CHAPTER II.

"Therefore he loved gold in special."--Chaucer.

"It is a great calamity, a heavy dispensation!" said a neighbour to Patty Fripp.

"He will get over it in time--the master," said others, especially the women; "all men get over these things--he'll marry again, no doubt; he is too young to live all alone in the world."

Patty was very indignant at this suggestion being made already.

"Time tries all, and soothes all," said another gossip; "we shall see by and by--men don't break their hearts for love, look you. And how about the little boy?"

"Poor little soul! he is fretting sorely for his mother," said Patty, polishing her face with her checked apron, after having 'a good cry'; "but that is just human natur, I s'pose."

To the lonely man it seemed strange that Mary was no longer in the cottage at Finglecombe, and it was difficult for him, for a time, to realise the idea that she was gone for ever from her place; that he would never see her again; and that morning and night would come inexorably; the weeks become months, and the months become years; and that no Mary, with all her great love and tenderness, was there to bear a part in the long vista of life that lay before him.

His loneliness became at times insupportable, and he was frequently absent from home--a circumstance which never occurred in Mary's time. On these occasions the long and sleepless hours of night were terrible to little Derval, with his true Devonshire dread of the supernatural, for he had no longer the sweet consciousness of the near presence of his watchful mother.

At such times, till sleep sealed his eyes, he had but one thought--that out there in the dew and darkness of night, as in the sunshine by day, was the grave of one who had loved him and tended him, as no other human being would do, in the little churchyard, where the white tombstones and crosses contrasted so strongly and beautifully with the emerald green of the turf and the darker tint of the vast ancient yew that overshadowed them.

In all the wide earth--the earth of which he had, as yet, so little conception, there was already no spot so dear to little Derval as the turf that covered his mother's grave; and thus in the darkness of the moonless nights he was wont to waken and weep when he heard the cold wind sighing and the rain falling; and he shuddered at the thought that she was out there, exposed to them both, as it seemed to his heated fancy.

Then a great terror would come over him, till he crept softly into bed beside old Patty Fripp.

So the first heart-piercing days of sorrow and unavailing regret began to pass away, and the old craving after wealth, the world, and mammon began to resume its sway in the mind of Greville Hampton, and the dreams of which we have spoken came to his fancy again.

He began to think of Mary with more composure, and could hear, in silence, Mr. Asperges Laud, when urged by him, gently and sweetly, to remember that she had only faded out, as the stars fade, to shine again; had died as the flowers die in autumn, for resurrection in a brighter summer, in which he should meet her again, and there should be neither sorrow nor parting. All this sounded and seemed too remote and vague for the ache, the bitter void made by her departure. Yet though Mr. Laud knew by experience that Father Time was a great consoler, there was another nearer at hand than his Reverence had quite reckoned on.

Over the life of little Derval there was now a change, which he felt, though did not quite understand. The loss of his mother he had become accustomed to; but somehow, though there seemed plenty of happiness in the world, it never came to him. Other children whom he saw, or met at Mr. Laud's classes, seemed all well fed, neatly clad, and joyous, for they had come thither with mothers' kisses on their rosy cheeks, and the same caresses awaited them when they went home; but he had no one to kiss him now, save old Patty Fripp, who, like a genuine maid-of-all-work, was seldom without a smudge on one side of her nose.

Papa seemed for ever absent, for, as the months ran on, he seemed to have found some mysterious occupation elsewhere than at Finglecombe.

There was a time when Greville Hampton used to steal to the bedside of his little boy, and hang over him in his sleep, parting the thick curly hair from his forehead, softly and tenderly, while remarking with fondness, that there still he could see Mary's long eyelashes, Mary's brow and pure sweet profile, and all the loving memory of her would gush up in his heart.

Observant Patty thought that he was wont to do this less and less now, while his absences from the lonely cottage became more frequent and long. She marvelled much at this. Had he fallen in with some schemes by which to amend his shattered fortune--the schemes on which she had again and again heard him descant in times past? But whatever caused the change in his habits and bearing, it was soon to be made apparent to her now.

Patty was startled from her usual propriety, or the even tenor of her way, when Greville Hampton, with some reluctance or hesitation in his manner, as if conscious of the speculation he would excite, announced that three guests were coming to dinner on a certain day; and thereupon great bustle ensued at the cottage of Finglecombe, whither the railway van brought various wines, fruits, and condiments, "even to the last grapes and first cucumbers of the season," as Patty Fripp said, for the expected guests; and Patty had to obtain the aid of a neighbour as a helping hand, and the united wonder and excitement culminated, when two of the guests arrived in a handsome and well-appointed brougham, and proved to be ladies--an old and a young one--a Mrs. Rookleigh (of whom Patty had never heard) and her niece, whom, with all her beauty, she mentally deemed to be hard, bold, and haughty.

