- » »t— i %_M y— » (jp j jy fc i H i r ■ *-— > frl i j^4 i -«~ '■■ ,*"r CHEAP EDITION OF NOVELS BY HENRY KINGSLEY Crown Svo, cloth, price 3^. 6d. each. " Mr. Henry Kingsley's novels have so much fulness of life in ♦hem, such a strong bounding pulse, that there are few books of the kind plea ' ' " OJL .~4r.*. AUST "A the coi the ge: Geof "A prodig things startle our ha The its col Rave the g) reined "LI B RARY OF THE U N IVLRSITY OF ILLINOIS 823 v. t r its literary excellence, : earnestness of purpose, nconformist. — Saturday Review. >e Recollections. For lal consummation of all )ment permitted to flag. , and sent them forth to Is which have come into RTONS. iition. Cr. 8vo. e author's own nature, ting about Australia and re." — Globe. tgination, observation in from a warm heart well ' — London Review. •f Leig J.1UIU. JL.U.1L1U11. v^xwvix ~*k~'*j ^ »ir'*j ~>a - ~j — » §3 ONLY AN ENSIGN ONLY AN ENSIGN % C alt of % gtittai from Cabnl By JAMES GRANT, AUTHOR OF "THE ROMANCE OF WAR," "FIRST LOVE AND LAST LOVE, " LADY WEDDERBURN'S WISH," ETC. IN THREE VOLUMES. VOL. I. " Conic what come may, Time and the Hour runs through the roughest day."— Macbeth. LONDON : TINSLEY BROTHERS, 18, CATHERINE ST., STRAND. 1871. [All Rights Reserved.] LONDON : BRADBURY, EVANS, AND CO., PRINTERS, WHITEFRIARS. J* PKEFACE. To have entered, more fully than I have done, into the events and fighting prior to the Retreat from Cabul, would have proved unsuitable for the purpose of my story, and for these events I must refer the reader to history or the newspapers of the time. An officer of the Queen's 44th Regiment escaped death in the Khyber Pass in the mode narrated in its place, by wrapping the regimental colour round him ; and strange and varied as the adventures of Captain Waller may appear, after the last fatal stand was made by our troops, some such incidents actu- ally occurred to a Havildar of the Shah's Ghoorka Regiment, after its complete destruction in Afghan- istan, so there is much that is real woven up with my story. VI PREFACE. Fiction, according to Sir Francis Bacon, infuses in literature that which history denies, and in some measure satisfies the mind with shadows, when it cannot enjoy the substance — the shadows of an ideal world. "Art is long and life is short, so we do wisely to live in as many worlds as we can." 25, Tavistock Road, Westbourne Park, August, 1871. CONTENTS. CHAP. PAGE I. — THE TIME WILL COME 1 II. — RHOSCADZHEL 18 III. — THE ALARM BELL 24 IV. — POWDERED WITH TEARS 36 V. — PORTHELLICK VILLA 40 VI. — RICHARD'S MYSTERY 57 VII. — LADY LAMORNA 65 VIII. — THE BROKEN CIRCLE 76 IX. — FOREBODINGS 84 X. — THE LONELY TARN 92 XL— CONCERNING FLIRTATION 104 XII.— THE PIXIES' HOLE 110 XIII.— THE TIDE IN ! . . . . . . . 132 XIV.— LOST 141 XV. — THE SEARCH 152 XVI.— INTELLIGENCE AT LAST 161 XVII. — THE TRECxVRRELS 171 XVIII. — HE LOVES ME TRULY 182 XIX.— THE GREATER SORROW 196 Vlll . CONTENTS. CHAP. PAGE XX. — A FAMILY GROUP 207 XXI. — HUMILIATION 218 XXII. — "MRS. GRUNDY" 232 XXIII. — A LEGAL " FRIEND " 243 XXIV. — THE DOCTRINE OF CHANCES 252 XXV. — MISCONCEPTION ... . . . 267 XXVI.— REVERSES 274 XXVII. — ALONE ! 285 ONLY AN ENSIGN CHAPTER I. THE TIME WILL COME. "Le jour viendra — it is the motto of our family — given to us by Henry VI. ' The day will come,' " said old Lord Lamorna, proudly, as he lay back in his easy chair, with his elbows resting on the arms thereof, and the tips of his upraised fingers placed together, as if he was about to pray ; " and most applicable is that motto to you, nephew Eichard, for I am sure that when you are my age you will regret not having taken my advice." Eichard Trevelyan smiled, but looked somewhat uneasily at his younger brother Downie. " You are too rich to throw yourself away, and too well-born even for the most highly accomplished daughter of a cotton-lord, or knighted mill-owner," resumed his stately old uncle, sententiously ; " a fellow knighted too probably for dirty ministerial 2 ONLY AN ENSIGN. work ; but assume a virtue if you have it not, and let us see you " " Excuse me,' my lord — excuse me,, my dear uncle. I have no desire to — to marry; why you — your- self- " " Don't cite me, Richard. You are only forty- three, if so much " (and here, for the information of our young lady readers, we may mention that Richard is not the hero of these pages). "I am past seventy, yet I may marry yet, and do you all out of the title," added Lamorna, with a laugh like a cackle. " My brother Dick is certainly the most listless of men," said Downie, as he selected some grapes with the embossed scissors, and filled his glass with chateau d'Yquem. " I don't think that I am so," retorted Richard. " Downie is right," said Lord Lamorna. " Why do you not go into Parliament ? — I have two snug pocket boroughs here in Cornwall — and on one hand attack routine and red-tapeism like a Radical ; on the other hand, denounce retrenchment and cowardly peace- at-any -price, like a Tory of the old school. You would certainly be popular with both parties by that role, and do good to the country at large." " I have no turn for politics, uncle." " Diplomacy then — many of our family have THE TIME WILL COME. 3 figured as diplomats ; I was ambassador to Eussia, after Waterloo, and in the olden time more than one of our family have been so to the Courts of Scotland, France, and Brandenburg; and I trust we all refuted the axiom of Sir Henry Wotton, 1 that an ambassador was an honest man sent abroad to lie for the good of his country.' " " I have no taste for diplomacy." " What the devil have you a taste for ? " asked Iris uncle, testily ; " not domestic life, as I can't get you to marry, like Downie here ; and you soon left the army, or tired of Her Majesty's service." Richard flushed for a moment, and held his full wine glass between him and the light, as if to test the colour and purity of its contents. " I know what bachelor London life is — another style of thing, of course, from yours, Downie — that which someone calls the hard-w T orking life, which begins at two p.m. one day, and ends at four a.m. next morning. There are the parks ; the club, with its bow-window ; flirtations at balls and assemblies ; the opera, and parties to Greenwich; and then there is the darker picture of doing business with old Messrs. Bill Stamp and Cent. -per- Cent., in some dingy little den off the Strand. A bad style of thing it is to meddle with the long-nosed fellows in the discounting line ; just as bad as — and often the sequence to — running after actresses or opera- B 2 4 ONLY AN ENSIGN. singers. You may love them if you like ; but, great Heavens ! never stoop to the madness of committing matrimony with any of them, or for a moment forget the family to which you belong, and the ancient title that is your inheritance." All this was said with undisguised point and pomposity ; the cold grey eyes of Downie Trevelyan had a strange, sour smile in them ; and Eichard's face grew more flashed than ever now. Dinner was over in the stately dining-room of Rhoscadzhel ; Mr. Jasper Funnel, the portly, florid, and white-haired butler, had placed the glittering crystal decanters before his master, who, with two nephews, Richard and Downie Trevelyan, were lingering over their wine ; while in the western light of a September evening, through the tall plate- glass windows that reached from the richly-carpeted floor to the painted and gilded ceiling, the Isles of Scilly — the Casserites of the Greeks, the rocks consecrated by the pagan Cornavi to the Sun — could be seen at the far horizon, literally cradled in the golden blaze of his setting in the sea ; for the house of Khoscadzhel, in which our story opens, stands near the Land's End, in the brave old Duchy of Cornwall. Audley Trevelyan, tenth Lord Lamorna, took his title from that little bay or cove which was one of the most romantic spots on the bluff Cornish coast, THE TIME WILL COME. 5 until it was unfortunately selected by certain utilitarian speculators as a site for granite works ; and near it is a place called the Trewoofe, a triple entrenchment having a subterranean passage, wherein Launcelot Lord Lamorna, with some other Cornish cavaliers, hid themselves in time of defeat from the troopers of Fairfax, as the tourist may find duly recorded in his " John Murray." He was in his seventieth year ; pale in face and thin in figure, and with his accurate evening costume, for his valet always dressed him for dinner even when alone, the old peer in every gesture and tone displayed the easy bearing of a polished man of the world, and of the highest bearing — keen but cold, calm and unimpressionable. He had yet much of the wasted beau about his appearance ; he wore rosettes on his shoes and still adhered to a frilled shirt front and black watered silk ribbon for his gold eye-glass, with a coat having something of the high collar and cut peculiar to the days when George IV. was king. His features were fine and delicately modelled ; his nose a perfect aquiline, with nostrils arched and thin, his snow-white hair was all brushed back to conceal the bald places and to display more fully a forehead of which he had been vain in youth from a fancied resemblance to that of Lord Byron. In short the Apollo of many a ball-room was now indeed a lean 6 ONLY AN ENSIGN. and slippered pantaloon, but still careful to a degree in costume and all the niceties of cuffs and studs and rings. Calm and self-possessed as he appeared, when now lying back in his down easy-chair, sipping his iced wine and playing with the diamond that glittered on his wasted hand, and which had been a farewell gift from the Empress of Russia, he had been much of a roue in his youth, and consequently was not disposed to enquire too closely into the affairs of his nephew. Downie Trevelyan was already married, nearly to his uncle's satisfaction, his wife being the daughter of a poor but noble family; and as for Richard, he might run away with as many humble girls as he chose, provided he did not marry any of them, or make that which his haughty uncle and monetary patron would never forgive — a mesal- liance; for Lord Lamorna was a man full of strong aristocratic prejudices, and a master in all the tactics of society, and of his somewhat exclusive, and occasionally selfish class. His lordship's false teeth — a magnificent Parisian set that had cost him some fifty guineas — would have chattered at the idea of any member of his family making a mistake in matrimony. He had heard ugly whispers about Richard, but never could discover aught that was tangible. If it existed, THE TIME WILL COME. 7 Heavens ! how were Burke, Debrett and Co. to record it when the time came that it could no longer be concealed ? Should any mesalliance be the case, he had vowed often that the barren title should go without one acre of land to his eldest nephew ; and he would have willed that past him too had it been in his power to do so ; but though a sordid Scottish Earl of Caithness once sold his title to a Highland Chieftain, and caused one of the last clan-battles to be fought in Scotland, such things cannot be done now. The old man had one ever present, ever prevail- ing idea — the honour and dignity of the family — the Cornish Trevelyans of Rhoscadzhel and Lamorna. His two nephews were men in the prime of life, but Downie was three years younger than his brother. Richard Pencarrow Trevelyan, the elder and prime favourite with their uncle, was a remarkably handsome man, with fine regular features that closely resembled those of the old peer ; but Richard had been reared at Sandhurst, been in the army and seen much of a rougher life than his uncle. He had a free bold bearing, an ample chest, an athletic form and muscular limbs, which riding, shooting and handling the bat and the oar had all developed to the full, and which his simple costume, 8 ONLY AN ENSIGN. — for he was fresh with his gun and his game-bag, from the bleak Cornish moors and mountain sides — advantageously displayed. His dark blue eyes that were almost black, and seemed so by night, had a keen but open expression, his mouth suggested good humour, his white and regular teeth, perfect health, and his voice had in it a chord that rendered it most pleasant to the ear. Dark eyebrows and a heavy moustache imparted much of character to his face. His brother, Downie Trevelyan, had never been an idler like Richard. Educated at Rugby and Corpus Christi, Oxford, he had been duly called to the bar by the Honourable Society of Lincoln's Inn, and was now in good practice as a Barrister in London. He had all the air and bearing of a gentleman of good style; but he was less handsome than Richard; had less candour of expression in eye and manner ; indeed, his eyes were like cold grey steel, and were quick, restless, and at times furtive in their glances; and they never smiled, even when his mouth seemed to do so. Unlike Richard, he was closely shaven, all save a pair of very short and legal looking whiskers. To please his uncle was one of the unwearying tasks of his life; and even now, with this view, he was in the most accurate evening dress, thus affording a com- plete contrast to the rough and unceremonious THE TIME WILL COME. 9 tweed-suit worn by his brother — his coat broadly lapelled with black silk moire, his vest with three buttons, en suite with his shirt studs, which were encrusted with brilliants. His cold formality of manner rendered his periodical visits to Rhos- cadzhel somewhat dull to Lord Lamorna, for some- how few people cared much for Mr. Downie Treve- lyan. He had married judiciously and early in life, and had now several children; and thus, while join- ing his uncle in reprehending or rallying Richard on his supposed anti-matrimonial views, his cold, pale eyes, were wandering over the appurtenances, the comforts and splendour of that magnificent apartment, in which he was mentally appraising everything, from the steel fire-irons, to the gold and silver plate that glittered on the carved walnut wood side-board, whereon were displayed many beautiful cups, groups and statuettes (race-trophies of Ascot, Epsom and other courses) which had been won in Lamorna's younger days, when his stud was second to none in England, and certainly equal to that of Lord Eglinton in Scotland; yet he had never been a gambler, or a " horsey man," being too highly principled in one instance, and too highly bred in the other; and so we say, while the legal eyes of Downie appraised all, he thought of his eldest son, Audley Trevelyan, then a subaltern in a dashing Hussar Regiment, and marvelled in his heart, if he 10 ONLY AN ENSIGN. should ever reign as Lord of Khoscadzhel, manor and chace, with all its moors and tin-mines. " You were right to marry young, Downie," said the old lord, resuming the theme of their conversa- tion after a pause, adding, as if he almost divined