Read Ebook: Modern Flirtations: A Novel by Sinclair Catherine

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"It is easy," said Prince Eugene, "to be modest when one is successful; but it is difficult not to be envied." While the very presence of young Granville in the room, with his riotous young associates, seemed as if it held up a glass to their mind's eye, testifying the folly and evil of their course, yet Richard Granville abhorred display, while Sir Patrick and De Crespigny frequently declared he was "too clever and too good for them;" and unavoidable circumstances afterwards combined to estrange the young men still more. A law-suit had been going on almost since the period of their birth, conducted in an amicable way by their guardians, in which the interests of all three were so deeply concerned, and the case so exceedingly complicated, that years passed on, during which the youths had all grown to manhood, and the case remained still undecided; while the one-sided view which was given to Dunbar and De Crespigny on the subject caused in them an angry feeling of hostility and rancour against their amiable and high-minded young relative, who was so enthusiastically desirous to enter the English church, and devote himself to those sacred duties, that he scarcely wished a favorable decree, which would prevent the necessity for his pursuing a profession at all.

A Scotch law-suit may be compared to a game at battle-dore between the tribunals of England and Scotland, while the gaping client sees the shuttle-cock for ever flying over his head, higher and higher out of reach, and sent backwards and forwards with ceaseless diligence, but no apparent progress; or it is like a kitten playing with a ball of worsted, which is allowed to come often apparently within her grasp, and is then, when she least expects, twitched away farther than before. The Granville case had been decided by the Court of Session, against the two cousins, Dunbar and Crespigny, but being appealed to the House of Lords, was recommended for consideration, re-argued, re-considered, and nearly reversed, while replies and duplies, remits and re-revisals, commissions of inquiry, and new cases, followed each other in ceaseless succession, and many of the lawyers who were young men when the case began, grew grey in the service, while it yet remained in suspense. A grand-uncle of Sir Patrick's had fifty years before, bought an estate of ?12,000 a-year from the Marquis of Doncaster, to whom young De Crespigny was now heir presumptive; but Mr. Dunbar having, it was conjectured, entertained some suspicion that the title deeds were not perfectly valid, as an entail had been discovered afterwards, by which it was generally thought that the land must be restored to the original owner, he hastily and most unfairly sold the property to the late Mr. Granville for ?350,000, and dying intestate, after having lost nearly the whole sum in a mining speculation, it could not be proved whether Sir Patrick's father had acted as an executor for the deceased or not, so as to render himself responsible for his debts, and liable to refund the sum paid by Mr. Granville. Thus, whether the entail held good, and carried the estate back to Lord Doncaster, or whether it had been legally broken, so as to entitle the Granville family to keep it, or whether, if it were refunded, the price could be claimed from the heirs of Mr. Dunbar, still continued a mystery never apparently to be solved.

For many generations past, the ancient Marquisate of Doncaster had been inherited by a succession of only sons, all strict Papists, who had each in his turn been reckoned by the next heirs exceedingly sickly and unpromising, but still the wonder grew, for not one had ever died, till he left a substitute in regular rotation, to supply the vacancy which he created himself; and a long train of minorities in the family had caused the accumulation of wealth and property to be enormous, when the present proprietor succeeded fifty years before our story commences. Nothing could exceed his own astonishment at the unembarrassed magnificence of the fortune, of which he most unexpectedly found himself in possession, as his father had been in the habit of concealing the amount of his own income, and allowing his heir rather less than nothing, saying, that as he himself had never had anything to eat till he had no teeth to eat with, he was resolved that his successor should be similarly treated. In pursuance of this plan, the old nobleman even on his death-bed, had actually expired with a practical joke on his lips. He sent for his son, gravely told him that with debts, mortgages, and settlements, the very encumbered estate he was about to inherit would scarcely pay its own expenses, and recommended him to live in future with the most penurious economy. When the will was opened, finding to his unutterable joy, that he had merely been played upon by the old humorist, who, in reality left him ?40,000 per annum clear, so great was Lord Doncaster's surprise, that he declared his good fortune at the time to be "almost incredible;" and it might have been supposed, that he never afterwards completely believed it, as his personal expenses were always in a style more suited to the old Lord's threat than his performance, and he became a fresh instance of what may be so often remarked, that the most extravagant heirs in expectancy become the most avaricious in possession.

There was one singular peculiarity in the settlements of Lord Doncaster's family, that so long as he had no son, or if his son at twenty-one declared himself a Protestant, he had the power of selling or bequeathing the estates according to his own pleasure or caprice; and the ancestor who had inserted this clause in his deed of entail, made his intention evident, that the succession should go to the Roman Catholic Church, rather than to a Protestant heir; but the present peer had taken advantage, on so large a scale, of his own childless privilege, to sell the family estates, that his two deceased sisters, Lady Charlotte De Crespigny, and Lady Caroline Smytheson, used secretly to complain, that little would be left for their children, if he persevered in turning every acre into gold; yet no one ever could guess how the large sums were squandered or melted away, which the old Marquis was continually raising, unless they went, as was strongly suspected, in the form of "secret service money," among the priests by whom he was surrounded.

