d.i.c.k hastily withdrew his arm from Leonard's.

"Serpent's tooth!" he said falteringly, "so it is you, whom I warmed at my hearth, who are to ruin Richard Avenel?"

"No; but to save him! Come into the City and look at my model. If you like it, the patent shall be yours!"

"Cab, cab, cab," cried d.i.c.k Avenel, stopping a 'Ransom;' "jump in, Leonard,--jump in. I'll buy your patent,--that is, if it be worth a straw; and as for payment--"

"Payment! Don't talk of that!"

"Well, I won't," said d.i.c.k, mildly; "for 't is not the topic of conversation I should choose myself, just at present. And as for that black-whiskered alligator, the baron, let me first get out of those rambustious, unchristian, filbert-shaped claws of his, and then--but jump in! jump in! and tell the man where to drive!"

A very brief inspection of Leonard's invention sufficed to show Richard Avenel how invaluable it would be to him. Armed with a patent, of which the certain effects in the increase of power and diminution of labour were obvious to any practical man, Avenel felt that he should have no difficulty in obtaining such advances of money as he required, whether to alter his engines, meet the bills discounted by Levy, or carry on the war with the monster capitalist. It might be necessary to admit into partnership some other monster capitalist--What then? Any partner better than Levy. A bright idea struck him.

"If I can just terrify and whop that infernal intruder on my own ground for a few months, he may offer, himself, to enter into partnership,--make the two concerns a joint-stock friendly combination, and then we shall flog the world."

His grat.i.tude to Leonard became so lively that d.i.c.k offered to bring his nephew in for Lansmere instead of himself; and when Leonard declined the offer, exclaimed, "Well, then, any friend of yours; I'm all for reform against those high and mighty right honourable borough-mongers; and what with loans and mortgages on the small householders, and a long course of 'Free and Easies' with the independent freemen, I carry one--seat certain, perhaps both seats of the town of Lansmere, in my breeches pocket." d.i.c.k then, appointing an interview with Leonard at his lawyer's, to settle the transfer of the invention, upon terms which he declared "should be honourable to both parties," hurried off, to search amongst his friends in the City for some monster capitalist, who alight be induced to extricate him from the jaws of Levy and the engines of his rival at Screwstown. "Mullins is the man, if I can but catch him," said d.i.c.k. "You have heard of Mullins?--a wonderful great man; you should see his nails; he never cuts them! Three millions, at least, he has sc.r.a.ped together with those nails of his, sir. And in this rotten old country, a man must have nails a yard long to fight with a devil like Levy!

Good-by, good-by,--Goon-by, MY DEAR, nephew!"

CHAPTER XX.

Harley L'Estrange was seated alone in his apartments. He had just put down a volume of some favourite cla.s.sic author, and he was resting his hand firmly clenched upon the book. Ever since Harley's return to England, there had been a perceptible change in the expression of his countenance, even in the very bearing and att.i.tudes of his elastic youthful figure. But this change had been more marked since that last interview with Helen which has been recorded. There was a compressed, resolute firmness in the lips, a decided character in the brow. To the indolent, careless grace of his movements had succeeded a certain indescribable energy, as quiet and self-collected as that which distinguished the determined air of Audley Egerton himself. In fact, if you could have looked into his heart, you would have seen that Harley was, for the first time, making a strong effort over his pa.s.sions and his humours; that the whole man was nerving himself to a sense of duty.

"No," he muttered,--"no! I will think only of Helen; I will think only of real life! And what (were I not engaged to another) would that dark-eyed Italian girl be to me?--What a mere fool's fancy is this! I love again,--I, who through all the fair spring of my life have clung with such faith to a memory and a grave! Come, come, come, Harley L'Estrange, act thy part as man amongst men, at last! Accept regard; dream no more of pa.s.sion. Abandon false ideals. Thou art no poet--why deem that life itself can be a poem?"

The door opened, and the Austrian prince, whom Harley had interested in the cause of Violante's father, entered, with the familiar step of a friend.

"Have you discovered those doc.u.ments yet?" said the prince. "I must now return to Vienna within a few days; and unless you can arm me with some tangible proof of Peschiera's ancient treachery, or some more unanswerable excuse for his n.o.ble kinsman, I fear that there is no other hope for the exile's recall to his country than what lies in the hateful option of giving his daughter to his perfidious foe."

"Alas!" said Harley, "as yet all researches have been in vain; and I know not what other steps to take, without arousing Peschiera's vigilance, and setting his crafty brains at work to counteract us. My poor friend, then, must rest contented with exile. To give Violante to the count were dishonour. But I shall soon be married; soon have a home, not quite unworthy of their due rank, to offer both to father and to child."

"Would the future Lady L'Estrange feel no jealousy of a guest so fair as you tell me this young signorina is? And would you be in no danger yourself, my poor friend?"

"Pooh!" said Harley, colouring. "My fair guest would have two fathers; that is all. Pray do not jest on a thing so grave as honour."

