Birds of Prey by M.E. Braddon

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At present Mr. Sheldon was only at the beginning of his work.
The father and grandfather and uncle and great-uncles, the
great-grandfather and great-great-uncles, with all their progenies,
lay before him in a maze of entanglement which it would be his business
to unravel. And as he was obliged to keep his limited legal connection
together while he devoted himself to this task, the work promised to
extend over months, or indeed years; and in the meanwhile there was
always the fear that some one else, as quick-witted and indefatigable
as himself, would take up the same tangled skein and succeed in the
unravelment of it. Looking this fact full in the face, Mr. Sheldon
decided that he must have an able and reliable coadjutor; but to find
such a coadjutor, to find a man who would help him, on the chance of
success, and not claim too large a share of the prize if success came,
was more than the speculative attorney could hope. In the meantime his
work progressed very slowly; and he was tormented by perpetual terror
of that other sharp practitioner who might be following up the same
clue, and whose agents might watch him in and out of parish churches,
and listen at street-corners when he was hunting an oldest inhabitant.

CHAPTER IV.

DIANA FINDS A NEW HOME.

The holidays at Hyde Lodge brought at least repose for Diana Paget. The
little ones had gone home, with the exception of two or three young
colonists, and even they had perpetual liberty from lessons; so Diana
had nothing to do but sit in the shady garden, reading or thinking, in
the drowsy summer afternoons. Priscilla Paget had departed with the
chief of the teachers for a seaside holiday; other governesses had gone
to their homes; and but for the presence of an elderly Frenchwoman, who
slept through one half of the day, and wrote letters to her kindred
during the other half, Diana would have been the only responsible
person in the deserted habitation.

She did not complain of her loneliness, or envy the delights of those
who had departed. She was very glad to be quite alone, free to think
her own thoughts, free to brood over those unforgotten years in which
she had wandered over the face of the earth with her father and
Valentine Hawkehurst. The few elder girls remaining at the Lodge
thought Miss Paget unsociable because she preferred a lonely corner in
the gardens and some battered old book of namby-pamby stories to the
delights of their society, and criticised her very severely as they
walked listlessly to and fro upon the lawn with big garden-hats, and
arms entwined about each other's waists.

Alas for Diana, the battered book was only an excuse for solitude, and
for a morbid indulgence in her own sad thoughts! She had lived the life
of unblemished respectability for a year, and looking back now at the
Bohemian wanderings, she regretted those days of humiliation and
misery, and sighed for the rare delights of that disreputable past!
Yes, she had revolted against the degraded existence; and now she was
sorry for having lost its uncertain pleasures, its fitful glimpses of
sunshine. Was that true which Valentine had said, that no man can eat
beef and mutton every day of his life; that it is better to be
unutterly miserable one day and uproariously happy the next, than to
tread one level path of dull content? Miss Paget began to think that
there had been some reason in her old comrade's philosophy; for she
found the level path very dreary. She let her thoughts wander whither
they would in this quiet holiday idleness, and they went back to the
years which she had spent with her father. She thought of winter
evenings in London when Valentine had taken her the round of the
theatres, and they had sat together in stifling upper boxes,--she
pleased, he critical, and with so much to say to each other in the
pauses of the performance. How kind he had been to her; how good, how
brotherly! And then the pleasant walk home, through crowded noisy
thoroughfares, and anon by long lines of quiet streets, in which they
used to look up at the lighted windows of houses where parties were
being given, and sometimes stop to listen to the music and watch the
figures of the dancers flitting across the blinds. She thought of the
journeys she had travelled with her father and Valentine by land and
sea; the lonely moonlight watches on the decks of steamers; the long
chill nights in railway-carriages under the feeble glimmer of an
oil-lamp, and how she and Valentine had beguiled the tedious hours with
wild purposeless talk while Captain Paget slept. She remembered the
strange cities which she and her father's _protege_ had looked at side
by side; he with a calm listlessness of manner, which might either be
real or assumed, but which never varied; she with an inward tremor of
excitement and surprise. They had been very happy together, this lonely
unprotected girl and the reckless adventurer. If his manner to her had
been fitful, it had been sometimes dangerously, fatally kind. She
looked back now, and remembered the days which she had spent with him,
and knew that all the pleasures possible in a prosperous and successful
life could never bring for her such delight as she had known in the
midst of her wanderings; though shame and danger lurked at every
corner, and poverty, disguised in that tawdry masquerade habit in which
the swindler dresses it, accompanied her wherever she went.

