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"Ay, the old story," rejoined Chancey.

"Yes, sir, it is indeed – indeed it is, Mr. Chancey," said the young man, eagerly, catching at this improvement upon his first laconic address as an indication of some tendency to relent, and making, at the same time, a most woeful attempt to look pleasant – "it is, sir – the old story, indeed; but this time it will come out true – indeed it will. Will you do one little note for me – a little one – twenty pounds?"

"No, I won't," drawled Chancey, imitating with coarse buffoonery the intonation of the request – "I won't do a little one for you."

"Well, for ten pounds – for ten only."

"No, nor for ten pence," rejoined Chancey, tranquilly.

"You may keep five out of it for the discount – for friendship – only let me have five – just five," urged the wasted gambler, with an agony of supplication.

"No, I won't; just five," replied the lawyer.

"I'll make it payable to-morrow," urged the suppliant.

"Maybe you'll be dead before that," drawled Chancey, with a sneer; "the life don't look very tough in you."

"Ah! Mr. Chancey, dear sir – good Mr. Chancey," said the young man, "you often told me you'd do me a friendly turn yet. Do not you remember it? – when I was able to lend you money. For God's sake, lend me five pounds now, or anything; I'll give you half my winnings. You'll save me from beggary – ah, sir, for old friendship."

Mr. Gordon Chancey seemed wondrously tickled by this appeal; he gazed sleepily at the fire while he raked the embers with the toe of his shoe, stuffed his hands deep into his breeches pockets, and indulged in a sort of lazy, comfortable laughter, which lasted for several minutes, until at length it subsided, leaving him again apparently unconscious of the presence of his petitioner. Emboldened by the condescension of his quondam friend, the young man made a piteous effort to join in the laughter – an attempt, however, which was speedily interrupted by the hollow cough of consumption. After a pause of a minute or two, during which Chancey seemed to have forgotten his existence, he once more addressed that gentleman, —

"Well, sir – well, Mr. Chancey?"

The barrister turned full upon him with an expression of face not to be mistaken, and in a tone just as unequivocal, he growled, —

"I'm d – d if I give you as much as a leaden penny. Be off; there's no begging allowed here – away with you, you blackguard."

Having thus delivered himself, Chancey relapsed into his ordinary dreamy quiet.

Every muscle in the pale, wasted face of the ruined, dying gamester quivered with fruitless agony; he opened his mouth to speak, but could not; he gasped and sobbed, and then, clutching his lank hands over his eyes and forehead as though he would fain have crushed his head to pieces, he uttered one low cry of anguish, more despairing and appalling than the loudest shriek of horror, and passed from the room unnoticed.

"Jeffries, can you lend me fifty or a hundred pounds till to-morrow?" said young Ashwoode, addressing a middle-aged fop who had just reeled in from an adjoining room.

"Cuss me, Ashwoode, if the thing is a possibility," replied he, with a hiccough; "I have just been fairly cleaned out by Snarley and two or three others – not one guinea left – confound them all. I've this moment had to beg a crown to pay my chair and link-boy home; but Chancey is here; I saw him not an hour ago in his old corner."

"So he is, egad – thank you," and Ashwoode was instantly by the monied man's side. "Chancey, I want a hundred and fifty – quickly, man, are you awake?" and so saying, he shook the lawyer roughly by the shoulder.

"Oh, dear! oh, dear!" exclaimed he, in his usual low, sleepy voice, "it's Mr. Ashwoode, it is indeed – dear me, dear me; and can I oblige you, Mr. Ashwoode?"

"Yes; don't I tell you I want a hundred and fifty – or stay, two hundred," said Ashwoode, impatiently. "I'll pay you in a week or less – say to-morrow if you please it."

"Whatever sum you like, Mr. Ashwoode," rejoined he – "whatever sum or whatever date you please; I declare to God I'm uncommonly glad to do it. Oh, dear, but them dice is unruly. Two hundred, you say, and a – a week we'll say, not to be pressing. Well, well, this money has luck in it, maybe. That's a long lane that has no turn – fortune changes sides when it's least expected. Your name here, Mr. Ashwoode."

