THOU ART THE MAN.

Press, Volume LI, Issue 8750, 24 March 1894, Page 2

THOU ART THE MAN.

CHAPTER si.—A Letter From The .*.'. DESK). There xvere great masses of cloud in the cold grey above, and a misty darkness brooded over tho shoulder of the moor as the barouche, with its fine, upstanding greys, came swinging round the curve of the* road leading to Dunluce Castle—a more luxurious carriage than is generally to be mcc with in such a remote and desolate region a* Killander Moor—but this carriage belonged to a lady who3e importance filled the land to the utmost limit of moor and valley, and far away to the edge of yonder distant sea, whose leaden waves were edged with livid spray at this sunset hour of a stormy October afternoon.

The lady—Sibyl. Countess of Duuluce— was sitting alone in her carriage, wrapped" in dark fur, with a proud, clearly cut face showing pale between tha sable of her close-fitting toquo and the sable collar of her long velvet mantle. Her eyes had a dreamy look as they surveyed the desolate landscape, the undulating sweep of moorland, the distant grey of the sea. The droop "S the sensitive lips suggested mournful thoughts, or it might be a pensive mood engendered only of the sulieu atmosphere with its presage of storm, and the dark monotony of the laudscape.

Suddenly, out of the very ground, as it seemed to "Lady Dunluce, startled from her reverie, a rough, unkempt looking man came running after the carriage. The footman looked round at him, a*af he had been a dog, and took no further heed than he would have taken of a dog. The coachman drove steadily ou, touching the splendid muscular shoulders of his sleek greys daintily with the point of his whip, quickening the pace as the sky darkened.

The man came running on, giving chase to the carriage, and waving an arm in a ragged fustian sl«eve. " Stop," cried Lady Dunluce, and the coachman drew up his horses, in the midst of the bleak, bare, moor, and the footman alighted from the box and can;e to the carriage door, touching his hat with gloved fingers, mute image of obedience and subserviency. " That man wants to speak to mc, said her ladyship. "Wait." The vagabond's footsteps drew near. He was at the carriage door in less than three minutes, breathless and hoarsely panting, with a sound like the grating of rusty iron. He looked like a shepherd out of employment, ragged, gaunt, hungry-eyed. " Ar« you Lady Dunluce?" he asked. " Yes," answered her ladyship, wich her purse open iv her hand, having only one idea ns to the man'a motive in following her carriage. ~ . ' Begjtavs/were rar«ia4&ft£ lonely region, but this man was avidetiW a begzar, she thought; and not -being a political economist, her first impulse was to relieve him. . / < ■ He Raid never a word, but fumbled under the ragged shirt which hardly hid his lean breast, and brought forth. a folded sensp of paper, which he flung into the lady's lap, then turned and ran away—across the open moor this time, as fast as he had run after the carriage three minutes before. "Follow him," said Lady Dunluce to the footman, and the footman went tripping ing aud stumbling over the stony moor, nearly falling down at every second step. . The hungry vagabond vanished into the dim gray of evening before the over-fed lackey io his bucklea shoes had gope fifty yards across that difficult ground. He came back, breathlessly apologetic, and explained the impossibility of catchiug a man who ran like a rabbit. "Do you knotf who he is, or where he comes from?" "No. my lady. Never saw him before, to my knowledge." " There is no village in that direction : nearer than Cargill, aud that Is six miles I off. He must have come from Cargill, I suppose. A beggar, no doubt. That will do James. Home." •

Homel The word, how often so evt>r she might pronounce it, had alway* a sound of irony ia her ear. What likeness was there between the English ideal of home and Dunluce Castle, ou the Cumbrian moorland; or Dunluce House, near Berkeley square; or Ravensberg, in Hampshire; or the Mimosas at Cannes; or The Den, near Braemar; or any habitation owned by Archibald, ninth Earl of Dunluce ? Therejaxe men and women who can create an atmosphere of domestic peace in a log hut Ih-thVe Australian bush, or in a lodging-house at the" East End of London. There are others who, among a dozen palases, cannot create one home. A single streak of pale yellow light yonder on the western edge of the moor showed where the sun had dipped below the horizon. A colder wind blew up from the far-off sea, and Lady Dunluce shivered as she took up the scrap of soiled paper from her lap, and held ie gingerly with the tips of her gloved fingers. It was less than half a sheet of notepaper. There were only a few pencilled words in two straggling line* along the paper, aud those few words were so difficult to decipher that Lady Dunluce had to pore over them for a long time in the waning light before she made them out into the following sentences: — " Out of the grave, the living grave, a long-forgotten voice calls to you. Where their worm dieth not, and their fire is not quenched." No signature, no indication of from whom or whence the message cami*. A madman's scrawl, no doubt, inspired by some half-cloudy purpose in the troubled brain of lunacy. The ragged wretch whom she had taken for a beggar was doubtless some wandering lunatic, harmless, and therefore permitted to ramble about the countryside. A religious enthusiast, perhaps ! The scrap of Scripture pointed that way.

