CHAPTER VIII.

KATE GALTON MEANS SO
KINDLY!

KATE had secured the bait! She knew that she had done so as soon as she saw that the girl's desire pointed to remaining with her, for she had fathomed that Theo was a pet daughter who could move her parents to consent to any plan. The sole difficulty now was to win her husband's consent to the retention of the cage in which the bait was to be placed. For rooms in Piccadilly let at their full value in 1851, and John Galton was a man who gave thought as to the disbursement of his cash.

It was not alone for the sake of luring Harold Ffrench into her net that the pretty spider with the nut-brown hair made use of the fresh young country fly. Mrs. Galton wanted an excuse, a fair and valid excuse with which neither man nor woman could quarrel, for remaining in London and enjoying herself as much as was seemly; therefore she converted herself into a chaperone and appealed to John Galton's good-heartedness on behalf of her interesting young friend.

"I have been to call on that pretty Miss Leigh this morning, John," she said to her husband while they were at dinner on the evening of the day on which Hope told a flattering tale to Theo. "Poor child! she looked so doleful at the idea of going back to Houghton so soon that I couldn't help asking her to come and stay with us here when her father goes back."

"When is he going back?"

"In five or six days."

"We shall not be long after him; in ten days at the latest I shall go back; I don't like leaving the place for longer things get neglected when the master is away."

I

"if

"There, I didn't mean to say it, Kate. don't think that you find it dull, dear, and it would be confoundedly hard," he continued, defending her against himself as it were, you, who are not much more than a girl yourself, mightn't want a change sometimes: you shall stay here and enjoy yourself with Miss Theo Leigh, and as soon as I have set things going on the land, I'll come back to you."

He got up and kissed her as he said it, but I fear that the promise contained in his last sentence robbed her response of a little of its warmth.

"I haven't said much about my own connections heretofore, John," she said, virtuously, "but I often think that it is almost a pity that we should drift away from them altogether. Aunt Glaskill's countenance will be a good thing for Katy when she is grown up, and Aunt Glaskill won't be ill pleased at my taking a pretty girl like Theo Leigh to her house." "Take her by all means and please Lady

tenance of an old paint-pot when she's grown up, thank God."

"Then you really think that I had better remain ?"

"Certainly, if you wish to do so.

"Not unless you wish it too, John: I had rather be made downright rude to a dozen Miss Leighs than displease you."

"I would not have my wife rude to anybody; no, Kate, you have asked this young lady to stay with you, and you must not dis

appoint her. Katy and I will try to get on without you, but it will be dull work.

"As you will; of course, if you think it right that I should stay, I will do so; and, John ?"

"Well, what is it now?"

"About a brougham ? It won't do to risk Miss Leigh's evening dresses in common cabs, you know."

"Oh, won't it; well, dear, as I shall not be here, you can please yourself as to where you like to send when you want a carriage for the night."

"With a young lady on my hands-a young lady towards whom my fastidious cousin Harold inclines most kindly,—I shall want a carriage for other things besides night-work."

"Do you think there is anything in that quarter with Ffrench, then? He denied it when I chaffed him."

"Of course he denied it, and you must not 'chaff him,' as you call it; how can I tell whether or not there is anything in it yet? That remains to be seen. I think that there is a very fair chance of Theo Leigh marrying if she is brought out properly; marrying well, even if she does not marry Harold, which is more than probable."

"It would be different if you had a town house and town connection, Kate. However, you mean it so kindly that I hope your plan will succeed, though I don't think much of it myself. You can't do much for a girl when you're living in lodgings and don't entertain."

"My friends can do a great deal for her. Lady Glaskill (I was under her auspices when I met you, remember, John) is always very kind to aspirants in anything, and she sees a great many people. But about the brougham?" "You must have it, I suppose." "And will you see about it, dear?" "Yes; a single one will do, won't it?"

'No, John, no ; were I alone concerned 1 should infinitely prefer a single one, because -because I do infinitely prefer it; but supposing we are invited to any party at Richmond or Greenwich, and asked to give any one a lift home, my inability to do so might stop an offer. No, there must be room for a third in the brougham, and it must be very dark, and the horse I should like to be black or grey and a very high stepper. Of course you'll send up Rogers and Williams, so that I shall have my own liveries."

"Why, you're regularly going in for a town establishment, Kate; but you mean it so kindly, little woman, that you shall have your own way about it. I hope Ffrench won't disappoint you after all.”

"I hope he will not," she said dryly.

"Or the girl herself, for that matter. ls she a beauty?"

"No too dark; but there is something attractive about her, something very attractive indeed; otherwise I shouldn't take all this trouble to cultivate Harold's possible fancy. I shall call on Lady Glaskill to-morrow and secure her co-operation."

