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BORN TO SORROW.

CHAP. XVI.

making feeble pretence of sketching at Rome, and haunting the pleasant young artists' stu

WHERE LOVE IS GREAT, THE LITTLEST dios, the favourite of that genial, beer-drinking,

39 DOUBTS ARE FEARS.

Meanwhile Time has been weaving that won drous cable of his with all those parti-coloured strands of joy and woe, sorrow and grief, despair and death; and many a change for good and evil has taken place in the fortunes of our characters. The spring-flowers have faded long on the pleasant country-side; the summerrose has shed its bloom in solitary sweetness; and autumn has begun to paint the leaves with hectic flush-the badge of the waning year. Sportsmen are beginning to think of the deadly "First," and there is grief and mourning amidst the feathered game; for many a fluttering victim will sally from cover in the morning of that fatal day, never to return. The happy Londoner begins to feel the full force of the idea that his summer holiday is coming to an end, and that he must once more leave the delights of the watering-place, the well-loved plunge into briny Old Ocean, and the happy, lazy, do-nothing existence on the beach, for the dust, fog, and kindred discomforts of his own metropolis. Time has been weaving his cable steadily, persistently as Fate, and has from that famous wallet which he carries on his back extracted a few crumbs of kind oblivion for Charley Dalton. Tempered with the waters of Lethe has been the meal of the crumbs of oblivion to the young fellow; and the excitement and novelty of continental travel, and knocking about among sharp-shooters of every kind, have contributed much to efface the memory of the cruel blow he had suffered. Of course some kind friend had sent him a paper with the details of Ella's marriage in it; and he had sworn a good deal over it, and then had lighted a cigar, and leaned over the taffrail of his yacht, gazing into the still, blue waters of the Mediterranean, where every star was mirrored, and thought that perhaps, after all, he was better as it was. Poor girl! he wished her all the joy in life, and hoped that the sky of her future would be as pure and cloudless as the Italian sky above him. Here we shall leave him for the present, idling about in the Mediterranean,

long-haired tribe-shooting snipe in the Calabrian marshes, and spending lazy days amid the ruins of Tibur and Tivoli, refreshing his mind with quotations from the classic poetsnot very correct ones, I fear-and making sad bungling in the quantity. Here I shall leave the genial-hearted young fellow, and return to our friends in London.

Mrs. Grantley's large house in Portmansquare was open to the nobility and gentry of London, to come and take their pleasure therein, to eat and drink and be merry-and you may be right sure that there was no lack of guests. Read a play of Shakspeare's called "Timon of Athens," and you will have an idea, if mayhap you have not observed for yourself, how ready and delighted are people in all the grades of society-" gentleman, apothecary, ploughman, thief”—to sit down to eat and drink, and rise up to play at the expense of others. From the baron of high degree, who eats off gold-plate and drinks of the red, red wine, to the thief who eats the humble cow-heel, and quaffs the unpretending but enlivening "dog's-nose," it is the way of them-they are all the same. And now, if a fine mansion in the most select part of London, hedged in on all sides by the odour of sacred aristocracy if carriages, and a beautiful horse, a present from Oaklands ("Gulnare"), a magnificent chestnut, to ride about in the park-if a well-appointed table, and a bevy of guests to adorn it-if a stall at the Italian-if invitations to every imaginable kind of entertainment, water-parties to Richmond with amateur-crews, breakfast-parties in the grounds of Lady Hauton, croquet-parties, balls, picnics, routs, drums-if all these things can make glad the heart of young wife, then ought her life to have been one long, blissful dream. Then, as for dress and jewellery, her make-up was declared by able judges to be the best in wide London; and people often entreated an invitation to parties, where Mrs. Grantley was to assist, simply for the pleasure of seeing her. She was like the princess in "Love's Labour Lost"-a lady walled about with diamonds! With all this, was she happy?

F

I am inclined to think not. In the first place there was a secret between her husband and her-and what wife rests and is happy till that be discovered? Ah! Benedict, before you pass the irrevocable church-portal, before you make up your mind "to abjure sack and live cleanly," and take unto yourself a wife, be sure that there exists no skeleton in any cupboard of the capacious mansion into which you receive your fair young bride. You have heard of a certain Bluebeard and his inquisitive little wife, have you not? you may be sure that your own Mary will never rest till the dread secret is made patent to the light of day.

"Come, Harry, that's a dear old boy, tell me who that woman was that called on you at the Hall that day, when you looked so dreadfully careworn and miserable?" would Ella say, in a coaxing voice, and a pretty little imperious way of entreaty, which was irresistible in other things. "I am sure there can be no harm telling me all about it; besides, I am horribly jealous!"