The name was signed, the notes taken, and Ashwoode once more at the table; but alack-a-day! fortune was for once steady, and frowned with consistent obdurateness upon Henry Ashwoode. Five minutes had hardly passed, when the two hundred pounds had made themselves wings and followed the larger sums which he had already lost. Again he had recourse to Chancey: again he found that gentleman smooth, gracious, and obliging as he could have wished. Still his luck was adverse: as fast as he drew the notes from his pocket, they were caught and whirled away in the eddy of ruin. Once more from the accommodating barrister he drew a larger sum, – still with a like result. So large and frequent were his drafts, that Chancey was obliged to go away and replenish his exhausted treasury; and still again and again, with a terrible monotony of disaster, young Ashwoode continued to lose.

At length the grey, cold light of morning streamed drearily through the chinks of the window-shutters into the hot chamber of destruction and debauchery. The sounds of daily business began to make themselves heard from the streets. The wax lights were flaring in the sockets. The floor strewn with packs of cards, broken glasses, and plates, and fragments of fowls and bread, and a thousand other disgusting indications of recent riot and debauchery which need not to be mentioned. Soiled and jaded, with bloodshot eyes and haggard faces, the gamblers slunk, one by one, in spiritless exhaustion, from the scene of their distracting orgies, to rest the brain and refresh the body as best they might.

With a stunning and indistinct sense of disaster and ruin; a vague, fevered, dreamy remembrance of overwhelming calamity: a stupefying, haunting consciousness that all the clatter, and roaring, and stifling heat, and jostling, and angry words, and smooth, civil speeches of the night past, had been, somehow or other, to him fraught with fearful and tremendous agony, and delirium, and ruin – Ashwoode stalked into the street, and mechanically proceeded to the inn where his horse was stabled.

The ostler saw, by the haggard, vacant stare with which Ashwoode returned his salutation, that something had gone wrong, and, as he held the stirrup for him, he arrived at the conclusion that the young gentleman must have gotten at least a dozen duels upon his hands, to be settled, one and all, before breakfast.

The young man dashed the spurs into the high-mettled horse, and traversing the streets at a perilous speed, without well thinking or knowing whitherward he was proceeding, he found himself at length among the wild lanes and brushwood of the Royal Park, and was recalled to himself by finding his horse rearing and floundering up to his sides in a slough. Having extricated the animal, he dismounted, threw his hat beside him, and, kneeling down, bathed his head and face again and again in the water of a little brook, which ran in many a devious winding through the tangled briars and thorns. The cold, refreshing ablution, assisted by the sharp air of the morning, soon brought him to his recollection.

"The fiend himself must have been by my elbow last night," he muttered, as he stood bare-headed, in wild disorder, by the brook's side. "I've lost before, and lost heavily too, but such a run, such an infernal string of ruinous losses. First, a thousand pounds gone – swallowed up in little more than an hour; and then the devil knows how much more – curse me, if I can remember how much I borrowed. I am over head and ears in Chancey's books. How shall I face my father? and how, in the fiend's name, am I to meet my engagements? Craven will hand me no more of the money. Was I mad or drunk, to go on against such an accursed tide of bad luck? – what fury from hell possessed me? I wish I had thrust my hand between the bars, and burnt it to the elbow, before I took the dice-box last night. What's to be done?" – he paused – "Yes – I must do it – fate, destiny, circumstances drive me to it. I will marry the woman; she can't live very long – it's not likely; and even if she does, what's that to me? – the world is wide enough for us both, and once married, we need not plague one another much with our society. I must see Chancey about those d – d bills or notes: curse me, if I even know when they are payable. My brain swims like a sea. Lady Stukely, Lady Stukely, you are a happy woman: it's an ill wind that blows nobody good – I am resolved – my course is taken. First then for Morley Court, and next for the wealthy widow's. I don't half like the thing, but, d – n it, what other chance have I? Then away with hesitation, away with thought; fate has ordained it."

So saying, the young man donned his hat, caught the bridle of his well-trained steed, vaulted into the saddle, and was soon far on his way to Morley Court, where strange and startling tidings awaited his arrival.

CHAPTER XXVII
THE DEPARTURE OF THE PEER – THE BILLET AND THE SHATTERED MIRROR

Never yet did day pass more disagreeably to mortal man than that whose early events we have recorded did to Lord Aspenly. His vanity and importance had suffered more mortification within the last few hours than he had ever before encountered in all the eight-and-sixty winters of his previous useful existence. And spite of the major's assurances to the contrary, he could not help feeling certain very unpleasant misgivings, as the evening approached, touching the consequences likely to follow to himself from his meditated retreat.