She had been happy with him because she had loved him. That close
companionship, sisterly and brotherly though it had seemed, had been
fatal for the lonely and friendless daughter of Horatio Paget. In her
desolation she had clung to the one creature who was kind to her, who
did not advertise his disdain for herself and her sex, or openly avow
that she was a nuisance and an encumbrance. Every slight put upon her
by her father had strengthened the chain that bound her to Valentine
Hawkehurst; and as the friendship between them grew closer day by day,
until all her thoughts and fancies took their colour from his, it
seemed a matter of course that he should love her, and she never
doubted his feelings or questioned her own. There had been much in his
conduct to justify her belief that she was beloved; so this
inexperienced, untutored girl may surely be forgiven if she rested her
faith in that fancied affection, and looked forward to some shadowy
future in which she and Valentine would be man and wife, all in all to
each other, free from the trammels of Captain Paget's elaborate
schemes, and living honestly, somehow or other, by means of literature,
or music, or pen-and-ink caricatures, or some of those liberal arts
which have always been dear to the children of Bohemia. They would have
lodgings in some street near the Thames, and go to a theatre or a
concert every evening, and spend long summer days in suburban parks or
on suburban commons, he lying on the grass smoking, she talking to him
or reading to him, as his fancy might dictate. Before her twentieth
birthday, the proudest woman is apt to regard the man she loves as a
grand and superior creature; and there had been a certain amount of
reverential awe mingled with Diana's regard for Mr. Hawkehurst,
scapegrace and adventurer though he was.

Little by little that bright girlish dream had faded away. Fancy's
enchanted palace had been shattered into a heap of shapeless ruin by
those accidental scraps of hard worldly wisdom with which Valentine had
pelted the fairy fabric. He a man to love, or to marry for love! Why,
he talked like some hardened world-weary sinner who had done with every
human emotion. The girl shuddered as she heard him. She had loved him,
and believed in his love. She had fancied a tender meaning in the voice
which softened when it spoke to her, a pensive earnestness in the dark
eyes which looked at her; but just when the voice had seemed softest
and sweetest, the pensive eyes most eloquently earnest, the
adventurer's manner had changed all at once, and for ever. He had grown
hard, and cold, and indifferent. He had scarcely tried to conceal the
fact that the girl's companionship bored and wearied him. He had yawned
in her face, and had abandoned himself to moody abstraction when
accident obliged him to be alone with her. Miss Paget's pride had been
equal to the occasion. Mary Anne Kepp would have dissolved into tears
at the first unkind word from the lips of her beloved; but Mary Anne
Kepp's daughter, with the blood of the Cromie Pagets in her veins, was
quite a different person. She returned Mr. Hawkehurst's indifference
with corresponding disregard. If his manner was cold as a bleak autumn,
hers was icy as a severe winter; only now and then, when she was very
tired of her joyless existence, her untutored womanhood asserted
itself, and she betrayed the real state of her feelings--betrayed
herself as she had done on her last night at Foretdechene, when she and
Valentine had looked down at the lighted windows shining dimly through
the purple of the summer night. She looked back at the past now in the
quiet of the school-garden, and tried to remember how miserable
she had been, what agonies of despair she had suffered, how brief had
been her delights, how bitter her disappointments. She tried to
remember what tortures she had suffered from that wasted passion, that
useless devotion. She tried to rejoice in the consciousness of the
peace and respectability of her present life; but she could not. That
passionate yearning for the past possessed her so strongly. She could
remember nothing except that she had been with him. She had seen his
face, she had heard his voice; and now how long and weary the time
might be before she could again see that one beloved face or hear the
dear familiar voice! The brightest hope she had in these midsummer
holidays was the hope of a letter from him; and even that might be the
prelude of disappointment. She wrestled with herself, and tried to
exorcise those ghosts of memory which haunted her by day and wove
themselves into her dreams by night; but they were not to be laid at
rest. She hated her folly; but her folly was stronger than herself.

