Birds of Prey

w dawdling before a little print-shop, whose contents she knew by heart, now looki

owards the pine-clad hills. The house in which Captain Paget had taken up his abode was a tall white habitation, situated in the narrowest of the narrow by-ways that intersect the main street of the pretty Belgian watering-place; a lane in whic

ntrance to this lane, but, after a

home?" she thought; "they won

was a very beautiful face from which that loose dark hair was lifted by the summer wind. Diana Paget inherited something of the soft loveliness of Mary Anne Kepp, and a little of the patrician beauty of the Pagets. The eyes were like those which had watched Horatio Paget on his bed of sickness in Tulliver's-terrace. The resolute curve of the th

, had been typical of her loveless childhood. With her mother's death faded the one ray of light that had illumined her desolation. She was shifted from one nurse to another; and bar nurses were not allowed to love her, for she remained with them as an encumbrance and a burden. It was so difficult for the Captain to pay the pitiful sum demanded for his daughter's support - or rather it was so much easier for him not to pay it. So there always came a time when Diana was delivered at her father's lodgings like a parcel, by a

o at an early age had exhibited that affection for intellectual pursuits and that carelessness as to the duties of the toilet which are supposed to distinguish the predestined blue-stocking. Left quite alone in the world, Priscilla put her educational capital to good use; and after holding the position of principal governess for nearly twenty years in a prosperous boarding-school at Brompton, she followed her late employer to her grave with unaffected sorrow, and within a month of the funeral invested her savings in the purchas

father's lodging. Those are precocious children who learn their first lessons in the school of poverty; and the girl had been vaguely conscious of the degradation involve

with a little shiver at this word - "why, I might turn it over in my mind, and see if it could be done. But to be deceived time after time, as I've been deceived - you know the solemn language your father has used, Diana, for you have heard him - and to rely on a sum of money on a certain date, as I have relied again and again, after Horatio's assurance that I might

over a toyshop in the Westminster-road, where the Captain lived in consid

young man, who was a stranger to her, sat at a table near the window writing letters. It was a dull November day - a very dreary day on which to find one's self t

rchief off his face with an impatien

he asked peevishly, witho

with Mary Anne Kepp had been the one grateful impulse of his life; and even the sentiment which had prompted that marriage had been by no means free from the taint of selfishness. But he had been quite unprepared to

lone with her late on the night of her return; "but what on earth am I to do with a daughter, in the unsettled life I lead? However,

he savage selfishness of the animal nature stronger. Diana Paget had discovered some of her father's weaknesses during her miserable childhood; and in the days of her unpaid-for schooling she had known that his most solemn promises were no more to be relied on than the capricious breath of a summer breeze. So the revelations which awaited her under the paternal roof were not utterly strange or entirely unexpected. Day by day she grew more accustomed to that atmosphere of fraud and falsehood. The sense of shame never left her; for there is a pride that thrives amidst poverty and degradation, and of such pride Diana Paget possessed no small share. She writhed under the con

ched? The landlady who found her apartments suddenly tenantless and her rent unpaid might complain of the hardness of her fortune; but was it not harder for Diana, with the

ccept him as a companion, and to feel that her joyless life would have been drearier without him. He was the secretary of the Friendly and Philanthropic Loan Society, and of any other society organi

tain Paget found an able coadjutor in Valentine Hawkehurst, who answered one of those tempting advertisements in which A. B.C. or X. Y. Z. was wont to offer a salary of three hundred a year to any gentlemanly person capable of performing the duties of secretary to a newly-established company. It was only aft

emanly person, and so on - are always of the genus do. Your advertisement is very cleverly worded, my dear sir; only it's like the rest of them, rather too clever. It is so difficult for a clever man not to be too

ing beginning there arose a kind of friendship between the two men. Horatio Paget had for some time been in need of a clever tool; and in the young man whose cool insolence rose superior to his own dignity he perceived the very individual whom he had long been seeking. The young man who was unabashed by the indignation of a scion of Nugents and Cromies and P

in the rules of the King's Bench; that he had run away from home at the age of fifteen, and had tried his fortune in all those professions which require no educational ordeal, and which seem to offer themselves invitingly to the scapegrace and adventurer. At fifteen Valentine Hawkehurst had been errand-boy in a newspaper office; at

dmitted a worse man than Valentine Hawkehurst to his family circle, for the Captain had never taken the trouble to sound the depths of his coadjutor's nature.

usts of music by the fitful summer breeze. The loneliness of the place soothed the girl's feverish spirits; and, seated in a little classic temp

