HOSTAGES TO FORTUNE. A Novel. By MISS M. E. BRADDON, AUTHOR OF “AURORA FLOYD," "A STRANGE WORLD," "JOHN MARCHMONT'S LEGACY," "LOST "ELEANOR'S VICTORY," "FENTON'S QUEST," &c. HARPER & BROTHERS will send either of the above works by mail, postage prepaid, to any part of the United States or Canada, on receipt of the price. HOSTAGES TO FORTUNE. CHAPTER I. "Full many a lady PROFOUND excitement prevails in Llandrysak this sunny August morning. Dog-carts dash wildly down the fragment of inchoate street, whose chief feature is the post-office; phaetons and pony-carriages unknown to Llandrysak wind gayly across the common, and appear on the railway bridge. The station disgorges a crowd of smartly dressed young women and their attendant swains, who swarm over the little settlement, and forthwith make for the one establishment which provides refreshment of a light and unintoxicating character; for the people who come to Llandrysak are, as a rule, temperate in the extreme, and hardly know the meaning of a public-house. Mr. Cates-the purveyor of things in general, from butcher's-meat and bacon to tea, sugar, confectionery, and fancy biscuits; from bread, butter, and eggs to green-stuff and fish-has been laboring all night in the sweat of his brow to prepare adequately for this peaceful invasion. Monster hams await the sacrificial knife; quartern loaves wall in one side of the well-used counter; all the interior accommodation available in Mr. Cates's private abode has been thrown open for the reception of visitors; and tea and coffee are in perpetual preparation. But the most Mr. Cates can do in this way falls short of his patrons' demands. They storm his passage; they swarm upon his stairs, and throng his rooms, even trying to invade the sanctity of his bed-chamber, and wax loud and savage in their demands for accommodation and refreshment, until Mr. Cates -although feeling that he is making money as fast as he can drop it into his till-wishes that his customers were less numerous or less importunate; or, in his own words, wishes that he "had known beforehand that there would be so many;' though what he would have done had he been so informed, seeing that his house has no power of expansion, and that he has no yard or garden available for the erection of a tent, must ever remain a mystery. Whatever power of expansion his business premises possess has been exercised to the uttermost; for he has absorbed as much of the roadway as he can venture to encumber without detriment to the public. The space before his busy little shop is spread with trays of tarts and buns, hot and hot from the oven, promptly renewed as the hungry visitors consume them. And wherefore this inroad of the surrounding neighborhood into quiet little Llandrysak, famous only for its saline and sulphur springs, and in its normal condition the tranquil resort of health-seekers and water-drinkers? Question easily answered. For the last fortnight placards have adorned the public places of Llandrysakthe gates of the market-hall, the portal of the post-office, and the railway station-setting forth that on this third of August an Eisteddfod would be holden at Llandrysak, and numerous prizesranging from ten pounds to five shillings-would be awarded to successful competitors in the art of music and dramatic recitation. A monster tent had been brought from a distant city-Llandrysak is a good forty miles from any large town and erected behind the pretty little modern Gothic church on the common yonder; and after braving the breeze for a day or two, has ignominiously collapsed on Sunday afternoon, to be re-erected with increased stability on Monday. To-day is Tuesday, and the tent still stands bravely. The warm summer sky and soft west wind promise a glorious noontide, and at half past nine o'clock the inhabitants of surrounding villages are pouring into Llandrysak as fast as the single line of rail can bring them. Perhaps of all the quiet out-of-the-way places in this sea-bound isle there is none more tranquil, more utterly remote from the busy world, than Llandrysak. It is certainly not a town; it is hardly to be called a village. Two large and prosperous hotels, and three or four smaller hostelries-which are rather public boarding-houses than inns-have sprung up around the mineral springs. Three or four shops and half a dozen lodging-houses have been built on the edge of an undulating stretch of heathy common; and the new church, erected by public subscription, looks down upon the little settlement from its elevation on the aforesaid common. Llandrysak is situated on a plateau seven hundred feet above the sea-level, and all around it rise the green Cambrian hills-not mighty peaks, ;" like Snowdon or Penmaenmawr, but lovable hills, grassy and ferny-hills that tempt the pedestrian, and seem to cry aloud, even to the idlest