CHAP. XIV.

UNCLE AND NIECE.

Mrs. Percival Lyle was a clever woman, a very clever woman-in her way; and yet it was strange that as she drove from the door of Minerva Lodge, Mrs. Stainton, who was discreetly watching her departure from behind the shelter of a Venetian blind, wore a singular expression of contempt upon her countenance. She was no whit elated by the condescension of the visit; not an atom ruffled by the elegance of the Parisian bonnet; not in the slightest degree moved by the friendly confidence which had been bestowed upon her. On the contrary, there was a shade of quiet scorn and incipient triumph in the curl of her lip, as she murmured to herself:

"Poor thing! what a nobody she is! as shallow as her vanity, and as transparent as her veil. And she hoped to make me her dupe! I who have lived not only in the world but on it for years! I, who know so thoroughly the difference between money and real position. And who shall say that even money is left in that quarter, as a corner-stone upon which to build up an edifice of pride? I, for one, have my doubts. Wretched doll! what will she do, should she one day be called upon to make her own way in the world as I have done? And yet this flounced and furbelowed fine lady flattered herself that by a few honied and deceitful words she could impose on me, and use me as an instrument for working out her own selfish ends! Sydney Forester indeed! And how cleverly I concealed my own views for Ernest, by persuading her that the young man was attached to Emily Bellingham. However, I no more believe that fine fellow to be in love with her awkward, half-educated daughter, than I do that he will propose to me. How often people allow themselves to be hoodwinked by their own interests! Meanwhile it is clear that Penelope Lyle is likely to prove a thorn in the sides of the whole family, if some step is not taken at once. I have a great mind to see the old gentleman forthwith. He only refused to receive his relatives before that famous dinner; I heard of no after-prohibition; and I really think that it will merely be a proper mark of respect on my part,

to pay him a visit. It is still early; I have time enough before me, even to-day; and a thought strikes me- -I will go."

Mrs. Stainton rang the bell; ordered a fly; dressed herself carefully, with plain and quakerlike precision, made her domestic arrangements with Madame and her " young friends;" and within an hour was, in her turn, on her road to London.

Erect and stately as ever, there was, nevertheless, an expression of deep and anxious thought upon her brow as she drove along, which betrayed that the step which she was about to take was not wholly one of courtesy ; and without once changing her position-an undeniable evidence by the way of intense preoccupation of mind-she arrived in Hertford Street.

Mr. Reginald Lyle was at home.

The old merchant looked thinner and paler than on his arrival in England. Like many other exiles who pant for home, he had begun keenly to feel that he had wrenched asunder a hundred minute and hitherto disregarded links in the far-off world which he had so lightly abandoned, without finding an equivalent for them in his native country. The solitary existence to which, through his own caprice, he had condemned himself, was irksome to his naturally warm heart; the restricted home-habits of England, so opposed to the half-civilized romantic mode of life in which he had for years indulged, cramped his energies, and depressed his spirits; while, worse than all, he had abandoned every hope of being loved for himself, and had assumed the defensive attitude of one who felt that sooner or later he was to be made a prey, and who resolved to defer the evil day as long as possible. To him the blandishments of family affection were but as the thick and impenetrable jungle from which the tiger of selfinterest was to spring and rend him; and it is consequently not surprising that his nerves were shattered, and his temper soured, by a disappointment upon which he had not calculated, and for which he was himself in a great measure responsible.

Perhaps, under these circumstances, few visitors could have been more welcome to Mr. Lyle

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than Mrs. Stainton; not that he liked her; not that he had the slightest confidence either in her truth or her right-mindedness; but simply because her manner was calm and composed, and did not shock his fastidious taste, or alarm his indolence. He received her, therefore, with great urbanity, took her extended hand without any apparent repugnance, and led her to a seat with all the ceremonious courtesy for which he was remarkable.

"My dear sir;" commenced the lady, with a look and accent of the deepest interest; "how much I regret to find you so languid! I really fear that you are suffering from our wretched London climate. Should you not try the sea?" "I detest the sea in the winter, madam." "But Brighton! I have known so many invalids profit by a few weeks' sojourn at Brighton. And, excuse me, Mr. Lyle, your life is so very valuable."