"Is she bent on marrying Harold off also?" "Oh, no; doesn't care for him a bit; believes him to be all bad, an utterly irreclaimable selfish man, who is rightly dealt with in being wifeless and homeless. She isn't his aunt, you know; she was my mother's sister, no relation to Harold at all."

"Where has your aunt pitched her tent this year? I didn't know she was in town."

"In Wilton Place; but we won't speak about it any more, for when I remember that you won't be with me, all the edge of the pleasure I should otherwise feel is taken off."

"I will run up as often as I can," John Galton said, heartily; "in fact, when I have set things going I may as well come up altogether."

Which promise of happiness struck Mrs. Galton speechless for a minute or two; but after a time her powers of eloquence returned, and she enlarged with a wifely interest on the short-comings of his farm-bailiff—a man whom she "never trusted farther than she could see," she said—and on the general and proverbial dishonesty and laziness of the Haversham labourers. It was an unfortunate topic to have chosen if she desired to have her husband's society in town. The upshot of it was, that he declared the fact to be "that they were not to be trusted, unless they knew they were liable to the inspection of the master every hour of the day; farming won't do itself, and of course I have more interest in seeing it well done than any one else. Ah! well, I shan't give them such another spell of their own way for some time to come.

It was a most unfortunate topic to have chosen, this one which had terminated in such a decision. And so Kate thought, it is to be hoped.

The days passed quickly, and the call was made on Lady Glaskill, and a rapturous consent to Theo's going to Mrs. Galton came up from Mrs. Leigh, and the brougham was placed at Mrs. Galton's absolute disposal; and the happy husband went home to superintend the ripening of his crops and other things appertaining to his occupation-and the young fly walked confidingly into the spider's net, which was in process of renovaton, almost of reconstruction; and still Harold Ffrench kept out of the way.

The apartments which Mrs. Galton occupied

in Piccadilly were situate opposite to the Green Park. They were spacious and lofty, as became their position in the world, but they were not all that seemed desirable to her they were furnished after a grim and heavy fashion that was repulsive to her, although the furniture itself was good. The people to whom the house belonged, before letting it for the season and decamping for economic reasons, had carefully denuded their rooms of everything that could by any possibility be broken or easily carried away; and this precaution had imparted an air of rigidity and general dreariness to the rooms, which it now became Mrs. Galton's task to modify.

The task was one upon which she entered with an avidity which only a pretty woman desirous of worthily enshrining herself and rendering the casket deserving of so fair a jewel as she feels herself to be can experience. She resolved upon having a share in the glories that were going. She had always sighed for a fashionable life, and here was an opportunity of leading one, for a brief space at any rate. Old friends should be looked up and new ones formed through their means, and a lion or two caught and persuaded to roar in her rooms-all for Theo's sake, of course. The utmost triumph she could attain would be in a small way; but these were better than none at all, she told herself. Indeed her vanity led her to believe, that once seen and known and spoken about, but a very small effort would be necessary to make her rooms the resort of all that was most brilliant it would be a second Gore House, and she rather an improvement on Lady Blessington by right of her youth.

If John Galton imagined the rooms in which he left his wife to be already furnished, it was a pity he could not have been shown the upholstery bill which was run up the day of his departure and learnt his mistake. "There is no extravagance in it," Kate said when her aunt, Lady Glaskill, reproached her with extravagance in a tone of jocularity. "There is no extravagance in it, for all these things will do for Haversham Grange by-and-by, when I am forced to go back; at all events you must acknowledge the things are very pretty."

They were that, undoubtedly. The rooms seemed to Theo when she saw them first to be such a combination of fragrance and beauty as she had believed existed only in the (c Arabian Nights' Entertainments." There were hanging baskets of ferns and orchids, and creeping things innumerable, and vases of rare roses and pyramids of hot-house flowers of every hue, and sweeping curtains of green velvet and filmy muslin dividing one portion of the apartment from another, and seductive couches,

and beauty-fraught statuettes, and a few pictures (all historical) very warm in colouring, and mirrors and tall pier-glasses on every side reflecting all these things.

"It was hardly worth while to get them up in this way for the short time you'll be allowed to stay, my dear," Lady Glaskill observed, when she had marked and approved of her niece's renovated web.

"I don't mean it to be for a short time; I have a plan in my head."

"You always had, if I remember, my dear, a good many plans in your head, and some of them came to nothing."