He resolved by the major's advice to leave Morley Court without a formal leave-taking, or, in short, any explanatory interview whatever with Sir Richard. And for the purpose of taking his departure without obstruction or annoyance, he determined that the hour of his setting forth should be that at which the baronet was wont to retire for a time to his dressing-room, previously to appearing at supper. The note which was to announce his departure was written and sealed, and deposited in his waistcoat pocket. He felt that it supplied but a very meagre explanation of so decided a step as he was constrained to take; nevertheless it was the only explanation he had to offer. He well knew that its perusal would be followed by an explosion, and he not unwisely thought it best, under all the circumstances, to withdraw to a reasonable distance before springing the mine.

The evening closed ominously in storm and cloud; the wind was hourly rising, and distant mutterings of thunder bespoke a night of tempest. Lord Aspenly had issued his orders with secrecy, and they were punctually obeyed. At the hour indicated, his own and his servant's horses were at the door. Lord Aspenly was crossing the hall, cloaked, booted, and spurred for the road, when he encountered Emily Copland.

"Dear me, my lord, can it be possible – surely you are not going to leave us to-night?"

"Indeed, it is but too true, fair lady," rejoined his lordship, with a dolorous shrug. "An unlucky contretemps requires my attendance in town; my precipitate flight," he continued, with an attempt at a playful smile, "is accounted for in this note, which perhaps you will kindly deliver to Sir Richard, when next you see him. I trust, Miss Copland, that fortune will often grant me the privilege of meeting you. Be assured it is one which I prize above all others. Adieu."

His lordship gallantly kissed the hand which was extended to receive the note, and then, with his best bow, withdrew.

A few petulant questions, which bespoke his inward acerbity, he addressed to his servant – glanced with a very sour aspect at the lowering sky – clambered stiffly into the saddle, and then, desiring his attendant to follow him, rode down the avenue at a speed which seemed prompted by an instinctive dread of pursuit.

As the wind howled and the thunder rolled and rumbled nearer and nearer, Emily Copland could not but wonder more and more what urgent and peremptory cause could have induced the little peer to adopt this sudden resolution, and to carry it into effect upon such a night of storm. Surely that motive must be a strange and urgent one which would not brook the delay of a few hours, especially during the violence of such weather as the luxurious little nobleman had perhaps never voluntarily encountered in the whole course of his life. Curiosity prompted her to deliver the note which she held in her hand at once; she therefore ran lightly upstairs, and rapidly threading all the intervening lobbies and rambling passages, she knocked at her uncle's door.

"Come in, come in," cried the peevish voice of Sir Richard Ashwoode.

The girl entered the room. The Italian was at the toilet, arranging his master's dressing-case, and the baronet himself in his night-gown and slippers, and with a pamphlet in his hand, reclined listlessly upon a sofa.

"Who is that? – who is it?" inquired he in the same tone, without turning his eyes from the volume which he read.

"Per dina!" exclaimed the Neapolitan – "Mees Emily – she is vary seldom come here. You are wailcome, Mees Emily; weel you seet down? – there is chair. Sir Richard, it is Mees Emily."

"What does the young lady want?" inquired he, drily.

"I have gotten a note for you, uncle," replied she.

"Well, put it down? – put it there on the table, anywhere; I presume it will keep till morning," replied he, without removing his eyes from the pages.

"It is from Lord Aspenly," urged the girl.

"Eh! Lord Aspenly. How – give it to me," said the baronet, raising himself quickly and tossing the pamphlet aside. He broke the seal and read the note. Whatever its contents were, they produced upon the baronet an extraordinary effect; he started from the sofa with clenched hands and frantic gesture.

"Who – where – stop him, after him – he shall answer me – he shall!" cried, or rather shrieked, the baronet in the hoarse, choking scream of fury. "After him all – my sword, my horse. By – , he'll reckon with me this night."