It is a strange but true assertion, that anxiety, like misfortune, can lend misgiving and fear to any unwonted occurrence, and now Patty Fripp, for the little boy's sake, began to apprehend--she scarcely knew what!

"When I'm 'urried I'm flurried," said she to her gossip, "and look you, it ain't easy to get this place, a cottage though it be, ready by myself--to sort rooms and toilet-tables, kill chickens and dress 'em, and bake cakes, look you, like the king as burned 'em, lay tables, and all that sort o' thing!"

Mr. Hampton received his guests with great _empressement_, welcomed them to Finglecombe, with the beautiful surroundings of which they were greatly delighted, and--as Patty's watchful and wondering eyes were upon him--he was not sorry when the Curate arrived, and he desired her to conduct the ladies to a room, and assist them to remove the costumes they had driven in.

About the elder lady there was so little to remark that Patty scarcely noticed her, but her niece, Miss Anne Rookleigh, then nearer her thirtieth than her twentieth year, was brilliantly fair in complexion, with large and languishing eyes of that golden-hazel colour which so often goes with a duplicity of character, a magnificent figure, and masses of light chesnut coloured hair. Save that her bearing and expression were hard and cold, despite the languor in her eyes, the most severe connoisseur in female beauty could have found no fault with her, unless his glance fell upon her hands, which, for a lady so generally refined in aspect, were decidedly large and even coarse-looking.

Since his mother had been borne away--it seemed so long ago now--in that grim funeral car with its black plumes, no ladies had ever been under their roof, till these two came, and now to Derval it seemed that his papa was far less gloomy than he had been--indeed, was quite gay; one of these ladies, Derval thought, eyed him curiously, even hostilely through her gold glass, and he, grasping the while his top and whip, looked steadily up in her proud face with a reconnoitring gaze that piqued her.

The dinner passed over like any other. Greville Hampton was scrupulously attentive to both aunt and niece, but was so delicate and guarded in his manner, that Patty, who knew not the language of the eyes, could, as yet, obtain no clue to her suspicions; but, for the first time in his short life, the child was conscious of a something undefinable, he knew not what, in the manner of his father to himself, and felt that if the former did not quite repel his advances and wished-for caresses, he failed completely to respond to them, while under the golden hazel eyes of Miss Anne Rookleigh.

Derval then drew to the side of her aunt, who was intently conversing with Mr. Asperges Laud, and whom he utterly failed to interest, on the subject of his pet canary, and the big Dorking hen, that had been mamma's, and laid so many eggs.

At last the ladies rose, and quitting the table resolved to seek the garden, leaving their host and the curate to their wine and cigars.

"You have a piano here, Greville," said Miss Rookleigh with a bright smile.

"It is locked," said he uneasily.

"But there is a key, of course?"

"I have lost it," said he evasively; for the piano had been Mary's, and he could not yet have a stranger's fingers running over the keys where hers had brought forth the familiar notes.

So the ladies swept forth into the little garden, where they found a rustic chair under the shadow of a golden laburnham tree, and where the roses that Mary's hands had tended were now in all the beauty and luxuriance of midsummer; and ere long, Patty Fripp, who was not above eaves-dropping, while collecting fresh salad for supper, and unobserved was close by listening to all the two visitors said, obtained a clue to the whole matter.

In fact, Greville Hampton, the widower, was engaged to Miss Anne Rookleigh!

"Yes," said the latter, leisurely fanning herself, "that child of his will be a great bore!"

"A greater bore if you have any little ones of your own," said the aunt, laughing; "but don't begin with this spirit in your breast, Anne--take care."

"Take care of what?" asked the niece, haughtily.

"I mean of abusing the great power you so evidently possess over your intended."

"I little thought, aunt, when I was only amusing myself with him at Ilfracombe, rambling among the Tors, sketching the Lover's Leap, talking, playing chess with him, singing to him, accepting his flowers and all that, I would come to love him as I do, and end at last by finding this engagement ring on my finger!"

("So-so!" muttered Patty, under her breath, with a vicious sniff; "my old gossip was right--men don't break their hearts and die of love--for their wives at all events, look you!")

"Yes, I love him for himself alone," resumed Miss Rookleigh, after a pause, "not his fortune certainly," she added with a mocking laugh; "he is so handsome and winning. But I know, aunt, that though you are a widow, you deem it impossible that there can be any romance in a second marriage; and yet in such, a man may learn that his first was a mistake, and that now he only loves for the first time," and with a dreamy smile in her bright hazel eyes she swayed her fan to and fro.