"I know it, madam, I know it; and it will continue to be so until I have made my will."

"Oh, do not frighten me away by epigrams!" said Mrs. Stainton with one of the sweetest smiles in the world; "or I shall begin to fear I know not what."

"Fear nothing;" was the quiet reply; "you have nothing to fear from me. I am like an immature lemon, sour but harmless."

“How can you so wrong yourself, Mr. Lyle-you, who are the very embodiment of hospitality and kindness? I assure you that you were very differently judged this morning, during a visit which I received from my cousin, Mrs. Percival."

"Ha! Mrs. Percival was with morning?"

you this

"She was. We were chatting, as you are aware that mothers will do, of our dear children and their prospects."

"Very natural and proper; and, I presume, highly pleasurable also under the circumstances; as, from what I hear, those prospects are bright and happy ones on both sides."

"I can answer for my own;" said the lady with modest exultation; "I have indeed little to desire. My boys are all that I could wish; and I am proud to say that they are universally appreciated."

"I can well believe it;" replied the merchant with a singular smile; "they require only to be seen to be appreciated at once."

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I con

My dear sir, how you delight me ! fess that I dreaded lest they might not secure your approval."

"The apprehension was needless, madam. found them everything that I desired." "How shall I thank you?"

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"I require no thanks. I am a plain-spoken man, and have so long cast off the shackles of hyper-civilisation, that I rejoice whenever I have an opportunity of saying a civil thing at the right time, and in the right place; and to prove to you the extent of the interest with which your sons inspired me, I may as well tell you at

once

"My dear sir!" eagerly ejaculated the lady, with clasped hands, and for an instant thrown off her guard.

"I was about to say," pursued Mr. Reginald Lyle, totally unmoved by this exhibition of maternal tenderness; "that on studying them thoroughly-"

"Yes, my dear sir"

"And you are doubtless aware that after the ladies abandoned us on a late occasion in Bedford Square-(when, by the way, Mr. Percival made me a present of some of his excellent Madeira which I have greatly enjoyed, for your English wine-merchants must either have vitiated tastes or lax principles, to judge from the compounds with which they have favoured me since my arrival among them-) I had an unexceptionable opportunity of observing your sons, and your eldest is a refined gentleman; a very refined gentleman indeed; he does infinite you credit; while your youngest is about the bestdressed man I have seen for many years."

"How flattered the poor boys will be when I tell them this!"

Well, madam, as I was about to remark; it struck me that, had you not formed other views for them, they would have made admirable husbands for those two pretty young ladies of my nephew Percival's. It would really have been quite a delightful family connexion.”

"You must excuse me, Mr. Lyle;" said the lady in an accent in which disdain and disappointment were alike perceptible; " if I venture altogether to dissent from that opinion. Under any circumstances I should have hesitated to sanction the alliances to which you allude."

"You don't say so! Why, there would have been good fortunes at all events." "Perhaps."

Perhaps? You astonish me! Can there then be a doubt upon the subject?"

"Possibly. In any case, I should not have wished to incur the risk."

"My dear lady;" said the Anglo-Mexican with undisguised interest; "be frank with me. Are these mere conjectures of your own? Or have you really any foundation for the misgiving you have implied?"

"You must excuse me, Mr. Lyle ;" answered Mrs. Stainton with a dignified assumption of reserve. "We are all aware, and none more so than yourself, that a merchant's credit is his existence and if disgrace must come, every one connected with the unfortunate individual would naturally seek to avert it as long as possible, if only for their own sakes."

I cannot recover my surprise!" said the old gentleman, looking, as he felt, very seriously annoyed. "I have never before heard such a thing even hinted at. On the contrary, I have been told on all sides, and particularly by Mr. Percival himself, that his affairs were in the most prosperous condition."

"I can well believe it."

"Nay, madam, there must surely be some mistake. I have my own reasons for feeling convinced that there must be some mistake;

"That I readily admit; but my son Ernest is compelled by his profession to be frequently in the City, where he has an extensive acquaintance."

"And your son has informed you-?"

