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THE DUCIE DIAMONDS.

By C. BLATHERWICK,

AUTHOR OF "PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF PETER STONNOR, ESQ.," ETC.

CHAPTER I.

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Y name is Benny-James Benny-at your service. I have been Mr. Dilling's servant for-well, for longer than I can remember. You see, my mother was maid to old Mr. Dilling, so I was in a manner born to the place; and it is through her that I know all about the old family history.

Now, there has been a deal of talk about these diamonds-too much by halfI'm sick of it! I've had to tell the story so often that now I'm going to write it down, and have done with it for good and all.

Master's mother was a Ducie. How she came to marry Dr. Dilling, the country medical practitioner at Richfield, in Hampshire, was a puzzle to everybody. She was not what may be called a young lady when she married, and there was some talk of her not being over happy up there at the Towers with her old father; but for all that folks wagged their heads, and would have been well-behaved enough if it wondered how the Honourable Miss Augusta hadn't been for his mother. She spoilt him. Ducie could so far forget herself. "Forget herself," indeed! Why, the doctor did more good than all the Ducies put together! But that is what they said. They made a grand mystery of it. The old lord had got all the doctor's hard-earned money, and the doctor had got some awful secret in return.

Nothing was too wild for them to believe, except the marriage. This they couldn't swallow; but married they were, and the old lord gave her away in the parish church.

A rare rumpus there was with the rest of the family. All of them-eldest brother, sisters, and other relatives-would have nothing to do with her. Every man-Jack of them gave her the cold shoulder, except her younger brother, "Mad Tom," a rollicking London gentleman. He came to the wedding, was as affable as you please, and borrowed a hundred pounds of the doctor before he went back.

And the fuss they made about Master Ducie when he came into the world! Never was such a baby! Why, he had two nurses, and was carried about in lace that cost as much as ten years of my clothing. When he grew older I was told off as his page, and mighty proud I was of my charge, I can tell you. He was a fine chubby fellow, and

Too high and mighty by half was Mrs. Dilling. Master Ducie's cloth was too superfine for the Richfield set. Poor little chap! Why, one of the servant girls was sent off at a moment's notice for calling him "Ducky Dilly," and I got a rare wigging one day just for letting him play with Charley Spencer, the lawyer's son, while she went in to make a call.

I remember how we went to see the old lord at Ducie Towers. Master Ducie was left alone with him in the library. I peeped through the door. There he was in mortal terror, perched on a chair in the middle of the room, tucking in cake and fruit as fast as the old lord handed them. He didn't speak, but he stared. His old grandfather's face, with its deep seams and heavy, white, ropy moustache, looked for all the world like one of the grim monsters I had seen carved on the stone escutcheon outside. He plied Master Ducie with pears and cakes, walking round and round, pulling his moustache, and taking stock of the lad from various standpoints, then, at last, nearly knocked me over by bouncing out of the room with a big oath.

We did not go there again, but whenever Mrs. Dilling drove past the Towers in her little pony phaeton afterwards she would point 1

her whip at the battered old stone monsters get well besomed," said he. But, bless over the gates, and tell Master Ducie something wonderful about the family.

