cannot marry a Dutch doll.”
“Lovers’ tiff, perhaps,” said Pradelle.
“No, no,” said Aunt Marguerite, shaking her head confidently. “Harry is a little wild and changeable, but he pays great heed to my words and advice. Still I want your help, Mr Pradelle. Human nature is weak. Harry must win back his French estates.”
“Hear that, Louie?” said Harry, for Aunt Marguerite had slightly raised her voice.
“Yes, I heard,” said Louise quietly.
“Aunt is sick of seeing her nephew engaged in a beggarly trade.”
“For which Mr Henry Vine seems much too good,” said Madelaine to herself, as she darted an indignant glance at the young man. “Oh, Harry, what a weak, foolish boy you are! I don’t love you a bit. It was all a mistake.”
“I hate business,” continued Harry, as he encountered her eyes fixed upon him.
“Yes,” said Louise coldly, as an angry feeling of annoyance shot through her on her friend’s behalf. “Harry has no higher ambition than to lead a lap-dog kind of life in attendance upon Aunt Marguerite, and listening to her stories of middle-aged chivalry.”
“Thank goodness!” said Harry, as they rose from the table. “No, no, aunt, I don’t want any coffee. I should stifle if I stopped here much longer.”
Aunt Marguerite frowned as the young man declined the invitation to come to her side.
“Only be called a lap-dog again. Here, Vic, let’s go and have a cigar down by the sea.”
“Certainly,” said Pradelle, smiling at all in turn.
“Yes, the room is warm,” said the host, who had hardly spoken all through the dinner, being deep in thought upon one of his last discoveries.
Harry gave his sister a contemptuous look, which she returned with one half sorrowful, half pitying, from which he turned to glance at Madelaine, who was standing by her friend.
Aunt Marguerite smiled, for there was certainly the germ of an incurable rupture between these two, and she turned away her head to hide her triumph.
“She will never forgive him for speaking as he did about the beggarly trade.” Then crossing with a graceful old-world carriage, she laid her hand on Madelaine’s arm.
“Come into the drawing-room, my clear,” she said, smiling, and to Madelaine it seemed that her bright, malicious-looking eyes were full of triumph. “You and I will have a good hard fight over genealogies, till you confess that I am right, and that your father and you have no claim to Huguenot descent.”
“Oh no, Miss Vine,” said the girl, laughing, “my father must fight his own battle. As for me, I give up. Perhaps you are right, and I am only a Dutch girl after all.”
“Oh, I wish we were back in London!” cried Harry as they strolled along towards the cliff walk.
“Ah, this is a dead-and-alive place, and no mistake,” said Pradelle.
“Why don’t you leave it, then?” said Harry sulkily. “You are free.”
“No, I am not. I don’t like to see a friend going to the bad; and besides, I have your aunt’s commission to try and save you from sinking down into a miserable tradesman.”
“Why don’t you save me, then?”
“That’s just like you. Look here, sink all cowardice, and go up to the old boy like a Trojan. Plenty of money, hasn’t he?”
“I suppose so. I don’t know.”
“He’s sure to have.”
“But he’s such an old porcupine.”
“Never mind. Suppose you do get a few pricks, what of that? Think of the future.”
“But that venture must be all over now.”
“What of that? You get the money and I can find a dozen ways of investing it. Look here, Harry, you profess to be my friend, and to have confidence in my judgment, and yet you won’t trust me.”
“I trusted you over several things, and see how I lost.”
“Come, that’s unkind. A man can’t always win. There, never look back, look forward. Show some fight, and make one good plunge to get out of that miserable shop-boy sort of life.”
“Come along, then.”
“You’ll go up and ask him?”
“Yes, if you’ll back me up.”
“Back you up, lad? I should think I will. Lead on, I’ll follow thee.”
“We’ll do it sensibly, then. If you speak before Uncle Luke in that theatrical way we shall come down faster than we go up.”
“I’ll talk to the old man like a young Solomon, and he shall say that never did youth choose more wisely for his friend than Harry Vine, otherwise Henri, Comte des Vignes.”
“Look here,” said Harry peevishly – “‘otherwise Comte des Vignes.’ Why don’t you say alias at once? Why, if the old man heard that he’d want to know how long it was since you were in a police court. Here, you’d better stay down here.”
“All right, my dear fellow. Anything to help you on.”
“No; I’d rather you came too.”
There was a pause in a niche of the rocks, and then, after the scratching of a match, the young men went up the cliff-path, smoking furiously, as they prepared themselves for the attack.
Volume One – Chapter Fourteen.
Diogenes in his Tub
Uncle Luke was in very good spirits. He had rid himself of his incubus, as he called the sum of money, and though he would not own it, he always felt better when he had had a little converse with his fellow-creatures. His lonely life was very miserable, and the more so that he insisted upon its being the highest form of happiness to exist in hermit fashion, as the old saints proved.
The desolate hut in its rocky niche looked miserable when he climbed up back on his return from Van Heldre’s, so he stopped by the granite wall and smiled.
“Finest prospect in all Cornwall,” he said, half aloud; “freshest air. Should like to blow up Leslie’s works, though.”
The door was locked, but it yielded to the heavy key which secured it against visitors, though they were very rare upon that rocky shelf.
He was the more surprised then, after his frugal mid-day meal, by a sharp rapping at the door, and on going he stared angrily at the two sturdy sailor-dressed pedlars, who were resting their packs on the low granite wall.
“Can we sell a bit o’ ’bacco, or a pound o’ tea, master?” said the man who had won over Liza to the purchase of his coloured silk.
“Bang!”
That was Uncle