lounger, "Come, climb our gentle breasts, and breathe the purer ether that circles round our heads." Quiet and remote though Llandrysak is, it is eminently popular in its way. The hotels and lodging-houses are full to plethora in the season, and guests are billeted at outlying farm-houses "Are you going to the Eisteddfod ?" asks Mr. Dewrance, calmly ignoring these remarks. "Are you?" "That depends. Slingford Edwards is to be there in full force," with a wry face; "and I don't much care about the business. But I promised some ladies-" "Of course; I never knew such a man! Your whole life is frittered away in such small engagements; not an hour that is not pledged to a petticoat. Dewrance, in spite of your varied experience of life, your travels, your knowledge of the world, you are still what you were born to be." What is that?" inquires Mr. Dewrance, with the faintest show of curiosity. "A tame cat.' 66 to an alarming extent, considering the number of the lodgers in relation to the space available for their accommodation. In sheltered nooks upon the hill-side, in rustic lanes, you come upon lowly homesteads, which to the stranger's eye appear in no wise too spacious for a farmer's household, and which yet afford board and lodgment to fifteen or twenty water-drinkers in time of need. Of the two hotels, the Cambria is select and aristocratic, judiciously dividing its guests into two sections, known as Lords and Commons; and the Spring House, popular and easy-going. Wondrous stories are told of the chaff and practical joking which obtain at the latter hostelry, and the matrimonial engagements apt to result from a week's residence therein. Pianos are heard long after midnight; amateur concerts and Chris- "Why not?" asks the curate, placidly. "Tamety minstrelsy diversify the monotony of social catism isn't half a bad thing in its way. I like intercourse. Picnics and excursions of all kinds women, and women like me. I can make friends are of daily occurrence; and the click of croquet- of them. I don't flirt, and I never commit myballs without and billiard-balls within may be self; and then I look to women to help me in heard from morn till midnight. The more quiet the serious business of my life. A priest can Cambria has its croquet lawn also, sheltered by achieve great victories with an army of women surrounding groves of spice-breathing pine, and at his command. How are our churches beauits spacious billiard-room over the stony cham-tified, our sick tended, our poor fed, our children ber where the unsavory waters are dealt out by taught and cared for and civilized? complacent maidens across a pewter-covered bar, think the masculine element goes for much in suggestive of Spiers and Pond-awful chamber, these things? No, Westray; women are the pervaded ever by the odor of innumerable rotten Church's strong rock. As they were the last at eggs, which odor is the delightful characteristic the foot of the cross, so they have become the of a sulphur spring in perfection. first at the altar." This pump-room stands cheek by jowl with the more aristocratic wing of the Cambria, and gives upon the croquet lawn and piny groves and a broad space of gravel before the house. An avenue leads from the hotel down to a little bit of road that crosses the common and joins the high-road; for the Cambria stands in a genteel seclusion, about half a mile from the settlement that has grown up in the neighborhood of the railway station. From the pump-room on this sunny August morning emerges a gentleman, who wipes his lips with a cambric handkerchief, and wears a disgusted expression of countenance. 66 "Upon my word, Dewrance, I can't stand much more of it," he exclaims. Faugh! asafetida would be ambrosial in comparison." Mr. Dewrance, in clerical costume-faultless black and Roman collar-is lounging on a bench outside, smoking an after-breakfast cigar, with contentment depicted upon his visage. He is a wandering light in the ecclesiastical system, and has come to do duty at the unendowed church on the common for the season. He is not at Llandrysak for the waters. "What does it matter how nasty the stuff is if you think it's doing you good ?" he asks, languidly. The morning is too warm for much exertion. Even the clerical mind needs repose after the labor of performing matins for the edification of about a dozen females, chiefly of the spinster persuasion. "Ah, it's all very well for you to talk like that," remonstrates the other. "In the first place, you don't drink that nauseous stuff; and in the second, it would jump with your notions of self-mortification-fasting, abstinence, and all that kind of thing-to imbibe obnoxious waters. The sort of thing St. Francis of Assisi would have liked, you know." Do you "Upon my soul," ejaculates Westray, pulling his dark brown mustache, "I begin to think that women