the thoughts of his younger nephew, " your hoy Audley is, I hear from General Trecarrel, a hand- some fellow." "He is a perfect Trevelyan, my lord," replied Downie, who was studious in always according the title to his relative, "and then my daughter, Gartha, hids fair to equal her mother, who was one of the handsomest women in London." " To see your family rising about you thus, must afford you intense pleasure, Downie; but I cannot understand our friend Dick here at all. My years may not be many now, and I do not wish my heredi- tary estate to change hands often, or my lands to be scattered even after I am done with them." " I do not comprehend your fears, my dear uncle," said Richard, smiling ; " your estates can never lack heirs while God spares me — and then there is Downie " " And his son Audley the Hussar — you would say ? " " Exactly," replied Richard, but in a strange faint voice, and as he spoke he felt that the keen grey eyes of Downie were regarding him attentively by THE TIME WILL COME. 11 the waxen lights of the chandelier, Which Mr. Jasper Funnel and two tall footmen had just illuminated, at the same time drawing the heavy curtains of crimson damask over the last flash of the setting sun, and the ruddy sea whose waves were rolling in blue and gold, between the bluffs -of Land's End and the rocky Isles of Scilly. " You cannot be a woman-hater, Dick?" " No— far from it," replied Richard, as a soft ex- pression stole over his manly face; "there can be no such thing in nature." " The truth is — but take your wine — I strongly fear, that during your military peregrinations, you have got yourself entangled now — and unworthily perhaps." "My lord — you are mistaken," replied Richard firmly — almost sternly; "but what causes you to think so ? " " Your so decidely declining an introduction to General Trecarrel and his two daughters — the most beautiful girls in the duchy of Cornwall. They come of a good family too; and as the couplet has it:— " 'By Tre, Pol, and Pen, Ye may know the Cornish men.' " " The General resides somewhere near Port- hellick, does he not?" asked Downie, who saw 12 ONLY AX ENSIGN. that his brother was changing colour, or rather losing it fast. " Some one told me, Dick, that it was rumoured you got into a scrape in Edinburgh, 'that village somewhere in the North,' as one of our humourists calls it; it was to the effect that your landlady had fallen over head and ears in love with her handsome lodger, who was ditto ditto in her debt, and had to soothe her ruffled feelings and settle her bill, by matrimony at sight." "An utter scandal I" said Eichard, now laughing. " Your allowance to me, ever since I left the Cornish Light Infantry, has been too generous for such a catastrophe ever to occur." "And next came a story, that when you were at Montreal with the regiment, you made a precious mess of it with some pretty girl, and — to use Downie's phraseology — parted as heart-broken lovers, to figure as plaintiff and defendant at the bar." "Worse still and as false, my lord!" exclaimed Eichard, now pale with suppressed passion. "Don't look so darkly, Eichard," said Lord Lamorna, who saw the flash in his nephew's dark blue eyes; "I have had a pretty little box at Chertsey, and a villa at St. John's Wood in my day, when my friends, raven- tressed, or golden-haired as the case might be, were amiable and tenderly THE TIME WILL COME. 13 attached — but deuced expensive ; so I must not be severe upon you," added the old man, with his dry cackling laugh. " It is not these kind of little arrangements I fear, but a mesalliance ; and there are scandals even in London — yes, even in the mighty world of London, though there they soon die ; they don't live and take root, as in the so- called purer air of the country." " I cannot understand all those vague hints, tales and rumours, or who sets them afloat," replied Itichard, making an effort to preserve his calmness. Downie saw the veins rise in his brother's fore- head while their uncle had been speaking; and he smiled a quiet smile, as he bent curiously over his glass. " Full many a shaft at random sent, Finds mark the archer never meant ; " and he could see that some of the random remarks in the present conversation, rankled deeply in Uichard's breast; and that this conversation had verged, more than once, on somewhat dangerous ground. " Well, it is a marvel to me, Richard, how a handsome fellow like you can have escaped so long, known as you are to be the heir to my title and estates," continued the old lord, still harping on the same topic: "for the girls now go in for winning in 14 ONLY AN ENSIGN. matrimony, as we used to do at Ascot and Epsom." " How, my lord ? " asked Downie, as if he had never heard the joke before. "By a neck — a bare neck and bosom added; witness the beautiful and aristocratic demi-mondes at the Opera! Elizabeth was the first English- woman who, to excite admiration, exposed her person thus. The virgin queen wore a huge ruff certainly; but it stuck up behind her, she was decolletee enough in front." "I prefer her Scottish rival — collared to her pretty neck, and sleeved to the slender wrist/ 7 said Richard Trevelyan; "by Jove, I should not have cared for flirting with a woman who carried a fan in one hand and a hatchet in the other." " Our ancestor, Henry Lord Lamorna, was governor of Rougemont Castle, in Devonshire, under Queen Elizabeth," said the peer pompously ; "but having married the daughter of a simple knight in Surrey, he lost Her Majesty's favour at Court, and had to live in retirement here at Rhoscadzhel. Let that mistake be a warning to you, Richard." " It happened pretty long ago," replied Richard, laughing; "and at forty years of age I am surely unlikely to commit an act of folly " " If it be not committed already ? " THE TIME WILL COME. ]5 — " And lose your favour, even by marrying, ' the daughter of a simple knight.' " " With my favour you would lose this fine estate. But give me your hand, Dick,I know you will never do aught unworthy of our good old Cornish name of Trevelyan ! " With a grand old-fashioned air — yet one full of kindness — the proud old man presented his thin white hand to his nephew, who pressed it affec- tionately, and then rose to withdraw. " Whither go you, Dick, so soon ? " " Oh — anywhere, uncle," replied the other, wearily. "How, sir?" "Merely into the lawn to enjoy a post-prandial cigar," replied Pdchard, whose face wore an evident expression of annoyance, as he bowed and quitted the room. " We have worried him, I fear," said Downie, with a self-satisfied smile. " Don't use slang — it is bad in tone," replied his uncle ; " but I cannot make your brother out — I hope he is not deceiving us all. Gad, if I thought so — if that Montreal story should prove true " the peer paused, and his keen blue eyes flashed with anger at the vague thoughts that occurred to him. " Oh, do not fear, my lord," said Downie Tre- 16 ONLY AN ENSIGN. velyan, in a suave and soothing manner; "though sham diamonds often do duty for real ones." " What do you mean? " asked his uncle, haughtily. Downie only smiled, and bent over his glass of Burgundy again. " Neb na gave y gwayn call restona," said Lord Lamorna, significantly ; " I hate proverbs : but this is a good old Cornish one ; " he that heeds not gain, must expect loss. When do you expect your oldest boy home from India ? " " He may arrive next week, pehaps, my lord, and he will at once dutifully hasten to present himself to you.'' " He must be well up among the Lieutenants of the Hussars now ? " " Yet he means to exchange into the Infantry." "Why?" " It is a matter of expedience and expense, my lord ; even with forage, batta, tentage, and so forth, he finds his regiment a very extravagant one." " I shall give him a cheque on Coutts and Co., for I must not forget that you did me the honour to name him after me." " But you did us the greater honour in being his sponsor — and in bestowing upon him a gold sponso- rial mug." " With the Koithgath of the Trevelyans for a handle, and another perched on the lid ; well, well — THE TIME WILL COME. 17 he may be ray successor here — who knows, who knows," mumbled the old man, as he prepared to take his- after dinner nap, by spreading a cambric handkerchief over his face, and Downie glided noise- lessly away to the library, with a strange and un- fathomable smile on his colourless face, and he muttered, — " I too may say — " the time will come! " CHAPTEB II. RHOSCADZHEL. On the smooth lawn his brother was walking to and fro, with a cigar between his firm white teeth, with his heart a prey to bitter and exciting thoughts ; and though Bichard Trevelyan is not, as we have said, the hero of these pages, to the lawn we shall accompany him. " What the deuce can be the secret spring of all this intrusive solicitude upon my uncle's part about having me married, as if I were a young girl in her third season ?" he muttered; "I have often feared that Downie suspected me — as a lawyer, it is natural he should suspect every one of something more than he sees or knows ; and yet — I have been so wary, so careful! My poor Constance — still concealment — still dissimulation for the present, and doubts of our future! No hope for us, save in the death of that old man, ever so good and kind to me. Did he really but know Constance, how sweet and gentle she is! A curse be on this silly pride of birth and fortuitous position which is our bane — RHOSCADZHEL. 19 this boasting of pedigree old as the days of Bran ap Llyr, the ancestor of King Arthur. By Jove, it is too absurd! " and he laughed angrily as he tossed away his cigar and then sighed, as he surveyed the fagade of the stately mansion, and cast his e} T es round the spacious lawn that stretched far away in starlight and obscurity. "And yet must I stoop to this senile folly," he added, half aloud ; " for 'twere hard to see all these broad acres go to Downie's boy, the Hussar, past me and mine! " The seats of the Cornish aristocracy have usually little to boast of in architecture ; but the mansion of Bhoscadzhel* was an exception, being a rare specimen of a fine old Tudor dwelling, which had suffered more from the rude hand of civil war, than from " time's effacing fingers," and was built, tradition avers, from the famous quarry of Pencarrow, and of good Cornish freestone. A massive iron gate, between carved pillars, each surmounted by a koithgath, or wild cat, rampant — a crest of which Lord Lamorna was as vain as ever was old Bradwardine of his heraldic bears — gave access to the avenue, a long and leafy tunnel that lay between the house and the highway leading to the Land's End. The branches of the stately old elms were interlaced overhead, like the groined arches of a Gothic cathedral and a delightful pro- * Cadzhel, Coruisli for castle. c2 20 ONLY AN ENSIGN. menade their shade afforded in the hot days of summer, when only a patch of blue sky, or the golden rays falling aslant, could be seen at times through their foliage. Engrafted in the later Tudor times upon the ruins of Khoscadzhel, of which there is still re- maining the fragment of a loopholed tower and ponderous granite arch shrouded in ivj', with its modern porte-cochere and vestibule floored with marble, its mullioned windows filled in with plate glass in lieu of little lozenge-panes, its dining hall and drawing rooms lighted with gas when such was the wish of its proprietor, the mansion, though retaining all the characteristics of the days when Queen Bess held her court at Greenwich and danced before the Scottish ambassador, had never- theless all the comforts, appliances and splendour, with which the taste and wealth of the present age could invest it. The great dining-hall had remained almost un- changed since the days of the first Charles. Its vast chimney-piece, which rose nearly to the ceiling, was covered with marvellous scrolls and legends, and innumerable wild cats' heads among them, over all being the arms of Trevelyan of Lamorna ; gules, a demi- horse argent issuing from the sea, adapted from the circumstance of one of the family swim- ming on hoiseback from the Seven Stones to the EHOSCADZHEL. 21 Land's End, when they were suddenly separated from the continent by a terrible inundation of the ocean, and as this dangerous reef is no less than nine miles from Scilly, where a light-ship points it out to the mariner, the feat was well worthy of being recorded, at least in heraldry. The furniture here was quaint and old, massive and richly carved, and though the vast stone - nagged chamber, where many a Cornish cavalier has whilom drunk " confusion to Cromwell and the Rump," and where still stands the great dining table with its dais, where of old " the carles of low degree " had sat below the salt, is sombre and gloomy, somewhat of lightness is imparted by the splendid modern conservatory that opens off it, with marble floor and shelves of iron fret-work laden with rare and exotic plants. It boasts of a chamber known as " the Queen's,'' wherein Henrietta Maria had slept one night before she fled to France, and since then no one has ever occupied the ancient bed that, like a huge catafalque, stands upon three steps in the centre of the wain- scoted room which like several others in Rhoscadzhel, has hangings of faded green tapestiy, that are lifted to give entrance ; and where the hearths, intended for wood alone, have grotesque andirons in the form of the inevitable koithgath on its hind legs. And on the walls of these old chambers hung many a 82 ONLY AN ENSIGN. trophy of the past, and many a weapon of the present day, from the great two-handed sword wielded by Henry Lord Lamorna at the Battle of Pinkey down to the yeomanry sabre worn by the present peer at the coronation of George IV., a peer of whose effeminacy the said Lord Henry would have been sorely ashamed. And many a Vandyke, Kneller, and Lely were there, with portraits of the Trevelyans of past times, who now lay under their marble tombs in yonder little church upon the hill, where among dust and cobwebs hung their helmets, spurs, and gauntlets, and the iron mace of one Launcelot Trevelyan, who was a man of vast stature ; and it is as great a source of wonder to the village children as the rickety ruin of a gilded coach which at certain times is drawn forth to the lawn and aired carefully, being that in which the grandfather of the present peer brought home his bride in patches and powder, and it is supposed to be the first vehicle of the kind ever seen in the duchy of Cornwall. Thus, as Richard Pencarrow Trevelyan thought over all these possessions with their tra- ditional and family interests, of which, by one ill-natured stroke of the pen, his proud uncle might deprive him and his heirs for ever, a bitter sigh escaped him. Beyond the quaint facade of the ancient house, RHOSCADZHEL. 