Cosmo Bertram was at a very low ebb. No horse. Had moved off to Batignolles. Had not been asked to the Embassy for a twelvemonth. When he ventured into the Tuileries gardens in the afternoon, it somehow happened that the backs of the ladies' chairs were mostly turned towards him. He was still dapper in appearance; but a close observer could see a difference. Management was perceptible in his dress. He had no watch; but the diamond remained on his finger—for the present; and yet society had nothing seriously compromising to say against him. It was rumoured that he had seen the interior of Clichy twice. So had Sir Ronald, who was now the darling of the Faubourg; but then, note the difference. Sir Ronald had re-issued with plenty of money—or credit, which to society is the same thing; while poor Bertram had stolen down the hill by back streets to Batignolles, where he had found a cheap nest, and whence he trudged to his old haunts with a foolish notion that people would believe his story about a flying visit to England, and accept his translation to Batignolles as a sanitary precaution strongly recommended by his physician. If society be not yet civilized enough to imitate the savages, who kill the old members of the community, it has studied the philosophy of the storks in Jutland, who get rid of their ailing, feeble brother storks, at the fall of the year. Bertram was a bird to be pecked to pieces, and driven away from the prosperous community, being no longer prosperous.

First among the sharp peckers was Miss Tayleure, who always had her suspicions of Captain Bertram, although she was too good-natured to say anything. The seasons had circled three or four times since she had had the honour of being introduced to the gentleman, and yet the lady was waiting to see what the improved facilities for travel might bring her in the matrimonial line. She had, her dearest friends said, almost made up her mind to marry into commerce.

"Poor Tayleure!" one of the attachÉs said, at the CafÉ Anglais, over his Marennes oysters, after the opera; "doomed to pig-iron, I'm afraid. Must do it. Can't carry on much longer. Another skein of false hair this season, by Jove."

In a society so charmingly constituted, the blows are dealt with an impartial hand; and it is so mercifully arranged, that he who is doubling his fist seldom feels the blow that is falling upon his own back. It was a belief which consoled the poor Baronet's orphan through her dreary time at the boarding-house—that, at least, she was free from damaging comment. Her noble head was many inches out of water; the conviction gave her superb confidence when she had to pass an opinion on her neighbour.

Two old friends of Cosmo Bertram are lounging in the garden of the Imperial Club.

"Hasn't old Tayleure got her knife into Bertram! Poor dear boy. It's all up with him. Great pity. Was a capital fellow."

"Don't you know the secret? The old girl had designs on Bertram when he first turned up; and the Daker affair cast her plot to the winds. Mrs. Daker, you remember, was at old Tayleure's place—Rue d'AngoulÊme!"

"A pretty business that was. But who the deuce was Daker?"

"Bad egg."

The threads of this story lay in a tangle—in Paris, in Boulogne, and in Kent! I never laboured hard to unravel them; but time took up the work, and I was patient. Also, I was far away from its scenes, and only passed through them at intervals—generally at express speed. It so happened, however, that I was at hand when the crisis and the close came.

Mrs. Daker was living in a handsome apartment when I called upon her on the morrow of the ball. She wept passionately when she saw me. She said—"I could have sunk to the earth when I saw you with Bertram—of all men in the world." I could get no answers to my questions save that she had heard no tidings of her husband, and that she had never had the courage to write to her father. Plentiful tears and prayers that I would forget her; and never, under any temptation, let her people, should I come across them, know her assumed name, or her whereabouts. I pressed as far as I could, but she shut her heart upon me, and hurried me away, imploring me never to return, nor to speak about her to Cosmo Bertram. "He will never talk about me," she added, with something like scorn, and something very like disgust.

I left Paris an hour or two after this interview; and when I next met Bertram—at Baden, I think, in the following autumn—great as my curiosity was, I respected Mrs. Baker's wish. He never touched upon the subject; and, since I could not speak, and my suspicions affected him in a most painful manner, I did not throw myself in his way, nor give him an opportunity of following me up. Besides, he was in a very noisy, reckless set, and was, I could perceive before I had talked to him ten minutes, on the way to the utter bad. When I remembered our conversation about Daker, his light, airy, unconcerned manner, and the consummate deceit which effectually conveyed to me the idea that he had never heard the name of Daker, I was inclined to turn upon him, and let him know I was not altogether in the dark. Again, at the ball, he had carried off the introduction to Mrs. Trefoil with masterly coolness, making me a second time his dupe. Had we met much we should have quarrelled desperately; for I recollected the innocent English face I had first seen on the Boulogne boat, and the unhappy woman who had implored me not to speak her name to him. The days follow one another and have no resemblance, says the proverb. I passed away from Baden, and Bertram passed out of my mind. I had not seen him again when I spent those eventful few days at Boulogne with Hanger.