Lady Dunluce resolved to drive to Cargill next day and search out the history of the reckless creature, ft indeed he lived there, as seemed likely; unless he were to be found in one of those rare and lonely cottages scattered here and there over the face of the moors between Dunluce and Ardilston, the little seaport whence coal and iron were shipped for the south. A great tract of wild country, broken only by obscure villages, lay between these two points. The coal mines and smelting works, and miners' villages all lay northward of Ardliston. The landscape on this southward side of the little harbour was wild and gloomy, box had a certain stern beauty of its own, and was ant disfigured by mining operations of *any kind—a barren, sullenly picturesque district.

Lady Danluee was interested in the troubled mind which had prompted that pencil scrawl. A call to repentance, no doubt; such a summons as the pauper Puritan, seeing rank and beauty roll by in a three-hundrea-guinea barouche, not unseldom feels himself called upon to deliver. There was really nothing to wonder at. There was hardly anything exceptional in the incident, unless perhaps It were that the man should have been there in the oick ot time, as her ladyship's carriage went by. Yet even that circumstance was easy enough to understand if the man were an inhabitant of the district. She drove in that direction often, and as a person of mark ia the neighbourhood her habits were doubtless noted and known.

Ne, there was nothing curious in the incident, nothing worthy of much thought; and jet ana thought of nothing else daring

the homeward drive of more than half an hour. She carried the thought with her under the great grey gateway, with its Iron portcullis; aud into the hall, where tho atmoshere of smouldering logs and hothouse flowers bad a feeling at of the warm sweet South ah« knew so well; and up to her owo sanctum sanctorum, where the slip of soiled paper lay on her lap as she sipped her solitary cup of tea. His lordship and his lordship's friends had been out shooting all day; her niece—a niece by courtesy—had gone with the luncheon cart, and the lady of Dunluce Castle had the great mediaeval fortress all to herself in the- October gleaming. Presently she drew the lamp nearer, and scrutinised that pencilled scrawl even more closely than before in the blight white light. "It is not the writing of an uneducated man,*' she said to herself, and then her head sunk lower, as her elbow rested on the cushioned arm of her chair, until her forehead almost touched the slip of paper on the table in front of her. She sat there some minutes, lost in dreamy thought. "How strange that the hand should ba like his," she murmured. And then after a pause, "Is it really like, or do I fancy a resemblance because he is so ofteu in my thoughts \" Then, after another lapse into reverie, "Ho was not iv my mind to-day. I had other things to think of. I was brooding on the hard realities of life; not upon its losses and regrets 1" She took up the paper, and studied it again, noting every stroke of the pencil. "It is like the writing: of the dead," she said at last, with conviction. " The hand which wrote was the hand of a gentleman. I must hunt out the writer. I shall not rest until I find out who and what he is; a madman, no doubt; but should he be in poverty and distress I should like to help him—if it were only because he writes like the dead."

She rose, and went across the room to the large old-fashioned escritoire where most of her letters were written, and where, among numerous pigeon-holes and quaint recesses, there were two deep drawers, provided with Bramah locks. She unlocked one of these, and dropped Jhe scrap of paper on the top of ths neatly arranged packets of letters, tied with different-coloured ribbons—letter;* which were in some wise the record ofa woman's life. Thtre was one of these packets tied with a broad black ribbon.

