Part 3

"Eh, I don't know. O Lord! I hope I never shall be the father of a _boy_!" exclaimed the pedagogue, with a sudden agitated glance up at the bedroom windows, as the dread crossed his mind that he might have been overheard all this while.

However, all objection melted before the warmth of Roscoria's attachment, and one night he gave up his keys and authority to Tregurtha, bade him bolt the shutters and troll out prayers to the household in his jovial bass, for Louis Roscoria was going to a ball to "declare himself."

He had found out all about Lyndis (or thought he had). She was the niece of Admiral Sir John Villiers; her father dead; her mother married again to a hunting, racing type of man who wanted no stepdaughter about. So fair Lyndis was staying with her uncle for the time, looking after the housekeeping in return for his kind protection. But Roscoria gathered much hope that his suit might possibly be the means of relieving her from any unsettled feeling that she might have about her future. And thus it came to pass that at the termination of their fifth dance together they were sitting in a ferny grotto--the goddess was all robed in blue this time, as if she had brought down a piece of summer sky trailing after her--and Louis began all at once to show the tenderness he felt.

There was a little of the usual fencing with the subject, and then Roscoria came out with a few leading questions. He had heard rumors--very disquieting rumors--in short, would she set his mind at rest?

Lyndis bent the glory of her mystic eyes upon him for an instant, whilst she said:

"I was going to be married, but we were obliged to put it off. Where are you going, Mr. Roscoria?"

"I don't know," said Louis miserably. He had risen and taken a few steps away, but he came back again and leant against the wall by her side, breathing quick and brokenly.

"What is the matter?"

"Oh!" groaned Roscoria, "I wanted you."

He heard no answer, so he straightened up and took her kind hand and said, "Never mind; I was a fool not to be silent; but--but--if you had known your own charm, would you have made me so unhappy?"

Then there seemed a light in her eyes which was not there before, and a whisper was borne to him low and far away as if it were the echo of the voice of Fate thousands of years ago:

"By the favor of Heaven I am free!"

Shortly afterward Louis believed he heard himself saying, "Why did you forsake him, for _he_ never did it?"

"The admiral forced the match upon me--he is so arbitrary! I consented in a cowardly moment; but that was before I had seen you. The gentleman I was betrothed to saw I was not contented before even I knew it myself; he himself volunteered to release me. Of all the unselfish men I know, Mr. Rodda is----"

("The deuce he is!") thought Roscoria to himself. "_Not_ Eric Rodda, Miss Villiers--the young fellow I tutored at Rome! Brother of Tom? Poor fellow! I feel like a brute, somehow."

"No use to feel so, Louis; it was all over before ever I saw you."

"'Louis'--you darling! Could you put up with a very modest style of existence--at Torres? You said you admired the situation."

"Oh! are you poor?"

"The proverbial church-mouse is a Rothschild to me."

"What a cruel thing that is!" sighed Lyndis; "when the admiral, my mother, my stepfather, all insist on my marrying a rich man."

"Then, my dear lady, go and do it in Heaven's name!" cried Roscoria, and at sight of her surprised face he said, repentantly, "I beg your pardon--Lyndis--darling."

"Which do you put first?" asked Lyndis, smiling sweetly, "Obedience or Love?"

"Love," emphatically responded Louis.

"Oh, Mr. Roscoria, and you a schoolmaster!"

"And you, Miss Villiers, tell me, do you prefer the main chance, or me?"

"Alas! I am no lover of abstractions."

She came a little toward him as she said it, and he had her hand again.

"This dear hand--shall it be mine?"

No answer, save that propitious starlight in her eyes.

"Lyndis, one kiss, that I may know you are mortal."

"I daren't," she said, and gave him one. "If the admiral _were_ to come round the corner---- I say no more."

She gave him a stephanotis from her hair to keep as her favor, and then whispered apprehensively:

"You have no idea what a naval officer can be when he takes to match-making. I shall have to fight this out some day with him."

"No; allow me," said Roscoria.

"If you dare; but--_this_ is after supper."

("Oh, how _can_ you?") expostulated the lover.

Then, being a serious maiden, who knew what she was doing, Lyndis pressed his hand and quietly, but finally, spoke:

"Mr. Roscoria, go home and think it over."