Lady Glaskill was one of those pleasant old ladies who never neglect an opportunity of saying a possibly disagreeable thing to another woman. She was a little old lady, slightly deformed, but she declared herself to have been a fairy, a sylph, an ethereal beauty in the days of her youth; and as no one could remember those days, she was never contradicted. She was an active, restless little woman even now, agile and kittenish and gushing, and full of false enthusiasm and sham brilliancy and fearfully high spirits; a ghastly old coquette who believed in herself and her love-winning properties long after every one who knew her had come to the conclusion that the only things real about her were her bones: for the skin was enamel and the colour was paint, and the teeth and hair were constantly renewed and extremely variable, and the heart and sentiments were falser than everything else. She was a nice old lady! a very nice old lady indeed was Lady Glaskill; and people frequented her house largely when she was in town, and only speculated as to whether she had really poisoned her husband for threatening to tell that he had been forced to marry her at the point of her papa's sword when she was away.

Lady Glaskill's hair was a great joke amongst her aquaintances; she was always imagining herself to be like some heroine of romance or history, and investing in new hair that might further the illusion. On one hot day in a long long past year she had fancied a resemblance in herself to Cleopatra, and forthwith she organized a Richmond party and went up the river in a boat under a flame-coloured canopy with black locks streaming wildly around her, a sandalled foot in full view, and a fancy Egyptian garment of scanty proportion over her skinny little person, to the scandal of so much of the world as thronged the banks to look at Lady Glaskill's current folly. Shortly after this she had costumed as "Corinne," and crowned herself with a wreath of bays on the strength of having written a volume of very immoral and unmetrical poetry,

which she read aloud with passion and emphasis at several of her evening parties. She had been robed to the chin and she had been desperately décolletée in rapid succession for a longer series of years than one would care to enumerate. She had gained a name for foolish vanity beyond every one of her foolishly vain compeers; her name had been called in question (mainly through her own vainglorious boasts), and her stories had been refuted a thousand times. Yet still she kept her place in the world, and the denizens of it flocked around her tattered mud-bespattered old standard wheresoever she erected it and called attention to the fact.

She was not a good, a worthy, or a respected woman, but she was a popular and very wellknown woman; and she struggled hard to remain this latter thing, and never faded away from any one's mind through lack of continually stirring that mind up with a hint of her existence. She had married Sir Archibald Glaskill by force, and fought her way into society like the enterprising woman she was, and she had held her place hardly but warily, and won for herself a name with which every one, who was any one at least, was acquainted. This was something all must allow, even if they do not rate the honour as highly as Lady Glaskill did; to her it was as the breath of her nostrils; and Kate Galton had been in the way of this breath passing over her very often when she was a girl.

But Lady Glaskill was a clever fool only, and Kate was something a trifle higher in the scale.

The former told her eccentric, enthusiastic, purposeless lies only for the sake of being stared at and called "so very peculiar you know;" the latter told her better modulated ones for an end always. Kate liked to be stared at, but not to be stared at solely on account of her peculiarities. Her aunt, wizened, ruddled old Lady Glaskill, was happy and content in the assertion that every unmarried man she had ever met had loved and proposed to her, and every married one had lost his head and heart and honour. Lady Glaskill was happy and content with the mere assertion of these things. But Kate was not satisfied unless such things were. The shadow was enough for the voracious vanity of the old woman, but the substance alone sufficed for the not less voracious vanity of the younger

one.

It was at Lady Glaskill's house in Wilton Place that Theo Leigh made her entrance into London society. Lady Glaskill had issued cards for a conversazione, and it promised to be brilliantly attended, for she audaciously asked, or caused her friends to ask, every one

whose name sounded that year, and her audacity was well rewarded.

"That little girl you have taken up shall be noticeable, my dear, for I won't have too many other women," Lady Glaskill had said to her niece Mrs. Galton, with the rarest magnanimity, or rather with what would have sounded like the rarest magnanimity if her niece had not been fully aware of the fact that "too many women," were not wont to grace her aunt's reunions. So when Miss Leigh and her chaperone floated into the crowded rooms in Wilton Place, it was through a lane hedged almost entirely by men that Theo walked unconsciously to meet her fate.

CHAPTER IX. THE SHADOW BEGINS TO FALL.

THERE was a man at Lady Glaskill's that night who had written a successful novel. No personality is intended; hundreds of men wrote novels that were successful or the reverse in 1851; and there was also a political martyr, and an African explorer, and a scientific man who had poisoned his wife by accident, and found himself the centre of attraction in the fashionable world ever since the catastrophe. Around these revolved the usual throng that one meets at such places. In their midst rose the fez of an Oriental ambassador, who had been inveigled into gracing the rooms for a few minutes.

The successful novelist and the scientific murderer faded into insignificance, and paled into nothing before the light of Osmanli Effendi, around whom all the women were crowding, basking unctuously in the oily refulgence of the smiles of the child of the sun, who was gazing calmly at their long English throats bared for the occasion, and thinking that not one of them was worthy to be compared with the least lovely of the lights of his far-off harem, and of how many pounds of Rahat La Koum it would take to improve their appearance.

