the porter at lord beauport's mansion in st. barnabas square became so familiarised with mr. bowker's frequent visits as at length to express no surprise at the sight of the "hold cove," who daily arrived to inquire whether any tidings of lord caterham had been received. although the porter's experience of life had been confined to london, his knowledge of the ways of men was great; and he was perfectly certain that this pertinacious inquirer was no dun, no tradesman with an overdue account, no begging letter-writer or imposter of any kind. what he was the porter could not tell; mentioned, in casual chat with the footman waiting for the carriage to come round, that he could not "put a name" to him, but thought from his "rum get-up" that he was either in the picture-selling or the money-lending line.

undeterred by, because ignorant of, the curiosity which his presence excited--and indeed it may be assumed that, had he been aware of it, his actions would have been very little influenced thereby--old william bowker attended regularly every day at the st. barnabas-square mansion, and having asked his question and received his answer, adjourned to the nearest tavern for his lunch of bread-and-cheese and beer, and then puffing a big meerschaum pipe, scaled the omnibus which conveyed him to london bridge, whence he took the train for the little house at sydenham. they were always glad to see him there, even though he brought no news; and old mrs. ludlow especially found the greatest comfort in pouring into his open ears the details of the latest experience of her "cross." william bowker to such recitals was a splendid listener; that is to say, he could nod his head and throw in an "indeed!" or a "really!" exactly at the proper moment, while all the time his thoughts were far away, occupied with some important matter. he saw til occasionally, and sometimes had flying snatches of talk with annie maurice in the intervals of her attendance on the invalid. bowker did not meet charley potts very frequently, although that gentleman was a regular visitor at sydenham whenever mrs. ludlow and til were there; but it was not until the evening that mr. potts came, for he was diligently working away at his commissions and growing into great favour with mr. caniche; and besides, he had no particular interest in miss maurice; and so long as he arrived in time to escort miss til and her mother back to london bridge and to put them into the lowbar omnibus, he was content, and was especially grateful for the refreshing sleep which always came upon old mrs. ludlow in the train.

at length, when many weary days had worn themselves away, and geoffrey was beginning to feel his old strength returning to him, and with it the aching void which he had experienced on regaining consciousness daily increasing in intensity, and when margaret's hold on life had grown very weak indeed, old william bowker, making his daily inquiry of lord beauport's porter, was informed that lord caterham had returned the previous afternoon, and was at that moment at breakfast. then, with great deliberation, mr. bowker unbuttoned his coat and from an inner breast-pocket produced an old leather pocket-book, from which, among bits of sketches and old envelopes, he took a card, and pencilling his name thereon, requested the porter to give it to lord caterham.

the porter looked at the card, and then said jocosely, "you ain't wrote your business on it, then? 'spose you couldn't do that, eh? well, you are a plucked 'un, you are, and i like you for it, never givin' in and comin' so reg'lar; and i'll let him have your card just for that reason." he disappeared as he said these words, but came back speedily, remarking, "he'll see you, he says, though he don't know the name. do you know the way? same rooms which his brother used to have,--straight afore you. here, i'll show you."

the friendly porter, preceding mr. bowker down the passage, opened the door of what had been poor arthur's sitting-room, and ushered in the visitor. the bookcases, the desk, the pictures and nicnacks, were all as they had been in the old days; but there was a table in the middle of the room, at which was seated the new lord caterham finishing late breakfast. bowker had never seen the lionel brakespere of former days; if he had, he would have noticed the change in the man before him,--the boldness of bearing, the calm unflinching regard, the steadiness of voice, the assurance of manner,--all of which, though characteristic of lionel brakespere in his earliest days, had deserted him, only to reappear with his title.

"you wished to see me, mr. ----. i don't know your name," said lionel, stiffly returning the stiff bow which bowker gave him on entering.

"you have my card, my lord," said old bowker quietly.

"ah, yes, by the way, i have your card," said lionel, taking it up. "mr. bowker--mr.--bowker! now that does not convey to me any idea whatever?"

"i daresay not. you never heard it before--you never saw me before; and you would not see me now, if i did not come on business of the greatest importance."

"business of the greatest importance! dear me, that's what they all come on. of the greatest importance to yourself, of course?"

"of the greatest importance to you. except in a very minor degree, ive nothing to do in the matter."

"of the greatest importance to me! o, of course--else it would not have been worth while your coming, would it? now, as my time is valuable, be good enough to let me know what this business is."

"you shall know in as few words as i can tell you. i come to you from a woman--"

lionel interrupted him with a cynical laugh.