Nobody had a better right to be eccentric than Lord Doncaster!--old, rich, unmarried, and originally educated at home,--a misfortune sufficient in itself to engender so many peculiarities, as to render a man unfit for society ever afterwards. The aged peer was shy, proud, and arbitrary beyond all conception, avaricious about trifles, yet lavish to excess on great occasions, suspicious of all men's motives and intentions, and yet confiding to the last extreme of weakness, in the Abbe Mordaunt, his confessor, despising all men, and yet anxious beyond measure for the world's good opinion, addicted to the very worst female society, when he might have enjoyed the best, hating company, and yet sometimes plunging into it, when and where he was least expected, jealous to excess of his next heir, Louis De Crespigny, whom he enslaved to his caprices, as if even his existence were to be given or withheld at his option, yet sometimes whimsically cordial in his manner to him, though ready to take fire in an instant if his condescension led the lively youth into the slightest approach towards confidence or familiarity.

Mr. Howard Smytheson, the wealthy brother-in-law of Lord Doncaster, having purchased most of the De Crespigny estates, as acre after acre, farm after farm, and house after house, came successively into the market, bequeathed them on his decease to an only daughter then an infant, and it became a favorite day-dream with the old peer, that his nephew and niece should be educated for each other, while to this end he tried his utmost power of conciliation with the maiden sister of Mr. Howard Smytheson, to whose care the young heiress had been consigned, hoping that thus all the amputated limbs of his vast property might yet be reunited in their pristine magnitude, to which very desirable end he thenceforth directed his whole conversations with young De Crespigny, to whom he more than hinted that, unless their will were the same about this marriage, his own will after death would be found very different from what his nephew probably anticipated and wished.

The private vices of Lord Doncaster had been so very private, that though much was suspected, little could be known; yet, while he had few visible or personal expenses, and no imaginable outlet for his fortune, he invariably spent all his income, and considerably more, being one of those personages occasionally seen who excite the wonder and speculation of relations and neighbours, by unaccountably frittering away fortunes of almost royal splendor, without any appearance of royal luxury or royal liberality. Wearied of the world, in which he had nothing more to desire, and of himself, as he had nothing to think of or to do,--bored in short with the want of a want, Lord Doncaster's life was indeed a mere heartless pageant of mean ostentation and fretful pride, sternly insulated in a state of solitary old-bachelor despotism, and absorbed in himself to a degree which no ordinary mind could conceive or comprehend. Encumbered with so many unoccupied hours, it was a subject of as much wonder how he disposed of his superfluous time, as of his superfluous fortune; but he settled that question, by remarking one day to his nephew, that "the great business of life is, to shuffle through the day anyhow till dinner time." Like all parsimonious men, Lord Doncaster could not endure to hear any one else reckoned affluent, and Louis De Crespigny knew that a certain receipt for irritating him was, to over-estimate everybody's income, consequently he amused himself occasionally by audibly giving out Lord Towercliffe's fortune to be ?15,000 a-year, and estimating his friend Sir Patrick Dunbar's rent-roll at a clear sum of ?20,000 per annum, while he slyly watched his uncle's rising choler, and patiently heard, for the fiftieth time, an elaborate explanation, that it was impossible, and a sober calculation which reduced both the offending parties almost to beggary.

In the month of August, as regularly as time revolved, Lord Doncaster delighted to read in the newspapers, his own pompous advertisement, the only original composition he was ever known to attempt, in which he prohibited poachers and strangers from shooting on his moors in Argyleshire, Mid-Lothian, Yorkshire, Galloway, Cromarty, and Caithness, but except the annual appearance of this spirited manifesto, no public evidence ever came forth of that extraordinary wealth which property so extensive must be supposed to produce. No charitable donations bore witness to Lord Doncaster's liberality--no country objects were encouraged by his public spirit--and the monuments daily arising in memory of departed merit, made a vain appeal for his pecuniary tribute of respect and regret, for Lord Doncaster neither respected nor regretted any man.

It was an often-repeated axiom of Lord Doncaster's, that every man cheats or is cheated; but in one instance, and one only, his Lordship had shown apparently some kind feeling, or rather perhaps he might be said to have exhibited a capricious freak of benevolence, though the result had been such as to afford him an excuse ever afterwards for not again attempting a single act of gratuitous liberality.

The nearest relative to his ancient family, after Louis De Crespigny and Miss Howard, was Mrs. Anstruther, a distant cousin, who, after making a low and almost disgraceful marriage, had suddenly died, it was believed by her own hands, thus consigning her two young children to helpless, and apparently hopeless poverty, till at length they were very unwillingly invited, or rather permitted to become residents in an almost menial capacity at Beaujolie Castle, in Yorkshire, where, as they could neither be drowned like kittens, nor shot like puppy-dogs, the Marquis caused them to be treated like the "whipping boys" in Charles the First's time--sometimes employed as playmates to amuse his nephew and niece during their holiday visits to his residence, but more frequently treated in a sort of mongrel way between dependents and slaves by the heartless and tyrannical old peer, who considered them as mere poachers on the preserve of his family honors, having forced their way into existence by some untoward accident, and become absolute blots in the creation, liable to be suspected, and even accused to their faces of every low and vicious propensity, in consequence of which, from an early age, he destroyed their self-respect, and irritated their evil passions by the most rash and unfounded aspersions--theft, swindling, lying, and gluttony, were among the principal counts in his Lordship's indictment, when he sometimes vented a paroxysm of ill-humor on these his unhappy dependents; and many a time the tears of Mary Anstruther, and the flashing eye of her brother Ernest, bore witness to the anger and grief with which they listened to his bitter and often unmerited upbraidings.

