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“I don’t quite know, Sir, why I’ve listened so long to this kind of thing from you; you have no right on earth, Sir, to address that sort of thing to me. How dare you talk to me, Sir, in that – a – a – audacious tone upon my private affairs and conduct?”

Uncle David was a little fiery, and answered, holding his head high, –

“What I have to say is short and clear. I don’t care twopence about your affairs, or your conduct, but I do very much care about my niece’s happiness; and if you any longer decline to take the answer she has given you, and continue to cause her the slightest trouble, I’ll make it a personal matter with you. Good-night!” he added, with an inflamed visage, and a stamp on the floor, thundering his valediction. And forth he went to pay his brief visit to his brother – not caring twopence, as he said, what Lord Wynderbroke thought of him.

Sir Reginald had got into his dressing-gown. He was not now in any pain to speak of, and expressed great surprise at the sudden appearance of his brother.

“You’ll take something, won’t you?”

“Nothing, thanks,” answered David. “I came to beg a favour.” “Oh! did you? You find me very poorly,” said the baronet, in

a tone that seemed to imply, “You might easily kill me, by imposing the least trouble just now.”

“You’ll be all the better, Reginald, for this little attack; it is so comfortably established in your foot.”

“Comfortably! I wish you felt it,” said Sir Reginald, sharply; “and it’s confoundedly late. Why didn’t you come to dinner?”

David laughed good-humouredly. “You forgot, I think, to ask me,” said he.

“Well, well, you know there is always a chair and a glass for you; but won’t it do to talk about any cursed thing you wish to-morrow? I – I never, by any chance, hear anything agreeable. I have been

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tortured out of my wits and senses all day long by a tissue of pigheaded, indescribable frenzy. I vow to Heaven there’s a conspiracy to drive me into a mad-house, or into my grave; and I declare to my Maker, I wish the first time I’m asleep, some fellow would come in and blow my brains out on the pillow.”

“I don’t know an easier death,” said David; and his brother, who meant it to be terrific, did not pretend to hear him. “I have only a word to say,” he continued, “a request you have never refused to other friends, and, in fact, dear Reginald, I ventured to take it for granted you would not refuse me; so I have taken Alice into town, to make me a little visit of a day or two.”

“You haven’t taken Alice – you don’t mean – she’s not gone?” exclaimed the baronet, sitting up with a sudden perpendicularity, and staring at his brother as if his eyes were about to leap from their sockets.

“I’ll take the best care of her. Yes, she is gone,” said David.

“But my dear, excellent, worthy – why, curse you, David, you can’t possibly have done anything so clumsy! Why, you forgot that Wynderbroke is here; how on earth am I to entertain Wynderbroke without her?”

“Why, it is exactly because Lord Wynderbroke is here, that I thought it the best time for her to make me a visit.”

“I protest to Heaven, David, I believe you’re deranged! Do you the least know what you are saying?”

“Perfectly. Now, my dear Reginald, let us look at the matter quietly. The girl does not like him; she would not marry him, and never will; she has grown to hate him; his own conduct has made her despise and detest him; and she’s not the kind of girl who would marry for a mere title. She has unalterably made up her mind; and these are not times when you can lock a young lady into her room, and starve her into compliance; and Alice is a spirited girl – all the women of

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our family were. You’re no goose like Wynderbroke – you only need to know that the girl has quite made up her mind, or her heart, or her hatred, or whatever it is, and she won’t marry him. It is as well he should know it at first, as at last; and I don’t think, if he were a gentleman, peer though he be, he would have been in this house to-night. He counted on his title: he was too sure. I am very proud of Alice. And now he can’t bear the mortification – having, like a fool, disclosed his suit to others before it had succeeded – of letting the world know he has been refused; and to this petty vanity he would sacrifice Alice, and prevail on you, if he could, to bully her into accepting him, a plan in which, if he perseveres, I have told him he shall, besides failing ridiculously, give me a meeting; for I will make it a personal quarrel with him.”

Sir Reginald sat in his chair, looking very white and wicked, with his eyes gleaming fire on his brother. He opened his mouth once or twice, to speak, but only drew a short breath at each attempt.

