light passed over his face. He sunk gently backwards upon his pillow, sighed very softly once, and so he died.

"His Grace has sent to ask if the Marquis is awake?" said the groom of the chambers, opening the door gently and looking in.

CHAPTER VIII.

THE SOLDIER AND THE LADY.

THEY were seated together on the banks of the lake, both in deep mourning; and he had come to say good-by to her, yet could not find the words to do so fittingly. It was full a year after the Marquis's death, yet the great house reared its stately fabric as haughtily as ever amidst the ancestral woods of the Wyldwyls, and all was outwardly much as it had been. Lord Punjaub, who had an honest sense of the becoming, had paid off the most pressing claims on the family property, saying simply that he could not wear a tarnished name; so the men in possession had been paid out, and the collateral heirs who trembled for the old plate and pictures, had been unable to advertise their high birth and claims by law. suits, which was a sad thing for the Inns of Court, and several rising young barristers had put down their broughams when it was known in the clubs that the Duke of Courthope's affairs were settled.

Settled?-well, perhaps Mr. Sharpe could have told a different story. No man likes to tell all his liabilities, and the Duke had only mentioned those which immediately disquieted him, and something fresh was always turning up. Still the outward dignity of the ducal house was preserved, and the gentlemen of the county were assembled there as usual that year to shoot the covers of time-honoured Beaumanoir.

Captain Brown dropped pebbles absently into the lake and watched the cygnets sailing over its placid surface. Miss Wyldwyl was sketching; and the Dowager Marchioness of Newcomen was taking her usual airing in a bath-chair near them, being pushed slowly from behind by a black servant in livery. Her poodle barked beside her, and now and then she watched the soldier and the lady through her keen eyes furtively, knowing or suspecting more of them than they knew or dreamed of themselves.

It was Miss Wyldwyl who first broke silence. "Why should you go back to India?" she said gently. "The Duke tells me that you have been offered employment at home, and surely you have done enough for fame?" They had become almost as intimate as brother and sister now, having lived daily and every day together in the same house.

"I go," he answered," because I am restless, and discontented, unworthy of my good fortune and kind friends, dissatisfied most of all with myself."

"And why?" she asked; "why can you not stay with us? My father has urged you so often to remain with him; and I," she added somewhat mournfully, "am I such a dull companion for you both?"

"My place will be soon filled up," replied the soldier with a sad smile, “and I shall leave no regrets which will not be forgotten in a week, though I shall take with me memories which will endure as long as I."

"What memories?" she said; "since you have no ties to England strong enough to detain you."

1

"It would be truer to say that I shall carry my chains with me, be cause they are fastened to no other heart but my own," he answered. "You do injustice to your friends," returned Miss Wyldwyl. “My father said but yesterday that he had never known the Duke speak so warmly of any one, and you know his own feelings towards you. We have all lived together under one roof so long, that it will be a hard parting for him, for all of us."

"Yet it is better I should go, Miss Wyldwyl," replied the soldier dejectedly. "I told you long ago that I was in love with a dream. I think it is the dream of your goodness. And so farewell. I was not a charity boy, as they say here," he added with a blush, "but I was a peasant born and bred, a mere soldier of fortune, who has been raised above his sphere, and looked upwards till he grew giddy."

She did not answer him, but still he lingered, though he had said good-bye, and bade God be with her now.

"Can you ever forgive me?" he resumed. "I can never pardon myself. But I could no more resist your loveliness than I could have withstood the powers of heaven. Think of me sometimes as of one who would willingly have died for you; who dared not ask to live; and who had nothing, not even hope."

He turned with a sombre grace to leave her, but she had risen and stood before him in all the radiance of her youthful beauty.

"Is not my heart enough for you?" she said, and placed her hand in his. Then her head drooped upon his shoulder, and she hid her face.

An hour afterwards Miss Wyldwyl's arms were round her father's neck, and she told him of her happiness; and asked the General's blessing on her.