She had stepped into the brilliant light of the ballroom, and vanished from his sight. Roscoria went home as in a dream. A shifting picture was before him--in front, smiling scenes of bliss and love; in the background, Nemesis, in the garb of a naval officer.

VI.

THE ADMIRAL IS SQUARED.

Admiral Sir John Villiers was of all landowners the most peppery. He could not keep on terms with the farmers, his tenants; he never attempted to be on terms with his relations, and his warlike attitude toward the owner of the adjacent property of Torres was notorious. A man so revelling in storms as the admiral must needs have _some_ quarrel with his next-door neighbor, and the subject-matter is easily found. A bit of land contested, a dubiousness of fence, and behold Sir John Villiers rampant. The makings of a despot had the admiral; he was kindness itself (in his imperious way) so long as he was not crossed; but oppose the most reasonable of wills to his and England itself, let alone Devonshire, was not large enough to contain him.

Unfortunately, it was Roscoria who happened to be the next-door neighbor, and very warm the admiral made the neighborhood.

Roscoria loved every inch of Torres, and held his own with an iron grip. The admiral took it into his head that a corner on the boundary of the two properties belonged to himself, and he set himself to wrest it from Roscoria. A little representation and cajolery he tried first, then threats, for he did not mean to be ousted by an impudent young puppy like Louis Roscoria. But the owner of Torres stood firm.

The relations were thus a little strained, when a glorious piece of strategy occurred to Louis the lover. He had just declared himself to Lyndis, and had received her assurance that she loved him in return, and would marry him gladly could the admiral be squared.

So Roscoria arranged a dinner at Torres Hall, Tregurtha and two or three others to be present, and then went over himself to invite the admiral. Sir John Villiers hemmed and ha'd, and would have curtly declined to enter the young man's house, but, scenting the battle afar off, and hoping for a good rousing tussle, he consented, grimly.

Some fine old port came up from the cellar of Torres, and a very jolly party Roscoria and Tregurtha managed to make of it. The admiral, who came in at first snuffing haughtily and twirling his eyeglass with the most warlike aspect imaginable, was soothed and smoothed as the wine went round, and at last began to tell stories.

Propitious circumstance! Need we say how the young men roared with laughter at indifferent naval anecdotes, and greeted one effort at an august pun with clamorous applause? Tregurtha burst forth at last, followed by the others, into the _Lobgesang_, "For he's a jolly good fellow!" and this was the signal for Roscoria to edge himself confidentially close to the admiral and insinuate:

"Indeed, sir, we are all convinced of this, and it makes me all the more regretful that there should be any--any small mis--mis--understanding." (Roscoria here grew very nervous, and stammered a good deal.) "Fact is, Sir John, we all think here that things could be most comfortably settled if--if you could be content to make one small sacrifice. You have a niece----"

"The sacrifice, sir, if any is made, must be on _your_ side," quoth the admiral, kindling; "though I don't deny that if you were to marry my niece it might thus be made to my full and complete satisfaction."

"Precisely, Sir John; and in that case, without further difficulty, I give up to you the 'boundary-plot,' which, I am afraid, you have long wished to possess."

"Wished, sir--_wished_? It is mine!" The admiral smote the table with his fist; the glasses jingled; he remembered the port, and, drinking some, was cheered.

"Yours, Sir John--yours from this moment if you consent to lay Miss Villiers' hand in mine," Roscoria spoke with ardor; the other men gathered round with interest, and the admiral saw he was expected to say the handsome thing. He rebelled at first.

"Young man," he said, "your hospitality is of a somewhat treacherous character."

"Pardon me, Sir John," retorted Roscoria. "I believe I have made you an honorable proposal. If it takes place whilst you are drinking my wine, well, sir, all that I can say is--I trust you find the port is good."

"Excellent--excellent. I have no fault to find with the wine. The wine, sir, is unexceptionable. I wish only I found your offer the same."

"Come now, admiral," interposed Tregurtha, good-humoredly, "what's a niece? You are rid of a tiresome responsibility, and the lady gets an honest husband."

"H'm! honesty is his _forte_, is it? Shouldn't have thought it," muttered the admiral; but he was giving in.

"There is one objection," he said, moving uneasily. "Miss Villiers is under age; but then girls are headstrong nowadays. What if she declines?"