"No one looks for romance in a second marriage--at least, I should not," replied her practical aunt; "I have always deemed them, like most first marriages, matters of convenience or of calculation, now-a-days. At all events you must admit, Anne, that all freshness of the heart must be gone?"

"Aunt, you are very unpleasant! I believe a man is quite capable of loving twice, and the second time more than the first; because he must know his own mind better. If I thought that Greville had only the shadow of love to offer me--but I shall not canvas the idea! Greville's first marriage must seem like a dream to him now, and, if otherwise, it will go hard with me if I do not soon obliterate all memory of a former affection. He married his first wife for her beauty, I believe; but she was a poor namby-pamby little thing. He'll soon forget her, nay, he must have forgotten her now!" And a flash came into her eyes, of subtle colour, as she spoke.

"Hush, Anne, how would you like to be spoken of thus? Besides, his child--_her_ child--will be a perpetual reminder."

"It is aggravating! I believe the little brat already views me as an interloper; and though I knew his age, he is on a larger scale than I expected, and certainly looks old for the child of a man so youthful as Greville; and then he speaks with the odious Devonshire patois!"

"One lucky thing is that your engagement will not be a long one, if you are satisfied for the time with this poor--though certainly pretty--place."

"It satisfied _her_," thought Patty, glancing at the distant spire, the shadow of which was falling on Mary's grave; and the old woman crept away, as she had heard more than enough, muttering, "after all these years I'd give him warning this very hour, but for the sake of the child. Poor Derval! from this day, I fear me, his life will be a blighted one! Dear, dear! but the master has soon begun to sweeten the hay again!" she added, referring to an old Cornish practice common among lovers in haymaking time.

So barely a year had elapsed, since the woman who clung to him so tenderly and truly in poverty, as in wealth, and whose heart had been for years against his own, had been laid in the silent grave, when Greville Hampton brought another--but not a fairer--wife to share his cottage home.

That home he had spared no expense his means permitted to decorate for the new idol, who had certainly not come to him undowered. Many old and familiar objects had been removed--there were cogent reasons why--and gave place to newer fancies.

While Derval and Patty had been the sole occupants of the cottage at Finglecombe, the wedded pair had been spending their honeymoon on the continent; they had seen Antwerp with its cathedral and the art treasures of its galleries; Cologne and Coblentz, the precipitous Kolandseck with its baronial ruin and mouldering arch; hill-encircled Ems, the banks of the picturesque Lake, wooded Nassau and merry Wiesbaden; Greville the while judiciously silent that he had gone all that bridal tour once _before_. But now he thoroughly believed in his second election; and it has been said that, at few times, or at no time, of his life, is a man such a true believer in faith and love as when he plunges into matrimony; and we must suppose that it was so with Greville Hampton.

The arrival of the bride at Finglecombe, with all her boxes and that "particular baggage," as Patty thought, her own maid, was a source of sore worry to the former, who could no longer pursue the even tenor of her way under the new state of things.

Greville kissed his little boy, who clung fondly to him; but the bride gave the latter her gloved hand coldly, and scanned him through her glass, while he eyed her with mistrust and wonder, and with a strange shrinking, for somehow her eye chilled him, and thus, at the very home-coming there was a petty _contretemps_.

"Kiss him, Anne dearest," said Greville; "go and be kissed by your mamma, Derval."

"She is not my mamma," said the child recoiling.

"Go and be kissed by her instantly, sir!"

"I won't, Papa."

"Then leave the room, sir!"

"He gives me a cold reception, certainly," said Mrs. Hampton, her golden-coloured eyes sparkling dangerously under their rather white lashes, as she threw off some of her travelling wraps and appeared to Patty's wondering eyes in a rich and handsome dress, that accorded well with the stately character of her beauty; and Derval slunk away, doubtful and fearing, whether he had done right or wrong; but then, what did papa mean by calling this strange woman his mamma?

"His presence shall not annoy you, Anne."

"But, until he gets accustomed to me, Greville?"

"I shall compel him to stay in his own room, or in the kitchen with Patty, till he knows how to treat you."

So on this day the troubles of Derval really began. He felt that he could never be even confident in the presence of this stranger who had so suddenly taken a high place in their little household. There was everything in her manner and bearing to repel him, and when she spoke to him his large eyes dilated under her stony gaze, as those of a bird are said to do when a serpent begins its charm of fear; and when rated for some trifle, he said sullenly:

"I want my own mamma. Why did papa bring _you_ here, and set you in _her_ place at table?"

