I only smiled and shook my head. I did not believe a word of it. Yet, perhaps, I was wrong. He knew very well how to take care of his money; in fact, compared with other young fellows, he was a bit of a screw. But he could do a handsome and generous thing for himself. His selfishness would expand n.o.bly, and rise above his prudential considerations, and drown them sometimes; and he was the sort of person, who, if the fancy were strong enough, might marry in haste, and repent--and make his wife, too, repent--at leisure.

'What do you laugh at, Charlie?' said Wylder, grinning himself.

'At your confounded grumbling, Mark. The luckiest dog in England! Will nothing content you?'

'Why, I grumble very little, I think, considering how well off I am,'

rejoined he, with a laugh.

'Grumble! If you had a particle of grat.i.tude, you'd build a temple to Fortune--you're pagan enough for it, Mark.'

'Fortune has nothing to do with it,' says Mark, laughing again.

'Well, certainly, neither had you.'

'It was all the Devil. I'm not joking, Charlie, upon my word, though I'm laughing.' (Mark swore now and then, but I take leave to soften his oaths). 'It was the Persian Magician.'

'Come, Mark, say what you mean.'

'I mean what I say. When we were in the Persian Gulf, near six years ago, I was in command of the ship. The captain, you see, was below, with a hurt in his leg. We had very rough weather--a gale for two days and a night almost--and a heavy swell after. In the night time we picked up three poor devils in an open boat--. One was a Persian merchant, with a grand beard. We called him the magician, he was so like the pictures of Aladdin's uncle.'

'Why _he_ was an African,' I interposed, my sense of accuracy offended.

'I don't care a curse what he was,' rejoined Mark; 'he was exactly like the picture in the story-books. And as we were lying off--I forget the cursed name of it--he begged me to put him ash.o.r.e. He could not speak a word of English, but one of the fellows with him interpreted, and they were all anxious to get ash.o.r.e. Poor devils, they had a notion, I believe, we were going to sell them for slaves, and he made me a present of a ring, and told me a long yarn about it. It was a talisman, it seems, and no one who wore it could ever be lost. So I took it for a keepsake; here it is,' and he extended his stumpy, brown little finger, and showed a thick, coa.r.s.ely-made ring of gold, with an uncut red stone, of the size of a large cherry stone, set in it.

'The stone is a humbug,' said Wylder. 'It's not real. I showed it to Platten and Foyle. It's some sort of gla.s.s. But I would not part with it.

I got a fancy into my head that luck would come with it, and maybe that gla.s.s stuff was the thing that had the virtue in it. Now look at these Persian letters on the inside, for that's the oddest thing about it. Hang it, I can't pull it off--I'm growing as fat as a pig--but they are like a queer little string of flowers; and I showed it to a clever fellow at Malta--a missionary chap--and he read it off slick, and what do you think it means: "I will come up again;"' and he swore a great oath. 'It's as true as you stand there--_our_ motto. Is not it odd? So I got the "resurgam" you see there engraved round it, and by Jove! it did bring me up. I was near lost, and did rise again. Eh?'

Well, it certainly was a curious accident. Mark had plenty of odd and not unamusing lore. Men who beat about the world in ships usually have; and these 'yarns,' furnished, after the pattern of Oth.e.l.lo's tales of Anthropophagites and men whose heads do grow beneath their shoulders, one of the many varieties of fascination which he practised on the fair s.e.x.

Only in justice to Mark, I must say that he was by no means so shameless a drawer of the long-bow as the Venetian gentleman and officer.

'When I got this ring, Charlie, three hundred a year and a London life would have been Peru and Paradise to poor Pill Garlick, and see what it has done for me.'

'Aye, and better than Aladdin's, for you need not rub it and bring up that confounded ugly genii; the slave of your ring works unseen.'

'So he does,' laughed Wylder, in a state of elation, 'and he's not done working yet, I can tell you. When the estates are joined in one, they'll be good eleven thousand a year; and Larkin says, with smart management, I shall have a rental of thirteen thousand before three years! And that's only the beginning, by George! Sir Henry Twisden can't hold his seat--he's all but broke--as poor as Job, and the gentry hate him, and he lives abroad. He has had a hint or two already, and he'll never fight the next election. D'ye see--hey?'

And Wylder winked and grinned, with a wag of his head.

'M.P.--eh? You did not see that before. I look a-head a bit, eh? and can take my turn at the wheel--eh?'

And he laughed with cunning exultation.

'Miss Rachel will find I'm not quite such a lubber as she fancies. But even then it is only begun. Come, Charlie, you used to like a bet. What do you say? I'll buy you that twenty-five guinea book of pictures--what's its name?--if you give me three hundred guineas one month after I'm a peer of Parliament. Hey? There's a sporting offer for you. Well! what do you say--eh?'

'You mean to come out as an orator, then?'

'Orator be diddled! Do you take me for a fool? No, Charlie; but I'll come out strong as a _voter_--that's the stuff they like--at the right side, of course, and that is the way to manage it. Thirteen thousand a year--the oldest family in the county--and a steady thick and thin supporter of the minister. Strong points, eh, Charlie? Well, do you take my offer?'