"Ah! she'll not decline," said Roscoria, with a joyous ring in his voice.

"Indeed, sir! Then there has been a little clandestine love-affair between you already, has there? The hussy!"

"_Well_, admiral, we don't generally make our first tentative advances in the presence of the guardians--now do we?" put in the ready Tregurtha.

"I suppose not, you rascal; I suppose not," said the admiral, and pen and paper were laid before him.

"Now mind, Sir John," Roscoria warned him jocularly, "this transaction may not be strictly legal; but there is such a thing as the Court of Honor. I am sure of my own intentions, I can guess at the lady's, and this writing is to hold you to yours."

The admiral only nodded impatiently, and wrote down in good set terms an agreement to give his niece in marriage to Louis Roscoria on condition of that landowner and his heirs forever resigning all claim of ownership to the boundary-plot of Braceton Park. He threw the paper across to the young men to sign as witnesses, and then returned to his glass and his yarn. The old fellow's somewhat shaken good-humor was quickly restored. He was finally put into his greatcoat and sent home in his brougham, feeling vaguely uncomfortable, but softly singing a nautical ditty.

Roscoria knew no discomfort nor repentance, but danced the hornpipe with Tregurtha.

VII.

ROSCORIA'S BETROTHED.

Rosetta Villiers was looking very uncomfortable. She had taken a seat opposite to her uncle, the admiral, and was cross-questioning him with a certain sternness, before which the old sinner was quailing considerably.

"Mr. Roscoria made you this offer, you say? It is most extraordinary: I scarcely have seen him."

"Why, Rosetta, he gave me to understand--at least, he hinted at something like an _affaire de coeur_ between you."

"Affaire de fiddlestick!" cried Miss Villiers, rising in real indignation; "the man _must_ have been exceeding! Why, upon my word, the conceit of these young men! I suppose, passing me in the lanes once or twice, he was slightly taken with my looks, and supposes me to have been equally entranced by his. I should really like to see him, uncle, to give him a piece of my mind."

"Well, that is the most sensible thing you have said, Rosetta," agreed the admiral, "for you must anyway see this fellow, and make it up with him somehow, to save my credit as a man of my word. I admit it's a deuced awkward business, but since I consented to it--in cold blood mind, Rosetta, I repeat that I had _not_ had too much--I am bound to stick by the contract, and I suppose you, being included in it, are at least called upon to bear me out."'

"I never knew such a fearful scrape!" cried Rosetta, with a rush of despairing tears to her eyes. And then, being very brave of nature, she shook herself together and pondered. She was a real child still, only sixteen, and had never been much in the company of older ladies. She was, therefore, quite unprepared to enter upon any matrimonial plans of her own, and--clever as she was--dwelt in surprising ignorance of the world. No course then could her inexperience suggest, except that of saving her uncle's reputation by adhering to the contract. And as she thought and accustomed herself to the strange idea, her young face lighted up with humorous smiles, and she threw up her head with a delightful sense of enterprise.

"Sir," she began, turning solemnly upon the shamefaced admiral, "I feel that you have treated me with scant consideration, and plunged me early into the difficulties of a matronly career. Nevertheless, such is my care for the family reputation that--I'll marry Louis Roscoria!" she concluded, with a sudden gust of laughter.

"Yes; he is learned, is he not? And I remember him as very good-looking," she added, with a blush; "large, soft eyes, if I am not mistaken. I _suppose_ one can fall in love, given a man so handsome. _Allons--essayons!_ But if I don't give it him for this abominable deception, then I don't feel the blood of my Spanish ancestors on the mother's side coursing vigorously through my veins! Sir, I consent."

The admiral (who was honestly afraid of his spoilt niece) confounded himself in thanks and praise, and privately thanked also his stars that his ward had grown up so unsophisticated. With that tricksy Spanish spirit of hers, had she taken this affair in a different light she might have got me into fearful trouble, he thought, softly whistling directly the descendant of the hidalgos had turned the corner.

Next day was fixed for Roscoria's introduction. On hearing the complete success of his stratagem, Louis arrayed himself regardless of expense and hastened to Braceton Park. He gave Tregurtha leave to follow him in an hour--"to be introduced to the lady, who, I suppose, will then be my betrothed," he said.

