VIRTUE LE MOYNE. BY J. B. STEPHENS, AUTHOR OF CHAP. I. If the architect of Hope Hall (rest his soul, he has been dead two hundred years) had written a tragedy, he would have observed the unities to perfection. I suspect, however, that this would have been at the expense of imagination, and I rest my opinion upon his great work of Hope Hall. It was a drama in five acts. A square mass of brick was supported on each side by a smaller mass of the same shape, but projecting a little from the central portion. Act Fourth, a little episodical, but in so slight a degree as to be perfectly legitimate, was a low square tower on the top of the main building; while Act Fifth brought the whole into faultless unity by means of a line of arches connecting the two wings, and forming a gloomy piazza before the central entrance. The five square piers on which the arches rested, looked like a résumé of the whole idea of the building, and had a Rhadamanthine appearance of poetical justice about them that was equally unimpeachable and unimaginative. It was well for Hope Hall that the architect had not the choice of its situation. Under his severe selection it would probably have stood in the centre of a square plain. As it was, Nature seemed to have created the place, at least the region behind the house, on purpose for nymphs and fauns to sport in; so thick and luxuriant were the coverts, so green the little dells, so wayward the many little streams and cascades that played beneath the plumy ferns. The grounds in front of the house were more open, but half way down the broad avenue a rustic bridge overhung a deep rocky gorge, at the bottom of which flowed with a strange murmuring, utterly unlike the gay prattling of brooks in general, what was known by the name of the Eerie Burn. This gorge gradually softened down into one of the gentlest of glades, where the sunlight loved to rest, and where the waters were silent, as if the Eerie Burn had told its secret to the rocks, but could not trust the grass and the laughing flowers. When I mention that this sweet spot bore the name of the Kelpie's RUTSON MORLEY." Kirk, the reader will become aware that the story is not entirely disconnected with Scotland. Let me at once set the said reader at rest in regard to one interesting point. You will not have to say when you close it, “Ah, well, though the end appears so bright, yet in the nature of things they must all be dead long ago, the armour rusted, and the silks faded, and the castle!-why, when I was there last year with the * **Historical Association, even old Hornby, D.D., who knows everything, wasn't quite sure which was the dining-hall." No, no, Virtue Le Moyne yet lives-still lovely and beloved. Ah Virtue, could you only recognize yourself here, how would you resent all the liberties I intend to take with the most hidden workings of your little heart! But I shall trick you out so that you shall not know yourself. I have you quite under my thumb here. I know there is nothing you hate so much as a turned-up nose, but a turned-up nose you shall have-if I so will it. En revanche for many a little torment suffered at your mischievous hands, I feel strongly inclined to dye your hair of a staring vermilion. But fear not, little Virtue. I shall deal gently with you. For according to my creed, the most excellent thing in woman is a gentle and loving heart; and such is yours. Therefore I shall give you Eliza's nose-I have heard you speak admiringly of it; and you shall have those eyes of Helen's that I have so often seen turn upon you with unspeakable love; and you shall have Annie's hair, which I have seen you twine so fondly: but you may have your own little mouth, and that simply because I should have to go so far to find one that can so easily adapt itself to all the moods of my story, one in which the many shades that lie between archness and deep womanly sympathy can find such rapid or such lovely expression. The name I bestow on you I found in a newspaper, and thought it a pretty one. As for your heart, little woman, I intend to have excellent sport with it. I shall sometimes lay great weights on it, and then lift them off again, to show the public its elasticity, I shall sometimes inflate it with joy, to show how B a pure young heart can swell and bound. I shall sometimes stick arrows into it, to show the purity of the blood. But I will pull them all out of it again, and will ultimately dispose of it in a manner which I think will not be altogether disagreeable to you. to poor Robert's?" asked the bachelor; "just as his looked, I remember, when he threw up his cap on hearing of Will's success, and declared he would not be long behind him." "And when Richard was her age he had just such hair, so soft and flaxen: this is some of it, you know, James;" and she pressed a ring to her lips, and for some time both were silent. "Have you looked into the box yet, James?" resumed the sister; and reading her brother's answer in his face. "We must do it sooner or In the library of Hope Hall, on antique highbacked chairs, one on each side of a great old fireplace, sat Isabel Le Moyne, aged 61, and James Le Moyne, her brother, aged 57-spinster and bachelor. I have called it the library because it had once been such, though the litera-later," she said...... "suppose we do it now?" ture it had formerly contained was now reduced to a few well-worn classics, and some volumes of the "Gentleman's Magazine." The furniture, however, was mostly of library fashion, and two or three dingy busts faintly