Lady Dunluce stood for a minute or so with the drawer open, looking down at those letters bound with the black band ; then sho slowly closed the door aud locked it. and as she turned away from the secretaire her eyes were dim with tears. That fancied resemblance In a handwriting had been like the liftiug of a cofliu lid for one last look at the dead face underneath. All the passion and the de-pair of a long buried past had come back to Sibyl Dunluce at the bidding of an unknown lunatic who happened to write like the man to whom she had given her girlish heart teo > years ago. She was sitting in her low chair by the fire, in the shadow of a fourfold Indian screen, when the door opened suddenly and a rush of fresh air and an exuberant young woman came noisily into the room, and brought her back in an instant from the past with its fond regrets to the present with its manifold obligation. " Uh, such a day I" cried the new comer. "You were better off even iv your dreary afternoon drive. I had to wait, and wait, and wait for those men, till I was absolutely ravenous, and the hot dishes were utterly spoilt. I shall never go out with the luncheon cart again, unless I have three or four pretty girls to back mc up. These fellows would be punctual enough then ; but they don't mind reducing poor plain ine to the verge of starvation." " Poor plain Cora,' said her ladyship, as the girl sealed herself at a corner of the tea-table and began a spirited attack upon the cakes and buns which Lady Dunluce had left uutasted. " Girls who really think themselves plain don't talk about it; they live in hope that it is a secret between themselves and their looking-glasses."

"Oh, but I am an exception to your rule," protested Miss Urquhart, with her largo serviceable mouth full of Scotch bun. " VVhen I was twelve years old I found out the difference between beauty and ugliuess. I heard all the pretty girls admired —' such blue eyes, sucu long lashes, such dear little mouths, such lily and rose complexions, and lovely golden hair,' while I observed that people called mc good, or clever or sensible ! As if any girl wanted to be called sensible ! So I looked steadily at my image in the glass, and I faced the unpleasant fact. " ' You are plain, Coralie,' 1 said to myself; 'unmistakably plain. You have tolerable eyes, and good teeth ; but your nose in a failure, your complexion is pallid, and your mouth is just twice too large for prettiaefes. Naver forget that you are plain, my dear Coralie, aud then perhaps other people won t remember the fict quite so often. Shake hands with Fate; accept your thick nose and your pallid complexion as the stern necessities of your existence, and make the most of your eyes and teetb, and your average head of hair.' That is the gist of what I said to myself, in less sophisticated language, perhaps, before I was fifteen, and from the philosophy involved in that I have never departed. So if 1 have come to nineteen years of age without being admired I have at least escaped being laughed at 1" " You are a bright, clever girl, Cora, and have quite enough good looks to float your cleverness, and to win you plenty of attention."

"Doyou really mean that?" asked Miss Urquhart, turning a pair of keen brown* eyes upon Lady Dunluce. " Well, you who are among the handsomest of your sex can afford to be geuerous. The men are civil enough to mc, certaluly; and I believe some of them like mc, in a way, an a jolly good fellow, don't you know." "I think you ought to leave off being a jolly good fellow. Cora, and remember that you are a young lady, now your twentieth birthday is drawing near," said her ladyship, with kindly seriousness. "What, leave off cigarettes, and horsey epithets, forego my morning fun in the stables and kennels — giro the billiardroom a holiday—and take to embroidering | wiadow curtainß and reading the last book ; of the Honourable Somebody's travels in Timbuctoo. So 1 would, Auutie, if I could only make up my mind which line is likely to pay best la such a case as mine—the well brought up, stand-offish young lady, or the fr«e and easy young person whom her male acquaintances talk of as'good fun,' or * not a bad sort.'" "Perhaps you will explain what you mean by paying beat?"

"Oh, I'm sure you catch my meaning. Which line will bring mc the moat eligible offer of marriage? That is the question. Of course there is a sprinkling of properly minded young men, the cream of the Peerage and the lauded gentry, who could only be won by a proper-minded young lady: but I doubt if among these chosen ones there is a chance for such as I; aud I have observed that the ruck of young men prefer the society of a girl who is distinctly on their own level, a little below them rather than a little above. That is why chorus girls and barmaids often get on so well in the world."

"Ah, Cora, what a pity you should have learnc so much about the seamy side of life."

" Yes, that comes of being brought up by a father instead of a mother. Had my poor mother lived she would have reared mc in a state of guileless innocence. I should have thought burlesque boys and pantomime fairies a kind of semi angelic creatures, and 1 should never have heard of a barmaid ; whereas the governor used to entertain mc with the gossip of the clubs every morning at breakfast, the only meal he takes at home."