Again the door opened, and Leonard appeared.

"Welcome," cried Harley, pleased to be no longer alone under the prince's penetrating eye,--"welcome. This is the n.o.ble friend who shares our interest for Riccabocca, and who could serve him so well, if we could but discover the doc.u.ment of which I have spoken to you."

"It is here," said Leonard, simply; "may it be all that you require!"

Harley eagerly grasped at the packet, which had been sent from Italy to the supposed Mrs. Bertram, and, leaning his face on his hand, rapidly hurried through the contents.

"Hurrah!" he cried at last, with his face lighted up, and a boyish toss of his right hand. "Look, look, Prince, here are Peschiera's own letters to his kinsman's wife; his avowal of what he calls his 'patriotic designs;' his entreaties to her to induce her husband to share them.

Look, look, how he wields his influence over the woman he had once wooed; look how artfully he combats her objections; see how reluctant our friend was to stir, till wife and kinsman both united to urge him!"

"It is enough,-quite enough," exclaimed the prince, looking at the pa.s.sages in Peschiera's letters which Harley pointed out to him.

"No, it is not enough," shouted Harley, as he continued to read the letters with his rapid sparkling eyes. "More still! O villain, doubly d.a.m.ned! Here, after our friend's flight, here is Peschiera's avowal of guilty pa.s.sion; here, he swears that he had intrigued to ruin his benefactor, in order to pollute the home that had sheltered him. Ah, see how she answers! thank Heaven her own eyes were opened at last, and she scorned him before she died! She was innocent! I said so. Violante's mother was pure. Poor lady, this moves me! Has your emperor the heart of a man?"

"I know enough of our emperor," answered the prince, warmly, "to know that, the moment these papers reach him, Peschiera is ruined, and your friend is restored to his honours. You will live to see the daughter, to whom you would have given a child's place at your hearth, the wealthiest heiress of Italy,--the bride of some n.o.ble lover, with rank only below the supremacy of kings!"

"Ah," said Harley, in a sharp accent, and turning very pale,--"ah, I shall not see her that! I shall never visit Italy again!--never see her more,--never, after she has once quitted this climate of cold iron cares and formal duties! never, never!" He turned his head for a moment, and then came with quick step to Leonard. "But you, O happy poet! No Ideal can ever be lost to you. You are independent of real life. Would that I were a poet!" He smiled sadly.

"You would not say so, perhaps, my dear Lord," answered Leonard, with equal sadness, "if you knew how little what you call 'the Ideal'

replaces to a poet the loss of one affection in the genial human world.

Independent of real life! Alas! no. And I have here the confessions of a true poet-soul, which I will entreat you to read at leisure; and when you have read, say if you would still be a poet!"

He took forth Nora's ma.n.u.scripts as he spoke.

"Place them yonder, in my escritoire, Leonard; I will read them later."

"Do so, and with heed; for to me there is much here that involves my own life,--much that is still a mystery, and which I think you can unravel!"

"I!" exclaimed Harley; and he was moving towards the escritoire, in a drawer of which Leonard had carefully deposited the papers, when once more, but this time violently, the door was thrown open, and Giacomo rushed into the room, accompanied by Lady Lansmere.

"Oh, my Lord, my Lord!" cried Giacomo, in Italian, "the signorina! the signorina! Violante!"

"What of her? Mother, Mother! what of her? Speak, speak!"

"She has gone,--left our house!"

"Left! No, no!" cried Giacomo. "She must have been deceived or forced away. The count! the count! Oh, my good Lord, save her, as you once saved her father!"

"Hold!" cried Harley. "Give me your arm, Mother. A second such blow in life is beyond the strength of man,--at least it is beyond mine. So, so!

I am better now! Thank you, Mother. Stand back, all of you! give me air. So the count has triumphed, and Violante has fled with him! Explain all,--I can bear it!"

BOOK TWELFTH.

INITIAL CHAPTER.

WHEREIN THE CAXTON FAMILY REAPPEAR.

"Again," quoth my father,--"again behold us! We who greeted the commencement of your narrative, who absented ourselves in the midcourse when we could but obstruct the current of events, and jostle personages more important,--we now gather round the close. Still, as the chorus to the drama, we circle round the altar with the solemn but dubious chant which prepares the audience for the completion of the appointed destinies; though still, ourselves, unaware how the skein is to be unravelled, and where the shears are to descend."

So there they stood, the Family of Caxton,--all grouping round me, all eager officiously to question, some over-anxious prematurely to criticise.

"Violante can't have voluntarily gone off with that horrid count," said my mother; "but perhaps she was deceived, like Eugenia by Mr. Bellamy, in the novel of 'CAMILLA'."

"Ha!" said my father, "and in that case it is time yet to steal a hint from Clarissa Harlowe, and make Violante die less of a broken heart than a sullied honour. She is one of those girls who ought to be killed! All things about her forebode an early tomb!"