betokened that Greek Philosophy, and English and Italian poetry had not been without reverence in Hope Hall. All within the room was dull and faded, and yet spoke unmistakably of better days. The carpet especially, though, like all the rest, worn and indistinct, still showed, where the pattern was at all discernible, the emblazonment of a noble house. The appearance of the occupants of the room was in keeping with that of the room itself, save in the item of dimension. Both were of small stature; yet in spite of this and of their oldfashioned and faded attire, both had an air of cherished dignity that, while it spoke of departed grandeur, showed also the abiding sense of family and name. Not that they had an air of pride; for on their small, well-formed features sat an expression of serenest benignity and gentleness, which, though an unqualified adornment to the sister, might have been advantageously tempered, in the case of the brother, with some little appearance of manly resolution. Perhaps this deficiency was in some way connected with the apparent change in the family circumstances, for such dim ancestral portraits as hung in the room showed faces in which generosity and openness were nobly combined with courage and strength of will." Mention has been made of a fireplace, but it does not by any means follow that there was a fire. On the contrary, the young light of early summer, evening though it was, was playing with all things new and old, smiling love on the old and hope on the new. But in this corner of the so-called temperate zone, people, especially old people, have strong leanings toward the fireplace, which are utterly irrespective of season; and it is not until the reign of summer has passed into absolute despotism that everything suggestive of artificial caloric is eschewed. Neither is it to be imagined that our benign spinster and bachelor sat staring benignity at each other, like chimney-piece ornaments. Listen. "Did you observe how like her smile was to William's?" asked the spinster; "just the expression he had that happy and yet unhappy day when he rushed into this room to tell us he had got his appointment." "And did you remark how like her eyes were She rose, and followed by her brother after a few moments of apparent irresolution, led the way from the library along a dim corridor to a small unfurnished room where stood a long military chest, the inscription on which indicated that it had belonged to Richard Le Moyne, of the Honourable East India Company's -th Regiment of Foot. The very name seemed to bind them with a spell, and as they stood for some time clinging to each other, and gazing on the chest as mourners gaze on the coffin lid ere yet the solemn ritual is closed, it was easy to see that this was a relic of the dead, and, moreover, that they distrusted their own strength to face its message. "You have the key, James," said the sister at length, in a scarcely audible whisper. "Give it me. I think I can do it." "Try, dear," said he, passing the key to her, and imitating her movement as she kneeled down beside the chest. It was opened, and first there appeared three swords. James Le Moyne shuddered visibly as he drew them one by one from their scabbards, and thought of the many bloody frays in which they had served the valour of his bolder brothers. It was strange to see these two unwarlike natures shrinking timidly from the glare and naked terribleness of the weapons, and yet ever returning with mingled pride and sorrow to read in every bruise and dent the story of family honour. By the time that he had returned the third to its sheath, there was a faint gleam of reflected heroism even in the face of James Le Moyne. Next Next followed a heavy soldier's great-coat. It was marked inside with William's name. came an officer's mess jacket, which they knew to have been Robert's: and next, wrapt up in paper by itself, an officer's field uniform, over which they held a long dispute. James thought it was William's; Isabel that it was Robert's'big enough indeed for Richard himself!" In vain James displayed his minute knowledge of regimental distinctions: benign natures are often singularly positive; and it seemed almost as if they were actually going to quarrel on the subject, when Isabel proposed that they should lay it aside rather than profane their brothers' memory by anything like hot words. They therefore kissed each other, and Isabel was just taking a last look of the coat before laying it aside, when she suddenly threw herself into her brother's arms, and sobbed out that it was Richard's. James took it up in silence, and at once saw what Isabel had detected before him, the tiny rent through which the messenger of death had forced its way: for they both knew full well that Richard had been shot through the heart. It was tacitly agreed between them that this was enough for one night; so they replaced the too suggestive articles, and promised each other that they would be better able to bear it some other time. "I should like to have another look at her, Isabel," said James, when, after a long reflective hour of silence passed in their high-backed chairs in the library, the spinster had suggested that it was time they should separate for the night. Come, then, by all means," replied she; and stealthily and noiselessly, as if the murder of infant sleep were the unpardonable sin, the two mounted the old oak stair and entered the little bedroom where, in a neat crib beside her aunt's great catafalque of a bed, slept, far from the bright