For three weeks Diana Paget had no companions but her sorrowful
memories--her haunting shadows; but at the end of that time the
stagnant mill-pond of her life was suddenly ruffled--the dull course
of existence was disturbed by the arrival of two letters. She found
them lying by her plate upon the breakfast-table one bright July
morning; and while she was yet far away from the table she could see
that one of the envelopes bore a foreign stamp, and was directed by the
hand of Valentine Hawkehurst. She seated herself at the table in a
delicious flutter of emotion, and tore open that foreign envelope,
while the French governess poured out the tea, and while the little
group of schoolgirls nudged one another and watched her eager face with
insolent curiosity.

The first letter contained only a few lines.

"MY DEAR DIANA," wrote the young man, "your father has decided on
returning to London, where I believe he really intends to make a
respectable start, if he can only get the opening and the help he
wants. I know you will be glad to hear this. I don't exactly say where
we shall take up our quarters; but the Captain will of course come to
see you; and if I can chasten my outward semblance sufficiently to
venture within the sacred precincts of a lady's school, I shall come
with him. Direct to the old address, if you write before the end of
the month, and believe me, as always, your friend." "VALENTINE."

The second letter was in Charlotte Halliday's big bold hand, and was
frank, impetuous, and loving as the girl herself.

"MY OWN DEAREST DI,--It is all arranged," wrote Miss Halliday, dashing
at once into the heart of the subject. "I talked mamma over the very
first day after my return, and then there was nothing more to be done
than to talk over Mr. Sheldon. Of course there was just a little
difficulty in that, for he is so awfully practical; and he wanted to
know why I wanted a companion, and what _use_ you would be in the
house; as if the very last thing one required in a companion was
companionship. I'm almost afraid to tell you the iniquitous fables I
invented about your extreme usefulness; your genius for millinery, and
the mints of money you would save by making up mamma's flimsy little
caps; your taste for dress-making, &c. &c. &c. You _are_ the cleverest
creature in the world, you know, Di; for you must remember how you
altered, that green silk dress for me when Miss Person had made me a
square-shouldered fright. So, after a great deal of humming, and
haing, and argufication--_is_ there such a word as 'argufication,' I
wonder?--my stepfather said that if my heart was set upon having you,
and if I thought you would be useful, you might come to us; but that he
could not afford to give you any salary, and that if you wanted a new
dress now and then, I must buy it for you out of my own allowance; and
I will, darling, if you will only come and be my friend and sister. My
life is dreadfully dull without you. I walk up and down the stiff
little gravel paths, and stare at the geraniums and calceolarias.
Mariana might have been dreary in her moated grange; but I daresay the
Lincolnshire flowers grew wild and free, and she was spared the
abomination of gaudy little patches of red and yellow, and waving
ribbons of blue and white, which constitute the glory of modern
gardening. Do come to me, dear. I have no one to talk to, and nothing
to do. Mamma is a dear good affectionate soul; but she and I don't
understand each other. I don't care for her twittering little birds,
and she doesn't care for my whims and fancies. I have read novels until
I am tired. I am not allowed to go out by myself, and mamma can
scarcely walk to Kensington-gardens without sinking under the exertion.
We drive out sometimes; but I am sick to death of crawling slowly up
and down by the Serpentine staring at people's bonnets. I might enjoy
it, perhaps, if I had you with me to make fun out of some of the
bonnets. The house is very comfortable; but it always seems to me
unpleasantly like some philanthropic institution in miniature. I long
to scratch the walls, or break the windows; and I begin to understand
the feelings of those unhappy paupers who tear up their clothes: they
get utterly tired of their stagnation, you see, and must do something
wicked and rebellious rather than do nothing at all. You will take pity
upon my forlorn state, won't you, Di? I shall come to Hyde Lodge
to-morrow afternoon with mamma, to hear your ulti--what's its name?--
and in the meanwhile, and for ever afterwards, believe me to be your
devoted and unchanging LOTTA."

Diana Paget's eyes grew dim as she read this letter.

"I love her very dearly," she thought, "but not one hundred-fold as
much as I ought to love her."