The rooms were very full; people stood thick as ears of corn in a well-grown field, and the buzz confused Theo as she advanced up that aforesaid lane, hedged in by masculine humanity on either side, in the wake of her chaperone, who made straight, with the rush of an adept, towards her hostess. Mrs. Galton never faltered when she entered a room or undulated up and down like an elastic female figure in cork-she just floated on, cool, quiet, erect, and fair, towards her goal. But her advent always made a sensation. She had the art of entering at the right moment. I do not know whether she lurked in the doorway until such time as those whose gaze would guide the rest began to yawp, and

look as if they needed something new. But at all events, this was the juncture at which she almost invariably appeared, and this night she made no exception to her usual rule.

Her heart beat thickly at finding herself once more amidst scenes from which she had blindly gone at twenty to grace a country Grange. She was radiant in her white robes-in the thick sheeny silk and cloudy tulle that became her fair loveliness so well. She was marked as a married woman by the head-dress of downy plumes, fastened by a diamond aigrette, which she wore.

The girl, following in her wake, led the eye off from this beautiful woman very pleasingly, for Theo Leigh was all alight with excitement,excitement that was partly due to the novelty, but still more to the fact of Mrs. Galton's having imparted to her the probability "of their meeting Harold there." Now this probability had been alluded to by Mrs. Galton in what Mr. Leigh would have termed a "mincing manner," for she had spoken of it softly, and with one of the blushes she could call up at will. But Theo had marked neither manner nor blush in the joy consequent on this announcement. She was going to see him again!—to see him once more, and that was enough.

The hour of dressing had not been one of unmixed satisfaction to Theo, for Mrs. Galton was one of those sweet women who are specially skilful in the sticking in of small mental pins to another woman. She had left it till the day of the party to question Theo as to what she meant to wear. When Theo told her what, and "hoped it would do," Mrs. Galton did not exactly say that it was not fitting and proper, but she damned it with the faintest praise, and Theo felt uncomfortable.

Not that Mrs. Galton in reality disapproved of her young friend's choice of toilette, but it was a point of conscience with her never to let an opportunity pass of putting a sister out of conceit with her appearance, and she was rigorous in attending to the demands of her conscience on this point.

rule; only becoming, in fact, to very fair women with little colour."

However, Theo inducted herself into both dress and wreath perforce-she had none other to wear. As she caught a glimpse of herself in the pier-glass she felt that if Mrs. John Galton were dissatisfied with her appearance, then was Mrs. John Galton a difficult woman to please. Theo had yet to learn that it is not invariably excess of affection which renders our friends hypercritical about us. "I will consult her beforehand another time, and get her to order my dress for me," the unsophisticated Miss Leigh thought, as she stepped into the carriage after her chaperone.

It was very exciting to her and very brilliant, she thought, this new scene in which she found herself, but it had not the power to absorb her sufficiently to make her forget the hope that had brightened her journey thither. Even as her hostess was introducing her to His Excellency, Theo's eyes wandered away in search of Harold Ffrench.

"Aunt Glaskill is making a terrible goose of herself to-night," Mrs. Galton whispered contemptuously to Theo after the expiration of a few minutes, during which Lady Glaskill had succeeded in attracting all attention to herself by being ecstatic about "the Orient," to the neglect and partial oblivion of her niece. When Lady Glaskill's follies led attention away from Kate, Kate was as intolerant to them as the wisest could desire. boring that poor man insufferably," Mrs. Galton continued; "any one can see that he wants to talk to me; but Lady Glaskill does hold on so pertinaciously when she once gains a man's ear."

"She's

The fact was that the majority of those who stood within speaking range of Mrs. Galton were strangers to her; she would, therefore, have been condemned to a silence which it is always painful to maintain perforce in a gay throng of talkers and laughers. No wonder that she thought Lady Glaskill in a turban and ecstacies was making a goose of herself by engrossing that which Kate herself sighed for

“Oh, if you think it does, it's all right," in a tone which implied that she (Mrs. Galton) did not think that it did become Theo by any means. Kate then went on to inquire about the wreath Theo designed to wear, and to opine that "forget-me-nots were pretty, but affectedly simple, didn't Theo think, as a

The crowd broke up into portions and readjusted itself presently, when ices were brought in and handed round, and then Mrs. Galton found herself draughted on into the immediate circle of which the ineffably bored Oriental was the centre. The opportunity was one which she would not suffer to pass; mental molestation from her would, she rightly judged, be preferable to the same from her aunt, therefore she smiled and spoke with all the fascination of which she was mistress. this his Mightiness listened with calm courtesy,

To