CHAPTER XX.

SOME OF MR. BETTS'S PLANS FOR HIMSELF AND

OTHERS.

ONE of the circumstances which it now becomes necessary to notice more prominently is the extraordinary friendship which had sprung up between Squire Silcote and Mr. Betts.

It had begun in the battle-royal with the Sir Hugh Brockliss faction, about the removal of St. Mary's Hospital into the country. Mr. Betts's shrewdness, his bold bull-dog style of fighting, the rough carelessness of speech natural enough in a somewhat coarse man finding himself among superiors, who were perfectly aware of his antecedents, and very much inclined to snub him; more than all, perhaps, his intense dislike and contempt for Sir Hugh Brockliss-natural enough,

also, for men of his class are very apt to hate the class next above them: all these things, combined with the profoundest respect for the Squire himself, had won Silcote's heart, and he had admitted Betts to his intimacy in a wonderful manner. As time went on he found that Mr. Betts suited him, and became necessary to him; and Arthur, coming suddenly from Oxford once, was very much astonished to find Mr. Betts quietly ensconsed opposite his father before the fire, with dessert and wine between them, as comfortable as could be.

"This is queer," he thought, "but it may lead to good. Algernon's head trumpeter as the governor's chief confidant. If the fellow will not trumpet too loud, this may lead to a great deal of good. I wonder if he has tact enough to see that."

He had quite as much tact as Arthur in his way. He once, in a natural manner, when the conversation led easily up to the point, mentioned Algernon's noble behaviour to him in a manly straightforward way, and left the leaven to work.

"It'll end in a legacy, mayhap; but, as for that, the Squire's is a better life than Algernon's. I'll do

all I can; but time is the word, and caution. That old Princess! I wish she was choked with her diamonds, or smothered in one of her satin gownds, or hung in her own Vallanceens. I'd give a ten pun' note, my lady, to know what games you have been up to in foreign parts in your time, and why you are everlastingly bobbing up and down to Kriegsthurm's in a black veil. There's a nail loose in one of your shoes, or you wouldn't be hand in glove with the most pig-eyed, false-hearted, ten-languaged" (Mr. Betts distrusted, with a true British distrust, those who spoke foreign tongues) "rascal in Europe. I could buy your secret of him, my lady, if I was rich enough; but where would be the use of sporting my shillings against your pounds? Old Frankypanny knows all about you, too, but he is such a stuck-up, honourable, poverty-struck old swell that I as much dare ask the Duke of Norfolk. There's old Miss Raylock, too; I was present when she was in the library, rummaging among the old books according to custom; and she was talking as pleasant to me as need be, and as confidential; but when you came in, rustling with your silks, she shut up, did the old girl, all in a minute, as tight as a Chubb's safe, and

begins a bowing and scraping, and sticking her old nose in the air; aye, and looked the princess all over, as well as you, and better too. She knows. But she is no good. One of the same sort as Frankypanny. That Boginsky, he is a regular young sieve; he'd be the fellow to work, but I never did trepan a loosemouthed man, except in the way of business, and I never will. Nevertheless, my fine Madam, I am deeply indebted to you for your well-meant effort to hoist me out of this; and, if I can put a spoke in your wheel, you may rely on my doing so with a thorough good will."

For the Princess strongly objected to the introduction of Mr. Betts at Silcotes. Among her better reasons for this, one can see that she distrusted him because he belonged strongly to the faction of the dispossessed prince Algernon; and it was possible, with such a whimsical man as her brother, that his old dislike of Algernon might die out under new influence, to the terrible detriment of her darling Tom, now become a pest and an expensive nuisance to his father. Arthur, in case of being heir, would deal nobly by his brother: from the wronged Algernon Tom could not hope much,

she argued, not knowing that the Quixotic Algernon, in his blind devotion to Tom, would have most likely given him back nearly everything, or, at least, would have trusted him with far more than would the shrewder Arthur. Among the more ignoble motives for her dislike of Mr. Betts was the fact that Mr. Betts, having done a vast deal of foreign business in his life among shaky Continental bonds, was intimate with a great many very shaky Continental characters, and chiefly with Kriegsthurm, whose close acquaintance with the chances of foreign revolutions had made him a most useful man in old times, and whose information he had paid for handsomely. She knew that Betts and Kriegsthurm were intimate, and, with her usual foolishness, asked her brother if he was aware of the sort of character he was bringing into his house; giving an account of Betts's bankruptcy, with a great many fresh particulars, invented, I fear, on the spot. Silcote had told her that he was quite aware of Mr. Betts's bankruptcy, but that he liked the man. He said it so very quietly, that she saw at once that she had only, by being too quick and eager, aroused the old obstinacy in him, and gave