HARRY VOWHAMPTON.-A NOVELETTE.

BY FEATHER PENN, ESQ.

(Continued from Page 496.)

CHAPTER V.

MORE MONEY IS BORROWED ON SECURITY.

THE Reader!"Mr. Simon Carsellis, money-dealer, etc."

The gentleman thus introduced was nearly seventy years of age; his hair was quite white, and gave to him an appearance of great respectability, which was always supported by a style of dress that suited him as a man; a plain suit of dark clothes, not black, with a white tie fastened by a diamond brooch of high value. This attire gave him somewhat a professional, but not a clerical, appearance, and his manner was such as is gained by men, who, without belonging to the "upper ten thousand," yet acquire the bearing of lords and gentlemen from constant intercourse with them.

In this narrative Mr. Carsellis will have to appear in two characters; for the present, in that of money-lender. The room in which he sat, before a library knee-hole table, was a back apartment, and a bright fire was burning in the grate, and blinked a cheerful welcome even to those who came in out of the thin April sunshine.

Mr. Harry Vowhampton felt this welcome, as he was announced, and proceeded to take a chair opposite Mr. Carsellis.

The room and the money-lender were evidently well known to him. On Vowhampton's entrance, Mr. Carsellis had shaken hands with him, in the friendly way in which an old peer would receive a young family acquaintance, and exhibited, outwardly, no sign of expecting a business interview; he asked how matters stood at Cramborough, and if the seat was pretty well secured?

Before approaching the immediate object of his visit, Vowhampton gossipped on several subjects, and the time occupied in such conversa tion, will afford me opportunity to refer to an event which followed the pic-nic at Hillchurch.

When returning to town the next day, Vowhampton had left the high road, and the principal party, at Bexley Heath, intending to pass through the village of Old Bexley and reach London by way of Bromley.. All went well, as far as a house that stood on the road between the latter place and Starch Green, where lived a friend of Vowhampton's, on whom he proposed to call.

Just before reaching the carriage entrance, he was accosted by a gentleman on horseback.

"How d'ye do, Mr. Vowhampton?" Vowhampton stopped, tried to remember where he had before seen his mounted friend's face, felt puzzled and exclaimed :

"I must ask pardon for a bad memory, you have the advantage of me !"

This word advantage made the man grin; and a horrid grin, that at once helped Vowhampton's memory, for he recognised Mr. Edward Longwind, the Sheriff's officer.

It was not the first time that Harry Vowhampton had been placed in a similar predicament, and, excepting that he felt very vexed, he was not confused at the appearance of what sheriffs' officers have been calledthe mile-stones on the road by which all fast coaches must pass-and making a sign for Mr. Longwind to ride beside him, he curtly asked him in whose interest he was now specially engaged?

"About that Irish steeple chase affair, sir," replied Longwind, respectfully.

The amount was not very large, being under £300, but it was more than Vowhampton knew how to raise. He was a clever "gentleman rider," and had piloted a friend's horse at a race, near Dublin, where the favourite had the ill-luck to fall and break her leg-she was consequently immediately shot. Now the horse had really belonged as Vowhampton believed to his friend, but that friend was a rogue, and not wishing to lose the value of the horse, he had got a livery-keeper to claim the ownership, and between them an action was commenced against the rider. Such an action could never have been mantained, but Vowhampton neglected to defend it, and a judge's order was the result.

Thus, escaping with neck and limbs unbroken, the "gentleman rider" found his steeple chase led him to the prison, whither Mr. Longwind was now conducting him.

Out of this scrape Vowhampton had been cleared, with the assistance of Mr. Carsellis, after about a month's seclusion, but that time had been sufficient to alter very materially some of his hopes and plans.

In his interview with the solicitor, sent by Mr. Carsellis, Vowhampton had referred to his position with Miss Annie Homewood.

I am sorry that he should have done so, but since a young fellow— in love and in debt-will not act either so prudently, or so honourably as other honourable gentlemen, who are in neither of those conditions, I have only to relate the circumstance, and need not, as I will not, apologise for the fact.

Law is the lock-up of a good many people's honour, and if the world could only unbolt its secret doors, how many of our own wild-eyed friends and prisoners would be let loose to spoil unsuspected reputations!

The lawyer at once told the lover, that Miss Annie had no fortune; and although Vowhampton was greatly surprised to hear his adviser speak

thus confidently of the lady's affairs, yet, he felt sure, the sources of his information must be correct.

"It is as I have said," continued the solicitor, "and there are no certain prospects in that quarter. Let me hope you have not proceeded too far in this matter to recede, for, I must tell you plainly, you have little chance of retrieving your position, except by marriage. With the help of your friends you may get into Parliament, and then you will not be without opportunities of forming a prudent marriage. It is Miss Elinor Homewood who is the heiress."

As stated above, the prisoner managed to make arrangements, in a few weeks, to satisfy his creditor, and the details of those arrangements are not at all necessary to this story, but their effect on the lover must be noticed.

He resolved to write a letter to Annie, and tell her frankly of his position and prospects.

He would tell her that, as a man of honour, he felt he could not claim the promise which he had most earnestly and sincerely asked, in a brighter time, when his wishes had made him forget the difficult career before him.

This letter will appear in a future chapter; at present I have only to say that its result was the destruction of the jewelled secret which had been for two or three weeks (none the less bright for being worn out of sight) locked in the heart of the lady of the manor at Hillchurch. It was now lodged in a private drawer of thought, and the key was thrown into the river of the Past. The love-story between Annie and Vowhampton had come to an end-for the present, at least.