David Arden rather wondered that his brother took all this so quietly. If he had observed him a little more closely, he would have seen that his hands were trembling, and perceived also that he had tried repeatedly to speak, and that either voice or articulation failed him. On a sudden he recovered, and regardless of his gout started to his feet, and limped along the floor, exclaiming, –

“Help us – help us – God help us! What’s this? My – my – oh, my God! It’s very bad!” He was stumping round and round the table, near which he had sat, and restlessly shoving the pamphlets and books hither and thither as he went. “What have I done to earn this curse? – was ever mortal so pursued? The last thing, this was; now all’s gone – quite gone – it’s over, quite. They’ve done it – they’ve done it. Bravo! bravI tutti! brava! All – all, and everything gone! To think of her – only to think of her! She was my pet.” (And in

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his bleak, trembling voice, he cried a horrid curse at her.) “I tell you,” he screamed, dashing his hand on the table, at the other end of which he had arrested his monotonous shuffle round it, when his brother caught suddenly his vacant eye, “you think, because I’m down in the world, and you are prosperous, that you can do as you like. If I was where I should be, you daren’t. I’ll have her back, Sir. I’ll have the police with you. I’ll – I’ll indict you – it’s a police-office affair. They’ll take her through the streets. Where’s the wretch like her? I charge her – let them take her by the shoulder. And my son, Richard – to think of him! – the cursed puppy! – his post obit! One foot in the grave, have I? No, I’m not so near smoked out as you take me – I’ve a long time for it – I’ve a long life. I’ll live to see him broken – without a coat to his back – you villanous, swindling dandy, and I’ll – – ”

His voice got husky, and he struck his thin fist on the table, and clung to it, and the room was suddenly silent.

David Arden rang the bell violently, and got his arm round his brother, who shook himself feebly, and shrugged, as if he disdained and hated that support.

In came Crozier, who looked aghast, but wheeled his easy-chair close to where he stood, and between them they got him into it, trembling from head to foot.

Martha Tansey came in and lent her aid, and beckoning her to the door, David Arden asked her if she thought him very ill.

“I ‘a’ seen him just so a dozen times over. He’ll be well enough, soon, and if ye knew him as weel in they takins, ye’d ho’d wi’ me, there’s nothing more than common in’t; he’s a bit teathy and short-waisted, and always was, and that’s how he works himself into them fits.”

So spoke Tansey, into whose talk, in moments of excitement, returned something of her old north-country dialect.

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CHAPTER XLVI

AN UNKNOWN FRIEND

As they drove into town, Uncle David was thinking how awkward it would be if Sir Reginald should have recovered his activity, and dispatched a messenger to recall Alice, and await their arrival at his door. Well, he did not want a quarrel; he hated a fracas; but he would not send Alice back till next morning, come what might; and then he would return with her, and see Lord Wynderbroke again, and take measures to compel an immediate renunciation of his suit. As for Reginald, he would find arguments to reconcile him to the disappointment. At all events, Alice had thrown herself upon his protection, and he would not surrender her except on terms.

Uncle David was silent, having all this matter to ruminate upon. He left a pencilled line for Sir Henry Margate, his brother’s physician, and then drove on towards home.

Turning into Saint James’s Street, Alice saw her brother standing at the side of a crossing, with a great-coat and a white muffler on, the air being sharp. A couple of carriages drawn up near the pavement, and the passing of two or three others on the outside, for a moment checked their progress, and Alice, had not the window been up, could have spoken to him as they passed. He did not see them, but the light of a lamp was on his face, and she was shocked to see how ill he looked.

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“There is Dick,” she said, touching her uncle’s arm, “looking so miserable! Shall we speak to him!”

“No, dear, never mind him – he’s well enough.” David Arden peeped at his nephew as they passed. “He is beginning to take an interest in what really concerns him.”

She looked at her uncle, not understanding his meaning.

“We can talk of it another time, dear,” he added with a cautionary glance at the maid, who sat in the corner at the other side.

Richard Arden was on his way to the place where he meant to recover his losses. He had been playing deep at Colonel Marston’s lodgings, but not yet luckily. He thought he had used his credit there as far as he could successfully press it.

The polite young men who had their supper there that night, and played after he left till nearly five o’clock in the morning, knew perfectly what he had lost at the Derby; but they did not know how perilously, on the whole, he was already involved. Was Richard Arden, who had lost nearly seven hundred pounds at Colonel Marston’s little gathering, though he had not paid them yet, now quite desperate? By no means. It is true he had, while Vandeleur was out, made an excursion to the City, and, on rather hard terms, secured a loan of three hundred pounds – a trifle which, if luck favoured, might grow to a fortune; but which, if it proved contrary, half an hour would see out.

He had locked this up in his desk, as a reserve for a theatre quite different from Marston’s little party; and on his way to that more public and also more secret haunt, he had called at his lodgings for it. It was not that small deposit that cheered him, but a curious and unexpected little note which he found there. It presented by no means a gentlemanlike exterior. The hand was a round clerk’s- hand, with flourishing capitals, on an oblong blue envelope, with a vulgar little device. A dun, he took it to be; and he was not im-

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mediately relieved when he read at the foot of it, “Levi.” Then he glanced to the top, and read, “Dear Sir.”