Miss Paget: "the trees are all dressed alike. Nature makes no di

onsisted of four roomy chambers on the second story of a big rambling house. The rooms were meanly furnished, and decorated with the tawdry o

the hotels, or to feast sumptuously à la carte, while on unlucky days they did not dine at all. Diana found a roll and some cream cheese in a roomy old cupboard that

p sounded behind her. She knew the step; and although she did not lift her head, her eyes took a new brightness in the summer d

was laid softly on her should

man whose entrance to the golden temple had been

have been losing, I suppose, Mr. Hawkehurst,

t the board of green cloth yonder, there was no excuse for my staying. Your father has not been holding his own within the last hour or two; but when I left the rooms he was going to the H

et was quite unmoved. She had resumed her old attitude, and sat looking towards the lighted windows of the Kursaal,

te it had been something in the manner of an elder brother, whose fraternal breast is impervious to the influence of a sister's loveliness or a sister's fascination. If Diana Paget

the very line of proceeding which a beautiful woman can never bring herself to forgive. A chivalrous stiffness, a melancholy dignity, a frozen frigidity, which suggest the fiery bubbling of the lava flood beneath the ic

awkehurst," Diana said abruptly, when her companion had fini

e become Mr. Hawkehurst all of a sudden, when for the last

his own manner was imitated. She stole a rapid look at him as she ans

you behold the one great truth of the universe in action. There is nothing but money, and men are the slaves of money, and life is only another name for the pursuit of money. Go and look at beauty yonder fading in the light and heat; at youth that changes to age before y

e people yonder, if you

d why is my life made up of baseness and lies? Because my father was an improvident scoundrel, and did not leave me

ference, and looked at him with sad earnest eyes. He met the glance, and the ex

ld have kept me honest. Decidedly not happy; the men who can be happy on five hund

appiness to you compared to the miserable life you lead - the shameful, degraded life which shuts you out of the society of res

d turkey and champagne, another day upon bread and cheese and small beer; but I couldn't eat beef and mutton always. That's what kills people of my temperament. There are born scamps in the world, Diana, and

so cruel of you

l to

e - who ca

ness Diana Paget's head drooped a little as

ting them lie there than in kicking them out. My mother was a good woman in the beginning, I know; but she must have been something more than a mortal woman if she had not lost some of her goodness in twelve years of such a life as she led with my father. I be

w friends," said Miss Paget, "since the

expression of his face, and any emotion to which her words might have given rise could be betrayed only by some gesture

s much as I do know of them. If I have any redeeming grace, Diana Paget, it lies in the fact that I know what a worthless wretch I am. Your father thinks he is a great man, a noble suffering creature, and that the world has ill-used him. I know that I am a scoundrel, and

, she would only love you b

been cheated. She would see other women - less gifted than herself, probably - and would see the market they had made of their charms; would see them rich and honoured and happy, and would stand aside in the muddy streets to be splashed by the dirt from their carriage-wheels. And then she would con

ursaal. Valentine lighted a second cigar and smoked it out, still in silence. The clocks struck eleven as he threw the end

f light vanished in the darkness below. "Good night, Diana. Don't sit too long in the co

upon the iron rail of the balcony, laid her head upon them, and wept silently. Her life was very dreary, and it seemed

or with her tears were very rare, and the passion which occasioned them must needs be intense. The night air grew chill and damp; but although she shivered now and then beneath tha

otstep that sounded on the carpetless floor. It was Valentine Hawk

"all dark still. Ah! she has gone to bed, I suppose. That's a

ut there all this time?" he asked; "do

eremonious question. The light of the candle shone full upon his face whe

g the matter?" sh

ow morning, on the first stage of your journey to England. Look here, my girl! I can give you just about

, what do

people you have been living with, too soon. Come, come, don't shiver, child. Take a few dr

de her drink the spirit. He was obliged to force the rim of th

uietly. There's a balance struck, somehow or other, depend upon it, my girl; and the prosperous people who pay their debts have to suffer, as well as the Maca

one else

the woman with whom you were at school. Do you think she would refus

use. She was very good to me. Bu

e to you; because the tie that links you to Hor

infallible, that I suppose he had grown careless as to his execution of it. Or perhaps he took a false meas

ust and horror. Valentine's arm was ready to support her, if she had shown any symptom

me to go awa

ur father's daughter. That would be about the worst reputation which you could

nation. "It seems very dreary to go back to England to

get had been reared. She obeyed Valentine Hawkehurst to the letter, without any sentimental lamentations whatever. Her scanty possessions were collected, and neatly packed, in little more than an hour. At three o'clock she lay down in her tawdry

the carriage that she spoke f

go very hard with

h it as well as we can. The charge may brea

ye, Val

in moved off. Another moment and Miss Paget and

at over his eyes as he wa

ing for once in my life. I wonder whether the recording angel will carry that up to my credit, and whether th