And then she went back to Mr. Hawkehurst's epistle, and read and
re-read its half-dozen lines, wondering when he would come to London,
and whether she would see him when he came. To see him again! The
thought of that possibility seemed like a spot of vivid light, which
dazzled her eyes and made them blind to anything around or beyond it. As
for this offer of a strange home in the household of Mr. Sheldon, it
seemed to her a matter of so very little importance where she went or
what became of her, that she was quite willing to let other people
decide her existence. Anything would be better than the monotony of
Hyde Lodge. If Valentine Hawkehurst came to see her at Mr. Sheldon's
house, he would be permitted to see her alone, most likely, and it would
be something like the old times; whereas at the Lodge Priscilla Paget or
one of the governesses would undoubtedly be present at any interview
between Diana and her old friend, and the real Valentine would be
hidden under the semblance of a respectable young man, with very little
to say for himself. Perhaps this one thought exercised considerable
influence over Miss Paget's decision. She wanted so much to see
Valentine alone, to know whether he had changed, to see his face at the
first moment of meeting, and to discover, if possible, the solution of
that enigma which was the grand mystery of her life--that one perpetual
question which was always repeating itself in her brain--whether he was
altogether cold and indifferent, or if there was not some hidden
warmth, some secret tenderness beneath that repelling outward seeming.

In the afternoon Miss Halliday called with Mrs. Sheldon, and there was
a long discussion about Diana Paget's future life. Georgy abandoned
herself as unhesitatingly to the influence of her daughter as she did
to that of her husband, and had been brought to think that it would be
the most delightful thing in the world to have Miss Paget for a useful
companion.

"And will you really make my caps, dear?" she said, when she had grown
at her ease with Diana. "Miss Terly in the Bayswater-road charges me so
much for the simplest little lace head-dress; and though Mr. Sheldon is
very good about those sort of things, I know he sometimes thinks my
bills rather high."

Diana was very indifferent about her future, and the heart must have
been very hard which could have resisted Charlotte's tender pleading;
so it was ultimately decided that Miss Paget should write to her
kinswoman to describe the offer that had been made to her of a new
home, and to inquire if her services could be conveniently dispensed
with at Hyde Lodge. After which decision Charlotte embraced her friend
with enthusiasm, and departed, bearing off Mrs. Sheldon to the carriage
which awaited them at the gates of Priscilla Paget's umbrageous domain.

Diana sighed as she went back to the empty schoolroom. Even Charlotte's
affection could not altogether take the sting out of dependence. To go
into a strange house amongst strange people, and to hold a place in it
only on the condition of being perpetually useful and unfailingly
good-tempered and agreeable, is scarcely the pleasantest prospect which
this world can offer to a proud and beautiful woman. Diana remembered
her bright vision of Bohemianism in a lodging near the Strand. It would
be very delightful to ride on sufferance in Mrs. Sheldon's carriage, no
doubt; but O, how much pleasanter it would have been to sit by
Valentine Hawkehurst in a hansom cab spinning along the road to
Greenwich or Richmond!

She had promised to despatch her letter to Priscilla by that
afternoon's post, and she kept her promise. The reply came by return of
post, and was very kind. Priscilla advised her by all means to accept
Miss Halliday's offer, which would give her a much better position than
that which she occupied at Hyde Lodge. She would have time to improve
herself, no doubt, Priscilla said, and might be able to hope for
something still better in the course of two or three years; "for you
must look the world straight in the face, Diana," wrote the
schoolmistress, "as I did before I was your age; and make up your mind
to rely upon your own exertions, since you know what your father is,
and how little you have to hope for from him. As you are to have no
salary with the Sheldons, and will no doubt be expected to make a good
appearance, I shall do what I can to help you with your wardrobe."

This letter decided the fate of Captain Paget's daughter. A week after
Miss Halliday's visit to Hyde Lodge a hack cab carried Diana and all
her earthly possessions to the Lawn, where Charlotte received her with
open arms, and where she was inducted into a neatly furnished
bedchamber adjoining that of her friend. Mr. Sheldon scrutinised her
keenly from under the shadow of his thick black brows when he came home
to dinner. He treated her with a stiff kind of politeness during the
orderly progress of the meal; and once, when he looked at her, he was
surprised to find that she was contemplating him with an expression of
mingled wonder and reverence.

He was the first eminently respectable man whom Miss Paget had ever
encountered in familiar intercourse, and she was regarding him
attentively, as an individual with scientific tastes might regard some
natural curiosity.

CHAPTER V.

AT THE LAWN.