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You must really excuse me, my dear sir;" said Mrs. Stainton firmly; "I have already been guilty of an unpremeditated indiscretion; and you will of course understand that the subject is a most unpleasant one to me. Be good enough to attribute my imprudence to the anxiety which I felt to justify myself in your eyes for my repugnance to the marriages you proposed. I could not, of course, consent to sacrifice my sons."

There was a pause. Mr. Lyle was buried in thought, and had evidently lost the point of his visitor's remark.

"Nor-" pursued the lady, breaking in upon the momentary silence; "had my cousin Percival been not only solvent, but even wealthy, should I have desired to see sons of mine united to half-educated and trivial women, who can never aspire to be more than playthings to a man of sense and mind; with no style to do them credit in society, and no intellect to render them companionable at the domestic hearth."

"You are no doubt right, my good lady;" said the old merchant, rousing himself from his abstraction; "and it is consequently fortunate that you do not think and feel as I did; while it is equally lucky that the young ladies, even while labouring under the deficiencies which you deplore, are not likely to remain long on their father's hands, if we may judge by the apparition of the very fine young man who acted as a substitute for my nephew Octavius at Mr. Percival's dinner."

"Oh, Mr. Lyle!" exclaimed his companion, with a mocking laugh; "how satirical you are!" "Satirical, madam !"

"Well, forgive me the word, as it has escaped me but surely you did not imagine for one moment that Sydney Forester, one of the most elegant young men of the season, was paying serious attention to poor dear Anastasia?"

"Upon my honour, my dear lady," retorted the old merchant with a shade of his habitual causticity, "I have never known what to imagine since I arrived in this country; and you have yourself this very moment unconsciously added to my perplexity. I had no idea that you had a season even for young men in England." "Oh, yes, indeed;" smiled Mrs. Stainton, overlooking the manner of her companion's remark in her anxiety to convince him of her perfect familiarity with the fashionable argôt of London society: "and not only for young men, but for young ladies also; and woe betide the beauty who remains unmarried after she has seen her third. Every young girl who is properly introduced into life is expected to glide into matrimony as swiftly and gracefully as one of those aquatic spiders which we occasionally see skimming along the surface of the water."

"They are indeed. I have even seen cases where wealth, accomplishments, and beauty have failed. Nothing, in short, will do, my dear sir, but fashion. Fashion is the magician's wand which creates, if not the first, at least all the other requisites; and rank itself cannot be put into competition with it."

"You do not, from what I infer, consider my grand-nieces to be fashionable."

"How can they be so," asked the ladycom passionately, "when they have never had even common advantages? I have, of course, a great regard for both Mr. and Mrs. Percival, but still it is impossible for me to shut my eyes to the fact that he is a mere unpolished city man of business, who has never left his own country; who has made a home of his counting-house; and who is totally ignorant of the usages of the great world; while she-but I am really becoming censorious!"

"You are, at all events, vastly amusing."

"No! Do I really amuse you? How delighted I am! I am sure, my dear sir, that you must want some one to amuse you in this large house, all alone as you are; and I feel convinced, that if you would allow my Ernest to sit for an hour with you now and then, you would be entertained by his conversation." "I have already been very much so."

"He is witty, is he not? And so quiet, and unconscious of his own powers of humour. Oh, no; Mr. Lyle, I never could have borne to see him throw himself away upon one of his cousins."

"By the bye, my dear madam, that remark reminds me that I have not yet requested you to be good enough to inform me of the precise position of your two amiable sons. They are both, I think you said, on the eve of marriage?"

"Did I say so? Well, I will not now recal my confidence, since you are kind enough to evince so marked an interest in their prospects; but, of course, you will keep my secret. The truth is that, although, as I am sure you will at once believe, I do not permit them to shew themselves frequently at Minerva Lodge (conscious as I am that my position is one of great responsibility), still it has chanced-I really cannot tell when or how-that two of my young friends (and I am proud and happy to say, two of the very sweetest and dearest girls among them) have formed the most devoted attachments to my poor boys; and although I have, as I felt it my duty to do, strongly represented to them that, when once they appeared in society, they would doubtlessly have opportunities of making what would be considered by the world as more brilliant and desirable marriages, all my arguments have been overruled; while, as no impediments presented themselves on the other side, I have, as a natural consequence, been induced to yield. Indeed, I do not see