Admitted into the drawing-room, Roscoria was left alone for what seemed to him an awful while. He grew nervous, and fluttered at every sound in the room. The clock annoyed him inexpressibly, and he started every time he faced a mirror. At last, in despair, he clutched his hat and stick, and sat down in orderly stiffness with his back to the door, and tried to abstract his thoughts. But they would dwell on his Lyndis, and it was no use to try and "sit like his grandsire carved in alabaster."

Suddenly there was a light sound of approach, and a tremulous, sweet voice close to his ear said simply:

"Good-afternoon, Mr. Roscoria."

Louis bounded on his chair as by galvanism, dropped his incumbrances, and spread forth a pair of eager arms, into which Rosetta, thinking this was all in the day's work, was actually preparing submissively to walk, when he saw that something was wrong.

"Ten _thousand_ pardons!" he cried.

"Not at all," said Rosetta, smiling. "It is quite natural that you should feel deeply upon an occasion like this." And then she rubbed her small hands together bashfully, and waited with a beating heart for the beginning of his courtship.

"But I hope you see my mistake," urged Louis, still in smiling embarrassment. "I took you, in fact, for another lady."

"But; I _am_ the other lady," said Rosetta.

"Ah!--Miss Villiers I was expecting."

"Precisely, I am Miss Villiers," said Rosetta, with firmness.

Roscoria looked the lady in the face. She was a very young looking creature, small, but rather strongly made, with a striking white face and great blue-black eye with a latent, passionate fire in the very depths of them. She had a resolute small chin and a decided mouth. Louis thought her, spite of her prettiness, the most tremendous interlocutor he had ever met. He turned absolutely faint with sudden horror, and grasped a chair, saying feebly:

"But Miss Villiers was tall and fair."

"Oh, my cousin do you mean? Yes; she will be in directly. But--but"--(Rosetta's face grew whiter and her eyes larger with the shock of discovery)--"you did not mean _her_, surely?"

"Excuse me--I did--and do."

"Then allow me to assure you, Mr. Roscoria, that the admiral did _not_. My cousin, Lyndis Villiers, is his niece and guest merely; it is I who am his ward since my father died in a naval engagement. He has made a very natural mistake. Lyndis is supposed to be out of the question, being engaged to marry a former pupil of yours--Mr. Eric Rodda. The admiral of course assumed that you meant me when you made your extraordinary request. I may mention that I thought it odd at the time."

"Oh, Lord! oh, Lord! I am punished this time!" groaned Roscoria, and, without even keeping up a pretense of ceremony, he sank on the table and sat there, rocking himself backward and forward. Rosetta laughed as one who had lost a load of care. She was now free to rejoice at the misfortunes of another, and for the first moment could not resist doing so. She stood opposite Roscoria and laughed at him and his discomfiture, like the child she really was.

"Not that I mean the least disrespect to you, my dear Miss _Villiers_," apologized Roscoria, out of the depths of his lamentations; "if only, like my predecessor Jacob when in a similar predicament, I could take _both_, how glad, how thankful I should be! But as it is, dear Miss Villiers, your cousin is so much to me--and--I thought I had got her!--in short, I know you will excuse me."

"Excuse you? Why, I am so thankful myself!" breathed out Rosetta.

"Thanks: it is very kind of you to say so. It makes it much easier for me," sighed Roscoria, gratefully.

At that moment enter the admiral, walking sideways and fumbling with the door-handle as one who fears to interrupt a _tete-a-tete_.

Roscoria came forward in penitent guise, and began to explain the unlucky mistake that had arisen, and how it was Miss _Lyndis_ Villiers toward whom his heart had yearned.

The admiral snorted. His temper arose. Both the young people knew they were in for it. Sir John Villiers withered them both with his sea-faring eye.

"Goodness gracious!" exclaimed Roscoria, also a little irritably. "If I tear up that paper, and leave you in possession of that bit of land, and say no more of my marriage in connection with it, but try to gain Miss _Lyndis_ Villiers as a separate undertaking, I suppose it will be all right?"

"Rosetta Villiers is an heiress, so if she pleases to throw herself away on a poor school master--he's no worse than the good-for-nothing military men who generally get the heiress--but Lyndis Villiers has not a penny, and I owe it to my second brother's memory to see that his orphaned child does not marry any impecunious young gentleman. Besides, she is suitably affianced to Mr. Rodda's eldest son. She is, therefore, out of the question."