Life at the Lawn went by very smoothly for Mr. Sheldon's family. Georgy
was very happy in the society of a companion who seemed really to have
a natural taste for the manufacture of pretty little head-dresses from
the merest fragments of material in the way of lace and ribbon. Diana
had all that versatile cleverness and capacity for expedients which is
likely to be acquired in a wandering and troubled life. She had learned
more in her three years of discomfort with her father than in all the
undeviating course of the Hyde-Lodge studies; she had improved her
French at one _table d'hote_, her German at another; she had caught
some new trick of style in every concert-room, some fresh combination
of costume on every racecourse; and, being really grateful for
Charlotte's disinterested affection, she brought all her
accomplishments to bear to please her friend and her friend's
household.

In this she succeeded admirably. Mrs. Sheldon found her daughter's
society much more delightful now that the whole pressure of Charlotte's
intellect and vitality no longer fell entirely upon herself. She liked
to sit lazily in her arm-chair while the two girls chattered at their
work, and she could venture an occasional remark, and fancy that she
had a full share in the conversation. When the summer weather rendered
walking a martyrdom and driving an affliction, she could recline on her
favourite sofa reading a novel, soothed by the feeble twittering of her
birds; while Charlotte and Diana went out together, protected by the
smart boy in buttons, who was not altogether without human failings,
and was apt to linger behind his fair charges, reading the boards
before the doors of newsvendors' shops, or looking at the cartoons in
_Punch_ exhibited in the stationers' windows.

Mr. Sheldon made a point of pleasing his stepdaughter whenever it was
possible for him to do so without palpable inconvenience to himself;
and as she was to be gratified by so small a pecuniary sacrifice as the
trifling increase of tradesmen's bills caused by Miss Paget's residence
in the gothic villa, he was the last man in the world to refuse her
that indulgence. His own pursuits were of so absorbing a nature as to
leave little leisure for concern about other people's business. He
asked no questions about his stepdaughter's companion; but he was not
the less surprised to see this beautiful high-bred woman content to sit
at his board as an unsalaried dependent.

"Your friend Miss Paget looks like a countess," he said one day to
Charlotte. "I thought girls generally pitched upon some plain homely
young woman for their pet companion, but you seem to have chosen the
handsomest girl in the school."

"Yes, she is very handsome, is she not? I wish some of your rich City
men would marry her, papa."

Miss Halliday consented to call her mother's husband "papa," though the
caressing name seemed in a manner to stick in her throat. She had loved
that blustrous good-tempered Tom Halliday so very dearly, and it was
only to please poor Georgy that she brought herself to address any other
man by the name that had been his.

"My City men have something better to do than to marry a young woman
without a sixpence," answered Mr. Sheldon. "Why don't you try to catch
one of them for yourself?"

"I don't like City men," said Charlotte quickly; and then she blushed,
and added apologetically, "at least not the generality of City men,
papa."

Diana had waited until her destiny was settled before answering
Valentine Hawkehurst's letter; but she wrote to him directly she was
established at the Lawn, and told him the change in her plans.

"I think papa had better let me come to see him at his lodgings," she
said, "wherever they may be; for I should scarcely care about Mr.
Sheldon seeing him. No one here knows anything definite about my
history; and as it is just possible Mr. Sheldon may have encountered my
father somehow or other, it would be as well for him to keep clear of
this house. I could not venture to say this to papa myself, but perhaps
you could suggest it without offending him. You see I have grown very
worldly-wise, and am learning to protect my own interests in the spirit
which you have so instilled into me. I don't know whether that sort of
spirit is likely to secure one's happiness, but I have no doubt it is
the wisest and best for this world."

Miss Paget could not refrain from an occasional sneer when she wrote to
her old companion. He never returned her sneers, or noticed them. His
letters were always frank, friendly, and brotherly in tone.

"Neither my good opinion nor my bad opinion is of any consequence to
him," Diana thought bitterly. It was late in August when Captain Paget
and his _protege_ came to town. Valentine suggested the wisdom of
leaving Diana in her new home uncompromised by any past associations.
But this was a suggestion which Horatio Paget could not accept. His
brightest successes in the way of scheming had been matured out of
chance acquaintanceships with eligible men. A man who could afford such
a luxury as a companion for his daughter must needs be eligible, and
the Captain was not inclined to sacrifice his acquaintance from any
extreme delicacy.

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