CHAPTER XVI.

Jasper Adelstone was in love.

It was some time before he would bring himself to admit it even to

himself, for he was wont to pride himself on his superiority to all

attacks of the tender passion.

Often and often had he amused himself and his chosen companions by

ridiculing the conditions of those weak mortals who allowed themselves

to be carried away by what he termed a weak and contemptible affection

for the other sex.

Marriage, he used to say, was entirely a matter of business. A man

didn't marry until he was obliged, and then only did so to better

himself. As to love, and that kind of thing--well, it was an exploded

idea--a myth which had died out; at any rate, too absurd a thing

altogether for a man possessed of common sense--for such a man, for

instance, as Jasper Adelstone. He had seen plenty of pretty women and

was received by them with anything but disfavor. He was good-looking,

almost handsome, and would have been that if he could have got rid

of the sharp, cunning glint of his small eyes; and he was clever and

accomplished. He was just the man, it would have been supposed, to

fall a victim to the tender passion; but he had stuck fast by his

principles, and gone stealthily along the road to success, with his

cold smile ready for everyone in general, and not a warm beam in his

heart for anyone in particular.

And now! Yes, he was in love--in love as deeply, unreasoningly, as

impulsively as the veriest school-boy.

This was very annoying! It would have been very annoying if the object

of his passion had been an heiress or the lady of title whom he had in

his inmost mind determined to marry, if he married at all; for he would

have preferred to have attained to his ambition without any awkward and

inconvenient love-making.

But the girl who had inspired him with this sudden and unreasoning

passion was, much to his disgust, neither an heiress nor an offshoot of

nobility.

She was a mere nobody--the niece of an obscure painter! She was not

even in society!

There was no good to be got by marrying her, none whatever. She could

not help him a single step on his ambitious path through life. On the

first evening of his meeting with Stella, when the beauty, and, more

than her beauty, the nameless charm of her bright, pure freshness,

overwhelmed and startled him, he took himself to task very seriously.

"Jasper," he said, "you won't go and make a fool of yourself, I hope!

She is entirely out of your line. She is only a pretty girl; you've

seen a score, a hundred as pretty, or prettier; and she's a mere

nobody! Oh, no, you won't make a fool of yourself--you'll go back to

town to-morrow morning."

But he did not go back to town; instead, he went into the conservatory

at the Rectory, and made up a bouquet and took it to the cottage, and

sank deeper still into the mire of foolishness, as he would have called

it.

But even then it was not too late. He might have escaped even then

by dint of calling up his selfish nature and thinking of all his

ambitions; but Stella unfortunately roused--what was more powerful in

him than his sudden love--his self-conceit.

She actually dared to defend Lord Leycester Wyndward!

That was almost the finishing stroke, unwittingly dealt by Stella, and

he went away inwardly raging with incipient jealousy.

But the last straw was yet to come that should break the back of all

his prudent resolves, and that was the meeting with Stella and Lord

Leycester in the river-woods, and Lord Leycester's attack on him.

That moment--the moment when he lay on the ground looking up at

the dark, handsome, angry, and somewhat scornful face of the young

peer--Jasper Adelstone registered a vow.

He vowed that come what would, by fair means or foul, he would have

Stella.

He vowed that he would snatch her from the haughty and fiery young lord

who had dared to hurl him, Jasper, to the dust and insult him.

What love he already possessed for her suddenly sprang up into a

fierce flame of jealous passion, and as he rode home to the Rectory he

repeated that vow several times, and at once, without the loss of an

hour, began to hunt about for some means to fulfill it.

He was no fool, this Jasper Adelstone, for all his conceit, and he knew

the immense odds against him if Lord Leycester really meant anything

by his attention to Stella; he knew what fearful advantages Leycester

held--all the Court cards were in his hands. He was handsome, renowned,

noble, wealthy--a suitor whom the highest in the land would think twice

about before refusing.

He almost guessed, too, that Stella already loved Leycester; he had

seen her face turned to the young lord--had heard her voice as she

spoke to him.

He ground his teeth together with vicious rage as he thought of the

difference between her way of speaking to him and to Leycester.

"But she shall speak to me, look at me like that before the game is

over," he swore to himself. "I can afford to wait for my opportunity;

it will come, and I shall know how to use it. Curse him! Yes, I am

determined now. I will take him from her."