At times, however, Lord Doncaster found it convenient for his own private purposes to patronize the Anstruthers, and threatened, in the hearing of all his young relatives, that if Louis De Crespigny's conduct did not in all respects satisfy him, an heir more subservient to his wishes might be found, and though the culprit must be his nephew, he need not be his successor, while the glance of his eye towards Ernest aroused hopes, wishes, and even expectations of the wildest extravagance, which were then confirmed for a time by his being promoted to temporary attention and consideration, not only displayed ostentatiously by their capricious patron, but extending to the increased respect and observance of the servants, the thermometer of whose obedience rose and fell according as the sunshine of Lord Doncaster's favor shone upon his young relative or not; yet brief as these periods of increased importance had always been, they made an indelible impression on the young and ambitious minds of those usually neglected children. "The child becomes a boy, the boy a youth, and then the game of life begins in earnest."

Without education or principle, and with no friend on the wide earth to confide in or to consult, the two young Anstruthers, like weeds that will yet flourish though trampled upon, grew up vigorous in body, and enthusiastically as well as devotedly attached to each other, with a depth and power of affection which appeared, before long, the only redeeming quality in characters wherein strong passions and weak principles promised little, and threatened much, to all with whom they might hereafter become associated.

The resemblance between them was as remarkable as their attachment, both having dark Italian-looking countenances, of remarkable symmetry, with a singularly excitable and determined expression in their large lustrous eyes, while it was remarkable that neither could by possibility look any one steadily in the face. There was a wild, almost feverish brilliancy in the eye of Ernest, expressive of a fiery impetuosity, amounting at times almost to an appearance of insanity, when, after being obliged to crouch and flatter for his bread before Lord Doncaster, he would retire with Mary, and give loose to all the angry torrent of his long-suppressed emotions. The sister's heart cowered sometimes before the flood of invectives and imprecations with which he relieved his heart by speaking of his wrongs, while he seemed to cherish a gnawing belief that fortune herself had shown him a most unaccountable and undeserved enmity, which he was resolved, by fair or by foul means, to subvert. "I shall yet rise above all the accidents of fortune! It shall be done, I care not how, Mary," said he sternly. "We must not be over-particular on that score, for, as the proverb says, 'a cat in mittens will never catch mice!'"

Bold, fearless, and ready, with a keen appetite for danger, a fearless ambition, consummate cunning, and an insatiable thirst for adventure, it seemed sometimes as if he would put his mind into a pugilistic attitude, and buffet his way forward to pre-eminence in spite of all the malice of fortune and of mankind. With a temper vindictive, harsh, and deadly, his blood mounted like mercury in a thermometer at the very thought of success, and often when he spoke to his sister in the lowest whisper of their future prospects, she would start and look hastily round as if in terror, lest the wild dreams of his undisciplined mind might be overheard and resented, for he nourished a feverish hope, which he called a presentiment, but which amounted almost to a monomania, that the splendid residence in which they were now only tolerated on sufferance, "as reptile dependents," would one day become his own.

If every man living might remove at pleasure all those who stand inconveniently in his way, political economists would have nothing to fear from a too rapidly increasing population, and the day-dreams of Ernest, which gained strength and consistency every hour, were prolific in both deaths and marriages. He carefully collected in the Peerage all the instances there recorded, in which distant relations had succeeded through a long mortality of twenty or five-and-twenty intermediate heirs,--he remembered that neither Louis nor Caroline had yet endured the measles,--he thought their Shetland ponies very dangerous, and, in short, if their days had been measured by him, the measure would have been short indeed. His personal vanity was excessive, and amidst his wild schemes of aggrandisement, the first and foremost had lately been to marry his lively, frolicsome, little cousin, and occasional playmate, Caroline Howard Smytheson, in whose infant manner, heedless and good-humored as she was, he flattered himself there might be traced an evident appearance of preference, while he could not but also remark, that before any of the young party had attained the age of maturity, and Caroline was yet a mere infant. Louis De Crespigny had already begun to exercise his genius for flirtation in the society of his humble cousin Mary Anstruther,--humble only in circumstances, but possessing that pride without principle, which goes before a fall.

