“What for?”
“Never mind. Will you lend it to me?”
“But what can you want with fifty pounds, Harry? You’re not in debt?”
“You’ve got some saved up. Now, lend it to me, there’s a good girl; I’ll pay you again, honour bright.”
“Harry, I’ve lent you money till I’m tired of lending, and you never do pay me back.”
“But I will this time.”
Louise shook her head.
“What, you don’t believe me?”
“I believe you would pay me again if you had the money; but if I lent it you would spend it, and be as poor as ever in a month.”
“Not this time, Lou. Lend it to me.”
She shook her head.
“Then hang me if I don’t go and ask Duncan Leslie.”
“Harry! No; you would not degrade yourself to that.”
“Will you lend it?”
“No.”
“Then I will ask him. The poor fool will think it will please you, and lend it directly. I’ll make it a hundred whilst I’m about it.”
“Harry!”
“Too late now,” he cried, and he hurried away.
“Oh!” ejaculated Louise, as she stood gazing after him with her cheeks burning.
“No,” she said, after a pause; “it was only a threat; he would not dare.”
“Harry gone to his office?” said Vine, entering the room. “Yes, dear.”
“Mr Pradelle gone too?”
“Yes, dear; fishing, I think.”
“Hum. Makes this house quite his home.”
“Yes, papa; and do you think we are doing right?”
“Eh?” said Vine sharply, as he dragged his mind back from where it had gone under a tide-covered rock. “Oh, I see, about having that young man here. Well, Louie, it’s like this: I don’t want to draw the rein too tightly. Harry is at work now, and keeping to it. Van Heldre says his conduct is very fair. Harry likes Mr Pradelle, and they are old companions, so I feel disposed to wink at the intimacy, so long as our boy keeps to his business.”
“Perhaps you are right, dear,” said Louise.
“You don’t like Mr Pradelle, my dear?”
“No, I do not.”
“No fear of his robbing me of you, eh?”
“Oh, father!”
“That’s right; that’s right; and look here, as we’re talking about that little thing which makes the world go round, please understand this, and help me, my dear. There’s to be no nonsense between Harry and Madelaine.”
“Then you don’t like Madelaine?”
“Eh? What? Not like her? Bless her! You’ve almost cause to be jealous, only you need not be, for I’ve room in my heart for both of you. I love her too well to let her be made uncomfortable by our family scapegrace. Dear me! I’m sure that it has.”
“Have you lost anything, dear?”
“Yes, a glass stopper. Perhaps I left it in my room. Mustn’t lose it; stoppers cost money.”
“And here’s some money of yours, father.”
“Eh? Oh, that change.”
“Twenty-five shillings.”
“Put it on the chimney-piece, my clear; I’ll take it presently. We will not be hard on Harry. Let him have his companion. We shall get him round by degrees. Ah, here comes some one to tempt you away.”
In effect Madelaine was passing the window on her way to the front entrance; but Vine forgot all about his glass stopper for the moment, and threw open the glass door.
“Come in here, my clear,” he said. “We were just talking about you.”
“About me, Mr Vine? Whatever were you saying?”
“Slander of course, of course.”
“My father desired to be kindly remembered, and I was to say, ‘Very satisfactory so far?’”
“Very satisfactory so far?” said Vine dreamily.
“He said you would know what it meant.”
“To be sure – to be sure. Louie, my dear, I’m afraid your aunt is right. My brain is getting to be like that of a jelly-fish.”
He nodded laughingly and left the room.
“Did you meet Harry as you came?” said Louise, as soon as they were alone.
“Yes; but he kept on one side of the street, and I was on the other.”
“Didn’t he cross over to speak?”
“No; he couldn’t see the Dutch fraulein – the Dutch doll.”
“Oh, that’s cruel, Maddy. I did not think my aunt’s words could sting you.”
“Well, sometimes I don’t think they do, but at others they seem to rankle. But look, isn’t that Mr Pradelle coming?”
For answer Louise caught her friend’s hand to hurry her out of the room before Pradelle entered.
Volume One – Chapter Eleven.
Aunt Marguerite Studies a Comedy
That morning after breakfast Aunt Marguerite sat by her open window in her old-fashioned French peignoir.
She saw Pradelle go out, and she smiled and beamed as he turned to look up at her window, and raised his hat before proceeding down into the back lanes of the port to inveigle an urchin into the task of obtaining for him a pot of ragworms for bait.
Soon after she saw her nephew go out, but he did not raise his head. On the contrary, he bent it down, and heaved up his shoulders like a wet sailor, as he went on to his office.
“Mon pauvre enfant!” she murmured, as she half closed her eyes, and kissed the tips of her fingers. “But wait a while, Henri, mon enfant, and all shall be well.”
There was a lapse of time devoted to thought, and then Aunt Marguerite’s eyes glistened with malice, as she saw Madelaine approach.
“Pah!” she ejaculated softly. “This might be Amsterdam or the Boompjes. Wretched Dutch wench! How can George tolerate her presence here!”
Then Pradelle came back, but he did not look up this time, merely went to the door and entered, his eyes looking searchingly about as if in search of Louise.
Lastly, a couple of particularly unseamanlike men, dressed in shiny tarpaulin hats and pea-jackets, with earrings and very smooth pomatumy hair, came into sight. Each man carried a pack and a big stick, and as they drew near their eyes wandered over window and door in a particularly searching way.
They did not come to the front, but in a slouching, furtive way went past the front of the house and round to the back, where the next minute there was a low tapping made by the knob of a stick on a door, and soon after a buzzing murmur of voices arose.
Aunt Marguerite had nothing whatever to do, and the murmur interested her to the extent of making her rise, go across her room, and through a door at the back into her bed-chamber, where an open lattice window had a chair beneath, and the said window being just over the back entrance from whence the murmur came, Aunt Marguerite had nothing to do but go and sit down there unseen, and hear every word that was said.
“Yes,” said the familiar voice of brown-faced, black-haired Liza; “they’re beautiful,