THE SERPENT LET LOOSE.

Walter Clifford was so distressed at this outburst, and the prospect of actual litigation between his father and his sweetheart’s father, that Julia Clifford pitied him, and, after thinking a little, said she would stop it for the present.  She then sat down, and in five minutes the docile pen of a female letter-writer produced an ingratiating composition impossible to resist.  She apologized for her apparent insincerity, but would be candid, and confide the whole truth to Mr. Bell.  Then she told him that Colonel Clifford “had only just been saved from death by a miracle, and a relapse was expected in case of any great excitement or irritation, such as a doubtful lawsuit with a gentleman he disliked would certainly cause.  The proposed litigation was, for various reasons, most distressing to his son and successor, Walter Clifford, and would Mr. Bell be so very kind as to put the question off as long as possible by any means he thought proper?”

Walter was grateful, and said, “What a comfort to have a lady on one’s side!”

“I would rather have a gentleman on mine,” said Julia, laughing.

Mr. Bell wrote a discreet reply.  He would wait till the Assizes—­six weeks’ delay—­and then write to the Colonel, postponing his visit.  This he did, and promised to look up cases meantime.

But these two allies not only baffled their irascible chief; they also humored him to the full.  They never mentioned the name of Bartley, and they kept Percy Fitzroy out of sight in spite of his remonstrances, and, in a word, they made the Colonel’s life so smooth that he thought he was going to have his own way in everything, and he improved in health and spirits; for you know it is an old saying, “Always get your own way, and you’ll never die in a pet.”

And then what was still a tottering situation was kept on its legs by the sweet character and gentle temper of Mary Bartley.

We have already mentioned that she was superior to most women in the habit of close attention to whatever she undertook.  This was the real key to her facility in languages, history, music, drawing, and calisthenics, as her professor called female gymnastics.  The flexible creature’s limbs were in secret steel.  She could go thirty feet up a slack rope hand over hand with wonderful ease and grace, and hang by one hand for ten minutes to kiss the other to her friends.  So the very day she was surprised into consenting to marry Walter secretly she sat down to the Marriage Service and learned it all by heart directly, and understood most of it.

By this means she realized that now she had another man to obey as well as her father.  So now, when Walter pressed her for secret meetings, she said, submissively, “Oh yes, if you insist.”  She even remarked that she concluded clandestine meetings were the natural consequence of a clandestine marriage.

She used to meet her husband in the day when she could, and often for five minutes under the moon.  And she even promised to spend two or three days with him at the lakes if a safe opportunity should occur.  But for that she stipulated that Mr. Hope must be absent.