23 from the mullioned windows of which, half hidden by ivy and wild roses, there streamed out many a light into the darkness, his eyes wandered to the fertile fields, all bare stubble now, to the wide open moor overlooked by many a wooded tor, and to the beautiful lawn, in the centre of which stands one of those wonderful logan-stones, so peculiar to Cornwall and Brittany, a ponderous, spheroidal mass of granite, so exquisitely balanced that it may be oscillated by the touch even of a woman's hand ; and as he turned away to indulge in deeper reverie by the shore of the adjacent sea, he raised his right hand and his glistening eyes to the stars, as if some vow, as yet unuttered, was quivering on his tongue. " Yes ? " he exclaimed, " please God and pray God, the time will come; but not as my good uncle, and not, as the careful Downie, anticipate. Mar- riage ! how little do they know how, in the great lottery of life, my kismet — as we used to say in India — has been fixed — irrevocably fixed ! " CHAPTER III. THE ALARM BELL. The season was autumn now, and on the suc- ceeding day — the last he meant to spend at Rhos- cadzhel for some time at least — Richard Trevelyan appeared in the breakfast parlour again in shooting costume, with a scarlet shirt having an open collar, and with a brown leather shot-belt over his shoulder ; while his uncle, who, even when at his slender morning repast, in his elaborately flowered dressing- gown, wore accurately fitting pale kid gloves on his shrivelled hands, for such things were a necessity of the old lord's existence ; thus he glanced again with an air of annoyance at the dress worn by his eldest nephew, as he considered it a solecism, decidedly in bad taste, and that something more was due to his own presence. Downie's costume, a fashionable morning coat came more near his lordship's ideas of propriety. Mr. Jasper Funnel, in accurate black, was at the side-table, to slice down the cold meat, pour out the coffee from its silver urn into the beautiful Wedge- THE ALARM BELL. 25 wood cups, and to carve the grouse and other pies ; for Cornwall is peculiarly the land of that species of viand, as there the denizens make pies of everything eatable, squab-pies, pilchard-pies, muggetty-pies, and so forth. " I heard last evening the new chime of bells you have put up in Lamorna Church," said Richard, as he seated himself and attacked a plate of grouse, the recent spoil of his own gun; " how pleasantly they sound. Who rings them ? " " I cannot say — never inquired," replied the old peer, testily; "I can only tell you one thing, Richard." " And that is " " They were wrung out of my pocket by the vestry." At this little quip, Downie obsequiously and ap- plaudingly laughed as loudly as he was ever known to do, and just as if he had never heard it before. " However, I need not grudge the poor people their chime of bells ; I am rich enough to afford them more than that, and occupying as we do a good slice of this Land of Tin, for so the Phoenicians named this Cornish peninsula of ours as early as the days of Solomon, we have its credit to maintain; but bring us home a well-born and handsome bird, Dick, and I shall have the bells rung till they fly to pieces — by Jove I will! Only, as I hinted last 26 ONLY AN ENSIGN. night, let her be worthy to represent those who lie under their marble tombs in that old church of Lamorna; for there are bones there that would shrink in their leaden coffins if aught plebeian were laid beside them." Eichard shrugged his shoulders, and glanced round him with impatience. " Let us look forward, my dear uncle," said he ; " in this age of progress all men do ; and of what account or avail can a dead ancestry be ? " Downie smiled faintly, and Lord Lamorna frowned in the act of decapitating an egg, for to his ears this sounded as rank heresy or treason against the state. " By heavens ! nephew Eichard, you talk like a Eed Eepublican. With these socialistic views of equality, and so forth, I fear you will never shine in the Upper House." " I have no desire to do so ; you see how simple my tastes are " " In dress decidedly too much so." " And how happy and content I am to lead the life of a quiet country gentleman ; and have done so ever since I left the Cornish Light Infantry." " Your demands upon my pocket are certainly so moderate, that I cannot think you are playing me false, Dick," said the peer, with a pleasant smile ; " egad, if I thought you were doing so, I'd have you THE ALARM BELL. 27 before the Mayor of Halgaver, as our Cornish folks say! "Trust me, my good uncle," replied Richard Trevelyan, with a glistening eye, and laying a hand caressingly on the old mans shoulder, as he rose and adjusted his shot-belt; " and now I go to have a farewell shot on the moors." "Why a farewell shot? you have been here barely a fortnight." "Nevertheless, I must leave Rhoscadzhel to- morrow." " Positively ? " " Yes, uncle." " Pardon me," continued Lamorna, drily ; " but may we inquire for where ? " " Oxford — and then town after, perhaps." " Oxford — and town too," replied his uncle, testily ; "the last time you left this for London, if General Trecarrel was right, you were seen for a month after in his neighbourhood; and, if his story were true — and I dare not doubt it — you did not get beyond the border of Cornwall — and were cer- tainly not so far as Devonshire." "Trecarrel was, I hope, mistaken," urged Richard. "I hope so, too." Richard's face was pale, and to conceal his emotion, he stooped and caressed his favourite pointer, which had bounded in when the butler opened the door ; 2b ONLY AN ENSIGN. and soon recovering from his little agitation — what- ever its secret source might be — he politely and affectionately bade his uncle " good-bye for the present," nodded to the silent and observant Downie, took a double-barrelled breech-loader from the gun-room and sallied forth, unattended by game- keepers, desiring quite as much to indulge in reverie and enjoy a solitary ramble, as to have a shot at a passing bird. To Richard it seemed that he had read a strangely keen, weird and unfathomable expression in his uncle's eyes, as they followed his departing steps on this particular morning — an expression which, somehow, haunted him. The season, we have said, was now autumn, and a tender, mellow tone rested over all the landscape ; Richard Trevelyan was fond of the strange, wild district — the land of old tradition, of bold and varied scenes — amid which his youth and so much of his manhood had been passed, and he looked around him from time to time with admiring eyes and an enthusiastic heart. A soft warm shower had fallen that morning early, refreshing the fading September leaves in the belts of coppice that girt the upland slopes, and in the orchards, where the ripe golden apples were dropping amid the thick sward below. Above the purple, and often desolate moors which are so THE ALARM BELL. 29 characteristic of Cornish scenery, and where the small breed of horses, the little black cattle and sharp-nosed sheep of the province were grazing, the wooded tors or hills stood boldly up in the distance, their foliage in most instances presenting many varied tints. There were the brown madder, the crisped chesnut, and the fading beech, the more faded green of the old Cornish elm, and the russet fern below, from amid which at every step he took the birds whirred up in coveys ; while Richard, lost in reverie — the result of his uncle's remarks of late — never emptied a barrel at them, but walked slowly on looking round him from time to time, and filled with thoughts that were all his own as yet. The place where he loitered was very lonely : here and there a gray lichen -spotted druidical monolith stood grimly up amid the silent waste ; in the distance might be seen the gray expanse of the ocean, or some bleak looking houses slated with blue, as they usually are in Devon and Cornwall, or perhaps some of those poorer huts, which, like wigwams, have cob-walls ; i.e. are built of earth, mud, and straw, beaten and pounded together, just as they might have been in the days of Bran the son of Llyr, or when Arthur dwelt in Tintagel. Richard Trevelyan threw himself upon a grassy bank, and his pointer, doubtless surprised by his neglect of all sport, lay beside him with eyes of 30 ONLY AN ENSIGN. wonder and tongue out-lolled. In the distance, about a mile or so away, Trevelyan could see Kkoscadzhel House shining in the morning sun- light; and again, as on the preceding evening, he looked around with a bitter smile upon tor and moorland, and on the wondrous druid monoliths that stand up here and there on the bleak hill sides, each and all of them having their own quaint name and grim old legend. How came each to be there ? " Without patent rollers ; nay, without the simplest mechanical con- trivances of modern times, how was so huge a mass transported to yonder desolate and wind-swept height? How many yoke of oxen, how many straining scores of men must it have taken to erect the least of them ! What submission to authority, what servile or superstitious fear must have ani- mated the workers ! No drover's whip would have urged to such a task ; no richest guerdon could have repaid the toil ; yet there the wonder stands ! " And some such thoughts as these floated through the mind of Richard, as his eyes wandered from a cromlech or slab that rested on three great stones, to a vast maen or rock-pillar, that might be coeval with the days when Jacob set up such a stone to witness his covenant with Laban. " Shall I ever wander here with Constance — and if so, when," thought he; " assuredly not while my THE ALARM BELL. 31 uncle lives ; but Lis death — how can I contemplate it, when he is so good, so kind, so tender, and so true to me ? Oh, let me not anticipate tliat." How often in autumn, in the gloomy mornings of November, had he pursued the fox over these desolate moors, often breakfasting by candle-light in his red coat on a hunting morning, to the great boredom of old Jasper Funnel ? What joy it would be to gallop over that breezy wind-swept moor, with Constance by his side ! To walk with her through j^onder dense old thicket, and tell her that every tree and twig therein were her own; to drive by yonder cliff, Tol Pedn Pen- with, the western boundary of a beautiful bay, and where in the summer evening, the forty Isles of Scilly seemed to be cradled in the glory of the western sun ; to show her all these places with which he was so familiar, and perhaps to tell their children in the years to come — for all Richard's habits and tastes were alike gentle and domestic — the old Cornish legends of Arthur's castle at Tin- tagel, of the magic well of St. Keyne, and of Treg- eagle the giant — the bugbear of all Cornish little people ; the melancholy monster or fiend, who according to traditions still believed in, haunts the Dozmare Pool, from whence he hurled the vast granite blocks, known as his "quoits," upon the coast westward of Penzance Head; the deep dark 32 ONLY AN ENSIGN. Pool, his dwelling place, is said to be unfathomable and the resort of other evil spirits. Desolate and begirt by arid and dreary hills, it presents an aspect of gloomy horror; and then when the winter storms sweep the moorland wastes, and the miners at the Land's End, deep, deep down in mines below the sea, hear the enormous boulders dashed by it on the flinty shore overhead, above all can be heard the howling of Tregeagle ! For ages he has been condemned to the task of emptying the Dozmare Pool by a tiny limpet- shell, and his cries are uttered in despair of the hopelessness of the drudgery assigned him by the devil, who in moments of impatience, hunts him round the tarn, till he flies to the Eoche Rocks fifteen miles distant, and finds respite by placing his hideous head through the painted window of a ruined chapel, as a bumpkin might through a horse-collar ; for these, and a thousand such stories as these, are believed in Cornwall, nor can even the whistle of the railway from Plymouth to Penzance scare them away. Richard Trevelyan was smiling when he remem- bered how often he and Downie, when loving little brothers and playfellows, had been scared in their cribs at night by stories of Tregeagle; and of that other mighty giant who lies buried beneath Carn Brea, where his clenched skeleton hand, now con- verted into a block of granite (having five dis- THE ALARM BELL. 33 tinct parts, like a thumb and fingers) protrudes through the turf. He could recal the dark hours, when as fair-haired children, they had cowered together in one of the tapestried rooms of Ehoscadzhel, and clasped each other's hands and necks in fear of those hob- goblins, which people the very rock and cavern, and even the very air of Cornwall. Downie was a man now, legal in bearing, and cold-blooded in heart. Richard had painful doubts of him, and remembered, that, strangely enough his hand alone, had always failed to rock the logan-stone in the lawn before Rhoscadzhel, and such monuments of antiquity, have, according to Mason, the properties of an ordeal — the test of truth and probity : 1 ' Behold yon huge And unhewn sphere of living adamant, Which, poised by magic, rests its central weight On yonder pointed rock : firm as it seems, Such is its strange and virtuous property, It moves obsequious to the gentlest touch Of him whose heart is pure ; but to a traitor, Tho' e'en a giant's prowess nerv'd his arm, It stands as fixed as Snowdon ! " Even the childish hands of his little daughter Gartha, could rock the logan-stone, when Downie's failed to do so. Why was this? Was there indeed any truth in the ancient test of integrity and purity VOL. I. I) 34 ONLY AN ENSIGN. of heart; or was it but an engine of religious imposition? And now amid these unpleasant speculations, there came to the loiterer's ear, the tolling of a distant bell. He started up, and listened. It was, beyond a doubt, the house -bell of Ehos- cadzhel, and was being rung violently and continu- ously, for the breeze brought the notes distinctly over the furzy waste. What could have happened? Fire — or was he wanted in haste ? Was his uncle indisposed ; were his fears, his hopes and wishes, though blended with sorrow, to be realised at last? His breath came thick and painfully, and he re- membered with something of foreboding — for his Cornish breeding rendered him superstitious and impressionable — that as he had passed Lamorna church that morning, he had seen, on the rough lichstones at the entrance to the sequestered church- yard, a coffin rested prior to interment, while the soft sad psalmody of those who had borne it thither — a band of hardy miners — floated through the still and ambient air; for the custom of bearing the dead to their last resting place with holy songs — a usage in the East, as old as the fourth century — is still observed in Cornwall, that land of quaint traditions and picturesque old memories. Springing to his feet, Bichard Trevelyan dis- THE ALARM BELL. 35 charged both barrels of his gun into the air, and hurried in the direction of the manor house. As he drew nearer, the sonorous clangour of the great bell, which was now rung at intervals, but with great vigour, continued to increase, adding to the surprise and tumult of his heart, and the perturba- tion of his spirit. CHAPTER IV. POWDERED WITH TEARS. A mounted footman, who approached him at full speed, pulled up for a moment and respectfully touched his hat, for he was one of the Lamorna household. " What is the matter ? " asked Richard. 