"Dare you say so; you are a very bold child!" she exclaimed with some heat, and in her hard constrained voice, when a more generous woman would have smiled and resorted to caresses; "you ought to learn to love me."

"Never!" said the chubby Derval stoutly; "I shall only love my own mamma; she allowed me to climb on papa's knee and kiss him, but you won't."

"This brat, Derval," she thought, "must certainly remind him of that woman he loved, or fancied he loved, in the days of his youth and folly! Derval must be sent from this--out of this, somehow--anyhow! I would that he were old enough to go to sea."

To sea! Was his future shadowed forth in this idea?

Time will show.

And already she began to hate the child, all the more that her husband in his dreams--for he was as great a dreamer as ever--more than once, in her hearing, muttered or whispered to himself, softly and sadly, as to one near him, the name of "Mary," when doubtless the present was forgotten, and the days of the past came back in the visions of the night.

"He is thinking of his boyish fancies and his wax doll," Anne would mutter; "how shall I have patience to endure this if it occurs often?"

Tall, proud, haughty, and imperious in her secret nature, she was in all things the reverse of the _mignonne_, gentle and affectionate "wax doll," she thought of so contemptuously.

The poor for miles around felt a change now. Mary had ever but little to spare from her own slender store, and that little was given freely with kind words to all; yet the new bride that had come to Finglecombe, though wealthier far than ever poor Mary hoped to be, even amid all Greville's brilliant schemes and aspirations, gave not a crumb of broken victuals to the passing mendicant; and as for the sick and needy in the adjacent lanes, and little cob-villages, she knew not of their existence.

She had brought him a round sum of money, which, perhaps, more than even her beauty and unmistakable advances, had lured Greville Hampton into this second alliance; and with this he had speedily begun to speculate successfully in the purchase of land at Finglecombe, and to see, in prospect, the possible realisation of his golden dreams!

Had anyone ventured to hint to Greville Hampton that he had now forgotten Mary, he would have repelled the accusation with anger. But he had been lonely--he felt the want of companionship; this woman was handsome, and had been bent on winning him, for he was possessed of much manly beauty, with a fine presence; and the dowry she had, roused in him anew that craving thirst, that eager longing for "the gold that perisheth."

But in her love for him, and jealousy of the dead, she was somewhat exacting, and tried him considerably at times.

"You loved your first wife, of course, Greville, because it is your nature to be tender and loving," said she on one occasion; "but do, please, put her portrait away."

"Why, Anne?"

"Because the eyes of it seem to follow me everywhere, to watch me; and I can never see it without thinking--thinking--"

"Of what?"

"That she was as dear to you, perhaps--as near to you, certainly--as I am."

"Your ideas are foolish, Anne," said he; but the portrait was removed eventually, and one of her aunt, Mrs. Rookleigh, took its place.

Sometimes she went further than this, and would test his veracity a little unwarrantably, in her inordinate vanity, and with ineffably bad taste.

"Tell me, dearest Greville," she said, hanging over him, and caressing him with great _empressement_, "did you ever love before as you love me now?"

He smoked his old briar-root, but made no reply.

"Tell me--tell me," she persisted, while playfully pulling his ear; but his heart felt a pang, and his eye wandered involuntarily to where poor Mary's portrait used to hang.

"Why so inquisitive?" said he; "you know that I was married before. Do you think I am so vile as to marry without loving?"

"That is no answer. But were you ever so much in love as you are now?"

Wishing to evade the inquiry, he smoked rather doggedly on; so she questioned him again.

"Some fellows are in love a score of times, with every pretty girl they meet, in fact," said he.

"But you, Greville, are not one of those men."

"No, Anne, most certainly not."

So she could extract no more from him. He was weak in her hands, but to have said what she wished, he felt would he coarse treason to the dead, and thought, "why could she not be content?"

And when she sang--but in a style Mary never sang--she indulged in high fantastic flourishes, running her hands heavily over the same keys that Mary's pretty fingers had been wont to touch so lightly. For a time Greville Hampton winced at the familiar sound of the instrument, as if a spirit was conjured up by it; but ere long he became hardened--accustomed to it.

Soon her piano, almost every immediate relic of Mary, disappeared; and times there were when her successor spoke--but never in Greville's hearing--of her memory in a sneering manner, that stung the sensitive Derval, and as he grew older, maddened and infuriated him. However, he was but a child yet, and barely understood the tithe of what she said.

To her he was a perpetual eyesore; and in the round of her daily life--especially in the absence of Greville--she found a hundred petty means of venting her groundless dislike upon him.