"the deuce you do!" he said. "from a woman? well, i thought it was cigars, or a blue diamond, or a portrait of some old swell whom you had made out to be an ancestor of mine, or--"

"i would advise you not to be funny on the subject until you've heard it explained, lord caterham," said mr. bowker grimly. "i scarcely imagine you'll find it so humorous before i'm done."

"sha'n't i? well, at all events, give me the chance of hearing," said lionel. he was in a splendid temper. he had come back, after a pleasant run with algy barford, to enjoy all the advantages of his new position. on the previous night he and his mother had had a long talk about miss maurice--this heiress whom he was to captivate so easily. the world lay straight and bright before him, and he could spare a few minutes to this old fellow--who was either a lunatic or a swindler--for his own amusement.

"i come to you lord caterham, from a woman who claims to be your wife."

in an instant the colour died out of lionel's face; his brows were knit, and his mouth set and rigid. "o, ho!" said he through his clenched teeth, after a moment's pause; "you do, do you? you come to me from _that_ woman? that's your line of country, is it? o yes--i guessed wrong about you, certainly--you don't look a bit like a bully!"

"a bully!" echoed william bowker, looking very white.

"a bully!" repeated lionel--"the woman's father, brother, former husband--any thing that will give you a claim to put in an appearance for her. and now look here. this game won't do with me--i'm up to it; so you had better drop it at once, and get out."

old bowker waited for a minute with set teeth and clenched fists, all the gray hair round his mouth bristling with fury. only for a minute. then he resumed the seat which he had quitted, and said,

"i'm not quite so certain of myself nowadays, as ive been a long time out of practice; but it strikes me that during your long career of gentlemanly vice, my lord caterham, you never were nearer getting a sound drubbing than you have been within the last five minutes. however, let that pass. you have been good enough to accuse me of being a bully, by which term i imagine you mean a man sent here by the unfortunate lady of whom we have spoken to assert her rights. i may as well start by telling you that she is utterly ignorant of my intention to call on you."

"of course--o yes, of course. didn't give you my address, did she?"

"she did not."

"she didn't? o, then you've come on your own hook, being some relation or friend of hers, to see what you could bounce me out of."

"i am no relation of hers. i have not seen her half a dozen times in the course of my life."

"then what the deuce brings you here?"

"i'll tell you as shortly as i can. when you deserted this woman--not caring what became of her; leaving her to sink or swim as best she might--she slipped from one point of wretchedness to another, until, at the bottom of her descent, she was discovered by a very old friend of mime perishing of cold and hunger--dying in the streets!"

lionel, whose face when bowker commenced speaking had been averted, turned here, and gave a short sharp shudder, fixing his eyes on bowker as he proceeded.

"dying in the streets! my friend rescued her from this fate, had her nursed and attended, and finally--ignorant of the chief fact of her life, though she had confided to him a certain portion of her story--fell so desperately in love with her as to ask her to become his wife."

"to become his wife!" cried lionel; "and she consented?"

"she did."

"and they were married?"

"they were. i was present."

"_bravissimo!_" said lionel in a low voice. "you've done me a greater service than you think for, mr.--what's-your-name. she'll never trouble me again."

"only once more, my lord," said old bowker solemnly.

"what the devil do you mean, sir?"

"simply this, my lord. i understand your exclamation of delight at seeing your way legally to rid yourself of this woman, who is now nothing to you but an incumbrance. but you need not fear; you will not even have the trouble of consulting your lawyer in the matter. there is one who breaks up marriage-ties more effectually even than the divorce court, and that one is--death!"

"death!"

"death. the woman of whom we have been speaking lies in the jaws of death. her recovery, according to all human experience, is impossible. dying,--and knowing herself to be dying,--she wishes to see you."

"to see me!" said lionel scornfully; "o no, thank you; i won't interfere in the family party. the gentleman who has married her might object to my coming."

"the gentleman who married her in all noble trust and honour, she deserted directly she heard of your return. overwhelmed by her cruelty, and by the full details of her story, which he heard from your brother, the then lord caterham, at the same time, he fell, smitten with an illness from which he is barely recovering. she is in another house far away from his, and on her deathbed she calls for you."

"she may call," said lionel, after a moment's pause, frowning, thrusting his hands into his pockets, and settling himself back into his chair; "she may call; i shall not go."

"you will not?"

"i will not--why should i?"

"if you can't answer that question for yourself, lord caterham, upon my soul i can't for you," said bowker gruffly. "if you think you owe no reparation to the woman, your wife, whom you left to be rescued by strangers' charity from starvation, i cannot convince you of it: if you decline to accede to her dying request, i cannot enforce it."

"why does not the--the gentleman who was so desperately in love with her, and whom she--she accepted--why does not he go to her?" said lionel. he did not care for margaret himself, but the thought that she had been something to any one else grated upon his pride.