11 Oh, sir — oh, Mr. Richard — my lord is taken very ill." " 111 — my uncle ? " " He is quite senseless, and Mr. Downie Trevelyan has sent me for the doctor." " Then ride on and lose no time," replied Richard, as he hastened to the house, where he found con- fusion and dismay predominant, the servants hover- ing in the vestibule, conversing in whispers and listening at the library door, while Jasper Funnel and Mrs. Duntreath, the old housekeeper (a lineal descendant of the Dolly Duntreath, so well-known in Cornwall), were mingling their sighs and regrets for the loss of so good a master. " Where is my uncle ? " asked Richard, impetuously. POWDERED WITH TEARS. 37 " In the lib — lib — library," sobbed the house- keeper, with her black silk apron at her eyes, and as Richard advanced, Jasper Funnel softly opened the door. The favourite nephew entered the long spacious and splendid apartment, which occupied nearly the entire length of one of the wings of Rhoscaclzhel, its shelves of dark wainscot filled by books in rare and magnificent bindings, with white marble busts of the great and learned men of classical antiquity looking calmly down on what was passing below. The fire-place was deep and old ; but a seacoal fire was burning cheerily in the bright steel modern grate; and as if he was in a dream, seeing the far stretching lawn, with its tufts of waving fern and stately lines of elm and oak, as he passed the tall windows noiselessly on the soft Turkey carpet, Richard drew hastily near the great arm-chair, in which his uncle was seated, dead — stone-dead, with Downie, somewhat pale and disordered in aspect, bending over him ! The old man had suddenly passed away — disease of the heart, as it proved eventually, had assailed him while seated at his writing-table. On Richard's entrance and approach, Downie hurriedly took from the table and thrust into his pocket, a document which looked most legally and suspiciously like a " last will and testament ; " but 38 ONLY AN ENSIGN. quick though the action, Richard could perceive that the document, whatever it was, had no signatures of any kind. Eichard knelt hy his uncle's side ; he felt his pulses ; they had ceased to beat ; his heart was cold and still, and there came no sign of breath upon the polished surface of the mirror he held before the fallen jaw; with something of remorse Eichard thought, — " No later than this morning I deceived him — and he loved me so — was ever my friend and second father ! — I thought," he added aloud, to Downie, "that his eyes wore an unusual expression this morning — a weird, keen, farseeing kind of look, such as I never read in them before." " I fancied that I perceived some such expression myself, and consequently, at his years, was the less alarmed, or shall I say shocked, when in the very act of speaking to me, a sudden spasm came over his features — a deep sigh, almost a faint cry escaped him, and he sank back in his chair, when just about to write. See, there is the pen on the floor, exactly where it fell from his relaxed fingers." Eichard's honest eyes were filled with tears, and mechanically he picked up the pen and laid it on the desk. " Writing, say you, Downie ; and what was he writing ? " POWDERED WITH TEARS. 39 " Oh, I cannot say — a letter to his steward, I believe." " But — I see no letter.' " He was just about to commence it," replied Downie, whose usually pale face coloured a little. "And that paper you pocketed in such haste, Downie, what was it ? " " Nothing, Richard, that can concern you (by-the-by, you are Lord Lamorna now !) or that fair one whose portrait you exhibit so ostentatiously just now." "Richard started, alike at the title so suddenly accorded to him by his brother, and at the reference to the portrait, for in the confusion or haste, as he bent over his dead uncle, a little miniature, which he wore at a ribbon round his neck, depicting a very beautiful dark-eyed woman, had slipped from his vest, and with an exclamation of annoyance, he hastened to conceal it. " Who is the lady, Richard ? " asked Downie. "As yet, that must remain my secret," replied Richard ; " a little time, my dear fellow, and we shall have no mysteries among us." Downie, secretly, was not ill-pleased by this diversion, in which Richard forgot the subject of the paper. The doctor soon came — a village practitioner — fussy and full of importance; but nevertheless 40 ONLY AN ENSIGN. skilful ; and he decided that disease of the heart — a malady under which, though ignorant of its existence, the deceased had long laboured — had proved the immediate cause of death. The poor shrivelled remains of the proud old lord were conveyed to the principal bed-room of the mansion, and there laid in a species of state, upon a four-posted bed, that rose from a dais, and was all draped with black. His coronet and Order of the Bath, together with that of St. Anne, which he received when ambassador in Kussia, were deposited at his feet upon a crimson velvet cushion, that was tasseled with gold ; while two tall footmen in complete livery with long canes draped with crape, mounted guard beside the coffin day and night, to their own great disgust and annoy- ance, till the time of the funeral, of which Richard took the entire charge ; and which, in a spirit of affection and good taste, he resolved should be in all respects exactly what the deceased peer would have wished it to be. The features of the latter became, for a time, young and beautiful in their manliness and perfect regularity, while all the lines engraven there by Time were smoothed out, if not completely effaced. " How like our father, as I can remember him, he looks ! " whispered Downie, more softened than usual, by the hallowing presence of death. But Richard was thinking of another face whom TOWDERED WITH TEARS. 4l the dead man resembled — a young and beloved face to him. " Denzil did you say ? " he stammered. " I said our father," replied Downie, sharply. " True, he died young," was the confused reply. • " Your mind wanders, surely ? " said Downie, with a dark and inexplicable expression in his now averted face ; but Richard saw it not, he was simply taking a farewell glance of one who had loved him so well; his manly heart was soft, and his dark- blue e} r es were full with the tears of honest affection and gratitude. So Audley Lord Lamorna was dead, and all now turned to Richard as their new and future master ; all the blinds in Rhoscadzhel were drawn down by order of Mrs. Duntreath, and all went about on tip- toe or spoke in subdued voices, especially Downie, who in his heart thought that Richard was spending " far too much in ostrich feathers, crimson coffins, and other mummery," among undertakers, and heraldic painters, too ; but he was more politic than to say so — even to his wife, who, with her daughter Gartha, a pretty girl in her teens, had been on a visit to General Trecarrel, and now duly arrived to act as mistress of the mansion, pro tern., during the solemnities of which it was to be the scene. She was warmly welcomed by Richard Trevelyan ; 42 ONLY AN ENSIGN. she was his only brother's wife, and he had none of his own to take her place there — as yet. A peevish and foolish woman of fashion, who had once possessed undoubted beauty, Mrs. Downie Trevelyan was generally treated as a kind of cypher now by her husband ; but nevertheless he consulted her at times, on certain matters of common interest. She still clung tenaciously to the tradition of her former beauty, and sought to retain it by the aid of pearl powder, the faintest indication of rouge perhaps, and by the prettiest of matronly head- dresses made of the costliest lace. She was always languid, somewhat dreary, and spent most of her time with a novel in one hand, and a magnificent little bottle of ether, or some strong perfume, in the other. To Richard her society was decidedly a bore ; but at this crisis he was full of business, and occupied by a depth of thought that was apparent to all. Six tall servants in mourning scarfs, and in the livery of the Trevelyans, bore upon their shoulders the crimson velvet coffin containing the remains of the late lord, to the vault where his forefathers lay, and where many of them had been interred by torchlight, in times long past. There was something feudal, stately, and solemn in the aspect of the procession, when between two lines of all the tenantry, standing bare-headed, it POWDERED WITH TEARS. 43 wound down the old avenue, where the leaves were almost as thick, the sun as bright, and the birds singing as merrily as they might have been when Lord Launcelot rode there by the Queen's bridle, or when he and his cavaliers fled from Fairfax to seek shelter in Trewoofe ; and so his descendant Audley was laid at last, where so many of his pre- decessors lie side by side, "ranged in mournful order and in a kind of silent pomp," each coflm. bearing the names, titles and arms of its mouldering occupant. Pondering on who might stand here when his turn came to be lowered down there, Richard, the new lord, stood at the head of the tomb, pale, and with more emotion than met the eye ; Downie stood on his right hand, and the heir of the latter, well bronzed by the sun of India, on his left, three of his younger brothers, held with a ribbon. Their old friend, General Trecarrel, stood grimly and erect at the foot. The vault was closed, and the body of Audley, tenth Lord Lamorna, that frail tenement, which he had petted and pampered, of which he had been so careful and so vain, for some seventy years, was left to the worms at last ! The assemblage dispersed, and the world went on as usual. The bell of the village church, which had all morning tolled minute strokes, ceased ; and after a 44 ONLY AN ENSIGN. time the new chimes rang out a merry peal in honour of his successor. It was in Cornwall as at St. Cloud ; le Roi est mort — vive le Roi ! The old general, who had no fancy for a man- sion of gloom, departed, and took back with him Downie's son Audley, a jolly young subaltern, whom we shall soon meet elsewhere. But prior to this departure, there had been the reading of the will, an affair of great solemnity, in the library, the same apartment where the late lord died ; and his solicitors, Messrs. Gorbelly and Culverhole, a fat and a lean pair of lawyers, felt all their vulgar importance on the occasion. There were a few handsome presents to old and faithful servants, including Jasper Funnel and Mrs. Duntreath (whose sobs became somewhat intrusive), and Richard found himself Lord of Rhoscadzhel and Lamorna, with an unfettered fortune of thirty thousand per annum ; while Downie had a bequest of less than the third of that sum, together with some jeweliy, including the Russian diamond ring for his wife and daughter Gartha. So whatever had been the object or the tenor of that document which the astute barrister had so evidently prepared, and which he had thrust into his pocket so hastily and awkwardly on that eventful morning, Richard was as safely installed in the estates as in his hereditary title ; and the moment POWDERED WITH TEARS. 45 lie found himself alone, he became immersed in letter-writing. Opening the crimson morocco blotting pad which his uncle had last used, and which had his coronet and crest, the wild-cat, stamped in gold thereon, lie saw some words written in his brother's hand, and these, on investigation proved to be, " This is the last will and testament of me, L " (doubt- less Lord Lamorna) ; further on, as if at the bottom of the page, he could detect the name of "Port- hellick," and a dark flush of passion crimsoned the face of Richard. He thought again of the docu- ment he had seen in Downie's hand ; their uncle could certainly never have signed it, but some painful doubts — added to intense sorrow for their existence — grew strong in Richard's heart, which was a true and generous one. " ]\Iy dear Constance — my long suffering darling !" he muttered, almost aloud ; " the day is now near when all your doubts and my dissimulation to the world shall end. Thank God, the time has almost come." And he rode forth, to post with his own hand a letter he had written. He was barely gone ere Downie, who had been quietly observing his motions, also made an investi- gation of the blotting pad which Richard had just closed, and therein he saw what seemed to be the address of a recent letter. He held the pink sheet 46 ONLY AN ENSIGN. between his eyes and the light, and read clearly enough, " Mrs. Devereaux, Porthellick Cottage." And the lawyer smiled sourly, but with great uneasiness, nevertheless, and he muttered aloud, " I had but vague suspicions before — and now all my knowledge has come too late — too late ! " "I am so sorry to hear you say so, dear," said his graceful little wife, the rustle of whose fashion- able mourning suit he had been too much pre- occupied to hear, as she glided into the library, in search of one of the many uncut novels that now littered the tables ; " sorry chiefly for the sake of our dear Audley, and Gartha, and the other little ones." " Your know to what I refer — the succession ; it may not be so hopeless or irreparable as we think." " But your uncle died with his will unchanged." " True; I pressed upon him lately my belief that Richard had formed that — of which he had a horror so great — a mesalliance — in fact, a low or improper attachment for one beneath us in rank and name. My uncle's fury became great, and to take advantage of the time, I placed before him a will, leaving all his estates, as he had a hundred times threatened to do, to me and mine. I had the document ready written, and placed it before him ; but as fate would have it, in his pride, fury, and resentment, a POWDEEED WITH TEARS. 