I laughed and declined, to his great elation, and just then the gong sounded and we were away to our toilets.

While making my toilet for dinner, I amused myself by conjecturing whether there could be any foundation in fact for Mark's boast, that Miss Brandon liked him. Women are so enigmatical--some in everything--all in matters of the heart. Don't they sometimes actually admire what is repulsive? Does not brutality in our s.e.x, and even rascality, interest them sometimes? Don't they often affect indifference, and occasionally even aversion, where there is a different sort of feeling?

As I went down I heard Miss Lake chatting with her queen-like cousin near an open door on the lobby. Rachel Lake was, indeed, a very constant guest at the Hall, and the servants paid her much respect, which I look upon as a sign that the young heiress liked her and treated her with consideration; and indeed there was an insubordinate and fiery spirit in that young lady which would have brooked nothing less and dreamed of nothing but equality.

CHAPTER X.

THE ACE OF HEARTS.

Who should I find in the drawing-room, talking fluently and smiling, after his wont, to old Lady Chelford, who seemed to receive him very graciously, for her at least, but Captain Stanley Lake!

I can't quite describe to you the odd and unpleasant sort of surprise which that very gentlemanlike figure, standing among the Brandon household G.o.ds at this moment, communicated to me. I thought of the few odd words and looks that had dropped from Wylder about him with an ominous pang as I looked, and I felt somehow as if there were some occult relation between that confused prelude of Wylder's and the Mephistophelean image that had risen up almost upon the spot where it was spoken. I glanced round for Wylder, but he was not there.

'You know Captain Lake?' said Lord Chelford, addressing me.

And Lake turned round upon me, a little abruptly, his odd yellowish eyes, a little like those of the sea-eagle, and the ghost of his smile that flickered on his singularly pale face, with a stern and insidious look, confronted me. There was something evil and shrinking in his aspect, which I felt with a sort of chill, like the commencing fascination of a serpent. I often thought since that he had expected to see Wylder before him.

The church-yard meteor expired, there was nothing in a moment but his ordinary smile of recognition.

'You're surprised to see me here,' he said in his very pleasing low tones.

'I lighted on him in the village; and I knew Miss Brandon would not forgive me if I allowed him to go away without coming here. (He had his hand upon Lake's shoulder.) They are cousins, you know; we are all cousins. I'm bad at genealogies. My mother could tell us all about it--we, Brandons, Lakes; Wylders, and Chelfords.'

At this moment Miss Brandon entered, with her brilliant Cousin Rachel.

The blonde and the dark, it was a dazzling contrast.

So Chelford led Stanley Lake before the lady of the castle. I thought of the 'Fair Brunnisende,' with the captive knight in the hands of her seneschal before her, and I fancied he said something of having found him trespa.s.sing in her town, and brought him up for judgment. Whatever Lord Chelford said, Miss Brandon received it very graciously, and even with a momentary smile. I wonder she did not smile oftener, it became her so.

But her greeting to Captain Lake was more than usually haughty and frozen, and her features, I fancied, particularly proud and pale. It seemed to me to indicate a great deal more than mere indifference--something of aversion, and nearer to a positive emotion than anything I had yet seen in that exquisitely apathetic face.

How was it that this man with the yellow eyes seemed to gleam from them an influence of pain or disturbance, wherever almost he looked.

'Shake hands with your cousin, my dear,' said old Lady Chelford, peremptorily. The little scene took place close to her chair; and upon this stage direction the little piece of by-play took place, and the young lady coldly touched the captain's hand, and pa.s.sed on.

Young as he was, Stanley Lake was an old man of the world, not to be disconcerted, and never saw more than exactly suited him. Waiting in the drawing-room, I had some entertaining talk with Miss Lake. Her conversation was lively, and rather bold, not at all in the coa.r.s.e sense, but she struck me as having formed a system of ethics and views of life, both good-humoured and sarcastic, and had carried into her rustic sequestration the melancholy and precocious lore of her early London experience.

When Lord Chelford joined us, I perceived that Wylder was in the room, and saw a very cordial greeting between him and Lake. The captain appeared quite easy and cheerful; but Mark, I thought, notwithstanding his laughter and general jollity, was uncomfortable; and I saw him once or twice, when Stanley's eye was not upon him, glance sharply on the young man with an uneasy and not very friendly curiosity.

At dinner Lake was easy and amusing. That meal pa.s.sed off rather pleasantly; and when we joined the ladies in the drawing-room, the good vicar's enthusiastic little wife came to meet us, in one of her honest little raptures.

'Now, here's a thing worth your looking at! Did you ever see anything so bee-utiful in your life? It is such a darling little thing; and--look now--is not it magnificent?'

She arrested the file of gentlemen just by a large lamp, before whose effulgence she presented the subject of her eulogy--one of those costly trifles which announce the approach of Hymen, as flowers spring up before the rosy steps of May.

Well, it was pretty--French, I dare say--a little set of tablets--a toy--the cover of enamel, studded in small jewels, with a slender border of symbolic flowers, and with a heart in the centre, a mosaic of little carbuncles, rubies, and other red and crimson stones, placed with a view to light and shade.

'Exquisite, indeed!' said Lord Chelford. 'Is this yours, Mrs. Wylder?'