"ah, my god," said old bowker, "how willingly would he; but it is not for him she asks--it is for you. you boast of your experience of women, and yet you know so little of them as to expect gratitude of them. gratitude from a woman--gratitude--and yet, god knows, i ought not to say that--i ought not to say that."

"you seem to have had a singular experience, mr. bowker," said lionel, "and one on which you can scarcely make up your mind. where is this lady whom you wish me to see?"

"at sydenham--within an hour's drive."

lionel rang the bell. "tell them to get the brougham round," said he to the servant who answered it. "now, look here, mr. bowker; i am going with you thoroughly depending on your having told me the exact truth."

"you may depend on it," said old bowker simply. and they started together.

that was a strange ride. at starting lionel lit a cigar, and puffed fiercely out of the window; idly looking at the parliament-houses and other familiar objects which met his gaze as they drove over westminster bridge, the passing populace, the hoardings blazing with placards, the ordinary bustle and turmoil of every-day life. he was angry and savage; savage with margaret for the annoyance she had brought upon him, savage with bowker for having found him out, savage with himself for having allowed himself, in the impulse of a moment, to be betrayed into this expedition. then, as the houses became fewer, and the open spaces more frequent; as they left behind them the solid blocks of streets and rows and terraces, dull wretched habitations for ninth-rate clerks, solemn old two-storied edifices where the shipping agents and baltic merchants of a past generation yet lingered in their retirement, frowsy dirty little shops with a plentiful sprinkling of dirtier and frowsier taverns, imbued as was the whole neighbourhood with a not-to-be explained maritime flavour,--as they slipped by these and came into the broad road fringed by pretty gardens, in which stood trim villas stuccoed and plate-glassed, with the "coach-house of gentility" and every other sign of ease and wealth; then leaving these behind, emerged into country lanes with wide-spreading meadows on either side, green uplands, swelling valleys, brown shorn fields whence the harvest had been carried,--as they passed through all these the cruel thoughts in lionel's mind softened, and he began to think of the scene to which he was being hastened, and of his own share in bringing about that scene. as he flung away the butt-end of his cigar, there rose in his mind a vision of margaret as he had first seen her, walking on the castle hill at tenby with some of her young companions, and looking over the low parapet at the boiling sea raging round catherine's rock. how lovely she looked, glowing with youth and health! what a perfectly aristocratic air and _tournure_ she had, visible in the careless grace of her hat, the sweeping elegance of her shawl, the fit of her boots and gloves! how completely he had been taken aback by the apparition! how he had raved about her! had never rested until he had obtained an introduction, and--ah, he remembered at that moment distinctly the quivering of her eyelids, the fluttering of her young bosom under its simple gauze, her half hesitating timid speech. that was comparatively a short time ago--and now in what condition was he to find her? he was not all bad, this man--who is?--and the best part of him was awakened now. he crossed his arms, leaned back in the carriage, and was nearer repentance than he had been since his childhood.

and old william bowker, what was he thinking of? indeed, he had fallen into his usual day-dream. the comparison between margaret and his own lost love, made when he first saw her, had always haunted him; and he was then turning in his mind how, if such a complication as they were experiencing at that moment had been possible, it would have affected her and him. from this his thoughts glided to the impending interview, and he wondered whether he had done right in bringing it about. he doubted whether margaret would have the physical strength to endure it; and even if she had, whether any good--even so far as the arousing even a transient good in his companion--would result from it. as he was pondering upon these things, lionel turned quietly upon him and said in a hoarse voice,

"you said she was very ill?"

"very ill; could hardly be worse--to be alive."

"it's--" and here he seemed to pull himself together, and nerve himself to hear the worst--"it's consumption, i suppose, caught from--damn it all, how my lip trembles!--brought on by--want, and that."

"it originated in rheumatic fever, produced by cold and exposure, resulting in heart-disease and a complication of disorders."

"has she had proper advice?--the best, i mean, that can be procured?"

"yes; she has been seen twice by ---- and ----" said bowker, naming two celebrated physicians, "and her own doctor sees her every day."

"and their opinions agree?"

"they all agree in saying that--"

"hush," said lionel, seizing him by the arm; "your face is quite enough. i'd rather not hear it again, please." and he plunged his hands into his pockets, and sunk back shuddering into the corner of the brougham.

bowker was silent; and they drove on without interchanging a word until william stopped the coachman at a small gate in a high garden-wall. then lionel looked up with a strange frightened glance, and asked, "is this the place?"

