Perhaps if Rachel Lake had been in Belgravia, leading
a town life, the matter would have taken no such dark
colouring and portentous proportions. But living
in a small old house, in a dark glen, with no companion,
and little to occupy her, it was different.
She looked down the silent way he had so lately taken,
and repeated, rather bitterly, ‘My only brother!
my only brother! my only brother!’
That young lady was not quite a pauper, though she
may have thought so. Comparatively, indeed, she
was; but not, I venture to think, absolutely.
She had just that symmetrical three hundred pounds
a year, which the famous Dean of St. Patrick’s
tells us he so ’often wished that he had clear.’
She had had some money in the Funds besides, still
more insignificant but this her Brother Stanley had
borrowed and begged piecemeal, and the Consols were
no more. But though something of a nun in her
way of life, there was no germ of the old maid in her,
and money was not often in her thoughts. It was
not a bad dot; and her Brother Stanley had
about twice as much, and therefore was much better
off than many a younger son of a duke. But these
young people, after the manner of men were spited
with fortune; and indeed they had some cause.
Old General Lake had once had more than ten thousand
pounds a year, and lived, until the crash came, in
the style of a vicious old prince. It was a great
break up, and a worse fall for Rachel than for her
brother, when the plate, coaches, pictures, and all
the valuable effects’ of old Tiberius went to
the hammer, and he himself vanished from his clubs
and other haunts, and lived only—a thin
intermittent rumour—surmised to be in gaol,
or in Guernsey, and quite forgotten soon, and a little
later actually dead and buried.
I SEE THE RING OF THE PERSIAN MAGICIAN.
‘That’s a devilish fine girl,’ said
Mark Wylder.
He was sitting at this moment on the billiard table,
with his coat off and his cue in his hand, and had
lighted a cigar. He and I had just had a game,
and were tired of it.
‘Who?’ I asked. He was looking on
me from the corners of his eyes, and smiling in a
sly, rakish way, that no man likes in another.
’Radie Lake—she’s a splendid
girl, by Jove! Don’t you think so? and she
liked me once devilish well, I can tell you. She
was thin then, but she has plumped out a bit, and
improved every way.’
Whatever else he was, Mark was certainly no beauty;—a
little short he was, and rather square—one
shoulder a thought higher than the other—and
a slight, energetic hitch in it when he walked.
His features in profile had something of a Grecian
character, but his face was too broad—very
brown, rather a bloodless brown—and he had
a pair of great, dense, vulgar, black whiskers.
He was very vain of his teeth—his only really
good point—for his eyes were a small cunning,
gray pair; and this, perhaps, was the reason why he
had contracted his habit of laughing and grinning
a good deal more than the fun of the dialogue always
warranted.