"You have chosen me one of the finest fellows in the army for a sonin-law. Mind you don't spoil him," said Lord Punjaub to her fondly.

And that night it was told at dinner, that Captain Brown, a person whom nobody knew, had carried off the greatest heiress in England, so that everybody must know him now.

CHAPTER IX.

A DISCOVERY.

WHEN many persons had remarked the extraordinary likeness which existed between Captain Brown and the Courthope family, and it became the common talk of the palace, the Duke at last had observed it also; and it had

rendered him pensive. He was old and childless now: as far as he knew, he had few interests in life, and he began to feel a kind of lazy curiosity in this Indian soldier of fortune, who was so like himself. He set himself to remember if there was any event in his past career which could account for the astonishing resemblance between them, and he could recollect nothing. His Grace interrogated Captain Brown in his own shrewd way, apparently so careless and polite, yet so searching, but he could only find out that he was born at Wakefield-in-the-Marsh, on the borders of Oxfordshire; a fact which threw no light upon the subject. The Duke had lived a great deal in that neighbourhood when he was a young man at the University, and had afterwards hunted the country.

Then he set inquiries on foot, but conducted them in a discreet way, mostly through Dean Mowledy and the local gentry, so that he obtained no precise information. The Dean was especially reserved for reasons of his own, and the Oxfordshire squires could only say that young Brown was the son of an innkeeper, who had enlisted and done well in the army, as the Duke knew, and that his family had died in the wreck of the Royal Charter as they were about to emigrate, which circumstance touched upon a fact he did not care to remember, having resolutely forgotten some proceedings which had been taken at that time against a possible claimant on his father's estate. Of course, if Captain Brown was connected with those people, his likeness to the Courthope family might be only too well accounted for, and the less said upon the subject the better.

Still, he was not sure about that, and if there was the remotest chance of this young fellow ever becoming troublesome, it might be well to keep him in hand. Upon the whole, his Grace thought it would be as well to consult Mr. Sharpe, who knew everything, and would be certain to have it in his power to clear up the mystery, if it were worth his while to do so.

Meantime the Duke had taken a very strong liking to the young man. He was very frequently at Beaumanoir with Lord Punjaub, being still the General's aide-de-camp, and in constant attendance upon him. He had been sent frequently with confidential messages between the Duke and his uncle; and the General being an indifferent penman, conducted all his correspondence through young Brown, who wrote a straight upright hand, the characters of which were as stiff and plain as a regiment of soldiers. In all these circumstances the aide-de-camp had behaved himself with perfect good taste, and shown himself peculiarly straightforward and unassuming. The Duke himself was not a straightforward man at all, and therefore liked those who were, because his own habits of subterfuge made him prompt to see through all kinds of deception and trickery. Gradually Captain Brown had come to fill the post of private secretary between the two noblemen, and many intricate accounts and complicated questions of business had passed through his hands. He seemed naturally to encourage confidence without inviting it, or thrusting himself into it. He never showed a vulgar astonishment at anything, however strange; but did what was

wanted of him without remark, paying little real attention to it, if the truth must be told, for he was perpetually thinking of Miss Wyldwyl, and would have done anything, however dry or wearisome, which kept him near her, and she with the Dowager Lady Newcomen were now installed at Beaumanoir, Lord Punjaub, indeed, having been legally placed by Mr. Mortmain in possession of it, and the Duke's life-interest having been formally ceded to him, though his Grace was still permitted by his kinsman's courtesy to be master there to outward seeming.

"Sharpe," said the Duke of Courthope one day, entering the lawyer's office in Argyll Street, "I want you to guess a riddle for me."

Mr. Sharpe no longer came to Beaumanoir, since it had belonged to Lord Punjaub, who had an Indian soldier's hatred of money-lenders: but the Duke and he kept up their old intercourse, and often did business together without the General's knowledge, some promises which had been given by the Duke to his uncle notwithstanding.