Never did the human form more fearfully embody the passions of hell; he stood before them absolutely transformed. The quivering face was pale as ashes; the livid veins, like blue knotted cordage, protruded upon his forehead; the eye glared and rolled with the light of madness, and as he shook and raved there before them, no dream ever conjured up a spectacle more appalling; he spit upon the letter – he tore it into fragments, and with his gouty feet stamped it into the fire.

There was no extravagance of frenzy which he did not enact. He tossed his arms into the air, and dashed his clenched hands upon the table; he stamped, he stormed, he howled; and as with thick and furious utterance he volleyed forth his incoherent threats, mandates, and curses, the foam hung upon his blackened lips.

"I'll bring him to the dust – to the earth. My very menials shall spurn him. Almighty, that he should dare – trickster – liar – that he should dare to practise upon me this outrageous slight. Ay, ay – ay, ay – laugh, my lord – laugh on; but by the – , this shall bring you to your knees, ay, and to your grave; and you —you," thundered he, turning upon the awe-struck and terrified young lady, "you no doubt had your share in this – ay, you have – you have– yes, I know you – you – you – hollow, lying – , quit my house – out with you – turn her out – drive her out – away with her."

As the horrible figure advanced towards her, the girl by an effort roused herself from the dreadful fascination, and turning from him, fled swiftly downstairs, and fell fainting at the parlour door.

Sir Richard still strode through his chamber with the same frantic evidences of unabated fury; and the Italian – the only remaining spectator of the hideous scene – sate calmly in a chair by the toilet, with his legs crossed, and his countenance composed into a kind of sanctimonious placidity, which, however, spite of all his efforts, betrayed at the corners of the mouth, and in the twinkle of the eye, a certain enjoyment of the spectacle, which was not altogether consistent with the perfect affection which he professed for his master.

"Ay, ay, my lord," continued the baronet, madly, "laugh on – laugh while you may; but by the – , you shall gnash your teeth for this!"

"What coning, old gentleman is mi Lord Aspenly – ah! vary, vary," said the Italian, reflectively.

"You shall, my lord," continued Sir Richard, furiously. "Your disgrace shall be public – exemplary – the insult shall recoil upon, yourself – your punishment shall be memorable-public – tremendous."

"Mi Lord Aspenly and Sir Richard – both so coning," continued the Italian – "yees – yees – set one thief to catch the other."

The Neapolitan had, no doubt, bargained for the indulgence of his pleasant humour, as usual, free of cost; but he was mistaken. With the quickness of light, Sir Richard grasped a massive glass decanter, full of water, and hurled it at the head of his valet. Luckily for that gentleman's brains, it missed its object, and, alighting upon a huge mirror, it dashed it to fragments with a stunning crash. In the extremity of his fury, Sir Richard grasped a heavy metal inkstand, and just as the valet escaped through the private door of his room, hurled it, too, at his head. Two such escapes were quite enough for Signor Parucci on one evening; and not wishing to tempt his luck further, he ran nimbly down the stairs, leaped into his own room, and bolted and double-locked the door; and thence, as the night wore on, he still heard Sir Richard pacing up and down his chamber, and storming and raving in dreadful rivalry with the thunder and hurricane without.

CHAPTER XXVIII
THE THUNDER-STORM – THE EBONY STICK – THE UNSEEN VISITANT – TERROR

At length the uproar in Sir Richard's room died away. The hoarse voice in furious soliloquy, and the rapid tread as he paced the floor, were no longer audible. In their stead was heard alone the stormy wind rushing and yelling through the old trees, and at intervals the deep volleying thunder. In the midst of this hubbub the Italian rubbed his hands, tripped lightly up and down his room, placed his ear at the keyhole, and chuckled and rubbed his hands again in a paroxysm of glee – now and again venting his gratification in brief ejaculations of intense delight – the very incarnation of the spirit of mischief.

The sounds in Sir Richard's room had ceased for two hours or more; and the piping wind and the deep-mouthed thunder still roared and rattled. The Neapolitan was too much excited to slumber. He continued, therefore, to pace the floor of his chamber – sometimes gazing through his window upon the black stormy sky and the blue lightning, which leaped in blinding flashes across its darkness, revealing for a moment the ivied walls, and the tossing trees, and the fields and hills, which were as instantaneously again swallowed in the blackness of the tempestuous night; and then turning from the casement, he would plant himself by the door, and listen with eager curiosity for any sound from Sir Richard's room.