"My poor Coralie I And your father — pray don't call him governor—taught you that your mission in life is to marry ? " " Well, if I can ; badly, if] can'c ; at any rate to get myself some kind of a husband, so as to take myself off the paternal hands. At least, that was his idea a year or two ago. Now that yon are so good to mc and let mc be here and in Berkeley square he is no longer so keen on the matrimonial market. So long as I don't worry or burden him he is satisfied. But when you grow tired of mc ——" "I am not going to tire of you, Cora, I mean to grow fonder of you, if you will let mc."

" Let you I Why, I worship you. You are my ideal of all that is loveliest and most perfect in woman. If the leopard could change his tpots I would prove my sincerity in trying to be like you—in grace and dignity and high and pure thought*-—"

Lady Dunluce acknowledged these compliments with a sigh. " Ah, I know you have only a poor opinion of yourself, you don't half know how good you are." " Good 11 am nothing, Cora; a passive nonentity; a piece of human furniture that fills an allotted space in Lord Dunluce's establishment, and which is of no importance in the world, either for good or evil."

" That is hard, ain't it," sighed Coralie. " With your beauty you ought to have done as much harm as Cleopatra. You ought to have seen fleets destroyed and armies slaughtered for your beaux yeux. or kept, two kingdoms in commotion, like Mary Stuart; or even ia these degenerate modern times yon might have set the town in a blaze, been the cause of separations

and divorces, Belgian duels, and Mayfatr suicides. With beauty, and such wealth as yours—to be only Lady Dunluce. No, 16 is not much after all. And yet how many people envy you—l myself, for instance.

" I hope you are above so paltry a feeling. Cora."

"Don't hope anything good or noble of my father's daughter," said Coralie, renewing her attack upon a pile of crisp biscuits, and munching as she talked.

" I don't like to hear a daughter speak of her father as you speak of yours. Cora," Laciv Dunluce ssld gravely, '* and I would much rather you left his name out of our conversation. You ought to remember that he and I have long ceased to ba frinnds." „ .„ „ „ T "I ought 1 t ought 1 cried Cora. "I auk a wretch to forget," and then she put down her biscuit and sighed remorsefully. "It was so good of you to rescue mc fro/n my shabby, lonely life; it was so good of you to forget that I am Hubert Urquhart a daughter." ! " i"ou..are Lord Dunluce's niece. That 1 gives you a claim upon mc, Cora." [ " There are hundreds of women who would laugh such a claim to scorn; and you have plenty of girls of your own blood ito care for; those nice Hammond girls, I who are devoted to you." "They are very good girls, but they have a mother to look after them. " And I was motherless and alone, educated in a second-rat© school, kept by a needy French woman in a shabby suburb beyond tho Bois de Boulogne, and eating my heart out in a dingy lodging-house, which had but one virtue, that it was near my father's favourite clubs. Oh, how I hated that dark, narrow street under tho shadow ot St. James's Church, and tho joy bells and the death bells, and the clock that struck all the weary hours; and tho smart weddings, which served only to remind mc how httle chance I had of ever being married in a respectable manner; and the landlady, who would come in and squat down untuvlted upon the wretched sofa—until 1 felt tempted to ask whether the law between landlord and tenant made it her sofa or ours—and who condoled with mc because I must be so lonely with mv books and piano. As If books and piano were not better than her cockuey company. Oh, ie was a bottomless pit of squalid misery from which you rescued mc. I ought to be grateful." " Don't talk about gratitude, Cora. Be happy. That is all I want of you." " I'll do my beßt answered the girl briskly. " I don't know whether it is the chef or Mrs Ricketts who makes these too delicious biscuits, but whatsoever hand mixes the paste it is the hand of genius. And now I must go and glvo myself a warm bath, after all the dust and mire of the day's diversion, and spend an hour or so in making mysert just endurable." " Put on one of your prettiest frock 3, said Lady Dunluce. "Mr Coverdale is a good enough match for any young woman." "The Honourable and Reverend John Coverdale! It looks rather nice upon the address of a letter. But do you suppose for one moment, Aunt, that a serious and literary Anglican parson would ever look with the eye of favour upon mc?" asked Cora, pausing with her band upon the door. . . "Love delights in incongruities. Mr Coverdale is highly intellectual, and I believe both kind and conscientious. He is just the husband to ■" „ "To reform mc I Ah, Aunt, v it were any use, trying for him 1" She opened the door quickly, and was gone. Lady Dunluce heard her whistling a music-hall melody, learnt in the smok-ing-room, as she went along tho corridor. " That Is the warmest affection I get In this house," thought Sibyl Dunluce, as the notes died away in the distance. "I wonder whether she is false or true. An Urquhart, and true I That would indeed be an anomaly I But then there is the other side. Her mother may have been a good woman." She wanted to think well of this motherless and penniless girl if she could, for pure pity, although the girl was daughter of that man whom Sibyl Dunluce had regarded as her worst eiiemy, the man who had turned the sweetest gifts of life to bitterness and despair. She believed the worst of Hubert Urquhart, her husband's half-brother; and yet, hearing from Lord Dunluce that Hubert Urqubart's motherless girl was living alone and neglected in a West End bachelor lodging-house, all her kindly instincts rose in the girl's favour, and she lay awake a whole night thinking how she could serve this unhappy waif, whose misfortune it was to belong to au utterly false and unscrupulous father. There was one thing Lady Dunluce could not do, cross the threshold of any house inhabited by Hubert Urquhart. Sho spoke to Lord Dunluce on the morning after that night of troubled, thought. " 1 have been thinking of what you told mc yesterday about your brother's girl," Bhe began. " I don't like the idea of your niece being in such a miserable position, and if you don't object 1 should like to take her to live with mc. There is plenty ot room for her, both here and In • the country.'' "Ycb. there is room enough, undoubtedly* We are not a large family," said Dunluce, who had fretted himself with au angry wonder at the absence of an heir.