Time had ripened the faults of the two young Anstruthers, and perfected also their extraordinary beauty of person, when, after Ernest had attained the age of nineteen, a whim as sudden, and apparently as unaccountable as their adoption, caused Lord Doncaster, or rather the Abbe Mordaunt, unexpectedly to announce that they were dismissed from the house. Various rumours were circulated among the servants to account for this harsh and hasty decision, but nothing could be discovered for certain. Ernest was reported to have expressed himself with the greatest rancour and contempt respecting a report in circulation, that Lord Doncaster intended to marry the Abbe Mordaunt's beautiful niece, then on a visit at Kilmarnock Abbey, near Edinburgh. The Abbe was said to have missed some valuable jewels belonging to his niece Laura, who accused both the Anstruthers of having been seen in her room,--a large sum of money, it was hinted, had mysteriously disappeared--some people said that Ernest had been discovered at a late hour of the night attempting to enter the sleeping apartment of Lord Doncaster, without being able to give any satisfactory account of his intentions, and others declared that Louis De Crespigny's assiduities to Mary Anstruther had recently become rather too obvious, while surmises arose against her character; but whatever might be the cause, they were both hastily transferred on a few hours' notice from the splendors of Kilmarnock Abbey, to a small obscure lodging at Portobello. As Ernest was about to leave that house which had so long been his home, with Mary sobbing in uncontrollable grief on his arm, anger and despair were fearfully stamped on their young faces, when the Abbe Mordaunt advancing silently, placed a small sum of money in their hands, which the young man furiously dashed upon the ground, and trampled upon, saying in accents of strong and almost terrifying vehemence, while his countenance exhibited a dark insidious expression of almost maniacal fury, "I would not be human if I did not hate your niece and you!--my curse shall rest on both till I am revenged! Take back your paltry gold, I shall build up my own fortune, or perish in the ruins! I shall live by my own hands, or--by own hands I shall die!"

From that day forward the names of Mary and Ernest Anstruther never passed the lips of Lord Doncaster or the Abbe, who ordered the servants also to abstain from ever mentioning them, which only piqued the curiosity of the second table into greater activity than ever; but though many vague conjectures, dark suspicions, and absurd rumours, were promulgated throughout the establishment, nothing certain could be ascertained, except that they returned no more to Kilmarnock Abbey, and that a final extinguisher had been placed on all their prospects and hopes from Lord Doncaster.

About this time Mrs. Bridget Smytheson sent Miss Howard, then only six years old, to school, and seemed so little anxious to encourage an intimacy between the young heiress and Louis De Crespigny, whom she had long disliked, that Lord Doncaster, piqued and indignant, angrily reminded her of his sister Lady Caroline's dying injunction, to which she had promised implicit attention, that if the cousins, after they were grown up, could be ascertained to have to have a disinterested preference for each other, every opportunity should be given them to become attached and engaged.

"Certainly, Lord Doncaster; and I shall fulfil my pledge," replied the over-dressed, and rather under-bred aunt, in her usual tone of fantastic affectation; "but these boy-and-girl intimacies are not the most likely to produce that romantic love with which young people ought to begin their married lives; and besides, how could their preference be disinterested, where the brilliant prospects of both are continually descanted on as motives to their union. No! I have a considerable spice of romance in my composition; and when they do meet again, it shall be under very different circumstances."

"What a creature to have the charge of any girl!" thought Lord Doncaster, as he returned from handing her, with every appearance of profound respect, into her pony-carriage. "There is another woman half so insane out of bedlam; and that mad-cap child herself is as wild as a horse with the reins broke. The greatest annoyance on earth is, to have a rich and vulgar upstart among on's near connections."

The life of Louis De Crespigny, from the hour he entered the army, was one continued steeple-chase after pleasure and amusement, in whatever form they could be courted, or at whatever expense they could be enjoyed. At a very early age, he was already a veteran in the world and its ways; for he stood "alone in his glory," the most admired, courted, and idolized of mankind, a perfect adept in all the arts of rendering himself agreeable in society, and possessing many pleasant qualities, but none that were valuable. During a gay career of dissipation and frivolity, he had entered with successive eagerness on a thousand flirtations, though he always forgot to marry in the end, while his heart, like a phoenix, was frequently consumed, yet never destroyed, and always ready at the service of any young lady, with youth, beauty, and accomplishments enough to excite his temporary interest. Being of opinion, that, though not yet a peer, he ought speedily to be one, young De Crespigny openly avowed the impossibility of marrying while Lord Doncaster survived, and jocularly remarked, that it would be a pity prematurely to cut off the hopes of his hundred and one Scotch cousins, who lived, like Ernest Anstruther, on the hope, that if his neck were broken at Melton, his succession might yet be "cut up" amongst them; and to the friendly inquiries of his many relatives, he frequently replied with a condoling look, that he and his uncle were both "hopelessly well."

Lord Doncaster was not even yet, by any means, so great a Methusalemite in age, nor so weighed down by infirmities, as his lively nephew chose among the mothers and daughters of his intimate acquaintance to represent; and some ladies whom young De Crespigny had piqued or affronted, were actually ill-natured enough to hint, that Lord Doncaster was still almost young and almost handsome! They had even been so malicious as to insinuate, that his Lordship might possibly have a genius for marrying his house-keeper, almost the only respectable female who ever crossed his threshold; but Mrs. Fireland's very mature age, and very antiquated dress, shewed how completely she must have given up that point; and even her desire to please him in her own department, became every hour so increasingly difficult, and was attended with failures and disappointments so unforeseen and unaccountable, that the good woman often shook her head ominously, in alluding to his Lordship's numerous whims, saying, in a confidential under tone, which seemed to mean more than met the ear, to the steward, "he's petiklar! he's very petiklar! It would require a person bespoke to order to please his Lordship." And certainly he had become of late years more particular than ever.