Her husband's brow would cloud over, and he would reply, almost sternly, "Ella, my love, you know I refuse you nothing. I try to make you as happy as I can; but this thing I cannot tell you, believe me, and please don't worry me by asking again. Come, we shall be too late for Lady Shendryn's party if we don't make haste. What a fearful swell you look, in those amethysts! I declare it is I that shall become jealous of you, and watch you like an ogre! I have seen several captains with their whiskers casting sly glances. Ayez garde, ma petite !"

would complain the luckless losers. "Win or lose it's all the same with him; he takes it all with that infernally cool smile of his !"

When he married he had confessed this failing to the unsuspecting Ella, and had promised to forswear anything like cards and dice and heavy play for the future: he would restrict himself to a quiet hand at whist to oblige the master of the house; or, as a great indulgence, would play a pool of billiards with an old Indian veteran; and the happy girl implicitly believed him. Alas! the flimsiness of these good resolutions! Very like the Borealis race are they, evanishing amid the storm" of temptation and opportunity. Ella had forgotten that the pavement of a certain place is made of these good resolutions, "a hall of lost footsteps," indeed; and she little knew the fascination which the love of gambling exercises over the unhappy victim.

16

The delegates of the Temperance League may rave and rant from their platforms of the power which drink exercises over the tempted, and how impossible it is to resist the terrible craving for liquor. I would not hesitate to lay these gentlemen large sums of money that the power of drink is as the empty air when compared with the lust of gain-the all-absorbing, selfish, burning desire to win money! A gambler's life, look you, is one long, hopeless delusion. He never loses hope. What if he lose heavily one night? he may, in common possibility, make a great coup next night, and win back all his own, and more to boot; and it is only when his hair is grey and his nerves shattered, it is only when his hands shake so much that he can scarcely hold the cards, that he is reduced to hang about the tables-as we often see him at Baden or Hombourg-a miserable, decrepit old veteran, hanging about "in the rear ward of fashion," and pitifully entreating some lucky speculator to lend or give him a few francs to try his hand. "I used to break the bank once, monsieur. Ah, Dieu! if I could only begin, I might manage it now!"

That night Ella would be distraite and anxious, and very apt to cut all attempts at conversation short with the hapless young Waroffice clerks entrusted to her care; and when the ball was over, she would return short, curt replies to her husband's inquiries as to how she had enjoyed the dancing, and seemed to shrink from him during the next day. Ah! too surely was that middle-wall of separation growing up between two loving hearts; and though at the present so slight that it seemed an illusion, an Piteous, piteous to see this hoary sinner, with airy nothing, in after-years it was to grow up a tear in his bleared old eye, and his feeble into the solid masonry which would debar the hands grasping unconsciously at the glittering interchange of love and respect, and keep them rouleaux-as the desperate souls on the banks painfully distant. And with all this, Ella was of the sunless river clutch at old Charon's boat horrified to find that her husband was a gam-while the impassible croupiers rake in the bler. Devotedly, madly attached to the gam-coin, and gently hint to the ruined gambler that bling-table he had been before his marriage; his absence from the table would be no great and the men of his regiment called him "lucky Grantley!" for he scarcely ever rose from the écarté-table without carrying off some portion of the evening's booty; and many a callow gryph" cursed the luckless hour which presented him as a foe to the lucky Captain, who took his losses and his gains so coolly, and played such a steady, unerring game. Wellknown, too, was Grantley at all the West-end hells, and the card-tables of the clubs; and the men would often crowd round the table where the "cool Captain" sat, to get, if possible, an inkling of the marvellous skill of his game.

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"That's where it is; you can't rile him!'

loss.

"Pardon, monsieur, but you really must not interrupt the players !"

They are very glad to see you, with your pockets lined, at the Kursaal; but, penniless, it is a different matter. You must make way for the moneyed ones; and, as for your misery, to indulge in these feelings "is not the wear," as Lucio says, at Baden.

