding that I remained silent, she rung in an instant the alarm-bell of the cottage, and when I attempted to retreat, she seized with her slender hands the collar of my cloak, screaming for help. I shook her gently off-by Heaven it was gently— and just in time too, for Horace Brown's heavy artillery, that thick-headed Peter, came blundering into the room with a double-barrelled gun, the reports of which reached my ear long before I could get into my boat, which our rascal here had moored under the old cliff,-to think of the fellow firing after me! "We have been desperately thwarted from the beginning. D'Oraine, you look ill-here, man, let's have some hot brandy, that will set us up,-the kettle upon the grate has been hissing like a dozen snakes for the last half hour. I hate the hissing of a kettle, it puts one in mind of the hissing that will be elsewhere-Augh!" "It puts me in mind of worse than that,” said D'Oraine, sadly; "I never hear the sound without thinking of my boyhood!-my mother (she was an Englishwoman) had brought one from her own country, and whenever she wished to give her children a feast, she used to make them tea, warm tea, and the singing of the kettle was a sort of domestic music to our ears! I can call before me her kind sweet face-so sunny and so bright! God! that such a woman should have had such a son !" He arose from his seat, and paced up and down the room in moody silence; but Muskito was not too much busied with his thoughts to prevent his mingling the spirits |