One personage only seemed to have the art of doing no wrong in the estimation of Lord Doncaster; and the respect which he withheld from all mankind, was concentrated to an immeasurable degree on the Abbe Mordaunt, who was the Cardinal Wolsey of Kilmarnock Abbey and Beaujolie Castle. Proud, overbearing, harsh, and arbitrary, he ruled over the house, the purse, and even the will of his patron, with despotic and unlimited sway. Men are generally advanced in years before the passions and feelings have stamped their indelible traces, like the impression of a seal, which becomes permanent only after the wax has began to cool; but in every feature of the Abbe's countenance, might now be seen the evidences of a gloomy, severe, and almost ferocious temper, yet never was there a greater triumph of art over nature, than in the skill with which he adapted his looks and conversation to the taste or caprice of those whom it was his interest to govern, and the astonishing facility with which he could call up a bland smile and insinuating voice, to supersede the habitual haughtiness of his tone and manner.

Educated at St. Omers, in all the dark superstitions of that bigoted college, the Abbe was nevertheless far from desirous to seek within the walls of a cloister any protection from those temptations to worldly indulgence, which he had not even the wish to resist. He neither preached nor practised the virtues of his vocation, but paraded a whole troop of vices openly in the public eye; and far from attempting to reform mankind, he never attempted even to reform himself. Though in personal appearance of distinguished ugliness, yet such was the magic of his manner, that even by ladies he was considered perfectly irresistible; and to all, whether old or young, he generally succeeded in imparting a conviction, that he saw in her, for the first time, a realization of female perfection and female fascination. The Abbe was never known to stop half-way in arduously pursuing any object of pleasure, profit, or ambition, nor, whatever might be the impediments, was he ever seen to fail of success; for, like Bonaparte, he did not know the meaning of the word "impossible."

After having recklessly squandered, in a career of almost startling dissipation, the whole of his own patrimony, it was believed that he had obtained fraudulent possession of ?10,000 belonging to his very beautiful niece, to whom he must have refunded it had she lived to come of age, or had she married it must have been restored to her children, but about the time our story commences, she was supposed either to have died, or to have retired to a convent abroad, though whether upon conviction or not, might be considered very doubtful, as she had been educated by her mother in the Protestant faith, and it was generally conjectured that to so sudden and entire a removal from all former connections, her poverty more than her will must have consented. Laura Mordaunt had resided much at Kilmarnock Abbe with her uncle, to whom she seemed warmly and blindly attached, but the gossiping world sometimes conjectured that perhaps the evident partiality and admiration of Lord Doncaster might have roused in her some ambitious thoughts, backed by the influence of the Abbe. Among the peculiarities of the Marquis he had always professed a decided contempt for all respectable ladies, and therefore his attentions to Laura Mordaunt were at best a very questionable compliment, and became naturally of a nature which few relatives would have wished to encourage, yet Miss Mordaunt still remained a guest at Kilmarnock Abbey, till the period of her sudden disappearance, which caused so much astonishment among her intimate friends and near connections, that the father of Richard Granville, her cousin, shortly before his own death, wrote an affectionate letter, entreating her to return, were it but for a few months, and to make a home of his house for the future, should it suit her to do so; but to this kind and generous offer no reply ever came, and as all communications were to pass through the Abbe's hands, who alone knew his niece's direction, it might be doubted whether the invitation ever reached that hand for which it was intended.

That Lord Doncaster had cruelly disappointed Laura Mordaunt, as he had already disappointed many others, her friend and cousin had good reason to believe; and though unable to imagine any really romantic or lasting attachment to a man, however elevated in rank or agreeable in manners, of at least fifty years old, yet he knew that Laura, who lived so retired that she could boast of few friends and no admirers, might really have been dazzled with the splendour of his rank or the fascination of his conversation; while it seemed the most unaccountable part of the whole affair, that if such were the case, the attachment had not been reciprocal, between a young and beautiful girl, thrown so continually in his way, and an aged roue, who had so evidently admired her.

"Doncaster, Marquis of. Heir presumptive, Louis Henry De Crespigny."

A tradition prevailed among the elder ladies of fashion now in society, that a splendid set of diamonds, which had been long the ornament and admiration of Queen Charlotte's drawing-rooms, were since entailed, by an old Lady Doncaster, in the family; and many a young beauty, in arranging a bright futurity on her own plan, had frequently worn these far-famed jewels in her imagination, when presented at Court as a Marchioness, the envy and admiration of all her contemporaries. Meantime nothing could be more astonishing than to find how much was known in Edinburgh concerning the modes of life, temper, and character of the present Lord Doncaster, though he lived not only secluded from society, but made it his peculiar study to evade the scrutiny of impertinent curiosity, and was so anxious to check the loquaciousness of servants, that his butler and housekeeper had strict orders to keep up a sort of prison discipline in the establishment, and not to allow a word to be spoken when at meals. It was, however, authentically ascertained by some unknown means, that Lord Doncaster, who had formerly been a man of dissipated habits and irregular hours, now devoted himself to the care of his health as diligently and intensely as a miser does to the care of his money, and that to him it had become a subject of almost avaricious interest. If the Marquis had a finger-ache, it was magnified in Edinburgh into a case of certain death; but after a really severe illness, he was heard jocularly to remark, in sporting phrase, "I have had another round with death!" while he seemed confident, on these occasions, of always coming off victorious, though few among the young ladies of his nephew's acquaintance would have been found ready to back his expectations, while Agnes Dunbar impatiently remarked, that Lord Doncaster had been so long in the world, he seemed not to know how to leave it.