land of her birth, fatherless and motherless, Virtue Le Moyne. A frail little life it was, on which only four summers had shone; an insignificant life, which would hardly have been missed had the storms of the homeward voyage whirled it, like a severed leaf, into cold obstruction. The features of the face were hardly marked enough, as yet, for definite description; nothing apparently but what may be seen gratis fifty times a day in the arms of fifty nurses-a child asleep and yet the sister and brother stood in breathless adoration, feeling conscious of the birth of a new life within themselves that had come like a message from the land of love, and seeing in the face of their little angel-visitant a light which none else could have seen-a light that cast its radiance back on all memories of the past, and shed a new hope which was in itself a present joy, on the future that had hitherto been to them a land of darkness and terror. Thus they stood till the pallid hours covered her from them with their wings. "Just the Le Moyne face," at length whispered James, when he could see it no longer. "And she shall be a lady-shan't she, brother?" "A lady she shall be, even if I should have to" But James felt that he was trespassing here on the border-land of Resolution-a bourne from which he had always shrunk; and therefore instead of finishing his sentence grammatically, he merely whispered, "Good-night, dear." and the how of her appearance at Hope Hall on the very day on which our story commences. The Le Moynes were a very old family who came from no matter where. They were an old family-that was the main point; and, next in order to that, each generation of Le Moynes, as it gave up its last ghost, did so with the satisfy. ing impression that the pecuniary prospects of the next were as bright as its own had been. They had been a race of noble and brave men, and of beautiful and high-hearted women. There had been high days in Hope Hall, and people could still remember how that a Duke had been a guest there. But by some strange freak of fortune, or Nature, or whatever it is in this world that causes the disturbance of desirable sequences, James, the eldest of the four sons of the last Mr. Le Moyne, bore no more resemblance to the last of his race than a lily of the valley to a cedar of Lebanon. The Le Moynes were all tall, and were all Greathearts. James was so little of stature, both bodily and intellectually, that had Nature acted with consistent beneficence, she would have required to plant his whole way of life with convenient sycamores from which he might have obtained a proper view of things in general. He had the Le Moyne face; but it was in miniature. He had some of the Le Moyne dignity; but in his small proportions it had not scope to display itself, save in the form of self-satisfied suavity. Yet was James Le Moyne a gentleman; and besides, though apparently but an epitome of all that a Le Moyne should have been, there was in his heart a well-spring of affection which could have spared some drops for bulkier men. The said heart was generally in a state of oscillation. Its quality was peculiarly sensitive, but it was not large enough or strong enough to maintain its own orbit in spite of external influences: on the contrary, the smallest asteroid or the most prankish little comet could not come within range of the system to which it belonged without producing such extraordinary symptoms of perturbation as might have caused remote telescopic observers to imagine that its substance was utterly aqueous and transitionary. The legitimate result of this was that James Le Moyne, once rich, was now poor. Ever ready to lend, and ever trustful of the most insecure of securities; easily led on to speculate without the remotest chance of profit save to his prompters and agents in the schemes, and Then followed the usual kiss, more than fifty naturally extravagant through mere arithmetical years old, quite void of romance, but brimful of deficiency, it is not necessary to enter into affection. Then followed silence and utter dark-minute explanations as to how, in the hands of ness; and the world swept round into night, such a man, a fortune had dwindled down to a and terror, and crime, but the soul of child-pittance. He had now barely enough to support hood was at peace in Hope Hall, and the very midnight was sanctified by the breath of its in nocence. And, while they are all asleep, this is of course our opportunity for giving a few particulars regarding the position of the family thus introduced to notice, and particularly of the origin of our little heroine; with the why himself and his sister in life. One by one old vases and precious relics, once the pride of Hope Hall, had been transmuted into transient coin; one by one old paintings had undergone the same change; books had gone next; musical instruments next; and the sad procession was now moving at such a rate that Mr. Le Moyne and his sister were beginning to have cloudy, half-formed fears of the time when there would | be no more to sell. They were at least sure of the shelter of a home to the end of their lives. Hope Hall belonged to a neighbouring potentate, the Duke of Brandilton, who, looking on falling fortunes with pitying eye, and unwilling to see the departure of a family that had adorned his estate for many generations, had secured the Hall to them for life, free of rent. The lodge was occupied by an old woman and her son, the former of whom had once been a servant in the Le Moyne family, and