"For the moment let us assume it," said Roscoria (who, we remember, was better informed); "but in that case, naturally, Miss Rosetta Villiers is free."

A very gentlemanly young man! thought Rosetta approvingly.

"I do not see it, sir," said the admiral, unfurling a handkerchief like a challenge flag. "I will neither give up the field nor permit you to go without your share in the bargain."

"Then give me a trifling consideration in money," suggested Roscoria--"if Miss Villiers will kindly pardon my entering upon such matters in her presence."

"That piece of land and my niece are, in my estimation, priceless. Only the one, sir, is a sufficient substitute for the other. Besides, I decline to have any shilly-shallying in this affair. It will be all over the place to-morrow that Rosetta accepted you and you threw her over."

"Let it be; I accepted the position," said Rosetta.

"I will _not_ let it be," stormed the admiral. "If a young man thinks he can play fast and loose with a niece of mine, let him try--let him try!"

Here Rosetta, growing really frightened, hastily went out and returned with sherry and biscuits, which she pressed upon Roscoria's acceptance in the midst of his indignant rejoinder to her uncle. Mechanically the young man received the refreshments, and, holding his glass in one hand and taking a fierce bite of his biscuit, he said loudly, and turning toward the lady, "I protest again, Sir John Villiers, that I have not the slightest intention of playing fast and loose with Miss Rosetta, and she knows it as well as I do----"

And the door opened, and Lyndis Villiers was in the midst of them.

Now this time, of course, Roscoria was unnerved, and did nothing but turn very white and set down his glass and look away. Therefore Lyndis, hearing his last speech, seeing him in excited converse with her uncle and her pretty cousin, and eating and drinking as if he were there for the day, harbored a deep suspicion of her lover. There was a painful silence.

Then the admiral began again:

"Lyndis, come here! Do you know Mr. Roscoria?" and Lyndis lifted her clear gray eyes upon Louis and said, "Yes, certainly."

Then Roscoria recovered himself and shook his beloved by the hand, and murmured, "Good-morning, dearest; I am in an awful scrape."

And Rosetta confided to Lyndis that the admiral was past human guidance, and it was to be hoped that Providence would interfere. Of course Lyndis knew nothing of what was toward, and a laborious explanation had to take place, at the end of which the tall, fair Englishwoman looked rather shocked, and murmured something about "unjustifiable liberty," which was directed at Roscoria. He took up the attack by a counter-charge:

"Is it true that you, as the admiral says, are still engaged to Eric Rodda?"

Lyndis raised her eyes again to Roscoria's, this time with a furtive memory of love-making in them, and responded decidedly, "No, it is not."

"Sir," she continued, turning to the admiral, "Mr. Rodda is coming this afternoon to break this to you."

"Break it to me!" irascibly exclaimed the admiral. "How many more things am I to have broken to me this day? I should like to break a thick stick to these fellows! Why can't they stick to their engagements as I do? Precious attractive they seem to find you two young women. I wonder you are not ashamed, Lyndis, to come and tell me that your fellow has given you the slip too."

"Oh, I say!" expostulated Roscoria, and he dared--before the admiral--to put his arm round Lyndis' waist.

"Look at them, sir!" said Rosetta, in a motherly aside. "I'd go to the rack with Spanish fortitude before I would cross young love."

"Lieutenant Tregurtha!" announced the footman, and in came Dick with an air of "Bless you, my children!" about him. He was stopped on the very threshold, though, by recognizing in Miss Rosetta Villiers a dear, if new, attraction.

"Hallo!" he exclaimed. "Why, this _is_ delightful, you know!" and shook her warmly and long by the hand.

Rosetta ordered a fresh glass for the sherry, and Lyndis inhaled the odor of the hyacinths in the flower-stand, whilst Roscoria bent over her, earnestly engaged in making his peace. The admiral, who had been quelled for the moment, burst out afresh. In trembling accents he said, waving his hand:

"Ladies, leave us, if you please!" and Lyndis and Rosetta, knowing what impended, hastily made for the door, Roscoria finding time to bow out his adored just before Sir John broke into a torrent, a storm, hurricane, gust, squall, half-gale, great-guns-blowing (or any other nautical simile) of language.