Still Lord Doncaster obstinately persevered in living on, while, strange to say, many of the manoeuvring mamas who had been heard to declare, that if an old person must die at any rate, they could spare his Lordship better than any other mortal, became mortal themselves, and were first consigned to the tomb. Even some of the young and lovely girls, who had thought, in the morning of life, before the freshness of their bloom had been dimmed, or the lustre of their beauty had decayed, that this one obstacle to their happiness must be removed,--many of these gay, joyous, and unthinking beings had sunk unexpectedly into an early grave, while still Lord Doncaster, in a most provoking and unprincipled manner, disappointed everybody, and continued to exist in a world where he was anything but welcome, resolved apparently, never, in an every-day vulgar way, to die at all.

In the mean time, Louis De Crespigny, devoted to the amusements of life, but independent of all its finer sympathies, seemed to breathe nothing but the exhilarating ether of life, joyous, giddy, and intoxicating. He revelled in a laughing, lively, satirical consciousness of his own exact position in society, and privately resolved to make the most of it,--not that he deliberately made up his mind to deceive,--his code of honor was rigid enough in respect to his transactions with gentlemen, but in the case of young ladies it was otherwise,--

"Man, to man so oft unjust, Is always so to woman."

With ladies Mr. De Crespigny considered his own brilliant prospects and personal fascinations to be fair, marketable produce, which there could be no objection that he should use to the utmost advantage, for bringing in the largest possible return of pleasure, profit, and amusement. Accordingly, the gay young Cornet, living upon what he could borrow, on the disinterested attentions of manoeuvring mothers, and on the expectation of his uncle's speedy demise, made himself the chosen attendant of half a hundred accomplished and perfectly amiable young ladies, who laughed, talked, sang, and danced with him, while he soon became but too intimately known as a ruthless flirt, to many a young heart, and to many a happy home, where he took care that it should be distinctly implied and understood, that nothing but the jealous penuriousness of "that old quiz, Lord Doncaster," impeded his ardent wish to settle for life; while in the mean time, wherever a good table and cellar were kept, he testified exactly such a degree of partiality for the sister or daughter of his host, as made her be considered his wife-presumptive, and secured him a regular knife and fork in the house on all family festivals and state occasions, without any trouble in either ordering or paying for the entertainment. It has been said, that as a rolling stone gathers no moss, neither does a roving heart gain any affection; but whatever might be the case with others, Louis De Crespigny felt himself without a doubt the idol of every drawing-room, where he sentimentalized, rattled, and flirted in every style, with every girl under twenty, as diligently as if he were canvassing for an election, while they talked, looked, smiled, and dressed their very best; and the excellence of any gentleman's wine might be accurately estimated by the thermometer of Mr. De Crespigny's attention to the daughters; but he had a declared abhorrence of family dinners, which looked too business-like and domestic, as if he had really committed himself; though, as Lady Towercliffe remarked to her four daughters one day, "he never said anything to the purpose, when the purpose was marriage."

Mr. De Crespigny's engagement book was nearly as complicated an affair as any ledger or day-book, and much more so than his own banker's account, for he arranged it on the most systematic principles of profit and loss. In whatever house he had been invited to dine, he considered himself as "owing a quadrille" to one of the young ladies at the next assembly. If he had actually "sat under her father's mahogany," as he termed it, she might be perhaps entitled to two dances; and when he had spent the greater part of a summer in her mother's country house, that established a sort of sinking fund in her behalf, which entitled him to have the use of him as a partner, whenever he happened accidentally to be disengaged, though indeed nothing ever occurred accidentally in Captain De Crespigny's arrangements, for he never acted on impulse, but always on systematic calculation. He seemed, with his gay pell-mell manner, the most off-hand, careless, and undesigning of men; but even in the trifling affair of going to a ball, where he might literally have exclaimed, "I am monarch of all I survey," he invariably carried in his mind's eye a list of all those partners with whom policy or self-interest directed him to dance, and very seldom indeed did he swerve from his pre-conceived muster-roll.

Some of Mr. De Crespigny's brother officers, envious perhaps of his extraordinary success in society, threw out sceptical hints respecting the certainty of his succession, and laughed sarcastically at the indefatigable vanity with which he evidently liked being thus torn to pieces among the chaperons and dowagers of society; but he laughed as heartily as themselves. No one could ever get the start of him in a joke; and his associates, when he came in competition with any one of them, found it no laughing matter. He knew his own power--who does not know that?--and difficulties only enhanced his triumph.