"Get out of the way--leave the room, boy--go and play in the garden--you are not wanted here!" Such were hourly the greetings to the child now--no kisses, no caresses as of old. All his sweet childish impulses were crushed or checked, and thrust back upon himself, and distrust and dislike of her, the typical rather than the real stepmother (fortunately for humanity's sake), grew strong in his heart--his little yearning heart, that felt half broken at times by neglect, for he had no one now, save old Patty, to whom he could tell all the wondrous secrets, and deep, tender confidences of child-life.

And even Patty he might not have long, as in Mrs. Hampton's mind she contrasted unfavourably with her own maid; she deemed her gauche, for Patty was a stout, broad, and short-necked woman, with a clumsy gait, a ruddy complexion, red sandy hair, eyes rather green than grey, and with a resolute mouth and chin that came of her Cornish blood.

"Poor little Master Derval, poor darling!" said Patty once to Greville. "She has never said a kind word to him since she came to the house; and look you, sir, he would think she was mocking him if she said one now--yah!" and she ground her teeth.

"Silence, Patty; I cannot permit you to speak thus of Mrs. Hampton," said he angrily.

"Missus Hampton, indeed!" grumbled Patty, but under her breath, however. But one day Greville overheard a remark which gave him a pang.

"Derval, where are you going, sir?" demanded Mrs. Hampton imperiously, as he was taking his little cap.

"To the sea-shore," he answered shyly.

"Again? You are never anywhere else, and always come back with wet and sandy shoes. What takes you there?"

"I like to watch the waves come in, and listen to what they are saying."

"You are a little fool; I say you shall not go!" and seizing him with hands, which we have said were not small ones, she shook him violently, and tears sprang to his eyes.

"Oh," he wailed, "that my own mamma would come out of the ground, and help her little boy!"

"Ah, but your mamma can't," she said spitefully; "she is deep enough down, thank Heaven!"

"Hush, Anne," said Greville, suddenly appearing; "for Heaven's sake don't speak to the child in that manner."

"He aggravates me so!" she replied, colouring; but more with anger than shame.

"Oh, I do beg your pardon," said Derval one day, approaching in great tribulation, with his little hands pressed tremblingly together.

"For what?" she asked sharply.

"Please, I have broken your little china vase."

"The vase that dear Aunt Rookleigh gave me! Oh you clumsy, obnoxious brat!" she exclaimed, while her eyes gleamed with anger; and as no one was near she punished him severely.

"Mother, mother! mamma, mamma!" he cried, panting in her grasp, "oh, come back to your little boy, and save him from this terrible woman!"

"Woman, indeed, you fractious imp; I'll teach you what your mamma, as you call her, never did--manners!" and she continued to beat him till he, and herself, were quite breathless, and then she flung him in a heap into a corner, to sob himself into sullen composure.

In the lust of her cruelty she, by the pursuance of a system all her own, succeeded in actually weaning much of the regard of his father from him, and had him excluded from the dining-room when dessert--to which he had always been admitted--was on the table.

Banishment from dessert seemed to Derval the acme of ill-usage; and, apart from the loss of the good things thereat, he never forgot the day he found himself thus banished.

He had come into the room when he knew "papa was there," and rushed, breathless and laughing, up to his side.

"My chair is not put in for me, papa!" he exclaimed; "why is this?"

Seizing one, he began to drag it across the room towards the table, and to his father's side. Mrs. Hampton looked at him darkly (she was rather an Epicurean and did not like to be worried at meals), and Greville did so silently and uneasily, for he was not unmoved just then by the tender and pleading expression he read in the child's eyes.

"I thought you said, my dear, that we were not to be disturbed in this way by that _gauche_ boy?" said Mrs. Hampton; "and you know the nervous condition to which he reduces me--just now, at least."

"Leave the room, Derval; mamma does not want you to-day."

"Oh, papa, you are not angry with me?"

"Yes--no--but go; you are a bad boy to insist on coming to table."

And so Derval never sat at that table again till the day came when he was to leave the house for ever.

As he was peremptorily forbidden to go near the sea-shore, he frequently went to the churchyard of Finglecombe and spent hours there, weaving chaplets of daisies and wild flowers.

"What brings you here so often, my poor child?" asked Mr. Asperges Laud (patting him on the head) the curate, in his long-tailed coat, gaiters, and Roman collarino.

"To be near mamma's grave," said Derval, gulping down a sob. "Besides, it is a quiet place for a good cry," he added, as the kind curate took him into his little thatched parsonage.