From this little episode, the reader must now return to Mr. Carsellis, who, having exhausted the small talk of the day, has just asked:

"On what security do you propose to borrow more money? I must tell you frankly, Mr. Vowhampton, that the sums already advanced on your small patrimony, with interest on them, during your mother's life, are not likely to leave you a hundred pounds. Then as to Parliament, if you get your seat, that will be of little use until you get office, which a young man, with the best interest, cannot expect for the first three or four years nor is your chance as second heir to your uncle's baronetcy any marketable value."

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"But I have other security," said Vowhampton, with closed teeth and a nervous twitching at the elastic band round his pocket-book; "and I must have money to pay my election expenses."

"Will you show me this security? I must positively refuse any further advances on that I already possess!"

Vowhampton unrolled a scrip of paper. It was a blank promissory note bearing his mother's signature.

"This will do," said Mr. Carsellis, examining the writing-"how much do you want, £1000 ?-the two pictures will cover that."

The bill was filled up for £800, payable at six months' date, and

Mr. Vowhampton received a draft on Coutts' bank-then the old and young man parted with some casual remark, as if the conversation, ending thus trivially, had only been about the last new opera.

But the borrower was thinking of but one thing-that he would never obtain another guinea on his mother's security.

"The two pictures will cover it-' Yes," thought Vowhampton, as he walked homewards; "but, as I'm a man, those two pictures in our dining-room, done by Sir Joshua, shall remain the Vowhampton property as long as I live. I thank you, Mr. Carsellis," continued the young spendthrift, "for letting those words escape you. I have had money, money, money on security, with only half a thought of what that security was. Thank Heaven! for those few words, again; they show me the precipice over which I was about throwing myself, and I am now on its brink and may be unable to stop; but I will, as I love my mother, try and save what may be at least, there shall not be another guinea borrowed from this day. Now for Cramborough; a place in Parliament is worth winning; it will give, as Miss Homewood told me, a fresh aim to my life."

Arrived at his mother's house, Vowhampton found he was most anxiously expected; for already his mother was thinking over various little plans for raising the cash to repay the loan.

Poor mother! her son was her idol and she thought this money was the first he had wanted beyond the income she had hitherto allowed him although, how he managed to make it do, in the society he kept, had always been a mystery.

:

Let us hope she will never know, for I am inclined to believe the son will keep the vows he has just made, and if he does he has certainly a single chance left him.

But now, he must no longer allow anything to stand between him and a rich marriage. Away with feelings, with affections of the heart! They will never be allowed to interfere with his prospects-give him the opportunity and he will marry the rich girl who will have him!

Up to this point in his life Vowhampton had never admitted to himself that he would marry FOR money. The most he had ever allowed that he might do, was to marry a lady wITH money, if chance so far favoured him as to find such a one, whom he also admired; then the fortune would be very welcome, and be of much service in establishing himself as a married man.

But he was now in debt and could not afford to be in love. All former resolutions must be made to give way to the one settled deter mination which he had formed-that, of saving the Vowhampton estate.

And the readiest way of doing so, indeed the only way, as he believed, was by a prudent marriage. Then he thought over the list of women, with a fortune, with whom he had a chance, and it was a lover's Nemesis (for he still loved Annie) that he was compelled to acknowledge his greatest chance of success was with Elinor Homewood.

If I am at the head of the poll at Cramborough, he inwardly vowed to himself, I will tempt my fate in Russell Square. I have always been a intimate friend there, and I fancy not the last in the lady's estimation. "Poor Annie!" the lover thought, "it is a pity, for both our sakes, your cousin's fortune, or some of it, is not yours. I heartily wish there

were other ways of getting out of debt.

Such were the candidate's reflections, as he took his seat in a post carriage for Cramborough, resolved to spare no pains in the personal canvass which had, as yet, only been prosecuted with a lukewarmness that had lost him several votes. But there was yet time to lure to his wrist the falcon of popular suffrage (that bird with high instincts which yet stoops to the ground!) in a borough where the interests of his uncle, Sir Walter Vowhampton, pervaded most of the streets, sprawled over the fields, secreted itself in mortgaged bricks and mortar, and generally mixed itself with the local air-that is to say, in the breath of life of most of the free and independent electors.

CHAPTER VI.

A YOUNG LADY'S EXPLANATORY LETTER.

THE love passages in some lives often lead through bye-lanes where the world never thinks or cares to follow; and these green shaded places are seldom disturbed, except by accident-perhaps it is the pursuit of some second suitor, who seeking to take in his own the maiden's hand, finds it suddenly snatched from him, as a sensitive and honourable nature reveals to the eager lover the bye-path through which the heart has wandered; or, in other cases, it may be, there arises a feeling of pique and anger, which reveals the overgrown dank path of former disappointment. The lives of most persons indeed, are like our country places there are the dusty, narrow high-ways plain to the eye, and which all the world may traverse, directed by the orthodox finger posts set up in the cross roads; and then, thank Heaven! there are the unfrequented paths, through fields, along woods, under the trees which are only known to those who have themselves tracked out the bye-way for their own feet.

It is not, therefore, to be considered extraordinary, that Annie Homewood's friends; and, particularly, her best and greatest friend Elinor, should never have heard of the proposal made by Harry Vowhampton.

Certainly, Elinor had always believed a mutual preference for each other's society had been felt by Annie and Vowhampton, and it was strictly because Elinor had this impression, that her own manner to the latter had always displayed a cordiality and friendship, which strangers might easily construe into another cause, her own liking for the gentle