Grantley had kept his promise indifferently well in his first stay in town after the return from the pleasant Rhine-tour of the honeymoon: but temptation gathers all the greater force from being delayed; and he very soon

streets.

found himself gliding back to the old habits. | about her, quoting pages from Alfred de Musset Lounging in the big bay-window of his club or Owen Meredith, handing her to her carriage, with some brother-officers, he would feel an adorning her box at the opera, hanging over almost uncontrollable desire to walk into the the rails in the park to chat with her, and stroke card-room and see the players. "This is very her horse's mane, and forfeits not aught of her slow!" he would say, with a yawn, when his name or good fame, but is allowed the title of eye was tired with watching the motley stream exemplary and virtuous wife. Perchance there of life passing and repassing in the London is no harm in it; but still, to all outward appearance, it looks far from proper; and people will talk. Give them a bare inch of truth, and they will soon manufacture an ell of slanderous lies. This gauntlet Ella had to run, almost alone and undefended; and when the carrion flies, attracted by her marvellous beauty, came buzzing about her, daring to lower their voice in speaking to her, she had nothing to defend her but the innate purity of her heart: from this the idle set of danglers soon fled abashed, as did the rabble rout in "Comus" from the fair, shining presence of the lady. Nevertheless, the world of society was beginning to shake its head ominously, and to declare that it really was too bad of Grantley to leave his young, inexperienced wife so much alone!

"Uncommon slow!" would be the drawled answer of his friend. "I am bored to death with all these fellows, passing up and down, and with spotting and bowing to all those painted old women in their carriages! Tell you what, Grantley, let's go and have a hand at écarté. Oh, I forgot-married man, and don't play. What a bore!"

Nothing easier than for Grantley to have refused, and borne the graceless young fellow's chaff: but in vain. The old auri sacra fames was coming back, and he longed for the painted pack, just as the old huntsman, when his sporting-days are over, feels a feverish desire to rush after the streaming hunt.

"Well, only one game, to kill time; but mind, I am not going to play high-not made of coin like you young fellows."

And one game of écarté would lead on to another, till Grantley was put on his mettle, and allowed the hair-brained young men to double and treble the stakes, and would rise a winner of considerable sums, and be in a fair way to become again a thorough-paced gambler. And how the hypocrite would dissemble to his

wife!

"Yes, I have been at the club, Ella, and met some fellows from my old regiment, and of course we had lots to talk about; and the time wore on almost without my perceiving it."

"Not that she is anything but proper, my dear," would Mrs. Backbite whisper: "but then, how many cases have we seen when such things have terminated fatally? You remember poor Mrs. Vavasour? There was a wretched business! Vavasour used to neglect her most shamefully, and always made her go out by herself, while he was at the House till three or four in the morning. What was the consequence? They had barely been married a year when Mrs. Vavasour was talked about. Young Charley Forester, of the War-office, was never from her side; and the end of it all was that she went off with him, and left Vavasour to curse his folly. I didn't pity the man a bit: he might have attended more to his wife and less to the House.”

There is some truth in this. If the wife be left too much alone, what wonder that the voice of the tempter should make her swerve from her duty?

At the time of which I am writing, all the gambling circles of London were ringing with the name of a certain Italian nobleman (Count della Croce), whose success at the gamblingtable and in the ring was a matter of everydaytalk. It was impossible to play a good hand, or make a brilliant cannon at billiards, without someone saying, “Ah, you should see Della Croce play. They say he is never beaten ! It's certain that he has landed heaps of money since he has been in England; and his horse,

Aye, and almost without his perceiving it Ella was beginning to distrust her husband. Slightly to parody the proverb, "Distrust was entering at the door while Love was flying out through the window;" or, "Trust me all in all, or not at all," was the wife's motto. Halfconfidence was already doing its best to separate the hearts that once beat only for each other's mutual happiness. Wilfully blind as she had been to the dear one's faults, determined as she was to see no flaw in the idol which she had set up to cherish and worship, and firmly as she adhered to her marriage-vow, pure and unstained as when she knelt by Grantley's side in the cathedral at Turlminster, still she could not be oblivious to the fact that her husband stayed out much longer of nights than he should-that on his return he was much too excited and flushed to augur the spending of a quiet evening in harmless talkthat she was often compelled to go without his protecting arm to the myriad resorts of fashion, where there was no lack of temptation, and incitement to that harmless flirtation which we used to decry so in Spain, but now deem rather more fashionable than otherwise in England-foreigner. that system by which a married lady is allowed "Oh, of course he does," went on the to have half-a-dozen young men dangling speaker. "By-the-bye, he is coming to dinner

66

Tootletum," won the Leger the other day, putting about seven thousand into his pocket. Daresay, though, he is a refugee, or something of that kind, and lives on his wits. They are all Counts in Italy, you know!"

"I suppose he plays fairly ?" said Grantley, who formed one of the knot of men at the "Army and Navy" who were discussing the

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