In the dark nights of winter he could recal how tenderly mamma put him to bed, and watched beside him till he slept. It was old Patty Fripp who did so now, who tucked him cosily into his little crib and kissed him some twenty times ere she bade him "good-night," but, by order of Mrs. Hampton, was not permitted to linger beside him.

"The child tells you, ma'm, that he can't sleep in the dark alone, from fear," urged Patty on one occasion.

"Fear of what?" she asked curtly.

"The Long Cripples."

"What _do_ you mean?"

Patty then told her that snakes in Devonshire were called "long cripples," and Derval had heard of the one at Manaton, that was as big as a human body, and had legs as well as wings, and uttered a hiss that could be heard for miles around.

"The boy is a fool, and you are another; leave him to sleep, or wake, as he chooses," was the mandate. So Derval was left to sob himself asleep in the dark, cowering under his coverlet, fearing "the Long Cripple" was coming when the wind moaned in the chimney, or the ivy-leaves pattered on the window-panes.

Apart from the comments of Patty, the remarks of schoolfellows and neighbours were not wanting to foster the growing animosity of Derval to his stepmother. Curious eyes watched him, and the inquisitive questioned him, extracting answers, to which they gave suggestions all calculated to inflame his impotent wrath; and now a day came when the cottage at Finglecombe was turned topsy-turvy, and Derval, to his utter bewilderment, was banished for some time to the parsonage.

The real Lord of Finglecombe had come in the shape of a baby-brother to him--a baby whom the Rev. Asperges Laud made a little Christian by the name of Rookleigh Greville Hampton.

And now, more than ever, as this little one had come, did the father bless his increasing prospects in the acquisition of land, and in the profits thereon, as, like the man in the _Canterbury Tales_, "therefore loved he gold in special."

New hopes sprang up in the heart of Greville, and with the wealth he seemed likely to acquire, he ceased to regret that which he had lost, and to repine about the title of which his father and grandsire had been, as he believed, illegally deprived.

But in the years to come this baby-brother was fated to have a terrible and calamitous influence upon the destiny of Derval Hampton.

Greville Hampton was so successful in his speculations that he actually hoped, in time, to make quite an estate of Finglecombe. Money makes money, and thus he became a wealthy man; for true it is, "that the thing we look forward to often comes to pass, but never in the way we have imagined it."

His dreams of an El Dorado, and Mary's reading thereof, came back to his memory, when he saw house after house being built in the little dell that overlooked the sea; and he recalled her words, "Your riches lie, not in California, but _here_ in Finglecombe." How prophetic were her words!

Now that he was becoming wealthy, many persons who had held somewhat aloof from him began to discover a hundred good qualities in him they had never dreamed of before. Ladies had always admitted that he was a more than ordinarily handsome man; their husbands--county men--praised his seat on horseback, his manner and bearing, remarked the cheerfulness and good nature expressed in his face, and began to extol the great frankness of his manner, though, sooth to say, they saw little of him; for he, remembering how they had ignored his existence in the past, ignored theirs in the present time.

He steadily added acre to acre. A small, but pretty village, approaching the dignity of a watering-place, had sprung up in the lovely dell where the little cottage of Finglecombe stood, for it had now given place to an imposing brick villa, which seemed to look haughtily down on the humbler dwellings around, with its plate-glass oriels, ogee gables, its handsome oaken porch of fanciful design, and its sweeping approaches, rolled and gravelled between beautiful shrubberies.

As wealth flowed in and brought back wonted luxuries with it, he ceased to remember poor Mary's pathetic attempts at a little ornament and refinement amid the humility of her later surroundings, for Greville Hampton became a sorely changed man to all, and to Derval especially.

Could Mary have dreamed that a day would ever come when her child would pine for his father's love, as Derval pined in secret? But under the cruel influence of the second wife and her little boy it was so. Much of this, perhaps, arose from Hampton's absorption in his own pursuits, so fearful was he of losing any time that might add to his increasing store. Thus no word of endearment, of praise for studious conduct, no caress cheered the lonely little boy, who saw all such as his father could spare exacted by Mrs. Hampton for his baby-brother, while her petty tyranny and aversion to himself grew daily together, and a woman so petty, weak-minded, and jealous--jealous even of the dead--found much to inflict in the round of home life.

Once, during a protracted absence of his father--not that his presence perhaps would have mattered much--his little pet dog was taken from him, and sent away he knew not where, and when he wept and clamoured for it, she beat him and pulled his ears till his head ached. On another occasion she deprived him of his canary, as its seed and chickweed "made a mess"; and then he felt--as when she sent "mamma's big Dorking" to the spit--something like murder in his little heart.