This easy form of address he read with proper disdain.

“I am instructed by a most respectable party who is desirous to assist you, to the figure of £1,000 or upwards, at nominal discounts, to meet you and ascertain your wishes thereupon, if possible tonight, lest you should suffer inconvenience.

“Yours truly, “Israel Levi.

“P.S. – In furtherance of the above, I shall be at Dignum’s Divan, Strand, from 11 P.M. to-night to 1 A.M.”

Here then, at last, was a sail in sight!

With this note in his pocket, he walked direct to the place of rendezvous, in the Strand. It was on his way that, unseen by him, his sister and his uncle had observed him, on their drive to David Arden’s house.

There were two friends only whom he strongly suspected of this very well-timed interposition – there was Lady May Penrose, and there was Uncle David. Lady May was rich, and quite capable of a generous sacrifice for him. Uncle David, also rich, would like to show an intimidating front, as he had done, but would hardly like to see him go to the wall. There was, I must confess, a trifling bill due to Mr. Longcluse, who had kindly got or given him cash for it. It was something less than a hundred pounds – a mere nothing; but in their altered relations, it would not do to permit any miscarriage of this particular bill. He might have risked it in the frenzy of play. But to stoop to ask quarter from Longcluse was more than his pride could endure. No; nor would the humiliation avail to arrest the consequences of his neglect. In the general uneasiness and horror of his situation, this little point was itself a centre of torture, and now his

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unknown friend had come to the rescue, and in the golden sunshine of his promise it, like a hundred minor troubles, was dissolving.

In Pall Mall he jumped into a cab, feeling strangely like himself again. The lights, the clubs, the well-known perspectives, the stars above him, and the gliding vehicles and figures that still peopled the streets, had recovered their old cheery look; he was again in the upper world, and his dream of misery had broken up and melted. Under the great coloured lamp, yellow, crimson, and blue, that overhung the pavement, emblazoned on every side with transparent arabesques, and in gorgeous capitals proclaiming to all whom it might concern “Dignum’s Divan,” he dismissed his cab, took his counter in the cigar shop, and entered the great rooms beyond. The first of these, as many of my readers remember, was as large as a good-sized Methodist Chapel; and five billiard-tables, under a blaze of gas, kept the many-coloured balls rolling, and the marker busy, calling “Blue on brown, and pink your player,” and so forth; and gentlemen young and old, Christians and Hebrews, in their shirt-sleeves, picked up shillings when they took “lives,” or knocked the butts of their cues fiercely on the floor when they unexpectedly lost them.

Among a very motley crowd, Richard Arden slowly sauntering through the room found Mr. Levi, whose appearance he already knew, having once or twice had occasion to consult him financially. His play was over for the night. The slim little Jew, with black curly head, large fierce black eyes, and sullen mouth, stood with his hands in his pockets, gaping luridly over the table where he had just, he observed to his friend Isaac Blumer, who did not care if he was hanged, “losht sheven pound sheventeen, ash I’m a shinner!”

Mr. LevI saw Richard Arden approaching, and smiled on him with his wide show of white fangs. Richard Arden approached Mr. LevI with a grave and haughty face. Here, to be sure, was nothing

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but what Horace Walpole used to call “the mob.” Not a human being whom he knew was in the room; still he would have preferred seeing Mr. LevI at his office; and the audacity of his presuming to grin in that familiar fashion! He would have liked to fling one of the billiard-balls in his teeth. In a freezing tone, and with his head high, he said, –

“I think you are Mr. Levi.”

“The shame,” responded Levi, still smiling; “and ‘ow ish Mr. Harden thish evening?”

“I had a note from you,” said Arden, passing by Mr. Levi’s polite inquiry, “and I should like to know if any of that money you spoke of may be made available to-night.”

“Every shtiver,” replied the Jew cheerfully.

“I can have it all? Well, this is rather a noisy place,” hesitated Richard Arden, looking around him.

“I can get into Mishter Dignum’s book-offish here, Mr. Harden, and it won’t take a moment. I haven’t notes, but I’ll give you our cheques, and there’sh no place in town they won’t go down as slick as gold. I’ll fetch you to where there’s pen and ink.”

“Do so,” said he.

In a very small room, where burned a single jet of gas, Mr. Arden signed a promissory note for, £1,012 10s., for which Mr. LevI handed him cheques of his firm for £1,000.

Having exchanged these securities, Richard Arden said –

“I wish to put one or two questions to you, Mr. Levi.” He glanced at a clerk who was making “tots” from a huge folio before him, on a slip of paper, and transferring them to a small book, with great industry.

LevI understood him and beckoned in silence, and when they both stood in the passage he said –

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