who, though now in good circumstances, had yet sufficient gratitude to those who had formerly been her best friends to induce her to go daily to perform such domestic offices as poor Miss Le Moyne (too poor now to maintain a servant) was so entirely unfitted to perform for herself. Her son, by dint of industry, shrewdness, and unscrupulousness, had made a tolerable fortune; and though not yet, at the time we speak of, in his thirtieth year, he was able to rent from the Duke of Brandilton the whole of the land round the Hall. Ambitious as well as sordid, it was well known to Mr. and Miss Le Moyne that Peter Morgan had tried several times to bribe the factors of the Duke by offers of high rent to turn "those idle paupers," as he termed them, adrift upon the world, and to give him a lease of the Hall as well as of the estate. Knowing his character, they were quite aware that, notwithstanding repeated failures, this was still his cherished purpose; and accordingly the fear of this pitiless man hung ever like a heavy cloud over their heads, and did much to embitter a life which had little now to cheer it except mutual affection. The acute reader, of course, already perceives that Peter Morgan is the villain of the story. Virtue was his only child. William, the eldest of the three, had fallen a victim to the climate, after establishing a reputation as a brave and skilful officer. Robert had died after the amputation of a limb, rendered necessary by a wound received in battle. Richard had been shot through the heart while rushing at the head of his column right into a deadly breach. They had all died poor: but the Company could not let the memory of the brothers die away without giving some token of its sense of their extraordinary merit. A pension had been bestowed on Richard's widow; and, on her death which took place only two years after her husband's, half of it was settled on her daughter, who was sent home to her remaining friends by the Company's agents. So she sleeps her first sleep at Hope Hall; and if any one should ask how it happens that she should arrive so opportunely there on the very day on which our story commences, the coincidence can only be referred to the same sort of providential arrangement that sends the large rivers to flow beside populous cities. CHAP. II. The first thing little Virtue did, after her advent to the land of her fathers, was to save Hope Hall from passing into the hands of the alien, as shall be seen presently. How she awoke on the morning after our first peep at her crib; how her eyes met those of her aunt, who had been looking at her for hours before; how she stretched out her little hands towards her, and laughed and articulated some Hindoo mystery that neither her aunt nor her present biographer could translate; how she As for the alternative of Mr. Le Moyne at- watched her aunt dressing, and rose unresisttempting to better his condition by honest ingly when appealed to by the same; how she labour of any kind, it was certainly one which cried a little when the soap got into her mouth; did now and again present itself to his mind; how she brightened up when fairly dried, and but soon as he began to be cheered by the skipped about in robes of primal Paradise, singsight of the clustering grapes, and the dropping ing a sweet Hindoo melody; how she would honeycombs of the land that lay within his reach, hardly be caught and trammelled with the reloomed up the walls of fenced cities, gleamed quirements of civilization; how she was at forth the armour of the Sons of Anak, and last induced, by the promise of all kinds of James Le Moyne fled back in dismay to the sensual delights, to yield to the claims of prowilderness of his own barren idleness. "He priety; how she knelt on her aunt's knee, and could not dig, and to beg he was ashamed." | hiding her face as the cherubs do, uttered the And ever in his path stood the lion of Family little prayer her mother had taught her, and, Honour-a monster which stronger natures after kissing her aunt, slipped down, and again know how to tame to obedience and mighty ser- threw all her happy spirit into dance and song vitude. —all this, as it happened within the sacred precincts of Miss Le Moyne's bedchamber, we dare not dwell upon. Nor was Miss Le Moyne much of an helpmeet for her brother. Love was all she had to give him. They shared the same weaknesses. She had a shade more resolution, and greater power of endurance, but she was even more than he the victim to a sense of family dignity, which had now nothing to rest on except that which is independent of degree-a blameless life. And now for little Virtue. Of three brothers who had gone to serve their country in India, Richard was the only one who had married, and During all that morning, Miss Le Moyne kept her eye on every movement with strangelymingled feelings of pleasure and responsibility. And oh, what a different breakfast-table it was! First of all, Betty Morgan was in good humour -a rare thing indeed! Though, as we have before said, gratitude to her former benefactor induced her to lend her services to the Le Moynes, without hope, or even desire of remu neration, she had, nevertheless, a strong sense of the gratuitous nature of these services, and of the dependence of the family upon her daily assistance, and she tacitly exacted the right to rule in the house, and, above all, to indulge to her heart's content in sarcasm, directed against men and things in general, and "haun'less craturs" in particular. This morning, however, the firmament