He rushed at her and contrived to inflict sundry kicks about her ankles, which made her scream, and in a moment the strong and athletic hand of his father was upon him.

"Ask instant pardon of your mamma, sir!" was the command.

"I won't--she is not my mamma."

"I tell you, sir, she is," and the blows fell like a hailstorm about the head and shoulders of Derval. But not a tear came from his eyes now; his lips were firmly compressed, his face was deadly pale, and he regarded his father with a steady and unflinching eye.

"Go to your room, sir, and remain there till you are sent for."

Under this unjust treatment the boy became sullen and resentful; thus, when a little pool he had constructed in the garden, to hold a shoal of minnows, by her order was emptied and filled up, he revenged himself by poodling her favourite Persian cat, the gift of her aunt, Mrs. Rookleigh, and for this she resolved to inflict condign punishment, with great form and ceremony.

She armed herself with her riding switch (for Greville now kept a pretty pad for her) and desired the groom to bring Master Derval to the stable, and as she did so, in her silly malignity, her very handsome face had a very tiger-like expression, and she grasped the jewelled handle of the switch resolutely in her large white hand.

"Lock the door on the inside," said she when Derval was brought before her. "Off with his jacket and tie up his hands to the knob on that heelpost."

And almost before Derval could realise the situation, he found himself a prisoner, denuded of his jacket, a halter-rope looped round his wrists, and himself "seized up," for deliberate punishment, standing almost on tip-toe, and with considerable tension.

"Will that do, mum?" asked the groom, who thought the situation an amusing one, "a rum start," as he afterwards said in the kitchen, adding that he never thought so "handsome a lady could be so downright savage."

Derval turned his head half round with an appealing expression on his sweet boyish face--a look that reminded her of the expression of Mary's eyes in her banished portrait,--but at that instant she swung the elastic switch round, and it fell with a smart and stinging thud upon his shoulders, which had no protection now save his little shirt. Derval winced, but set his teeth firmly together, determined to die rather than give her the satisfaction of hearing him cry out or supplicate for mercy.

With steady and regular sweep the switch descended on Derval's quivering shoulders again and again; but not a cry escaped him, and enraged anew by his fortitude, or "obstinacy," as she deemed it, Mrs. Hampton exerted herself afresh, and Derval, while clenching his teeth and breathing hard, boy-like, thought of the cruel enchantress who used to whip the bare back of the helpless young king of the Black Isles in the Arabian Nights, and longed for some such punishment to fall on his tormentor as fell on that remarkable lady.

We know not how many strokes were administered, but Mrs. Hampton was becoming somewhat breathless, and the tension of the rope that bound her victim to the heelpost seemed as if dragging his arms out of their sockets.

"Do stop, please mum, the little lad is fainting," exclaimed the groom.

"Nonsense, he is shamming, he is as cunning as a fox!' she exclaimed; but it was as the groom said, for Derval's head drooped on his breast and he hung on the rope like a dead weight, while no motion was made by him.

"Untie him; dear me, I had no idea of this," said Mrs. Hampton, becoming suddenly alarmed, while the groom released the passive hands of Derval, and tenderly carried him into the stable-yard, where the fresh air fanned his face, which was now bathed with cold water from a fountain into which Mrs. Hampton dipped her cambric handkerchief.

"He will revive in a few minutes," said she, becoming certainly still more alarmed at the pallor of his face and seeing that his eyes remained closed.

"Lord, mum," said the groom, who rather enjoyed her growing terror, "I hope we won't be having a crowner's 'quest in the house!"

"Fool!" said she, darting an angry look at the speaker, and then applying her little bottle of aromatic vinegar to Derval's nostrils. He revived, however, rapidly, put his jacket on, and walked sullenly but unsteadily away.

For the first time in her life she feared her husband--was glad of his absence, and hoped that Derval's back, which she anointed when he was sound asleep, would bear no trace of what he had undergone when Greville Hampton returned.

"Flogged like a black nigger for poodling a dirty cat--my eyes!" was the comment of the groom, when relating the episode in the kitchen; and poor old Patty Fripp wept tears of rage when she heard of it.

Derval's back was still stiff and painful, and his tender wrists were excoriated, when his father returned a day or two after, but the idea of complaining about what he had undergone never occurred to him; in fact, he was too much accustomed to systematic ill-usage now.

He longed to be old enough to run away and be a soldier or a sailor--he cared not which--and he would sit by his mother's grave brooding over such thoughts, till led away by Mr. Asperges Laud, or found by Patty Fripp.