Another year had gone, and I had often thought over the death scene of Daker, and Sharp's trudges about Paris in search of his niece. I could not help him, for I was homeward bound at the time, and shortly afterwards was despatched to St. Petersburg. But I gave him letters. There was one hope that lingered in the gloom of this miserable story; perhaps Mrs. Daker had won the love of some honest man, and, emancipated by Daker's deceit and death, might yet spend some happy days. And then the figure of Cosmo Bertram would rise before me—and I knew he was not the man to atone a fault or sin by a sacrifice.

I was in Paris again at the end of 1866. I heard nothing, save that Sharp had returned home, having tried in vain to find the child to whom he had been a father since the death of his brother. He had identified her as Mrs. Trefoil; he had discovered that shame had come upon her and him; and he had made out the nature of the relations between his niece and Captain Cosmo Bertram. But Captain Bertram was not in Paris; Mrs. Trefoil had disappeared and left no sign. So many exciting stories float about Paris in the course of a season, that such an event as the appearance of a Kentish farmer in search of Mrs. Daker, afterwards Mrs. Trefoil, and the connexion of Captain Bertram with her name, is food for a few days only. This is a very quiet humdrum story, when it is compared with the dramas of society, provincial and Parisian, which the Gazette des Tribunaux is constantly presenting to its readers.

When I reached Paris it was forgotten. Miss Tayleure had moved off to Tours—for economy some said; to break new ground, according to others. There had been diplomatic changes. The English society had received many accessions, and suffered many secessions. I went to my old haunts and found new faces. I was met with a burst of passionate tears by Lucy Rowe, end honest Jane, the servant. Mrs. Rowe was lying, with all her secrets and plots, in PÈre Lachaise—to the grief, among others, of the Reverend Horace Mohun, who would hardly be comforted by Lucy's handsome continuance of the buttered toast and first look at the Times. Lucy, bright and good Lucy, had become queen and mistress of the boarding-house—albeit she had not a thimbleful of the blood of the Whytes of Battersea in her veins. But of the Rue Millevoye presently.

I came upon Bertram by accident by the Montmartre cemetery, whither I had been with a friend to look at a new-made grave. As I have observed, Bertram had reached a very low ebb. He avoided his old thoroughfares. He had discovered that all the backs of the Tuileries chairs were towards him. Miss Tayleure had had her revenge before she left. He had heard that "the fellows were sorry for him," and that they were not anxious to see him. The very waiters in his cafÉ knew that evil had befallen him, and were less respectful than of old. No very damaging tales, as I have said, were told against him; but it was made evident to him that Paris society had had enough of him for the present, and that his comfortable plan would be to move off.

Cosmo Bertram had moved off accordingly; and when I met him at Montmartre he had not been heard of for many months. I should have pushed on, but he would not let me. A man in misfortune disarms your resentment. When the friend who has been always bright and manly with you, approaches with a humble manner, and his eyes say to you, while he speaks, "Now is not the time to be hard," you give in. I parted with my fellow-mourner, and joined Bertram, saying coldly—"We have not met, Bertram, for many months—it seems years. What has happened?"

The man's manner was completely changed. He talked to me with the cowed manner of a conscious inferior. He was abashed; as changed in voice and expression as in general effect.

"Ruin—nothing more," he answered me.

"Baden—Homburg, I suppose?"

"No; tomfoolery of every kind. I'm quite broken. That friend of yours didn't recognise me, did he?"

"Had never seen you before, I'm quite sure."

I took him into a quiet cafÉ and ordered breakfast. His face and voice recalled to me all the Daker story; and I felt that I was touching another link in it. He avoided my eye. He grasped the bottle greedily, and took a deep draught. The wine warmed him, and loosed "the jesses of his tongue." He had a long tale to tell about himself! He disburdened his breast about Clichy; of all the phases of his decline from the fashionable man in the Bois to the shabby skulker in the banlieue, he had something to say. He had been everybody's victim. The world had been against him. Friends had proved themselves ungrateful, and foes had acted meanly. Nobody could imagine half his sufferings. While he dwelt on himself with all the volubility and wearying detail of a wholly selfish man, I was eager to catch the least clue to a history that interested me much more deeply than his; and in which I had good reason to suspect he had not borne an honourable part. The gossips had confirmed the fears which Mrs. Daker had created. I had picked up scraps here and there which I had put together.

"I am obliged to keep very dark, my dear Q.M.," Bertram said at last, still dwelling on the inconvenience to himself. "Hardly dare to move out of the quarter. Disgusting bore."