you, his mother wouldn't hear of it. Why, she wouldn't let him out of her sight. The We went that way when we took the young house was all ajar, and it was a pretty rough gentleman to Dr. Basom's school at Wing-time for us all, I can tell you. The doctor ham. A second-rate sort of school it was, was riled to see his old friends dropping off and I puzzled my head to know how they one by one owing to Madam's stuck-up ways, could think of sending this precious young and Madam herself was always in hot water master there, till I remembered that his about the tutors. They came and went by aunt, "the Honourable Mrs. Ducie Spencer," | dozens. Then, after a big wrangle, Mr. as she was called, lived at Wingham House. Ducie at last went off to college, where he She was a widow and reckoned to be very stopped, off and on, for four years. Then rich and very queer. Maybe they thought his father, the poor, dear, old doctor, died some good might come of his being near her. suddenly. A bad blow for us all. The old I didn't think much of her. Like her lord had gone off a year before, and Mrs. father, she reminded me of one of the stone Dilling, being sick of Richfield and all its griffins. "Here's the pair of them," thought surroundings, moved up to London, and set 1; "one here and one at the Towers." But up housekeeping with Mr. Tom Ducie at her jewelry! It winked and blinked at South Kensington. She wasn't happy here you with a hundred eyes whenever she moved. | either. Hers was the sort of nature that These were some of the Ducie Diamonds. never was, and never could be, quite happy. Like her father, too, she took stock of her She worrited herself about every blessed thing. nephew, and just as he was leaving popped The Towers didn't suit her, Richfield didn't up her gold eye-glasses, and said to her suit her, and now London didn't suit her. sister, as if suddenly struck with his plump- She was angry with her sister for being so ness, "Good heavens, Augusta, how ap- rich; and so sure as Mrs. Spencer came up pallingly like a pill!" to her London house for the season, so sure the two would be bickering about something." Sometimes it would be about the young Lady Ducie at the Towers, who was supposed to have talked Mrs. Spencer over into leaving her the diamonds; sometimes about Mr. Ducie, and sometimes about Wingham and Richfield. Poor lady! she hadn't a contented mind to feed upon, so she got thinner and thinner; and my mother solemnly believes to this day that she worried herself to death.

My young master was not long at school. I never thought that coarse, common place would do for the like of him. I knew he was plucky to the backbone, and wasn't a bit surprised when I saw him one evening trudging along the road, tired and dusty, but game as a bantam cock. A stout-set young man was walking by his side, and when Master Ducie ran up he says to me, "I've helped Master Dilling to get quit of Basom's place yonder. I shall get into fine trouble about it; but, there, I'm that tender-hearted I couldn't help it. Just you run in and tell his mamma as Luke Puller is here. I'm carpenter at Wingham, but don't want no reward."

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Why, I only met you outside on the road!" cries little Ducie.

"Never you mind! Just run in, youngster, and tell her ladyship as Luke Puller is here. He's run away from school, and I helped him. That's about the size of it! But I don't want no reward!”

Thinks I to myself, "No, you don't look as if you did." However, in I went. Mr. Luke has a long jaw with the missis, and went off with two sovereigns in one pocket and a letter of recommendation to Mrs. Ducie Spencer in the other, for having rendered such mighty service to a Ducie.

Dr. Dilling was terribly put out about this business. "He ought to be sent back and

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Master was as fine and handsome a looking gentleman as you'll see in a day's march. A Ducie every inch of him. Mad about art, but a poor, poor painter-leastways to my mind. President, too, of the Botticellian Club-a queer lot, who met once a week in his studio to jaw away about beautifying the world. Some of them, with Mr. Powell at their head, went in for pictures, and some, led by Mr. Delannoy, went in for ghosthunting.

They would go hundreds of miles to ferret out a real ghost, and every ghost story was popped down in a ledger, as if it had been a bale of goods.

Now and then master went to call on his aunt, Mrs. Ducie Spencer. She lived in Park Lane, and in her little house there was besieged by her many relatives. All the poor and proud Ducies, the Stanriggs, the Durfords, and sometimes Lady Duci? herself,

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would make it their business to come up and look after her and her diamonds. Mr. Ducie seldom went, but for all that she was fonder of him than of any of the rest. One day after calling he came back in a bit of a pucker. I was helping Mr. Tom to pack away his cigars in the library, when in bursts Mr. Ducie. My, he did look handsome! was just beaming all over. There was a sparkle in his eye, and a dash about him I had never seen before.

He

"I say, uncle," he begins, "who is the girl they call Ada stopping with my aunt in Park Lane?"

"Can't say, I'm sure," replied Mr. Tom. "One of my stray nieces, I should think, by the name."

"She is not a bit like a Ducie."
"Not got the style? Eh?"

Master hated being chaffed about the Ducies, so says, a little warmly, "I don't know what the Ducie style' may be, but I

never saw a Ducie with her perfect figure and sapphire eyes. She is the most beautiful creature I ever saw!"