47 spasm seized the old man, and he fell back dying, actually with the pen in his hand, after I had dipped it in that silver inkstand and placed it between his fingers." " How extremely unfortunate ! " said Mrs. Downie Trevelyan, placing her scent-bottle languidly to her little pink nostrils. " Unfortunate ? It was a narrow chance by which to lose thirty thousand a year ! " said Downie, grind- ing his teeth, while his eyes gleamed like two bits of grey glass in moonlight. " There is some mystery about Eichard's life ; moreover, he wears a woman's miniature at his neck." " Young — is she ? " " Well — yes — she seems so." "And pretty?" added Mrs. Downie, glancing at herself in a mirror. " Very." " His intended, perhaps ? " " I hope she is not more than that ; but time must soon show now." And over the porte-cochere of Ehoscadzhel there now hung a vast lozenge -shaped hatchment or funeral escutcheon, the sight of which would have delighted him, whose memory it was meant to honour, being the achievement of a bachelor peer, representing the arms of Lamorna in a shield com- plete — the demi-horse argent of the Trevelyans 48 ONLY AN ENSIGN. rising from the sea ; over all, the baron's coronet, crest, motto, and mantling, collared by the Orders of the Bath and St. Anne ; and after some old fashion, retained still only in Germany, Scotland, and France, the herald-painter had depicted at each corner a death-head, while all the black inter- stices were poivdered with tears. CHAPTER V. PORTHELLICK VILLA. More than forty miles distant from Rhoscadzhel, on that part of the Cornish coast which is washed by the waves of the Bristol Channel, at a place named Porthellick, or the Cove of Willows, was a beautiful white-walled villa, built in the Greek style of architecture, with an Ionic portico of six carved and painted wooden pillars. Its windows opened in the French fashion, and descended to the floor ; luxuriant creepers, jasmines, and sweet brier, were trained on green trellis-work around it, and rare plants of gorgeous colours grew in stone vases, which were placed in a double row along the smooth gravelled terrace, from which the basement of the cottage rose — for the villa was a cottage in cha- racter, being but a one storeyed dwelling, though spacious and handsome, and having a noble con- servatory and coach-house and stabling, and an approach of half a mile in length, bordered by a double line of those magnificent willows from which the place took its name, and affording. 50 ONLY AN ENSIGN. from the principal windows in front, an ample view of the sea, with ever and anon, a white sail lingering in the dim blue distance, or a passing steamer, with its pennant of smoke, streaming astern, as it sped towards Ireland or the Isle of Man. On the evening of that day when Lord Lamorna died so suddenly, a lady was standing under the portico of this house, looking anxiously, not sea- ward, but inland, towards the willow avenue, by which her residence was approached from the road that leads by Stratton, among the hills, towards Camelford and Wadebridge, near the rocky valley of Hanter-Gantick. The lady looked repeatedly at her watch, con- sulted a railway time-table, and entered the house, only to return to her post, and bend her eyes in anxious gaze along the avenue. Mrs. Devereaux, for it was she, was young-looking — marvellously so for her years ; she seemed to be quite a girl still ; yet she was fully four-and-thirty, and the mother of two children. This youthful appearance doubtless arose from her very petite and slender figure; her strictly fashionable style of dress, and the piquante beauty that shone in the minute features of her charming little face. Her eyes were dark, yet full of light and sparkle, though their long lashes imparted a great softness P0KTHELL1CK VILLA. 51 of expression. Her eyebrows were very dark and well-defined — some might have deemed them too much so j but they imparted great character to her face. Her mouth and chin were perfect ; her teeth like those of a child; and over all, her face, figure, and bearing, even to every motion of her hands and feet, Mrs. Devereaux was exquisitely lad} r -like. "At last — at last the}' come!" she exclaimed; " and 3 T onder is my dear, dear Denzil, whom I have not seen for so many, many months," she added, as her eyes filled with tears, and her soft cheek flushed with all a mother's joy. As she uttered her thoughts aloud, a little basket- phaeton, drawn by two lovely cream-coloured Shet- land ponies, was seen bowling down the avenue of pale green willows ; a 3 r oung lady was handling the ribbons of these Lilliputian steeds in a very masterly style ; and beside her sat a young man, attired in fashionable travelling costume, who was alternately waving his cap and a newspaper, which he flourished so vigorously, that the sleek, brindled cattle grazing in the clover meadows close by, lifted their great brown eyes as if inquiringly, while the little drag, with its varnished wheels flashing, dashed along towards the villa, the walls of which shone white as snow in the evening sunlight. The phaeton was reined up before the portico* E 2 LIBRARY UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS 52 ONLY AN ENSIGN. when a handsome lad of eighteen, with fine regular features, dark blue — almost black — eyes, and short fair curly hair, sprang out, and was instantly clasped to his mother's breast. " Oh, mamma — we have such news for you ! " ex- claimed the young lady, who seemed an exact re- production of Mrs. Devereaux in height and face, though barely seventeen, with dark eyes and hair ; " oh, such news ! " she added, in high, girlish ex- citement, as she tossed her whip and reins to a groom who came promptly from the stable -yard, Derrick Braddon, once a soldier in Richard's regi- ment — "Surely mamma knows all," said the youth; " have you not seen the Gazette ? " " Gazette ? " repeated Mrs. Devereaux, growing very pale, as she led her son caressingly into the little morning -room, where a hasty repast had been prepared for him and his sister, and which opened off a handsome little vestibule, hung with fox-brushes crossed, the trophies of many a hunting day, brought home by his father, " Captain Devereaux." " Denzil is now an officer, mamma," said the young girl, throwing off her hat and looking admiringly at her brother; " I was just in time to meet him at the train." " Yes, mamma — I was yesterday gazetted to an rORTHELLICK VILLA. 53 ensigncy in the Cornish Light Infantry, — got leave from Sandhurst, and at once came right slick down here. Oh, how proud papa will he — is he not here ? " " No," replied Mrs. Devereaux, faintly ; " and how does your name appear in the Gazette ? " " Here it is, mamma, dear," replied the youth, pointing to the paper he had heen flourishing, and feeling proud to see his name, for the first time, in print. "' Cornish Light Infantry; Lieutenant Audley Trevelyan, from the 14th Hussars, to be lieutenant, vice Gascoigne, killed in action. Denzil Devereaux, gentleman cadet, from the Royal Military College, Sandhurst, to be ensign, vice Foster, deceased.' And now, mamma, I am done at last with all the boredom of Euclid and fortification, Trigonometry, and all the rest of it." " And you will soon be done with poor mamma, too ! " " Nay, mamma, dear ; that can never, never be ! " replied the lad, as he threw his arms round her neck and kissed away the tears that were already oozing from her long and beautiful eyelashes ; " but I do so wish papa were at home — I have so much to tell, and so much to ask him ! " " Denzil — Devereaux ? " said the mother, ponder- in gly, and as if to herself. " Yes, mamma ; and few fellows at Sandhurst had 54 ONLY AN ENSIGN. more marks opposite their names than Denzil Devereaux, for I worked hard that I might choose my own regiment ; so I chose the 32nd because I am a kind of Cornish man, and because it was papa's old corps. Oh, how pleased he will be ! " " And where is the regiment stationed now ? " asked Mrs. Devereaux, in a low voice. " In India." " India ? " she repeated, mechanically, as if that separation, which is but as a living death, had already begun. " I wonder who the Audley Trevelyan figuring along with me in the Gazette, may be. It is a pure Cornish name." His mother was weeping now, and Sybil, who had hitherto been silent, began to do so from sympathy ; for already, so we have said, the pang of the coming parting was felt, and the maternal heart was wrung at the thought of a long and doubtful separation from her only son — her Denzil — whom she deemed beautiful as Apollo, and clever as the admirable Crichton ; for the Overland Eoute had not been opened, there was no electric cable to India, and its nearest point was distant a six months' journey by sea round the Cape ; and so, full of aching thoughts that her children could not share — thoughts that must be all her own till her husband returned — poor Mrs. Devereaux could only fold her son to her breast and rOKTHELLICK VILLA. 55 weep, till the young man's military and boyish en- thusiasm became dulled, and his naturally warm and affectionate heart grew full with a perplexity that was akin to remorse, for seeking to leave her side and push his way in the world as a soldier. Yet that was the only career his father had ever indicated to him. " A letter from papa — our dear papa ! " exclaimed Sybil, glad to cause some diversion from the gather- ing gloom, as she caught the missive from the hand of the village postman, who appeared outside the open window. " I wonder if he has heard of my appointment," surmised Denzil, his thoughts reverting to their old channel. "It is sealed and edged with black!" exclaimed Sybil ; " and — how singular — it bears the Penzance postmark! " " How is this, mamma — I thought papa was in London ? " asked Denzil. Mrs. Devereaux trembled violently, as she tore open the letter, and muttering an excuse hastily left the room with it. " What's up," said the ex-cadet, as he applied him- self to the sherry decanter ; " by Jove, Sybil, this is a strange way of receiving papa's letter. Who is dead, I wonder — I hope there is nothing wrong with him, anyway ! " 56 ONLY AN ENSIGN. " Oh, can he have met with an accident ? " " Scarcely, as the letter is written by himself; but to be at Penzance when we all thought he was in town— very odd, isn't it ? " CHAPTER VI. Richard's mystery. To explain much that the reader may have begun to suspect or misjudge, we must now go back a few years, into the private life of Richard Trevelyan. When stationed with his regiment in Montreal he had made, at some public assembly, the acquaintance of Constance Devereaux, then a girl fresh from school. He was fascinated by her rare beauty, and a certain espieglerie of manner, which the thoughts and cares of future years eventually crushed out of her ; and she, on her part, was dazzled by the atten- tions of a handsome and wealthy young officer ; for Richard being his uncle's favourite nephew and heir, received from him a handsome } r early allowance, in addition to that which he inherited from his father. Unfortunately Constance Devereaux, with all her beauty and accomplishments, was the daughter of one who would have been deemed of very humble caste indeed, if judged by the standard applied to such matters at Rhoscadzhel. The girl loved him 58 ONLY AN ENSIGN. passionately and blindly, and little foreseeing all such a step would cost her in the end, she consented to a private marriage ; so they were united in secret by Pere Latour, the catholic cure of the chapel of St. Mary, near Montreal ; an acolyte of the chapel and Richard's servant, a soldier named Derrick Braddon, being the only witnesses. The marriage was duly registered in the books of the little church, and an attested copy was lodged with the cure who performed the ceremony ; but as the regiment was ordered soon after to another colony, it was left in his hands for the time. Eichard obtained leave of absence, and soon after, much to his uncle's surprise, left the army by selling out, and led a kind of wandering life on the Conti- nent, taking his wife's name of Devereaux, the better to conceal from the proud, and as yet un- suspecting old lord, the mesalliance he had formed — a union, however; of which he had never cause to repent, for his wife was gentle and tender, and possessed many brilliant mental qualities ; but well did Eichard know that if that union were discovered, the immense fortune, which was at Lord Lamorna's entire disposal, would be left, if not altogether to Downie, to others, and past himself and the heirs of his line ; and that such a calamity should not occur he became more anxious and more solicitous after the birth of two children, a son whom he named Richard's mystery. 59 Denzil, after his own father, and a daughter, Sybil, born to them since their wanderings in Italy. Many difficulties attended the course of this secret matrimonial life ! Even in their 'continental travels, when seeking the most secluded places, stray English tourists would come suddenly upon them if they ventured near a table d'hote ; once or twice an old brother officer, or other people who knew or recognised in the so-called Captain Devereaux, Richard Trevelyan ; and then mysterious nods or knowing smiles were exchanged, and odd whispers went abroad in the clubs of London and elsewhere — innuendoes that would have withered up the heart of Constance had she heard them. She knew all that might be suspected, and felt that the positions of herself and her children, were alike false and liable to misconstruction; that malignant scandal might be busy with the names of them all. But the die was cast now, and she had but to suffer and endure ; to pray and to wait the death of the poor old man who was so kind to her husband, and who loved him so well — yet not well enough to forgive — had he ever discovered it — the deception which had been practised upon him and upon society. Repining in secret, sorrowing for the falsehood of her position, knowing that her husband, the father of her children, passed in the world as an eligible 60 ONLY AN ENSIGN. bachelor, the object of many a designing mother, open to the attentions, the coquetries and captiva- tions of their daughters, aware that he resided with her only by stealth and under another name than his own, Constance had indeed much to endure, though rewarded in some degree therefor, to see her children growing up in health and beauty, each a reproduction of their parents, for Denzil had all the personal attributes of his father, with much higher mental qualities, while the soft-eyed Sybil possessed all the dark beauty, the petite figure and lady-like grace of Constance herself. The latter, we have said, was but the daughter of a Canadian trader ; yet amid all the ease and luxmy with which her husband's ample means and tender love supplied her, there were times, when she could not but murmur in her heart at the anomaly of her situation, so different from the honest security of her father's humble home, and her native pride revolted against it ; and with this pride there grew a species of shame, which she felt to be totals- unmerited, and then she felt an utter loathing for the very name of Lord Lamorna, (though it should one day be borne by her own husband) as being the cause of all her secret suffering, her dread of the present and doubt of the future. On the education of their children, Richard, who doted on them, had spared nothing. Both were richaed's mystery. 