"A debt?" I asked.

"Worse."

"What then, an entanglement; the old story, petticoats?"

"Precisely. To-day I ought to be anywhere but here; the old boy is over, or will be, in a few hours."

The whole story was breaking upon me; Bertram saw it, and my manner, become icy to him, was closing the sources upon me. I resolved to get the mystery cleared up. I resumed my former manner with him, ordered some Burgundy, and entreated him to proceed.

"You remember," he said, "your story about the girl you met travelling with her husband on the Boulogne boat—Mrs. Daker." His voice fell as he pronounced the name. "I deceived you, my dear Q. M., when I affected unconcern and ignorance."

"I know it, Bertram," was my answer. "But that is unimportant: go on."

"I met Mrs. Daker at her hotel, very soon after she arrived in Paris. She talked about you; and I happened to say that I knew you. We were friends at once."

"More than friends."

"I see," Bertram continued, much relieved at finding his revelation forestalled in its chief episodes; "I see there is not much to tell you. You are pretty well posted up. I cannot see why you should look so savage; Mrs. Daker is no relation of yours."

"No!" I shouted, for I could not hold my passion—"had she been——"

"You would have the right to call me to account. As it is," Bertram added, rising, "I decline to tell you more, and I shall wish you good-day."

After all Bertram was right; I had no claim to urge, no wrong to redress. Besides, by my hastiness, I was letting the thread slip through my fingers.

"Sit down, Bertram; you are the touchiest man alive. It is no concern of mine, but I have seen more than you imagine—I have seen Daker; I have been with Sharp."

Bertram grasped my arm.

"Tell me all, then; I must know all. You don't know how I have suffered, my dear Q. M. Tell me everything."

"First let me ask you, Bertram, have you been an honourable man to Mrs. Daker?"

"Explain yourself."

"Where is she? Her uncle has broken his heart!"

"All I need say is, that she is with me, and that it is I who have sacrificed almost my honour in keeping her with me, after——"

I understood the case completely now.

"You found the prey at the right moment, Bertram. Poor forsaken woman! You took it; you lost it; it falls into your hands again—broken unto death."

"Unto death!" Bertram echoed.

I related to him my adventure in Boulogne; and when I came to Baker's end, and his bigamy, Bertram exclaimed—

"The villain! My dear Q. M., I loved—I do love her; she might have been my wife. The villain!"

"You say she is with you, Bertram. Where? Can I see her?"

"You cannot, she's very ill So ill, I doubt——"

"And you are here, Bertram?"

"Her uncle—Sharp—is with her by this time. She implored me not to be in the way. There would be a row, you know, and I hate rows."

It was Bertram to the last. He hated rows! I suddenly turned upon him with an idea that flashed through my mind.

"Bertram, you owe this poor woman some reparation. You love her, you say—or have loved her."

"Do love her now."

"She is a free woman; indeed, poor soul, she has always been. Marry her—take her away—and get to some quiet place where you will be unknown. You will be happy with her, or I have strangely misread her."

"Can't," Bertram dolefully answered. "Not a farthing."

"I'll help you."

Bertram grasped my hand. His difficulty was removed.

I continued rapidly, "Give me your address. I'll see Sharp, and, if they permit me, Mrs. Daker. Let us make an effort to end this miserable business well. You had better remain behind till I have settled with Sharp."

Bertram remained inert, without power of thinking or speaking, in his seat. I pushed him, to rouse him. "Bertram, the address—quick."

"Too late, my dear Q. M.—much too late. She's dying—I am sure of it."

The address was 102 in the next street to that in which we had been breakfasting. I hurried off, tearing myself, at last, by force from Bertram. I ran down the street, round the corner, looking right and left at the numbers as I ran. I was within a few doors of the number when I came with a great shock against a man, who was walking like myself without looking ahead. I growled and was pushing past, when an iron grip fell upon my shoulder. It was Reuben Sharp. He was so altered I had difficulty in recognising him. At that moment he looked a madman; his eyes were wild and savage; his lips were blue; his face was masked by convulsive twitches.

"I was running to see you. Come back," I said.

"It's no use—no use. They can ill-treat her no more. My darling Emmy! It's all over—all over—and you have been very kind to me."

The poor man clapped his heavy hands upon me like the paws of a lion, and wept, as weak women and children weep.

Yea, it was all over.

It was on New Year's Day, 1867, I supported Reuben Sharp, following a hearse to the cemetery hard by. Lucy Rowe accompanied us—at my urgent request—and her presence served to soften and support old Reuben's honest Kentish heart in his desolate agony. As they lowered the coffin a haggard face stretched over a tomb behind us. Sharp was blinded with tears, and did not see it.