"Hillo!" cried Mr. Tom, looking down from the top of the steps with his arm full of cigar-boxes. "You're hit pretty hard, young 'un. Cupid's arrow gone slick through you. By Jove, there's the barb sticking out of your back! I should like to see this divinity." Will you come ?"

"Do you mean it? asked Mr. Ducie eagerly.

"Of course I will! Don't you know I'd go a hundred miles any day to see a pretty girl?"

"Well, come with me to-morrow. We will go to lunch. Aunt Ada is uncommonly civil to me just now. Why, I don't know. But come and see if I'm not right."

They went, but I don't think they saw the "Divinity." Anyway Mr. Ducie came back very different from what he did the day before. From that time he got moody and irritable. He neglected the club gentlemen, and found fault with everything. I had been with him so long that I could read him like a book. I knew all about it. He was over head and ears in love! Just like him. Slap-dash at everything. Then followed a deal of correspondence with Park Lane, and Mr. Tom went there pretty often. They talked so freely before me that I soon got at the bottom of it. Mrs. Spencer wanted to make Mr. Ducie her heir, but he was to drop his name and take hers. Not one word would she tell him about that young lady, nor let him have so much as a peep at his divinity till he agreed to it.

"I tell you," Mr. Ducie was saying one day in answer to something his uncle had told him, "I tell you she coupled the conditions with such insults to my father and mother that I won't have anything to do with it. Of course I'm not ass enough to throw away a chance like this for a bit of sentiment, but I won't stand her insults!"

"You're right, my boy!" cried Uncle Tom, slapping him on the back, and there was an end of it.

He

But Mr. Ducie got worse and worse. went about looking as haggard as a starved owl, and worried my mother's life out because he ate nothing. All this, too, on account of a girl he had only seen once, and whose name he didn't even know. At last the doctor came. He pretty soon saw it wasn't a case for pills. "A sea voyage," says he. Now this was the sort of medicine to rouse him. Mr. Powell was a famous yachtsman, and there, by luck, was his fine schooner, the

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Clymene, for sale. The Botticellians palavered over it once or twice, and it ended by master buying her. Then the Club redecorated her, and one fine morning away we went, leaving my mother in charge of the South Kensington House. We intended to sail round the Land's End, up the west coast, and spend some weeks in the Scotch waters, but didn't manage all we hoped for. She was a beautitul craft, was the Clymene. Sea life was all new to me, so for a time I was pretty bad with the sickness. This wore off though. In a couple of days I had my sea-legs, and then, when I got on deck, my heart fairly bounded to see our big bird spread her white wings, and sail away straight into Cloudland. Mi. Ducie, too, picked up at sea. The farther we got from Park Lane the better he grew. He and Mr. Tom knew all about the yachting business. I didn't, and so got knocked clean overboard by the big boom as we were putting about just before making the Clyde. It would have gone hard with me if it hadn't been for Mr. Ducie. He was in the water as soon as I. Ah, a fine strong swimmer was master! It was touch and go with us, but he kept me up till they got the boat out; and when I came to myself I knew that it was Mr. Ducie who had saved my life.

This will show you the sort of stuff he was made of, and it must be a queer sort of fellow who wouldn't stick to him through thick and thin ever after. There was nobody like him— nobody! and my heart was sore when I saw him pining about that Park Lane business. It was just his nature. My mother couldn't tell me much about Park Lane, but Richfield being so near to Wingham House, she knew a little about Mrs. Spencer. This is what she told me.

Wingham House, with some houses and land in the adjoining village, had belonged for ever so long to the Squires Hortell. Somehow or other they came to the bad, and Mrs. Ducie Spencer bought the property from the last squire, Stephen. Queer, queer stories were told about it. "It was an unrighteous bargain;" "the place was haunted," and so on. But Mrs. Spencer loved a mystery. Nothing pleased her better than to be called the Wingham Witch with the Ducie Diamonds. Jewelry was her craze. Her delight was to flaunt her diamonds, rubies, emeralds, and what not, before the greedy eyes of her many nephews and nieces. 'Twas they who christened her the witch, and she kept up the character by worrying each of them in turn with hopes of being her heir. Suddenly, without warning, she would give

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