Two children had baen born to him, and had died in infancy. It seemed to him that there was a curse upon his union with a' woman who had never flattered him ho far as to pretend she loved him. She had given him herself and her wealth, the plaything of Fate, the slave of adverse circumstances ; and it seemed to him, and, perhaps, to the wife also, that a blight had fallen upon their offspring, the withering blight of a home where love had never entered.

"You have no objection then?" asked Sibyl, after a pause. They were in the hall, in the great stately house near Berkeley Square, one of those few houses to West End Loudon, where rank may live within high garden wallsshutfrom theoutside world. The garden was gloomy, after the manner of London gardens, despite all the gardener's art could do for it in the way of carpet beds and showy creepers; but the house was grandly ugly without and splendidly luxurious within. The wife's wealth had been spent lavishly upon that longneglected pile, and could the last Earl of Dunluce have revisited his town mansion, he would hardly have recognised tho rooms which, in his own day, bad been conspicuous for the shabblness of their enrtnins and carpets, and the ugliness of their furniture, of the later Georglsn period. Under her present ladyship's regime the house had been furnished and decorated throughout after the fashion of Louis Seize; and it might have been the mansion entre couret jardin of a Legitimist nobleman in the Faubourg St. Germain. Space and light, grace of line, Mid delicacy of colouriug distinguished those large and lofty reception-rooms, that airy hall, with its double sweep of shallow marble stairs. Its groups of palms, and gracious marble forma of Fawn and Nymph, Cupid and Psyche.,; Dunluce paced up and down the hall with an inscrutable countenance. He was a man in whom speech seemed always in some wise an effort.

"You won't mind my having your niece as a kind of companion, will you, Danluce ? " urged his wife. " Mind ? No, of course not. It is very good of you to suggest the thing. All I fear is that the girl may prove a bore to you.' And so the matter was settled, and Coralie Urquhart- was transferred with her meagre belongings from the shabby second floor front in Jermyn street to a suite of elegant rooms in Dunluce House, where there was room and verge enough to allow this young lady her own sitting room, as well as a Spacious bed and dress-ing-room. She declared that she felt like a princess amidst her new surroundings, and so much the more so after Madam Lorlotte, her ladyship's dressmaker, had taken her measure tor a complete set of frocks and out-door garments to suit all the requirements ot her new life.

Sibyl was far too delicate to suggest any overhauling of the girl's existing wardrobe, but a few judicious questions elicited the fact that Miss Urquhart possessed exactly five frocks, three tailor-made and threadbare, while the remaining two were evening gowns, a year and a half old, and too small to he worn without torture.

" The Pater's tailor gave mc a start with those dear little tweed frocks, when I came from Paris, hut he has turned disagreeable since then, and won't give any more tick." .

