"If Mr. Vyking, who ten years ago left a male infant in charge of Mrs.

Martha Brand, wishes to keep that child out of the work-house, he will call, within the next five days, at No. 17 Waddington Street, Lambeth."

Again and again, and again Lady Thetford read this apparently uninteresting advertisement. Slowly the paper dropped into her lap, and she sat staring blankly into the fire.

"At last!" she thought, "at last it has come. I fancied all danger was over--that death, perhaps, had forestalled me; and now, after all these years, I am summoned to keep my broken promise!"

The hue of death had settled on her face; she sat cold and rigid, staring with that blank, fixed gaze into the fire. Ceaselessly beat the rain; wilder grew the December day; steadily the moments wore on, and still she sat in that fixed trance. The ormolu clock struck two--the sound aroused her at last.

"I must!" she said, setting her teeth. "I will! My boy shall not lose his birthright, come what may."

She rose and rang the bell--very pale, but quite calm. Her maid answered the summons.

"Eliza," my lady asked, "at what hour does the afternoon train leave St.

Gosport for London?"

Eliza stared--did not know; but would ascertain. In five minutes she was back.

"At half-past three, my lady; and another at seven."

Lady Thetford glanced at the clock--it was a quarter past two.

"Tell William to have the carriage at the door at a quarter-past three; and do you pack my dressing-case, and the few things I shall need for two or three days' absence. I am going to London."

Eliza stood for a moment quite petrified. In all the nine years of her service under my lady, no such order as this had ever been received. To go to London at a moment's notice--my lady, who rarely went beyond her own park gates! Turning away, not quite certain that her ears had not deceived her, my lady's voice arrested her.

"Send Mrs. Weymore to me; and do you lose no time in packing up."

Eliza departed. Mrs. Weymore appeared. My lady had some instructions to give concerning the children during her absence. Then the governess was dismissed, and she was again alone.

Through the wind and rain of the wintry storm, Lady Thetford was driven to the station in time to catch the three-fifty train to the metropolis.

She went unattended; with no message to any one, only saying she would be back in three days at the farthest.

In that dull household, where so few events ever disturbed the stagnant quiet, this sudden journey produced an indescribable sensation. What could have taken my lady to London at a moment's notice? Some urgent reason it must have been to force her out of the gloomy seclusion in which she had buried herself since her husband's death. But, discuss it as they might, they could come no nearer the heart of the mystery.

CHAPTER VI.

GUY.

The rainy December day closed in a rainier night. Another day dawned on the world, sunless, and chilly, and overcast still.

It dawned on London in murky, yellow fog, on sloppy, muddy streets--in gloom and dreariness, and a raw, easterly wind. In the densely populated streets of the district of Lambeth, where poverty huddled in tall, gaunt buildings, the dismal light stole murkily and slowly over the crowded, filthy streets, and swarming purlieus.

In a small upper room of a large dilapidated house, this bad December morning, a painter stood at his easel. The room was bare, and cold, and comfortless in the extreme; the painter was middle-aged, small, brown, and shrivelled, and very much out at elbows. The dull, gray light fell full on his work--no inspiration of genius by any means--only the portrait, coarsely colored, of a fat, well-to-do butcher's daughter round the corner. The man was Joseph Legard, scene-painter to one of the minor city theatres, who eked out his slender income by painting portraits when he could get them to paint. He was as fond of his art as any of the great old masters; but he had only one attribute in common with those immortals--extreme poverty; for his family was large, and Mr.

Legard found it a tight fit, indeed, to "make both ends meet."

He stood over his work this dull morning, however, in his fireless room, with a cheerful, brown face, whistling a tune. In the adjoining room, he could hear his wife's voice raised shrilly, and the cries of half a dozen Legards. He was used to it, and it did not disturb him; and he painted and whistled cheerily, touching up the butcher's daughter's snub nose and fat cheeks, and double chin, until light footsteps came running up stairs, and the door was flung wide by an impetuous hand. A boy of ten, or thereabouts, came in--a bright-eyed, fair-haired lad, with a handsome, resolute face, and eyes of cloudless, Saxon blue.

"Ah, Guy!" said the scene-painter, turning round and nodding good-humoredly. "I've been expecting you. What do you think of Miss Jenkins?"

The boy looked at the picture with the glance of an embryo connoisseur.

"It's as like her as two peas, Joe; or would be, if her hair was a little redder, and her nose a little thicker, and the freckles were plainer. But it looks like her as it is."

"Well, you see Guy," said the painter, going on with Miss Jenkins' left eyebrow, "it don't do to make 'em too true--people don't like it; they pay their money, and they expect to take it out in good looks. And now, any news this morning, Guy?"

The boy leaned against the window and looked out into the dingy street, his bright young face growing gloomy and overcast.

"No," he said, moodily; "there is no news, except that Phil Darking was drunk last night, and savage as a mad dog this morning--and that's no news, I'm sure."

"And nobody's come about the advertisement in the _Times_?"

"No, and never will. It's all humbug what granny says about my belonging to anybody rich; if I did, they'd have seen after me long ago. Phil says my mother was a housemaid, and my father a valet--and they were only too glad to get me off their hands. Vyking was a valet, granny says she knows; and it's not likely he'll turn up after all these years. I don't care, I'd rather go to the work-house; I'd rather starve in the streets, than live another week with Phil Darking."

The blue eyes filled with tears, and he dashed them passionately away.

The painter looked up with a distressed face.

"Has he been beating you again, Guy?"

"It's no matter--he's a brute. Granny and Ellen are sorry, and do what they can; but that's nothing. I wish I had never been born."

"It is hard," said the painter, compassionately, "but keep up heart, Guy; if the worst comes, why you can stop here and take pot-luck with the rest--not that that's much better than starvation. You can take to my business shortly now; and you'll make a better scene-painter than ever I could. You've got it in you."

"Do you really think so, Joe?" cried the boy, with sparkling eyes. "Do you? I'd rather be an artist than at king--Halloo!"

He stopped short in surprise, staring out of the window. Legard looked.

Up the dirty street came a Hansom cab, and stopped at their own door.

The driver alighted, made some inquiry, then opened the cab-door, and a lady stepped lightly out on the curb-stone--a lady tall and stately, dressed in black, and closely veiled.

"Now who can this visitor be for?" said Legard. "People in this neighborhood ain't in the habit of having morning-calls made on them in cabs. She's coming up stairs."

He held the door open, listening. The lady ascended the first flight of stairs, stopped on the landing, and inquired of some one for "Mrs.

Martha Brand."

"For granny!" exclaimed the boy. "Joe, I shouldn't wonder if it was some one about that advertisement, after all."

"Neither should I," said Legard. "There! she's gone in. You'll be sent for directly, Guy."

Yes, the lady had gone in. She had encountered on the landing a sickly young woman, with a baby in her arms, who had stared at the name she inquired for.

"Mrs. Martha Brand? Why, that's mother. Walk in this way, if you please, ma'am."

She opened a door, and ushered the veiled lady into a small, close room, poorly furnished. Over a smouldering fire, mending stockings, sat an old woman, who, notwithstanding the extreme shabbiness and poverty of her dress, lifted a pleasant, intelligent old face.

"A lady to see you, mother," said the young woman hushing her fretful baby, and looking curiously at the veiled face.