of Betty Morgan's temper was serene and cloudless, from east to utmost west; and all her desires, words, and actions were shaped with subservient reference to the "bonnie bairn." Mr. Le Moyne, too, was unusually gay. The morning was usually his dull season. When evening came, the darkness was like a fence that guarded the Hall and its inmates from the intrusion of the world: but the morning was the signal for the renewal of the many noisy claims which he found it so difficult to meet, and of the few calls on exertion, which, even as they were, were too many for his listless nature. Mr. Le Moyne generally passed the morning in fear and trembling. Idle debts of old days were every now and again appearing on his breakfast-table, and turning his very coffee into gall and bitterness; and for the last few weeks rumours had been disturbing him of the expected failure of a mercantile house, which had been set up by some of his deceitful friends in the days of his prosperity on the strength of a generous loan from him-which friends had rewarded his generosity by adding his name to theirs as a sleeping partner in the business, and thus involving him in their losses. This morning, however, Mr. Le Moyne seemed to meet the daylight with a bolder front. He seemed to have gained a new trust in something unseen, as if little Virtue had come direct from the headquarters of blessing, "trailing clouds of glory" with her." And so the uncle, aunt, and niece, with Betty Morgan hanging over them with all the obsequious respect of olden times, formed as happy a breakfast-party as any that sat at table on that bright summer morning in any palace, hall, house, or cot under the blessed protection of the British Constitution. Yet, though love towards the new object was the reigning principle in each of the old folks, each regarded it from a different point of viewMiss Le Moyne, as a thing to be cherished, fondled, tenderly watched over, and instructed in the fear of God and the stainless genealogy of the Le Moynes-Betty Morgan (who had this morning insisted on being allowed henceforth the sole charge of all its animal requirements), as a thing to be washed clean, brushed smooth, dressed tidily, fed to repletion, and taught to express its wants in the Scottish dialect, to the entire extinction of the "senseless soonds the puir wee thing had lairnt amang thae blecks o'heathen"-Mr. Le Moyne, as a something between a fairy and an angel, a very spirit of protection, whose presence would soften the edge of the world's severity, scare gloom from the house and duns from the door; and, above all, that would save him, in some mysterious way, from the machinations of Peter Morgan ! This new feeling was destined to receive a rude shock at its very commencement, and a few minutes afterwards to receive so striking a justification, as rendered it a great support to the heart of James Le Moyne to the end of his appointed course. Breakfast was just over, and Miss Le Moyne was in the act of making little Virtue say her prayers over again for the benefit of her brother, who was standing by in a state of extatic attention, when the devotional solo and the rapture of the auditors were suddenly interrupted by a savage knock at the front-door, which was followed by the flurried appearance of Betty Morgan in the breakfast-room, who stammered out in a confused manner that her son was in the library, and wished particularly to see Mr. Le Moyne alone. It may be here parenthetically remarked, that the one being on earth whom Betty feared was her own son, to whose designs for and against anything whatever she was in no way privy. Her existence in relation to his was a sort of legalised sufferance, the comfort of which depended, as she was well aware, on her remaining as passive and unquestioning as possible. He was far from being averse to her passing the daytime in the Hall, as he seemed to have outgrown her society, and preferred being served by an alien of unknown origin of whom he had relieved the parish. To return. Mr. Le Moyne dropped at once, from the heaven of infant prayer in which he had just been revelling, to the first terrestrial station that presented itself, which was fortunately an arm-chair. A strange foreboding of a crisis of long-accumulating ills took possession of his whole mind, and of his poor body too, for he grew very pale, and trembled visibly. "What is the matter, Betty?" he asked, when he at length found words. "For heaven's sake, what is the matter, Betty?" 66 'Deed, sir,” replied that cautious domestic, "I kenna oor Peter's affairs ony mair than the man i' the min's. But I'se warrant ye'll no be lang i' findin' oot if ye'll just gang tae the leebrary an' speir. Oor Peter's no blate, as ye ken by this time. Bit, whatever it is, try an' speak him fair, sir," added she, in a whisper, evidently moved by the emotion of her former master. 'Onything like airs, an' ye may as weel steer up the deevil at yince!" "Wouldn't it do for you to go, Isabel dear?" asked Mr. Le Moyne, evidently more disheartened than reassured by the last piece of information. "I think, do you know, he would be more civil to you than to me." "If you wish it, James, of course," replied sisterly affection. "It's nae yis, mem," interposed Betty. "If oor Peter has set his hert on seein' Maister Le Moyne his lane, ye needna try hafflin ways with him. Virty, ma wean! If she hasna' gotten hud o'a peen, an's tryin' tae bite the heed aff't! Ah, ye wee pawkie, gie't tae yer auntie, an' come here, or I dicht yer mooth wi |