61 highly accomplished, and wherever they had wan- dered they had the most talented masters that wealth could procure. Now Denzil had taken the highest prizes at Sandhurst and was gazetted to a Regiment of the Line, and was going forth into the world under the false name of Devereaux ! How was this to be altered — how explained and rectified ? A necessity for being much about Rhoscadzhel, as being the heir to the estates and as his uncle's years increased, had compelled Richard Trevelyan to be more often present in his native county than he had hitherto been ; hence, he had settled his secret ties in the pretty little villa of Porthellick, at what he conceived to be a safe distance of some forty miles or so from the residence of Lord Lamorna. In and about that villa he was simply known as "Captain Devereaux," and as he had almost entirely relinquished hunting and field sports — save an occa- sional shot at a bird — and when there lived a retired and secluded life ; and as his wife and children seemed to live for themselves and him only, making friends with few save the poor and ailing, time glided by, and the mystery of Richard's career was never fully laid bare. For those there are in this world (and his uncle was one) who would have pardoned Richard making 62 ONLY AN ENSIGN. Constance Devereaux his mistress, and yet would mockingly have resented his making her a wedded wife ! Lamorna's friend General Trecarrel — the repre- sentative of one of the oldest families in Cornwall — who lived near Porthellick, had met Richard on horseback more than once in the vicinity of that place, when he was supposed to he in London, Paris, or elsewhere, and the mention of these cir- cumstances caused Mr. Downie Trevelyan, who, as we have shown, had a keen personal interest in the matter, to prosecute certain inquiries in that part of the duchy, and the result led him to believe that the Captain Devereaux who occasionally resided at the Grecian Villa in the Willow Cove, and his irre- proachable brother Richard, were one and the same person ! If it were so, the character of the lady must be — he supposed — somewhat questionable; and Downie knew right well that their uncle might for- give a liaison, but never a marriage with one of an inferior grade. The conduct and bearing of the lady at the villa seemed unimpeachable ; so Downie had long felt doubtful how to act, and only indulged in vague hints to his brother's prejudice. The pride and anger even these had kindled in the heart of the old lord, who was now gone, and the threats in which he had indulged, afforded Richard's mystery. 63 Richard Trevelyan a fair specimen of what would assuredly be the result were his marriage ever known at Rhoscadzhel; and when pressed on the subject pretty pointedly, he had assured his uncle — while his cheek flushed and his heart burned with shame — that he was still unwedded and free ; and even as he made the false avowal, the soft pleading eyes of Constance, his own true wife, and the voices of their children, came vividly and upbraidingly to memory ! Now the foolish old man had passed away, the barrier was removed, and all should be made light that had hitherto been darkness, as her husband's hastily written letter informed her. Yet she thought, with honest indignation, how hard it was that she had been for all these eighteen years and more kept out of her proper sphere as the wedded wife of Richard Trevelyan, often taking almost flight from this town and that hotel, lest he should be recognised ; consigned hence to a life of secres}' and seclusion ; a life that might yet cast doubts upon the very name and birth of her children, through the whim, the old-fashioned pride and folly of an absurd and antiquated peer, whose ideas went back, even far beyond the days of his youth, when people travelled in stage-coaches, used sand and sealing-wax for letters ; when steam and telegraphy were unknown, when papers were pub- 64 ONLY AN ENSIGN. lished weekly at sixpence ; and was one who deemed that railways, electricity, penny- dailies, and what is generally known as progress, are sending all the world to ruin. Her husband's letter filled her with joy. He playfully added, " I fear I have drunk of the well of St. Keyne before you," alluding to the well-known spring near Liskeard, a draught from which the Cornish folks suppose will ensure ascendancy in domestic affairs, and the letter was signed for the first time " Your loving husband, Lamorna." How strange to her eye the new signature looked. She felt somehow that she preferred his old one of "Richard." But they were one and the same now, and a little time should see her in her place, as mistress of that stately dwelling, Rhoscadzhel, which she had only seen once from a distance, and felt then, with an emotion of unmerited humiliation, that she could not, and dared not, enter. Like all its predecessors, this letter, that con- tained so much in a few lines, was addressed to her as " Mrs. Devereaux," and she felt a momentary pang, but remembered that to have addressed her by the title, which was now so justly hers, might have sorely perplexed the rural postman of her neighbourhood. CHAPTER VII. LADY LAMORNA. It was a difficult task for Constance Devereaux to conceal her undeniable joy from her affectionate and observant son and daughter; and her heart would sometimes upbraid her that she should feel thus happy on an occasion which must cause them all to wear mourning, the external livery of at least conventional woe. Denzil and his sister attributed her alternate fits of radiance and silence to pleasure at the anticipated return of their father, who on this occasion had necessarily been longer absent than usual from the Villa at Porthellick. The equivocation and anxiety of years — years the happiness of which had in it so much of alloy — were about to be removed now ! She was at last Constance Lady Lamorna of Rhoscadzhel — the wife of him who represented one of the oldest, and perhaps, most noble families in the duchy ; but one passage in her husband's letter troubled and per- plexed her, though it caused neither fear nor doubt VOL. I. f 66 ONLY AN ENSIGN. — of one kind at least— in her loving and trusting heart. " Our marriage must still be kept a secret for a little time ; when we meet, I shall tell you why." After so much had been endured, and now when the barrier had been swept away by death, why should there be more secresy still — at a time so critical for their Denzil, too ? For a week she tortured herself with endless surmises which might have grown into actual fears but for the arrival of her husband, looking so well and so handsome, and though grave (for he had loved his generous old uncle — his second father, as he termed him), so evidently pleased and happy; and Constance thought it fortunate that their son and daughter were both absent, she had so much to say and to hear. Denzil had taken his rod and gone forth to fish in some lonely tarn amid the moors, while Sybil had driven away in the pony phaeton to visit some friend at a distance. " Here's his lord the master himself, ma'am!" said Derrick Braddon, who was the only human being in England that shared their mystery, and who was now " dying/' as the phrase is, for per- mission to share with others the great secret the faithful fellow had kept so long and so well ; and now Dick's weather-beaten visage was radiant with LADY LAMORNA. 67 pride and pleasure as he ushered Richard into the pretty little drawing-room, when, with a girlish bound, Constance sprang into his open arms. " Well, dearest Materfamilias," said he, kissing her tenderly on the proffered lips and radiant eyes ; " you are looking as young and as charming as ever — ay, even as on that eventful morning in St. Mary's, at Montreal, a morning we may remember now without fear, my own one ! " " So the poor old man is gone at last, and our days of dissimulation are over," she replied, sob- bing amid the smiles that beamed on her up-turned face. " And you have acted wisely in not adopting deep mourning yet." " Why — wisely ? " she asked, while perceiving that her husband must have doffed his black costume somewhere on the way to Porthellick, for he was as usual attired in a shooting-suit and brown-leather gaiters ; and she felt an unpleasant emotion by this circumstance, for whence this con- tinued caution, she thought ; this care, this hateful continuation of an alias, as it seemed, this playing of a double character, if all were right and clear ? and now the passage in his letter flashed upon her memory. " I said ' wisely,' dearest Constance ; because we have still a part to play." F 2 68 ONLY AN ENSIGN. " Still ? " she queried, mournfully, and her eyelids drooped. " Tell me — the children know nothing of this change in our fortunes, I hope ? " " No — and dear Denzil, you are aware, has been — gazetted." "To my old corps — so I saw; God bless the boy?" exclaimed Richard Trevelyan; "yes, but what I mean is, that I must bring you all before the world — you as the wife, and them as the children, of Lord Lamorna, with judicious care and a strength of conviction that none can doubt or challenge." " Oh Richard," said she, trembling, " I do not understand you." "Here, I am still known as Captain Devereaux; but the world, which deems me a bachelor, must be convinced that we were married to each other in facice ecclesice, as those lawyer-fellows have it; and the proofs of that circumstance must be forthcoming." "Proofs?" she repeated, faintly, as she seated herself, and grew very, very pale, for it seemed to her over- sensitive mind, as if his manner had become hard and sententious, even while he stooped over, and tenderly and caressingly held in his, her little hand whereon was the wedding ring that Pere Latour had consecrated ; and now there ensued a brief pause, for in his knowledge of her extreme LADY LAMOENA. 69 sensibility, and the amount of his own loving nature, he feared the explanation of all he meant might wound. Though some might have deemed the secresy to which he had condemned her for years (lest they might lose the large fortune now theirs) selfish ; Richard Trevelyan had ever been nervously jealous of her honour, and the honour of their innocent children ; and at times, he had accused himself of moral cowardice in his submission to the caprice of his uncle. In his heart he had always cursed the duplicity to which they had been compelled to resort, and the false position in which that duplicity had placed them all for such a length of time. All this was to be atoned for now ; but he felt that it must be done wisely, warily and surely, or, as he had said, with strength, lest the world in which he had hitherto moved as a bachelor — that selfish and suspicious bugbear called " Society " might shrug its shoulders, and ask, " Can all this story be true ? " He had some difficulty in explaining all this to Constance, but, fortunatety, what he lacked in tact, he made up for in tenderness ; yet, after a minute of silence and tears, she exclaimed with uncontrollable bitterness, " I alone am to blame ! I ought to have foreseen the difficulties with which I should encumber you ; 70 ONLY AN ENSIGN. but I was a simple, a trusting and a heedless girl! " " Nor has the trust of your girlhood been mis- placed, Constance," he urged. " What Eden is without its serpent — what house without its skeleton ? and I am yours ! " " My darling Constance, do not speak thus, and do not weep ; think if Denzil or Sybil were to return and see you thus agitated — see what they never saw before, tears in your eyes ; at least, tears so bitter as these," urged her husband, as he caressed her tenderly. " You know, my own love, that solid proofs of our marriage, beyond mere assertion, must be forthcoming ; and until these proofs are in our hands, we must appear to the world as Captain and Mrs. Devereaux; we must act wisely and warily, I repeat, for the sake of our dear children." The face of Constance became ghastly, and a dangerous gleam, such as Eichard had never seen before, was in her dark eyes, while she said, huskily, " Honest Derrick Braddon witnessed our mar- riage, Eichard." " True; but I am now a peer of the realm, and I wish the full proof of it all. You know that during the past 3 r ear I have thrice written to the Pere Latour for the certificate of our marriage, but wrote in vain, he has left my letters unanswered. I might LADY LAMORNA. 71 employ those lawyers, Gorbelly and Culverhole to sift the matter, but to use their aid, might set abroad a scandal at once ; hence I now propose to start b} r the first steamer for America to get the necessary documents in person, and Derrick Braddon shall accompany me." " And may not I ? " she pleaded, softly. " No, darling Constance, I shall be gone for more than a month — for two, perhaps, and you have to get Denzil fitted out for his regiment — my poor Denzil, I shall grudge those two months' loss of his society fearfully, as you may suppose." " Pardon my momentary bitterness, dearest Eichard, but after so much endurance, after such long concealment — " her voice failed her, and wreathing her soft arms round his neck, she nestled her little head on his breast, and whispered with a sigh, as if her heart would burst, " is it irrevocable — and must I too, be separated from my boy ? " "It is but for a time, Conny — no young fellow should be idle ; and a year or so in the army " " And he will return, Richard " " As the son and heir of Lord Lamorna ! " " But oh, how I shall miss him ! " " You will have Sybil and me ! " "But you, too, I am about to lose," " For a time only ; and do not speak so forbod- ingly, dear Constance.''' 72 ONLY AN ENSIGN. " I felt such disappointment that Denzil should appear at Sandhurst, and even in the Gazette, not as a Trevelyan, hut as a Devereaux ! " " And a Devereaux he deems himself, and must continue to do so, till I return from Montreal. Old Trecarrel is going in command to India, and when matters are all squared here, I'll get Denzil on his Staff with ease. We have been the victims of circumstances ; have I not a thousand times said, that if my uncle had discovered our marriage, we should have lost all ? He is gone at last ; but you know, Conny darling, that his ideas were simply absurd — in some respects suited only to the middle - ages — the middle ages do I say ? By Jove, to those when the Anglo-Saxons wore coats of paint, and dyed their yellow hair blue. But are things arranged in this world wisely, think you, Con- stance ? " " I dare not impugn the plans of a beneficent Providence." " But Providence never meant the conditions of life to turn out as they too often do." " How, Richard," she, asked gently ; " I don't quite understand you ? " "That the greatest number of the rich, the power- ful and the most successful — by flukes, perhaps — are fools or knaves." "Ah, but if riches brought talent — the wealthy LADY LAMORNA. 