"To guess a riddle, your Grace?" echoed Mr. Sharpe. "With all the pleasure in life, if I can; and I think I may go so far as to say that there are few that I can't guess. What's the figure this morning, your Grace?" inquired Mr. Sharpe, blandly, having been recently paid many of his claims, and having little anxiety about the others, because he had received their value many times over in the shape of interest already.

"What are you good for, Sharpe ?" asked the Duke, who could never refuse the offer of money. He liked even the crisp rustle of new bank-notes in his pocket, and it literally soothed his fingers to handle sovereigns.

"Anything your Grace likes under five figures," replied Mr. Sharpe, cheerfully; and the conversation diverged into the details of certain pecuniary transactions, during which the Duke's placid dignity was at times slightly ruffled.

"By the way, Sharpe," said the Duke, after a pause, and quite recovering his good spirits, as soon as all conversation about money was at an end, "you have not heard my riddle."

"Another riddle?" inquired Mr. Sharpe, in some alarm, for his Grace could whistle down even such an old bird as he sometimes; and had sometimes got a loan he should not have had on strict business principles. "I'm afraid we must put it off till next week, your Grace. I can meet you then, if you will give me an order on the manager of your tin mine."

"Ah! then, we'll talk about that. When shall it be-on Monday morning? I shall be in town on Monday morning, Sharpe, if that will suit you," said the Duke, graciously. Then he put his head a little on one side with that innocent childlike smile of his, and asked, "Can you tell me who the deuce is a Captain Brown, Lord Punjaub's aide-de-camp?"

"He! he!" laughed Mr. Sharpe. "Well, perhaps I could if I tried, your Grace."

"I thought so," replied the Duke, drawing his chair closer to the money-lender, in an excited way he had when amused. "Damn it, Sharpe, you know everything. Who the deuce is he, now?"

"Captain Brown, of the 1st Lancers, your Grace means?" asked Mr. Sharpe, to make sure about the person inquired after.

"Ay! that's the man I mean," smiled the Duke.

"Captain Brown, of the 1st Lancers," replied the lawyer, demurely, "is your Grace's son. His mother was barmaid of the Chequers' inn at Wakefield-in-the-Marsh. She was your cousin's daughter by the Scotch marriage, and therefore Countess of Winguid in her own right. She was married to Thomas Brown, a Northumberlandshire man, before her son's birth, and he is therefore in law Earl of Winguid now, for she is dead. In that mottled tin box, on the fourth shelf, marked W. B. in white letters, your Grace, are the proofs of his mother's marriage, which I took for heriot, as agent to Sir Richard Porteous, under whom she was a copyholder. Your Grace, or young Brown, might now have been Earl of Winguid if he had employed a sharp solicitor; though we should have made a fight for it, your Grace—we should have made a fight for it."

"Ah!" said the Duke, grandly, without any trace of emotion, "I thought you might know. Going to Richmond, Sharpe, this afternoon? It's monstrous fine weather, and I hear my horses fretting outside there. Pleasant afternoon."

Five minutes afterwards the Duke of Courthope was driving with exquisite skill down Bond Street, and Mr. Stultz remarked to his foreman how well his Grace looked that day; perhaps he was a little flushed. Towards eight o'clock he dined at White's, and played high stakes during the evening, winning largely; for the game was whist, which wants a cool head.

CHAPTER X.
CONCLUSION.

THE Duke of Courthope did not, possibly, choose to make a parade of his feelings to Mr. Sharpe. It is not, however, fair to infer that the communication which he received from the money-lender made no impression upon them. He was a slow and rather indistinct thinker, and he had not made up his mind as to what he should do, or whether he should do anything. It no longer signified much to him, personally, who should be heir to the Winguid estates. His life-interest in them, as in all the rest of his property which he had not inherited from his mother, Lady Pencarrow, had been recently assigned to Lord Punjaub. It did not matter, therefore, one straw to him whether Captain Brown became Earl of Winguid, or whether Amabel Wyldwyl became a Countess