Lord Doncaster often dryly remarked, that the best economist in Britain must certainly be Louis De Crespigny, as, to his certain knowledge, he possessed only ?300 a year, and yet he seemed to revel in all the luxuries of life, besides having a great deal over for extravagance. There was no occasion for the young Cornet ever to think of dining at his club, as he might be entertained at the houses of three or four friends in a day, if he could have mustered as many appetites. In summer he incurred no expense, except to pay for his place occasionally on the top of a coach, or in a steam-boat, from one hospitable country house to another, where gigs were sent a stage to meet him on the way, if he were expected by the mail, or if by sea, a chariot might be seen waiting on the pier. He got "a mount" from one friend, the best seat in a barouche from another, and often the vacant place in a britschska from a third party, even to the expulsion of its more legitimate occupiers.

"What sort of looking individual, is a marrying man?" asked Sir Arthur, slyly. "I am often told that you, for instance, do not look like a marrying man; but pray point me out any one who does, that I may become more a connoisseur on the subject than I am. As for what you say of Louis De Crespigny, it sounds to my unpractised ear very like swindling; and he is not the youth I took him for if he live in such an element of deceit, sacrificing all sense of honor, all confidence, and all good feeling, for a worthless and transient popularity, or worse than all, for motives of mean, heartless self-interest. Such a man is not worth the space he occupies in the world!"

The Admiral's honest indignation would have been vented in still stronger terms, could his upright and honorable mind have been made to understand how entirely every thought, word, and action of Mr. De Crespigny's life was based on the most unswerving principles of cold, hard, unrelenting selfishness, and with what utter carelessness he seemed ready to trample on the wounded feelings of others; for it mattered not to him what degree of confidence he betrayed, or what degree of sorrow he inflicted. If in one house where he had been received as a son or a brother, he no longer found the cordial welcome of other days, a hundred other doors were still opened wide to receive him, where he could boast of having been "very nearly caught," and carry on the same game as before, which was a pastime to him, though fatal to the peace of many, who would willingly have died rather than betray the injury their feelings had suffered, when, after passing through the ordeal of his assiduities, they found themselves beguiled and cheated of all that was deepest and most sacred in their earthly affections--robbed without compunction by one who gave no return--who watched with elated triumph the growing delusion of those whom he had marked as victims to his own self-love, and whom he appeared to consider all in all to his happiness, till they found out at last that they were in reality less than nothing to him; yet the deception admitted of no redress. He lived on in a sort of cowardly impunity; for no young girl endowed with sensibility, and conscious of her own injuries, could desire, after entrusting him with the whole story of her hopes and affections, that the truth should be known; and his was a crime against which no evidence can be brought; for who could describe the tender nothings--the refined insinuations--the looks which say everything and mean nothing--the wordless language of the eyes, with which an undeclared love may be safely and yet obviously professed? What but a smile of ridicule or of censure could attend on such a detail of "unutterable things?" But with Louis De Crespigny nothing was unutterable; for he could say and unsay the same things two hundred times, and they always seemed to carry as much or as little weight as he pleased at the moment, while he entered society as a school-boy rushes into a garden, eagerly to pursue the brilliant insects fluttering in the sunbeams, ready to crush and injure them all for his momentary diversion, and yet on his guard to retreat in good order, should there appear to be the slightest danger of annoyance or discomfort to himself.

It was impossible to pass an hour in the society of Sir Arthur Dunbar, without seeing much to admire, and much also to love,--there was a sturdy, resolute, old-fashioned sense of honor in all his actions, tempered by the kindest and most considerate attention to the feelings, as well as to the interest of all with whom he might be associated, and his sentiments were tinctured by a generous liberality, only limited in action by the rigid restraints consequent on a very narrow income, which he had never been known to exceed, though he was often heard jocularly to remark, that the surplus, after his yearly accounts were paid, would scarcely buy him a pair of gloves.

Though the fire of Sir Arthur's eyes had been quenched by approaching blindness, and his weather-beaten countenance had been scarred in battle, and hardened by facing every tempest which had blown for half a century, yet his aspect had an air of habitual distinction and conscious dignity which commanded instant respect. There was an energy in the expression of his feelings, and a straightforward pursuit of what he thought right in all his actions, which gave him a singular influence over the affections and the conduct of those with whom he wished to associate, and the admirable use he made of which no one afterwards ever had cause to regret. His early life had been one full of action and of vigorous exertion, seeking, with old-fashioned patriotism, the honor of his country, more than the promotion of his own interests; but in advanced years, when no longer able publicly to distinguish himself, he directed his time and talents to the diffusion of happiness at home, and to a zealous, diligent, and humble preparation for that long and quiet home to which he believed himself rapidly approaching, and which he contemplated with the best of all philosophy,--that of a truly devoted Christian.

With all the blunt frankness of his sailor-like manner, Sir Arthur could nevertheless testify an almost feminine gentleness and sympathy towards the unfortunate. He was often discovered to have exerted clandestinely a degree of activity and zeal in serving the needy and desolate, which to a mind less eager and generous, would have seemed almost incredible,--he never lacerated the feelings of those who came to him for comfort, by attempting to convince the sufferer, as most people begin by doing, on such occasions, that the misfortune, whatever it be, is all his own fault,--and he was quite as ready, as well as better pleased, to rejoice with those that rejoiced, than to weep with those that wept, without ever, at any period of life, having found a place for envy in his kindest of hearts, which

"Turn'd at the touch of joy or woe, And turning trembled too."