73 and powerful would be too happy, and Fate or Pro- vidence do not make them so. "I cannot express to you how my heart was wrung with jealous envy, and even with shame, when I saw Downie's family stand around my uncle's grave, and enjoying all the freedom and hospitality of Rhoscadzhel — even his cold-blooded, fashionable wife, too — and thought how my own three tender loves were debarred " " And unknown — " " Yes d — n it, unknown, and must be for a few weeks still, but time cures all evils, and it will cure this. Yet is not the gazetting of the two cousins, Denzil and- the oldest of Downie's four boys, in one paragraph, and to my old corps, too a remarkable coincidence — all the more so, that they are ignorant of each other's existence ? " " My poor Denzil — he is so bright and clever! " " Ay, more clever than ever I was. In my time, when I met you so happily in pleasant Montreal, one could be a fair average soldier without all the polyglot accomplishments so necessary now, when he who quits Sandhurst as a candidate for a com- mission direct, with five shillings and threepence per diem to further his extravagance, might quite as well come out for the Church or Bar, with the chance of a safer and better paid berth in either." 74 ONLY AN ENSIGN. " And he joins his regiment as a Devereaux— my poor boy ! " " Still harping on that string!" said Richard, a little impatiently. " On my return when matters are all sorted and made clear by the legal docu- ments, Denzil and Sybil must be simply told, that my succession to estates and a title have necessitated a change of name." " But our Denzil is no longer a boy — and I shall almost blush for my past duplicity, before my own girl!" " Come, come, Conny, this is foolish ; what is done cannot be undone, and it is useless to cry over spilt milk." " And how to explain this absence, for perhaps two months, you say, when they have been longing every hour for your return from London, where they believed you to be ? " " I know not yet, Constance ; but a little time will make all things clear. We had no marriage contract — a love- sick subaltern and a schoolgirl were not likely to think of such a thing — we had only the brief certificate deposited with Pere Latour ; but a will executed by me, in favour of you and the children shall make all right and secure ; and now my little wife, for a biscuit and glass of dry sherry, as I have ridden this morning all the way from beyond Launceston." LADY LAMORNA. 75 Constance retired for a minute to bathe her eyes, to smooth her hair, and came back to look composed and smiling ; for she had still to act a part. The hour for which she had so pined and yearned — especially since her son Denzil first saw the light in a lonely village among the Apennines — the time when she should take her place as the wife of Richard Trevelyan, (not that she cared for the wealth that place might bring her) had come ; and yet there were fresh delays to be endured by her, and now it might be dangers dared by him she loved so well ; but he strove in his honest, manly, and affectionate way to cheer her ; and as he filled his glass with the sparkling golden sherry, he kissed her once more as if they were lovers still and said merrily, " I drink to your speedy welcome home, my dear little Lady Lamorna ! " CHAPTER VIII. THE BROKEN CIRCLE. Sybil who was clever with her pencil, made up quite a collection of sketches from her portfolio, a pleasant labour of love, for Denzil to take with him, as a souvenir of herself and their beloved Cornwall, and skilfully the girl's able hand and artistic eye had reproduced the wondrous stone avenues of Dart- moor and Merivale, the Stone Pillar of St. Colomb, the Cliff Castles of Treryn, Tintagel and elsewhere, with many a pretty and peaceful cottage scene. Preparations for her husband's journey, and more than all, the Indian outfit of Denzil, luckily occupied the attention of Constance for a time ; thus her hands and those of Sybil were fully employed, and the minds of both had no leisure to brood over the coming separation. Weary of the monotony of life at the villa, great was the delight of old weather-beaten Dick Braddon, to "be off" as he said, " to see the world once more with the master," whom he loved only second perhaps to Denzil, whose free frank bearing charmed THE BROKEN CIRCLE. 77 the veteran, who averred that he was exactly like what his father was, when he joined the Cornish Light Infantry, a cherry-cheeked ensign, long ago in America. But the hour of separation drew near, when both father and son were to leave Porthellick, and depart each upon their long watery journey ; — the former to America, and the latter to what seemed the other end of the world — India ; and the heart of Constance began to sink in spite of herself. " Oh, Richard," she whispered once, with her soft face nestling in her husband's neck, while his pro- tecting arm went kindly round her ; " the greatest joy on earth is to possess a child — the greatest woe to lose it! The loss of our parents we may, and must, in the course of time anticipate ; but the loss of our children — never! " " But Denzil will return, Conn}- — you would not have the boy tied to your apron-strings, like S} T bil?" urged Richard, laughing to cheer and rouse her; but, nevertheless, the rank, title and fair fortune now before them all, the mother's anxious heart foreboded sorrow in the future ; and now came the last night her boy was to sleep under his father's roof, ere he was to go forth into the world — forth like a branch torn from its parent stem. When all were in slumber that night, poor Con- stance stole in to watch her Denzil as he slept. The 78 ONLY AN ENSIGN. feeble rays of the night-lamp played on the features of her boy, and on the glitter of a laced scarlet-coat and gold epaulettes that hung on the pier glass. With the vanity natural to youth, he had been contem- plating himself in his Kegimental finery ere he went to repose, and his bullock-trunk and overland, lettered for "India," were among the first things that caught her eye, bringing more home to her heart the fact of his departure. He was still hers ! To-morrow he should be far away from her, out on the great and stirring highway of life — her petted boy no longer ; and smiles, like ripples upon shining water, seemed to spread over the smooth face of the sleeping lad, even as the tears gathered in the eyes, and prayer in the heart of the mother who watched him for a time, with her hands clasped, and stole away with many a backward glance, thinking how lonely she should be when that hour on the morrow came. And this tall and handsome lad — this young- soldier going forth to carry the Queen's colours in the distant East, was once her " baby boy," the child she had borne, nursed and nurtured. She had a sweet and sad, yet proud and joyous consciousness in this. Had he been weakly, deformed or crippled, she should have loved him all the same; but then, thank God! her Denzil was so handsome. THE BROKEN CIRCLE. 79 Often in far-away lands, on weary marches, in comfortless tents and rickety bungalows, on the banks of the ^Sutlej, or amid hostile Sikhs and Afghans, would he dream of the soft and loving face that had been bent in silence over his — the face he never more might see, save in those kind visions that God sends in sleep, to soothe — it may be, to sadden and to warn us. " No child can ever know how dearly its parents love it — how they suffer in its illness, loss or depar- ture," whispered Constance to herself; " still," she thought upbraidingly, " I left my poor father to sorrow in his humble home at Montreal — but then it was with a husband, so dear and true!" The child that is ill or absent, is always valued the most; so poor Sybil was almost forgotten by her mother for the time. A few hours more, and both husband and son had left her in tears, to separate in London, each to pursue his own journey. Of Richard's ultimate intentions, Denzil and. Sybil were to be left in ignorance, and also of the object and purport of his absence. So Constance was left with her daughter only by her side. The poor mother's heart felt as if thrust back upon herself now, for she was the mistress of a great family secret, which, as yet, she could not share even with Sybil. So the long dreaded " to-morrow," had come, and 80 ONLY AN ENSIGN. other morrows followed, and Constance began to feel herself most sadly alone. Often she stole into the well-known room to kiss the pillow on which her Denzil's cheek had rested; to weep over the bed as if a death had been there, and not the departure of a gallant boy full of hope and life; and on each occasion as she lingered there, she strove to pourtray in fancy his face, as she last saw him, sleeping all unconscious that she hovered near; and with a wild but loving presentiment and hope that he would again occupy it some day, she kept his room intact, exactly as he had left- it; his books, his fencing foils on those particular shelves, his old hat stuck round with fishing flies, on that particular peg where he was wont to hang it; his rods and guns, in yonder corner; though every detail, such as these, reminded her of him more vividly, fed her grief and roused the intense long- ing for his presence and return to her arms again. " India — India ? " she would say half aloud when communing with herself; "it may be ten years of separation. Ten years ! Oh— no, never, surely ! With my Eichard's great influence as a peer of the realm, that must never be permitted. In ten years what changes must inevitably happen; who may be alive then, and who dead? Sybil should then be seven-and-twenty — married perhaps — and to whom? — with children it may be — my poor innocent THE BROKEN CIRCLE. 81 Sybil! Oh no; three years at the utmost, and Denzil shall be again by his mamma's side ! " So the lonely Constance pondered, hoped and lovingly spun out like a web, her desires or mental view of the future, striving to gather happiness therefrom; while Sybil sought in vain to cheer her with music, to lure her out for a walk in the wil- lowed dell, or a drive along the coast road, in their pretty pony phaeton. The month was October now. With a sullen wail the autumnal blasts swept from the wooded hollows of Moorwinstow to the cavernous head- land of Tintagel, cresting before their breath the waves of the Bristol Channel. There came gusts of rain too, that beat dolefully on the window panes, with an angry and impatient patter, adding to the dreariness of heart experienced by those in the Villa of Porthellick. The season was bleak, and no- where could it seem more so than among the barren moors, the sea-beat bluffs, and resounding caverns, the wind swept pasture lands and promontories of Cornwall. The woods were almost bare ; the few remaining leaves, fluttered brown and crisp on the bared twigs; the stackyards were full, and the produce of the potato fields was consigned to long brown pits of fresh earth and straw, for the coming winter; the uplands were covered with decaying stubble, or 82 ONLY AN ENSIGN. being ploughed, while, gorged with worms, the great crows sat sleepily in the shining furrows. Thick as gnats in summer, the dingy coloured sparrows twittered in the hedgerows, which were being lopped and trimmed; and the axes of the woodmen were heard in thicket and copse; while the smoke of the steam-engine that worked and drained the adjacent copper-mine, hung low in the frowsy air, adding at times to the gloom of the landscape. Richard Trevelyan had sailed, and Denzil too; and Constance was aware that each of them had to traverse a wintry sea, the former before he returned and the latter before he reached his destination. The public prints had duly announced that " the Right Hon. Lord Lamorna and suite (i.e. old Derrick Braddon) had gone for a tour in America;" and Denzil if his eyes ever saw the announcement — which is doubtful — could little have dreamed how nearly it concerned him, and the mother on whom he doted, and whom he still knew only as " Mrs. Devereaux." The latter had to make many an excuse, even to Sybil, to account for her husband's protracted absence from the villa ; and Downie Trevelyan, when he read the above announcement in the " Morning Post," wiped his gold eye-glass and read it again with much perplexity and secret annoyance, while surmising " what the deuce could take THE BROKEN CIRCLE. 83 Richard so suddenly to America at this season of the year ! " The new task and anxiety of watching the ship- ping intelligence next occupied the attention of Constance. The steamer in which Richard sailed, had been seen, signalled and spoken with in sun- dry Atlantic latitudes and longitudes ; and some seventeen days or so saw her safely at the end of her voyage; but the transport, a great Indiaman with Denzil on board, was seldom heard of, some at long dates ; and at longer dates too, came his hastily written letters from St. Helena, and from Ascension, or by homeward-bound ships; few men, even of the most wealthy, thought then of proceed- ing to India by the scarcely developed overland route ; and how fondly those letters were read over and over again, the last thing at night, and the first in the morning, the mother, situated as Constance was then, may imagine ; for the loving little family circle was broken now. o 2 CHAPTER IX. FOREBODINGS. If ever Constance left the villa, she sought the direction of the coast, and when there never wearied of watching the wide expanse of the Bristol Chan- nel with its passing ships and steamers; for the changing ocean was the path hy which her loved ones were to return to her ; Richard, within a month perhaps, now ; but their son Denzil — oh, years must elapse, her heart foreboded and knew, ere she should see him again. And now as the season advanced, and storms and wrecks among the Scilly Isles and about the Land's End were not unfrequent, her soul became a prey to nervous fears, that were fed and fostered in spite of herself by Derrick's sister, Winny Braddon, a superstitious old Cornish woman, who had been Sybil's nurse. Winny, a devout believer in dreams, visions, the virtues of miraculous wells and so forth, was wont to declare that when all specifics failed she had been cured of rheumatism by crawling through the FOREBODINGS. 