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Cranley. Probably there was not one other man among the motley herds of Mrs. St. John Deloraine's acquaintance who would have used her unsuspicious kindness as an instrument in a plot of any sort. But Mr. "Shall I go and lunch with her?" he asked himself, as he twisted her note, with its characteristic black border and device of brown, and gold.
I had seen that woman before; she was not fit to be entrusted with the care of girls. She was at one time very well known." Mrs. St. John Deloraine's face had passed through every shade of expression doubt, shame, and indignation; but now it assumed an air of hope. "Margaret has always spoken so well of him," she said, half to herself.
Cranley arrived, when the clock was pointing to half-past one, at Mrs. St. John Deloraine's house in Cheyne Walk. He had scarcely entered the drawing-room before that lady, in a costume which agreeably became her pleasant English style of beauty, rushed into the room, tumbling over a favorite Dandie Dinmont terrier, and holding out both her hands. The terrier howled, and Mrs. St.
But perhaps you know that I lost my father, just before I entered Mrs. St. John Deloraine's service, and then my whole course of life was altered." "I am very sorry for you," said Barton, simply. He did not know what else to say; but he felt more than his conventional words indicated, and perhaps he looked as if he felt it and more.
"If there was a conspiracy," said Barton, "I am the ringleader in it; for, as you ask me, I must assure you, on my honor, that I detected Mr. Cranley in the act of trying to cheat some very young men at cards. I would not have mentioned it for the world," he added, almost alarmed at the expression of pain and terror in Mrs. St John Deloraine's face; "but you wished to be told.
The former strife had been on the matter of investiture; the strife of the twelfth century was respecting jurisdiction. We sometimes hear the expression, "Without benefit of clergy," and the readers of the "Lay of the Last Minstrel" cannot have forgotten William of Deloraine's declaration, "Letter or line know I never a one, Were't my neck-verse at Harribee."
It had, and probably deserved, a great reputation, and some good trout are still taken in the upper waters, and there must be monsters in the deep black pools, the "dowie dens" above Bowhill. But I never had any luck there. The choicest stream of all was then, probably, the Aill, described by Sir Walter in "William of Deloraine's Midnight Ride"
The graceful and touching, if a little conventional, overture of the Minstrel introduces with the truest art the vigorous sketch of Branksome Tower. The spirits of flood and fell are allowed to impress and not allowed to bore us; for the quickest of changes is made to Deloraine's ride a kind of thing in which Scott never failed, even in his latest and saddest days.
The only unperplexed face was Deloraine's. He whispered to me that Miss Barriton was going on to the Alvanleys' ball, and had warned him to be there. "She hasn't been to a dance for months, you know," he said. "I really think things are beginning to go a little better, old man." When I opened my paper next morning I read two startling pieces of news.
In a slum of Chelsea there might have been observed a modest place of entertainment, in the coffee and bun line, with a highly elaborate Chelsea Bun painted on the sign. This piece of art, which gave its name to the establishment, was the work of one of Mrs. St John Deloraine's friends, an artist of the highest promise, who fell an early victim to arrangements in haschisch and Irish whiskey.
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