Page:Once a Week Volume 7.djvu/549

 . 8, 1862.]  old friend—who forwarded it immediately to Miss Maitland. Many tears fell on the worn leather and yellow papers. They were chiefly military memoranda and accounts which she could not decipher. As she was closing the desk again her eye fell upon her own name in her father’s handwriting. She drew out the letter eagerly, trimmed her lamp, and sat down to read. It was evidently his farewell, written at intervals snatched from rest. Some passages were not complete. The last paragraph was dated the eve of his last battle, and bore no signature. With what exquisite sensations of thankfulness and comfort the daughter traced those blurred lines! He reproached himself bitterly with having so often thwarted her wishes and subjected her to his own whims. He said his last days were embittered by the thought that but for him she would not now be alone and without a protector. He asked her forgiveness for the pain he had inflicted. “But,” he went on, “my daughter will believe that I was sincere in my desire to secure her happiness. I did not see in Marston Howard then the man to whose keeping I could confide my treasure. I judged him wrongly, perhaps. I now see I judged him wrongly, and I acted very harshly and despotically by you, my child. Your patient endurance, your generous, entire forgiveness, your sweet cheerfulness melted my heart. I bless you, Marion, for all you have been to me; and if you are yet to be—as I pray you may—the sunshine of another’s home, as you have been of mine, think sometimes when you are happy of your poor old selfish father, and forgive him all his faults, for he loved you,—

“Ask Marston Howard for his forgiveness, too; I would die in peace with all—

“Tell M. H. that he will find my codicil—”

The ants had destroyed the rest of the sentence.

The dreary March afternoon is drawing to a close. London is cold and windy and dusty and cheerless, even at the West-end: far worse in the great barren squares inclosed with sooty houses, once handsome, but now more dismal even than their pert stuccoed rivals in the new quarters.

In the middle window of one of those faded grand drawing-rooms there stands a writing-table strewed with papers. The room is lined with books; books from wainscot to ceiling; books between the windows; books behind the door; books on the tables; books under the tables. Only one part is free from them. Above the mantelpiece and on either side are some choice engravings. By the fireside is a well-worn easy-chair, and on a handsome Turkey rug in the front of the fire lie a beautiful tortoiseshell cat and her kitten. They were the only comfortable-looking things in the room. The immediate precincts of the fire were evidently the “drawing-room”—all the rest was “office.”

A gentleman sat at the writing-table in the centre window, of whom it would have been difficult at the first glance to guess the age. Not old, by the firm set of the head on the broad shoulders and the vigorous hand that rested clenched on the desk; nor young, for the hair on the temples was grey, and the lines of the face were deeply worn, the expression stern, except when a rare smile revealed the kindly light in the eyes. He had let the ink in his pen grow dry as he sat musing, his head on his hand. Then he roused himself with something between a groan and a sigh—not of vexation nor of impatience, as at some transient annoyance, but as if some deeply-rooted sadness oppressed him.

There was a sound of softly-falling steps on the stone staircase, and a timid knock at the door. To his hasty “Come in” a lady entered, dressed in soft dark furs. Marston Howard rose and offered a chair, but she advanced.

“It is I,” she said. “You do not know me?”

“Yes, I know you,” was the answer spoken through the teeth. “Why are you come?”

“To fulfil my dear father’s last commands.” And she held the letter towards him.

“Aye; obedient still!”

He repented the bitter words before they were well spoken. With a grave but gentle inclination the lady turned to the door.

“Forgive me! Stay! O, Marion!”

She led him to the chair by the fire, and held a glass of water to his lips in silence.

“ Marion?” he whispered, hoarsely.

“For ever!” was her low reply.

“And have you always lived in these dreary rooms?” she asked, one day, after they had been talking long over the sad past and happy future of love and mutual confidence.

“Yes; my cousin Marston and his good little wife sometimes took pity on me.”

“Then she was Mrs. Marston!”

2em

[ readers may rely on the authenticity of the following narratives, though for the real names of the actors imaginary names have been substituted.—]

Another year there was trained in the same establishment as Munster, a horse we will call Culverstone. This horse was entered for the Two Thousand Guineas Stakes at Newmarket and also for the Derby. At the period I speak of he had never appeared in public, and had been at that time but slightly touched upon in the betting market by his owner and the stable party: considerable astonishment therefore was excited in the mind of the ever watchful Phil Spott on observing that week after week he was largely backed: on Phil’s “taking soundings,” as he termed it, and making various inquiries in quarters he could depend upon, he at length discovered that the principal backers of the horse were a Mr. A. and a Mr. B., and that they had not only swallowed up a large sum out of the available public money which is every year forthcoming to be betted against each and every horse in the Derby, but had in consequence brought the horse to a price at which Phil did not seem to think the owner and the stable ought to commence their investments. “This will never do,” said he. “Them as pays the piper has a right to choose the tune. We that keep the cows are not going to