"it is," said bowker; "she has been here for some little time now. you had better let me go in first, i think, and prepare for your coming."

and all lionel answered was, "as you please," as he shrunk back into his corner again. he was under a totally new experience. for the first time in his life he found himself suffering under a conscience-pang; felt disposed to allow that he had acted badly towards this woman now lying so stricken and so helpless; had a kind of dim hope that she would recover, in order that he might--vaguely, he knew not how--make her atonement. he felt uncomfortable and fidgetty. bowker had gone, and the sun-blistered damp-stained garden-door had been closed behind him, and lionel sat gazing at the door, and wondering what was on the other side of it, and what kind of a house it was, and where she was, and who was with her. he never thought he should have felt like this. he had thought of her--half a dozen times--when he was out there; but he knew she was a clever girl, and he always had a notion that she would fall upon her legs, and outgrow that first girlish smite, and settle down comfortably, and all that kind of thing. and so she would now. they were probably a pack of nervous old women about her--like this fellow who had brought him here--and they exaggerated danger, and made mountains of mole-hills. she was ill--he had little doubt of that; but she would get better, and then he'd see what could be done. gad! it was a wonderful thing to find any woman caring for a fellow so; he might go through life without meeting another; and after all, what the deuce did it matter? he was his own master, wasn't he? and as for money--well, he should be sure to have plenty some day: things were all altered now, since poor old arthur's death; and-- and at that moment the door opened; and behind william bowker, who was pale and very grave, lionel saw the house with all its blinds drawn down. and then he knew that his better resolutions had come too late, and that margaret was dead.

yes, she was dead; had died early that morning. on the previous day she had been more than usually restless and uncomfortable, and towards evening had alarmed the nurse who thought she was asleep, and who herself was dozing--by breaking out into a shrill cry, followed by a deep long-drawn lamentation. annie maurice at the sound rushed hastily into the room, and never left it again until all was over. she found margaret dreadfully excited. she had had a horrible dream, she said--a dream in which she went through all the miseries of her days of penury and starvation, with the added horror of feeling that they were a just punishment on her for her ingratitude to geoffrey ludlow. when she was a little quieted, she motioned annie to sit by her; and holding her hand, asked her news of geoffrey. annie started, for this was the first time that, in her calm senses, margaret had mentioned him. in her long ravings of delirium his name was constantly on her lips, always coupled with some terms of pity and self-scornful compassion; but hitherto, during her brief intervals of reason, she had talked only of lionel, and of her earnest desire to see and speak to him once again. so annie, pleased and astonished, said,

"he is getting better, margaret; much better, we trust."

"getting better! has he been ill, then?"

"he has been very ill--so ill that we at one time feared for his life. but he is out of danger now, thank god."

"thank god!" repeated margaret. "i am grateful indeed that his death is not to be charged to my account; that would have been but a bad return for his preservation of my life; and if he had died, i know his death would have been occasioned by my wickedness. tell me, miss maurice--annie--tell me, has he ever mentioned my name?"

"ah, margaret," said annie, her eyes filling with tears, "his talk is only of you."

"is it?" said margaret, with flushing cheeks and brightening eyes; "is it? that's good to hear---o how good! and tell me, annie--he knows i shall not trouble him long--has he, has he forgiven me?"

"not that alone," said annie quietly. "only yesterday he said, with tears in his eyes, how he loved you still."

there was silence for a moment, as margaret covered her eyes with her hands. then, raising her head, in a voice choked with sobs she said, with a blinding rush of tears, "o annie, annie, i can't be _all_ bad, or i should never have won the love of that brave, true-hearted man."

she spoke but little after this; and lionel's name never passed her lips--she seemed to have forgotten all about him and her desire to see him. from time to time she mentioned geoffrey--no longer, as in her delirium, with pity, but with a kind of reverential fondness, as one speaks of the dead. as the night deepened, she became restless again, tossing to and fro, and muttering to herself; and bending down, annie heard her, as she had often heard her before, engaged in deep and fervent prayer. then she slept; and, worn out with watching, annie slept also.

it was about four o'clock in the morning when annie felt her arm touched; and at once unclosing her eyes, saw margaret striving to raise herself on her elbow. there was a bright weird look in her face that was unmistakable.

"it's coming, annie," she said, in short thick gasps; "it's coming, dear--the rest, the peace, the home! i don't fear it, annie. ive--ive had that one line running in my brain, 'what though my lamp was lighted late, there's one will let me in.' i trust in his mercy, annie, who pardoned magdalen; and--god bless you, dear; god in his goodness reward you for all your love and care of me; and say to geoffrey that i blessed him too, and that i thanked him for all his--your hand, annie--so bless you both!--lighted late, there's one will--"

and the wanderer was at rest.