With a good humored smile at his own credulity in having believed that Louis De Crespigny could ever be serious in proposing to sacrifice a day of his gay and busy life, to a prosing tete-a-tete on the sea-beach with an old man like himself, Sir Arthur dismissed the subject from his thoughts, and finally relinquished all hope of seeing his young friend, after a short soliloquy, in which he ended, by slyly hoping that the gay Cornet would never cause those who might feel it more, to regret his having jilted them.

Not many days following, the Admiral had retired at his usual early hour to bed, and after some time passed in profound repose, he was suddenly startled into wakefulness at the dawn of day, while the watchman was calling the hour of "Past four o'clock," by a loud and vehement knocking at the front-door of his house, accompanied by the most fearful and vociferous out-cries of "murder!" It was the sharp, shrill tone of a woman in the agony of fear, becoming more and more vehement at every repetition of the cry, while Sir Arthur dressed with the rapidity of a practised seaman, and hurried down stairs, where he found his maid-of-all-work, and his man-of-all-work, already assembled in breathless consternation round a trembling, terrified-looking servant girl, whose eyes were gleaming with an expression of frantic alarm, while, from her incoherent exclamations, Sir Arthur could only gather that some act of unutterable horror had been perpetrated in an opposite house, the windows of which were all partially closed, except one in the upper story, which was wide open, and seemed to be much broken and shattered.

Without waiting another moment to investigate the business, Sir Arthur strode across the street, hurried in at the open door, and guided by a momentary cry of childish distress, he mounted the staircase, with an activity beyond his years, three steps at a time, and precipitately entered the nearest room he could find. There he paused for a moment on finding himself in a splendidly-furnished bed-room, adorned with a degree of taste and elegance, far excelling what was customary in so obscure-looking a lodging, and the Admiral was about hastily to withdraw, when he became suddenly transfixed to the spot, and his eye seemed perfectly blasted by the spectacle which met his agitated and astonished gaze, while several moments elapsed before he had nerve to advance, and ascertain the reality of a scene, which filled him with horror.

On a magnificent couch, the rich coverlet of which was drenched in blood, that had sprinkled the floor, and spouted to the very roof of the room, lay the cold stiffened corpse of a young female, whose head seemed to have been nearly severed from her body, while a violent contusion appeared upon her forehead. The wrist of her right hand, with which she had probably attempted to defend herself, had also been deeply cut, and in her hand she grasped a quantity of dark hair, which seemed to have been torn from the head of her assassin in the struggle for life. Her teeth were clenched, and her eye-balls were starting from their sockets with a look of agonised fear, most appalling to behold, and her long fair hair which lay in disordered billows on her shoulders, were matted with gore.

A table near the bed had been overturned and broken,--a knife of very peculiar form, bent and distorted, lay conspicuously upon the pillow, as if placed there on purpose to attract notice, and the carpet, on which a pool of congealed blood had gathered, was likewise strewed with money, rings, bijouterie, trinkets, and plate.

Nestled in a little crib, close beside the murdered woman, but plunged in a slumber so profound, that it could not be natural, slept undisturbed and uninjured, a lovely boy of about eight years old. His head rested on his arm, and a clustering profusion of jetty black hair fell over his blooming countenance, in which there was a look of almost death-like repose. Awakened with the utmost difficulty by Sir Arthur, the child, who appeared to be of wondrous beauty, opened for a moment, a pair of bright blue, star-like eyes, and with a cry of terror, called for his mother, but a moment afterwards, overcome by irresistible drowsiness, his rosy cheek dropped upon the pillow, his heavy eyes were closed, and he relapsed into the same strange, mysterious insensibility as before.

It was a fearful sight, that young mother, with her look of ghastly agony turned towards the ruddy healthful countenance of her child in his peaceful slumbers, and it was evident that her last thought had been for him, as his clothes were still convulsively held in her left hand, while a vain attempt had obviously been made to tear them asunder,--many deep cuts being visible on the child's night-gown, though his person had been left uninjured.

Sir Arthur compassionately snatched the boy up in his arms, to hurry him away from the dreadful scene, and called the watchman, who instantly raised an alarm, and summoned the whole neighborhood to his assistance, when before ten minutes had elapsed, the room was filled with a crowd of agitated spectators, scared by the tremendous event, and crowding around the bed in every attitude of astonishment, terror, and commiseration, uttering exclamations of alarm, gazing helplessly at the frightful spectacle, and forming a thousand conjectures respecting the tragical event, instead of attempting to give any rational assistance.

"Not a moment is to be lost!" said Sir Arthur, in the steady authoritive tone of one accustomed in great emergencies, to command, "Where are the other servants?" asked he, turning to the girl who had first given an alarm, "and where is your master?"

"I have no master, Sir!" replied she in a low incoherent whisper. "I think the lady was not married; but perhaps, Sir, she might be! A gentleman called here last week."

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