As he grew older he became painfully conscious, however, of the different treatment of his younger brother and himself; he saw how he was permitted to go threadbare and shabby, with tattered cap and seamy boots, while little Rookleigh--or Rook as he called him--was kept like a princeling in purple and fine linen, and all the while their father seemed careless or oblivious of the difference.

"I'll not stay here, Patty," said Derval one day in great soreness of heart, while smarting under some new affront; "I'll run away."

"Run away, child, and let the Pixies or the Long Cripple get thee!" exclaimed his old nurse.

But Derval had nearly ceased to fear these things now, and he had no dread of any created thing, though he did shrink from the malice and the severe and vindictive eyes of his stepmother, and from contending with the low forces of her small and narrow mind.

Had Greville Hampton shown more, or even any remarkable preference for his first-born than for little Rookleigh, there might have been some reason for her jealousy though none for her cruelty; but so absorbed was he, as we have said, in the novel and pleasant task of money-making, that he never gave a thought at all to Derval.

As the latter approached boyhood, and Rookleigh childhood from mere infancy, the continued difference in the treatment of both, in food, raiment, and even in toys, was perceptible to all. Derval shunned alike the dining-room and drawing-room, for _she_ was sure to be in either one or other. He lurked in the stable, the gardens, on the sea-shore, anywhere to be away from her, and his father never missed him apparently.

Rookleigh, petted, master, and more than master of the establishment, grew up a froward, petulant, sullen and cunning child--a greedy one too, who ate his cakes and sweetmeats in secrecy and haste, sharing none and nothing with his elder brother or anyone else; and in many ways, as her own peculiar rearing, he was becoming the counterpart of his mother.

Again and again had the latter hinted at sending Derval away somewhere, to hoard or be bound apprentice, she cared not to what; but time passed on, till he attained his fourteenth year, and his half-brother was seven years old, with his mother's chestnut hair and her cunning yellow-hazel eyes, but with a strange shifty expression in them.

At home in his father's house, Derval was beginning to feel homeless now. Though impulsive and enthusiastic, what to him were now the leafy rustle of the woods and apple-orchards of Finglecombe; the trill of the lark above his head, the white-flecked azure of the summer sky, the cornfields ripe for the sickle, the glare of the golden sunshine, the soft curve of the distant hills, the bold rocky coast of Devon, and the sea that lapped it?

He only longed to be far away from them all and from "that woman," for Finglecombe was no longer home to him; no welcome was there, and love had departed.

Often did the boy visit the ruins of the old castle of Oakhampton, and wander there, as he had been wont to do in happier times, when led by his father's hand, longing to be the lord of it, or of some such place--but of it more than all. For he had been told it was theirs by right, and the coat of arms above the mouldering portal, the shield with its three choughs, and the motto _Clarior e Tenebris_, was theirs also.

The grim stone vaults, the dimly-lighted chamber, the roofless hall, he peopled in imagination with mail-clad soldiers, their pikes glittering and banners waving, as his mind filled with feudal fancies and monastic longings, and he loved the old walls, which had been the cradle of his race, especially when they, and the masses of dark-green ivy that clothed them, were steeped in the redness of the setting sun, and the gathering shadows of evening added to their melancholy, their stillness, and gloom.

He felt his heart swell with romance and pride, as he recalled all his father and even Patty Fripp had told him of the Hamptons of other days, and of the rights he had lost, and bold and daring were the fancies that filled the mind of the brave boy at times, for he was now at the age when all life is illusion.

The sea-shore was his other favourite resort, and he spent hours there listening to the lap, lapping of the waves upon the shingle, and marvelling of other lands that were far, far away; and there was one morning, the excitement of which he never forgot, when a nameless and unknown wreck was found floating in the bay, a mastless and battered hulk--battered by the fury of some great storm, in which the water had contended with the spirits of the air, till all on board had perished.

Another haunt was a ruined and unused mill at Mill-brook, where the old wheel, covered with green moss and grey lichens, looked so picturesque, while the brook foamed and boiled unheeded beneath it, and some ancient trees with drooping branches cast a shadow over the ivied walls, where all, so busy once, was now silent, and made up a picture of which Derval never wearied in his childish rambles, though the pixies were said to grind their corn there at night, when the old wheel, so silent and still by day, was seen revolving furiously in the light of the moon.

Thus, a strange and shadowy expression--induced by his loneliness--began to come into the boy's eyes, as if he had thoughts no one understood, or cared to understand, and as if by day he dreamed of things unthought of by others. Mr. Asperges Laud saw all this in his face, and longed to see the little lad away from Finglecombe and its influence, and the wish was likely to be soon gratified.