As we have said before, several hours had passed, and all had long been silent in the baronet's apartment, when on a sudden Parucci thought he heard the sharp and well-known knocking of his patron's ebony stick upon the floor. He ran and listened at his own door. The sound was repeated with unequivocal and vehement distinctness, and was instantaneously followed by a prolonged and violent peal from his master's hand-bell. The summons was so sustained and vehement, that the Italian at length cautiously withdrew the bolt, unlocked the door, and stole out upon the lobby. So far from abating, the sound grew louder and louder. On tip-toe he scaled the stairs, until he reached to about the midway; and he there paused, for he heard his master's voice exerted in a tone of terrified entreaty, —

"Not now – not now – avaunt – not now. Oh, God! – help," cried the well-known voice.

These words were followed by a crash, as of some heavy body springing from the bed – then a rush upon the floor – then another crash.

The voice was hushed; but in its stead the wild storm made a long and plaintive moan, and the listener's heart turned cold.

"Malora—Corpo di Pluto!" muttered he between his teeth. "What is it? Will he reeng again? Santo gennaro!– there is something wrong."

He paused in fearful curiosity; but the summons was not repeated. Five minutes passed; and yet no sound but the howling and pealing of the storm. Parucci, with a beating heart, ascended the stairs and knocked at the door of his patron's chamber. No answer was returned.

"Sir Richard, Sir Richard," cried the man, "do you want me, Sir Richard?"

Still no answer. He pushed open the door and entered. A candle, wasted to the very socket, stood upon a table beside the huge hearse-like bed, which, for the convenience of the invalid, had been removed from his bed-chamber to his dressing-room. The light was dim, and waved uncertainly in the eddies which found their way through the chinks of the window, so that the lights and shadows flitted ambiguously across the objects in the room. At the end of the bed a table had been upset; and lying near it upon the floor was some-thing – a heap of bed-clothes, or – could it be? – yes, it was Sir Richard Ashwoode.

Parncci approached the prostrate figure: it was lying upon its back, the countenance fixed and livid, the eyes staring and glazed, and the jaw fallen – he was a corpse. The Italian stooped down and took the hand of the dead man – it was already cold; he called him by his name and shook him, but all in vain. There lay the cunning intriguer, the fierce, fiery prodigal, the impetuous, unrelenting tyrant, the unbelieving, reckless man of the world, a ghastly lump of clay.

With strange emotions the Neapolitan gazed upon the lifeless effigy from which the evil tenant had been so suddenly and fearfully called to its eternal and unseen abode.

"Gone – dead – all over – all past," muttered he, slowly, while he pressed his foot upon the dead body, as if to satisfy himself that life was indeed extinct – "quite gone. Canchero! it was ugly death – there was something with him; what was he speaking with?"

Parucci walked to the door leading to the great staircase, but found it bolted as usual.

"Pshaw! there was nothing," said he, looking fearfully round the room as he approached the body again, and repeating the negative as if to reassure himself – "no, no – nothing, nothing."

He gazed again on the awful spectacle in silence for several minutes.

"Corbezzoli, and so it is over," at length he ejaculated – "the game is ended. See, see, the breast is bare, and there the two marks of Aldini's stiletto. Ah! briccone, briccone, what wild faylow were you —panzanera, for a pretty ankle and a pair of black eyes, you would dare the devil. Rotto di collo, his face is moving! – pshaw! it is only the light that wavers. Diamine! the face is terrible. What made him speak? nothing was with him – pshaw! nothing could come to him here – no, no, nothing."

As he thus spoke, the wind swept vehemently upon the windows with a sound as if some great thing had rushed, against them, and was pressing for admission, and the gust blew out the candle; the blast died away in a lengthened wail, and then again came rushing and howling up to the windows, as if the very prince of the powers of the air himself were thundering at the casement; then again the blue dazzling lightning glared into the room and gave place to deeper darkness.

"Pah! that lightning smells like brimstone. Sangue d'un dua, I hear something in the room."

Yielding to his terrors, Parucci stumbled to the door opening upon the great lobby, and with cold and trembling fingers drawing the bolt, sprang to the stairs and shouted for assistance in a tone which speedily assembled half the household in the chamber of death.