It was a bold, audacious resolution; but then Jasper was both bold

and audacious in the most dangerous of ways, in the cold, calculating

manner of a cunning, unscrupulous man.

He was clever--undoubtedly clever; he had been very successful, and

had made that success by his own unaided efforts. Already, young as he

was, he was beginning to be talked about. When people were in any great

difficulty in his branch of the law, they went to him, sure of finding

him cool, ready, and capable.

His chambers in the inn held a little museum of secrets--secrets about

persons of rank and standing, who were supposed to be quite free from

such inconvenient things as skeletons in cupboards.

People came to him when they were in any social fix; when they owed

more money than they could pay; when they wanted a divorce, or were

anxious to hush up some secret, whose threatened disclosure involved

shame and disgrace, and Jasper Adelstone was always ready with sound

advice, and, better still, some subtle scheme or plan.

Yes, he was a successful man, and had failed so seldom--almost

never--that he felt he could be confident in this matter, too.

"I have always done well for others," he thought. "I have gained some

difficult points for other people; now I will undertake this difficult

matter for myself."

He went home to the Rectory and pondered, recalling all he knew of old

Etheridge. It was very little, and the rector could tell him no more

than he knew already.

James Etheridge lived the life of a recluse, appearing to have no

friends or relations save Stella; nothing was known about his former

life. He had come down into the quiet valley some years ago, and

settled at once in the mode of existence which was palpable to all.

"Is he, was he, ever married?" asked Jasper.

The rector thought not.

"I don't know," he said. "He certainly hasn't been married down here. I

don't think anything is known about him."

And with this Jasper had to be content. All the next day, after his

meeting with Stella and Leycester, he strolled about the meadows hoping

to see her, but failed. He knew he ought to be in London, but he could

not tear himself away.

His arm felt a little stiff, and though there was nothing else the

matter with it, he bound it up and hung it in a sling, explaining to

the rector that he had fallen from his horse.

Then he heard of the party at the Hall, and grinding his teeth with

envy and malice, he stole into the lane and watched Stella start.

In his eyes she looked doubly beautiful since he had sworn to have

her, and he wandered about the lane and meadows thinking of her, and

thinking, too, of Lord Leycester all that evening, waiting for her to

return, to get one look at her.

Fortune favored him with more than a look, for while he was waiting

the boy from the post-office came down the lane, and Jasper, with very

little difficulty, persuaded him to give up the telegram to his keeping.

I am sorry to say that Jasper was very much tempted to open that

telegram, and if he resisted the temptation, it was not in consequence

of any pangs of conscience, but because he thought that it would

scarcely be worth while.

"It is only some commission for a picture," he said to himself. "People

don't communicate secretly by telegram excepting in cipher."

So he delivered it unopened as we know, but when he heard that sudden

exclamation of the old man's he was heartily sorry he had not opened it.

When he parted from Stella at the gate, he walked off down the lane,

but only until out of sight, and then returned under the shadow of the

hedge and waited.

He could see into the studio, and see the old man sitting in the chair

bowed with sorrow; and Stella's graceful figure hovering about him.

"There was something worth knowing in that telegram," he muttered. "I

was a fool not to make myself acquainted with it. What will he do now?"

He thought the question out, still watching, and the old man's

movements seen plainly through the lighted windows--for Stella had only

drawn the muslin curtain too hurriedly and imperfectly--afforded an

answer.

"He is going up to town," he muttered.

He knew that there was an early market train, and felt sure that the

old man was going by it.

Hastily glancing at his watch, he set his hat firmly on his head,

dipped his arm out of the sling, and ran toward the Rectory; entering

by a side door he went to his room, took a bag containing some

papers, secured his coat and umbrella, and leaving a note on the

breakfast-table to the effect that he was suddenly obliged to go to

town, made for the station.

As he did not wish to be seen, he kept in the shadow and waited, and

was rewarded in a few minutes by the appearance of Mr. Etheridge.

There was no one on the station beside themselves, and Jasper had

no difficulty in keeping out of the old man's way. A sleepy porter

sauntered up and down, yawning and swinging his lantern, and Jasper

decided that he wouldn't trouble him by taking a ticket.

The train came up, Mr. Etheridge got into a first-class carriage, and

Jasper, waiting until the last moment, sprang into one at the further

end of the train.

"Never mind the ticket," he said to the porter. "I'll pay at the other

end."

