dinner was nearly over – at least late according to the ideas of the West-Country family, who sat down now directly Harry returned from his office work. Aunt Marguerite, after a week in her bedroom, had come down that day, the trouble with Liza exciting her; and that maiden had rather an unpleasant time as she waited at table, looking red-eyed and tearful, for Aunt Marguerite watched her with painful, basilisk-like stare all through the meal, the consequence being a series of mishaps and blunders, ending with the spilling of a glass dish of clotted cream.
With old-fashioned politeness, Aunt Marguerite tried to take Pradelle’s attention from the accident.
“Are you going for a walk this evening, Mr Pradelle?”
“Yes,” he said; “I daresay we shall smoke a cigar together after the labours of the day.”
Aunt Marguerite sighed and looked pained.
“Tobacco! Yes, Mr Pradelle,” she sighed; and she continued, in a low tone, “Do pray try to use your influence on poor Henri, to coax him from these bad pursuits.”
Harry was talking cynically to his sister and Madelaine, who had been pressed by Vine to stay, a message having been sent down to the Van Heldres to that effect.
“The old story,” he said to himself; and then, as he caught his sister’s eye after she had gazed uneasily in the direction of her aunt; “yes, she’s talking about me. Surely you don’t mind that.”
He, too, glanced now in Aunt Marguerite’s direction, as Pradelle talked to her in a slow, impressive tone.
“Ah! no,” said Aunt Marguerite, in a playful whisper, “nothing of the kind. A little boy and girl badinage in the past. Look for yourself, Mr Pradelle; there is no warmth there! My nephew cannot marry a Dutch doll.”
“Lover’s 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 dear,” 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 lip 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 by 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 then 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