Coralie was mildly reproved for that last word, and Madame Lotlotte was sent tor and told that she must produce a »ea«on's dresses for Miss Urquhart before tho end of the week. She shrugged her shoulders and elevated her eyebrows, and then exhibited all her neat little teeth in a caressing smile. "Pour Miladi on fail Vim-possible," she said. "Mais, mon Dieu. quatre jours pour /aire /aire vn trousseau." In the result the Impossible was done, so far as the production of two delicious little walking-gowns and; three partyfrocks, ofa most exquisite simplicity,yet with a certain boldness of style and colouring which set off Miss Urquhart'e plainness.

1 *••«..' "Site est francJusment laide la jpetiie*. the dressmaker told Lady Duulues's maid at a later interview. "But ii is an original style of ugliness, aud I like ifc better than your milky-skinned English faces, with their Insignificant, naraby. pamby features." Henceforward, Coralle'a life was a bed of ; roses—or would have been had she been utterly without conscience and without heart. Unluckily for her, she imd not yet attained th*»t hardness which ri«et ' superior to all moral feelings, nil vain com* pnnctions; but she was her father's daughter, and she was in a fair way of becoming like hi.rj.

He had a eorious conversation with her the night before she left him to become a portion of his brother's family. " Cora," ho SMld, thoughtfully, lying hack in the one comfortable urmchair which his landlady provided for her victims, and smoking his favourite brtarwood, "you and I are not likely to see much of each other while you are under Lady Duuluce's protection." •' Why not?" she asked wonderlngly. " Because her ladyship hates mc like foison. Never mind why she hates mc. tis an old story, and a long one. I don't reciprocate tho feeling, and I am profoundly interested In the lady and all that coucerns her. By the way, you keep a dairy, of course? Most girls do."

"Dochey? Then they must have more to write about than I hnvo had since I left Madamo Mlchon's. What should I put down? 'Tuesday: Poured out Father's coffee. Went for a walk in the Green Park with the landlady's daughter. Begat another uovel, rather stupider than the last. Why docs Mudle send one the books one doesn't ask for instead of the book ooe has been wanting for the last three weekst Went to bed at half-past eleven. Fathei had not come home.' Do you think that sort of record would be worth keeping?" " Happy the woman who has no history," answered her father sententlously. " Well, you will keep a diary in future, If you please, Cora; and you will keep It In such a manner as will admit of your alloying mc to read it. You will have plenty to record at Dunluce House and Dunluce Castle. You will have her ladyahlp—a most interesting study—a poem and a history incarnate. I want you to observe her closely, and to write dowa everything thatcoucerns her—her actions, sentiments, opinions, the people with whom she associates, and tho esteem in which she holds them."

"Father," said Cora, looking at hlnj with wide opeu eyes and hardening lips, more earnestly than she had ever looked at him in her life before, " you want mc to be a spy I" "No, ray dear; I only want you to be an observer. My interest la Lady Duuluce is founded upon the purest motives. I want to put an end to the feud between us, which is perilous for her and unpleasant tor mc. I know her miserably mated to mv brother, who is—well, about as bad as they make "em," continued Urquhart, taking refuge in slang. " I have no doubt I can be of use to her in the future—financially, in the protection of her enormous fortune, and otherwise—aud I can only serve her by watchfulness, personal or vicarious. It is just possible that this kindness to you means a change of sentiment towards me—a holding out of tflff olive-branch. So much the better If ffc does; but in any case you must watch for mc, siuce I cannot watch for myself. You will find out her friends and her enemies, and on which side the peril lies " " Will you assure mc that you arc hor true friend, arid that no harm can come of any thing I may tell you ?" " I do assure you that I am hor friend. I will go further und tell you that ten years ago I was her devoted lover. Sho refused me—her heart was buried in another man's grave—and a few months afterwards she married my elder brother. Tho match was of old Sir Joseph Higginaon's making, I have no doubt. She accepted a coronet— with a wry face, perhaps, but accepted it, all the same, an women do. That old romantic feeling of mine died out of mc long ago; but Sibylla Dunluce is still a great deal nearer and dearer to mc than any other woman, and I should like to help her if ever she have need of help. She Is too rich not to be robbed: she is too handsome not to be tempted. You will be with her in a confldental capacity: you are keen enough to scent either danger, and to pass the warning on to mc. You can send mc your diary weekly." " I can'c understand how you con be oi any use to her." " 1 daresay not," replied Mr Urquhart, with admirable nonchalance, puffing quietly at his brlarwood. (To be continued.)