The train was an express from Wyndward, and Jasper, who knew how to

take care of himself, pulled the curtains closed, drew a traveling cap

from his bag, and curling himself up went to sleep, while the old man,

a few carriages further off, sat with his white head bowed in sorrowful

and wakeful meditation.

When the train arrived at the terminus, Jasper, awaking from a

refreshing sleep, drew aside the curtain and watched Mr. Etheridge get

out, waited until he approached the cab-stand, then following up behind

him nearer, heard him tell the cabman to drive him to King's Hotel,

Covent Garden.

Then Jasper called a cab and drove to the square in which his chambers

were situated, dismissed the cab, and saw it crawl away out of sight,

and climbed up the staircase which served as the approach to the many

doors which lined the narrow grim passages.

On one of these doors his name was inscribed in black letters; he

opened this door with a key, struck a light, and lit a candle which

stood on a ledge, and entered a small room which served for the purpose

of a clerk's office and a client's waiting-room.

Beyond this, and communicating by a green baize door, was his own

business-room, but there were still other rooms behind, one his

living-room, another in which he slept, and beyond that a smaller room.

He entered this, and holding the light on high allowed its rays to fall

upon a man lying curled up on a small bed.

He was a very small man, with a thin, parchment-lined face, crowned by

closely-cropped hair, which is ambiguously described as auburn.

This was Jasper's clerk, factotum, slave. He it was who sat in the

outer office and received the visitors, and ushered them into Jasper's

presence or put them off with excuses.

He was a singular-looking man, no particular age or individuality. Some

of Jasper's friends were often curious as to where Jasper had picked

him up, but Jasper always evaded the question or put it by with some

jest, and Scrivell's antecedents remained a mystery.

That he was a devoted and never tiring servant was palpable to all;

in Jasper's presence he seemed to live only to obey his will and

anticipate his wishes. Now, at the first touch of Jasper's hand, the

man started and sat bolt upright, screening his eyes from the light and

staring at Jasper expectantly.

"Awake, Scrivell?" asked Jasper.

"Yes, sir, quite," was the reply; and indeed he looked as if he had

been on the alert for hours past.

"That's right. I want you. Get up and dress and come into the next

room. I'll leave the candle."

"You needn't, sir," was the reply. "I can see."

Jasper nodded.

"I believe you can--like a cat," he said, and carried the card with him.

In a few minutes--in a very few minutes--the door opened and Scrivell

entered.

He looked wofully thin and emaciated, was dressed in an old but still

respectable suit of black, and might have been taken for an old man but

for the sharp, alert look in his gray eyes, and the sandy hair, which

showed no signs of gray.

Jasper was sitting before his dressing-table opening his letters, which

he had carried in from the other room.

"Oh, here you are," he said. "I want you to go out."

Scrivell nodded.

"Do you know King's Hotel, Covent Garden?" asked Jasper.

"King's? Yes, sir."

"Well, I want you to go down there."

He paused, but he might have known the man would not express any

surprise.

"Yes, sir," he said, as coolly as if Jasper had told him to go to bed

again.

"I want you to go down there and keep a look-out for me. A gentleman

has just driven there, an old man, rather bent, with long white hair.

Understand?"

"Yes," was the quiet reply.

"He will probably go out the first thing, quite early. I want to know

where he goes."

"Only the first place he goes to?" was the question.

Jasper hesitated.

"Suppose you keep an eye upon him generally till, say one o'clock,

then come back to me. I want to know his movements, you understand,

Scrivell!"

"I understand, sir," was the answer. "Any name?"

Jasper hesitated a moment, and a faint color came into his face.

Somehow he was conscious of a strange reluctance to mention the

name--her name; but he overcame it.

"Yes, Etheridge," he said, quietly, "but that doesn't matter. Don't

make any inquiries at the hotel or elsewhere, if you can help it."

"Very good, sir," said the man, and noiselessly he turned and left the

room.

Little did Stella, dreaming in the cottage by the sweet smelling

meadows and the murmuring river, think that the first woof of the web

which Jasper Adelstone was spinning for her was commenced that night in

the grim chambers of Lincoln's-inn.

As little did Lady Wyndward guess, as she lay awake, vainly striving to

find some means of averting the consequences of her son's "infatuation"

for the painter's niece, that a keener and less scrupulous mind had

already set to work in the same direction.