85 famous Men-an-tol, or Holed Stone near Lanyon; and now she shook her grey head ominously when the wind blew a gale and rolled a heavy surf upon the shore, and averred that she could hear the wreck-bells booming under the sea at Boscastle. So Constance, though naturally free from all idle fancies save that which we may term the affectionate superstition of the heart, could not listen to the croaking of this old woman without vague and growing fear; for though Winny knew nothing of the interest that " Mrs. Devereaux" had in the family of Lamorna, or her connection therewith (Derrick having kept his secret well) those sounds amid the deep at Boscastle were supposed by Cornish tradi- tion to bode evil to the line of Trevelyan. For it would appear, as Winny Braddon related, that long ago the villagers of Boscastle were very envious of the melodious and musical bells that were rung in the church of Tintagel, to which they were a gift from its superior the Abbot of Fonte- vrault in Normandy. So De Bottreaux who was lord of the manor, and the site of whose castle is now marked by a green mound only, to gratify those villagers who were his vassals, ordered from London a merry peal for the spire of Boscastle church; and those bells were duly shipped on board a vessel named the Koitligath caravel, for her captain, Launcelot Trevelyan, was a younger son of 86 ONLY AN ENSIGN. the family of Lamorna. He had been a wild fellow, of whose future career evil had been pre- dicted by a Pyrdrak Brdz (old Cornish for a great- witch) who dwelt in the Zawn Reeth, a granite cavern at Nans Isal, on the western side of the bay so named — a wild and savage place surrounded by masses of scattered rock. So Master Launcelot ran off to sea, and served under Drake and Hawkins in many a dark and desperate day's work among the Spaniards in Brazil, Madeira, and the Cape de Verde; and had once been round the Cape of Storms as far as the realms of that mysterious personage then known as Prester John. Thus in due time, steered by Paul Poindester, a famous pilot from the Scilly Isles, the Koithgath, with the bells on board, arrived in the offing and in sight of Boscastle, with all its furzy hollows, above which rose the castle of Bottreaux, with the standard of its owner flying — a great banner, bear- ing three toads and a griffin. As the ship drew in shore, the bells of Tintagel church, that towers still on a bleak, exposed, and lofty cliff to the westward of King Arthur's castle, rang out a taunting and a joyous peal that mingled with the booming of the ocean as it rolled on the bluffs below, or far up the sandy bay of Trebarreth Strand. FOREBODINGS. 87 Then, according to the story, Launcelot Tre- velyan swore an exulting oath as he surveyed the stupendous scenery of his native shore, adding, "I am here again — thank my good ship and her canvas I" "Nay," said the old pilot Poindester, as he reverently lifted his hat, "rather thank God and St. Michael of Corn wall." "By Heaven," rejoined Trevelyan, "I thank myself and the fair wind only." Poindester though fearless, for he was a native of those dangerous Isles where for one who dies a natural death nine are drowned, rebuked this irreverence, on which the wild Trevelyan stormed and blasphemed, and forgetting to heed his compass or steerage, permitted his caravel to be dashed ashore, just as a sudden storm came on, and the waves of the Bristol Channel hurled her on the cliffs of the Black Pit, where every soul on board perished, save old Paul Poindester. From the high gilded poop of his caravel, Launcelot Trevelyan, with a fierce malediction, cast into the sea, before it swallowed him up, the silver whistle and chain, his badge of naval authority, the gift of Sir Francis Drake, lest it should become some wrecker's prey; and as the timbers parted, and the ship went down into the angry sea, the clangour of the bells resounded in her hold ; and there to this day they 88 ONLY AN ENSIGN. are heard by people loitering on the shore, when storms are nigh — or when aught is about to happen to the family of Lamorna, add the superstitious folks of Cornwall. " Oh why did this absurd old woman relate such a boding story to me ? " thought Constance, for situated as she was, she had become somewhat of a prey to gloomy and grotesque fancies ; hence, often in the night she would dream of wrecks, and seem to hear the sound of alarm-bells in her ear, and starting from bed, would draw up the window-blind and look forth to see if a storm was raving without, forgetting then, even though it were so, all might be calm and peaceful elsewhere. Then when she saw the autumnal moon in all its unclouded glory flooding her chamber and her white night-dress with silver lustre ; that all was calm and still, the diamond-like stars sparkling above the dark willows in the glen, or the darker woodland in the distance; and that no noises came to her listening ear, but perhaps the bark of a house-dog, or such as may be aptly termed the sounds of night and silence, she would go back to her lonely pillow with a prayer on her lips for those who were absent, and for all who were on the sea. A letter from Richard, made her supremely happy ! He had reached Montreal in safety. The poor FOREBODINGS. 89 old cure of the secluded little chapel of St. Mary — the good Pere Latour — was dead, and had been so for some time ; hence the reason that her husband's letters had remained unanswered. Even the little acolyte, the other witness of their marriage, had gone to his last home; and now in memory, Constance could recal the thin, spare figure of the old clergyman, with his white hair brushed behind his ears, his peculiar shovel hat, long black soutane, cape and gaiters to the knee — for he had been a man of the old school of French colonial priests. " His little chapel and vestry, both built of wood, as you will remember, Conn}', were burned down three years after our regiment left the city," con- tinued Richard's letter ; " and all the Records there perished in the flames ; among other things, the volume of the Register in which our marriage was entered. But, most providentially, the suc- cessor of Latour in the poor incumbency, found among some of his papers, the signed copy — or rather I should say, the original of our marriage lines or certificate — which we had never received. It is now in my jiosscssion, and I have folded it inside a will which I prepared on the voyage out — a will clearest Conny, in which, to make all certain for the future — as there are those at home, whom I doubt — I leave all I have in the world to you for life, and to Denzil and Sybil after you, 90 ONLY AN ENSIGN. absolutely. Your poor father and mother are interred not far from the grave of Pere Latour, and I have ordered white marble crosses to be erected to the memory of the three. I shall sail for England a fortnight hence, in the steamer Admiral, and till then, shall renew in sweet fancy the days of our loverhood, by many a ramble about Montreal ; by Hochlega, the picturesque site of the old Indian village, now its eastern suburb; the nine aisles of the great Cathedral; the gardens of the Convent of Notre Dame, and among the mountains close by — in many a shady walk and lane ; and Heaven and myself alone can know how I miss you and our dearest Sybil, and how I am longing to return." It was signed " Lamorna." " My dear, dear Kichard ! V sobbed the wife, while her tears of joy fell fast. "All the places I mention, you must remember well," he added in a postscript; "and you may imagine how sad it is for me to wander alone where once we were so happy together." " He was to sail in a fortnight from the date of his letter," thought Constance, with a glow of pleasure in her heart; " he must now be on the sea! and in a fortnight from this, I shall see him again — my dear, dear husband — so kind, so good, so true and thoughtful, even to mark, unasked by me, the last resting-place of poor mamma and papa — and FOREBODINGS. 91 even of the good Pere Latour. The latter act, is in itself, a compliment to me." Then an emotion of terror seized her, as she perused the letter again. What if the attested copy of those important " lines," their certificate of marriage, had perished in the same fire which consumed the wooden chapel, the vestry, and its registers! What then would have been her fate, and more than all, by sequence, the fate and position of the children she idolised — her proud boy Denzil, and the beautiful Sybil, now budding on the verge of womanhood ? A stigma — a stain — she could never remove, might have been on them, to the end of their lives ; and her soul seemed to die within her as she thought of the peril — the narrow escape, they had all made ! She thanked Heaven with fervour in her heart, and again and again, it swelled with gratitude to her husband, and with love for him and confidence in him ; with joy, too, that he would so soon hear all this from her own loving lips — for in a few days now, the Admiral would be due in the Thames ! CHAPTER X. THE LONELY TARN. While Constance Trevelyan — or Lady Lamorna, for so we ought to name her, though still known only as Mrs. Devereaux — was counting the hours of her husband's absence, and looking forward fondly to his return, Sybil, unnoticed, was absent from home more often and for longer periods than had been her wont; and the mother, preoccupied by her own secret thoughts, and anxiety for those who were far distant, failed to remark the circum- stance till it was incidentally mentioned by Winny Braddon. When questioned, Constance remarked with con- cern, that Sybil blushed deeply, and hastened to show her sketch-book, now nearly full, as an evidence of her artistic industry, and the progress she had made ; she did not add with whom, or that she had a lover. She who never before had a secret from her mamma, was beginning to have one now; and had the latter looked more closely at the sketch-book, she might have found traces and THE LONELY TARN. 93 touches of a bolder and more masterly pencil than Sybil's ; and it all came to pass thus. A mile or two from the Villa of Porthellick, there lies a lake, which had been a favourite resort of her brother Denzil when fishing for pike ; and of this place, and a great old Druidical stone that stands thereby, Sybil wished to make a sketch, and on a suitable day proceeded thither with all her appa- ratus, as she was anxious to have her production finished before her papa's return. It was a lonely tarn, deep and dark, yet there the bright green leaves and snowy flowers of the water lilies floated, and the voracious pike which rose at times to snap a fly or so, went plunging to the oozy bottom at the sight of aught so unusual as a human being invading the solitude. There were within its circuit, three tinj' willow- tufted isles, where the water- ducks built their nests amid the osiers, and near which an occa- sional wild swan flapped defiance with its wings among the floating lilies that impeded its stately progress. On the hill slopes the varied tints of autumn were in all their beauty; the ripened apples and pears were dropping among the long grass of many an orchard ; green } r et lingered amid the foliage of the old Cornish elms ; but the beeches were almost blood red, and the oaks were crisped and brown. 94 ONLY AN ENSIGN. In the calm depth of the tarn was reflected the shadow of the giant stone pillar, around which the storms, the winds and rain of perhaps three thou- sand years had swept; yet there it stood, solid, silent, grim and monstrous. Could that stone have spoken, what a tale it might have told of savage rites and human sacrifice ; what a history unfolded of races long since passed away or merged in others — the men of days before even the galleys of the Phoenicians cast anchor in Bude Bay, when their crews came to barter for tin with the wild abori- gines of Cornwall. Sybil, seated on a little camp-stool, was so intent upon her work, that some time elapsed before she perceived that another artist — whether professional or, like herself an amateur, she could not determine — was similarly occupied not far from her; and insensibly her eye wandered, from time to time, in the direction of this stranger. He was decidedly a handsome young man, whose grey tweed suit and round hat of grey felt, en- circled by a narrow crape band, failed to conceal a very distinguished air. His features were good and well bronzed by a foreign sun, apparently. He was without whiskers, or was closely shaven; but a smart mustache and dark eyebrows gave cha- racter to his face. He was seated on a fragment of rock, and in intervals between the progress of THE LONELY TARN. 95 his work and the whiffs of a cigar, spoke caress- ingly to a large dog that lay near hirn on the grass. The latter, a magnificent Thibet mastiff, with heavy jowl and pendant flap-like ears, suddenly rose and came slowly, leisurely and steadily forward to Sybil, and after a glance of survey, eyed her with what was almost a smile — if a dog can be said to smile. He then sniffed her skirts, and pawed them with his enormous paw. Sybil evinced no fear ; she patted the dog's huge rough head ; but was some- what surprised, when he lay down on her skirts with the utmost composure, and showed no dispo- sition to release her. The young man, whose eyes had followed, with some interest, the motions of his dog, now whistled to him ; but the mastiff did not stir. "Rajah — Rajah — you impudent rascal, come here ! " he cried. But Rajah made no other response, than by whipping the turf with his long tail. Upon this his master came round the margin of the tarn, and approaching Sybil, threw aside his cigar, lifted his hat and apologized, adding, — " I trust that my dog has not alarmed you ? " " Oh no — not in the least," replied Sybil, who began to feel somewhat embarrassed now. " I assure you that he is very gentle ; but he is 96 ONLY AN ENSIGN. permitting himself to be too free, and very few young ladies would, like you, have seen such an animal approach them without betraying signs of alarm, and all that sort of thing. Get up sir ! " " Oh, please don't," said Sybil holding out an ungloved and veiy pretty hand, deprecatingly, between the dog and the young man's uplifted cane ; " all dogs, and even cats, like me." " Thereby acknowledging your power — eh ? " responded the stranger, looking down admiringly into the soft, bright, earnest face, and clear dark eyes that were turned upward to his own. " I don't know what you mean by my power," said Sybil, with simplicity ; " but, as most people like me, why should not dogs — and — and this is such a splendid fellow ! " " I have brought him from a veiy distant country — he was the farewell gift of a friend who died, otherwise," he added, gallantly, " I should beg your acceptance of him." Sybil now coloured more deeply, and became uneasy; but the stranger resumed in his most suave tone, — " And you have been sketching this pretty little * lake — like me ? Our tastes and occupation are quite similar ! ■' Sybil had closed her book of sketches. "Will you not do me the favour to " THE LOXELY TARN. 97 " Show you my poor production — do you mean, sir?" " Yes." " But you may be an artist, and a well-skilled one." " And what then ? "