exercise a great deal more influence than we give them credit for. More than half the world is under petticoat government." "Why don't you join the majority ?" asks Dewrance, with a keen look at his friend. They have known each other less than a fortnight, yet are on those friendly and familiar terms which men slip into so easily. Herman Westray is a man who has made himself a name in the world of letters. He began his career as a journalist in the year he left Oxford, and has only lately shaken himself free from the trammels of the daily press. He has won reputation as poet, dramatist, critic, novelist, and is a power in literary circles. Stimulated by success, and proud of his budding laurels, he has worked his brain to the verge of exhaustion, and has come to Llandrysak Wells at the advice of a wise old doctor, who attended him nine-and-twenty years ago for chicken-pox and croup. 66 Why don't you look out for some nice girl who would reconcile you to the idea of matrimony?" pursues Dewrance. "You're just the kind of man who is bound to go to eternal smash if he doesn't marry." If Mr. Dewrance's vocabulary is more modern than ecclesiastical, it must be urged in his excuse that he has not been long in holy orders, and that his previous experiences have been of the world worldly. "I never found a nice girl yet," replies Westray. "I have met handsome girls, clever girls, fascinating girls, but never the woman to whom I could say, 'Take my life into your keeping, and be my better angel. Come between me and my evil thoughts; lead me into the path of peace." "Girls nowadays are awfully fast, I admit," says Dewrance, gravely, unless they're Anglican. Try an Anglican girl." "No, thanks. A young woman who would | I had acquired an uncomfortable habit of falling get up at five o'clock in the morning to embroid- asleep over my deŝk, which hinted at apoplexy, er an antependium, and neglect the housekeep- and now I am as fresh as paint. I have written ing. I shouldn't like a free-thinking girl, you two acts of a comedy since Saturday." understand, but I should prefer her religion to "I thought you were here for rest.' take its color from such teachers as Richter and "Oh, comedy dialogue hardly counts as work. Carlyle." Besides, I am pledged to give Mrs. Brandreth something sparkling for the opening of the autumn season at the Frivolity." Dewrance shrugs his shoulders with a deprecating air, and rises from his recumbent position. "I think we'd better go and have a look at the Eisteddfod," he says, "in spite of Slingford Edwards.' "The Frivolity? That's one of the new theatres, isn't it ?" "All that there is of the most new: a house like a bonbonnière by Siraudin; all quilted canary satin and gold, with a background of Burgundy-colored velvet; medallion portraits of Shakspeare's heroines on the panels — though what Shakspeare has to do with the Frivolity is more than any fellow can understand. In fact, it's a charming little box. The actors are most of them ex-cavalry subalterns; the actresses Slingford Edwards is the Non-conformist light of Llandrysak-Wesleyan or Baptist, no one seemed very clear which, but eminently popular among the natives. He holds forth thrice every Sunday from his rostrum in the red brick chapel, and appears on week-days with his manly form equipped in a costume at once agricultural and sportsman-like, his well-shaped legs, of which he is justly proud, incased in worsted-well, there isn't a plain woman among them." hose, his feet in smart buckled shoes. This gentleman's popularity at Llandrysak gives him importance at the national festival. He is deputy-chairman, and does most of the hard work, Mr. Morton Jones, the squire, being only required to make a condescending speech, and sit in his arm-chair, smiling blandly across a little table, throughout the proceedings. "Let us go and see how Slingford Edwards does it," says Mr. Dewrance, throwing away the stump of his cigar. They stroll down the avenue and across the common, where even on this warm August day the west wind blows pure and fresh. Green hills ring them round like a girdle, and beyond the green rise loftier peaks, russet brown or deep purple-tinged gray, melting into the blue cloudless sky. "Mrs. Brandreth herself is a handsome woman, I've heard," says the curate. "It would be a bald description of Myra Brandreth to call her handsome," answers Herman. "She is simply one of the most fascinating women who ever turned the brains of men. As for beauty, perhaps there are some handsomer, in her own theatre even; but there is a kind of loveliness about Mrs. Brandreth which I never saw in any one else. It isn't a question of eyes, or nose, or complexion, or figure. She breathes an atmosphere of beauty." Poetical," says the curate; "one would think you were among the men whose brains she has turned." "Not I. My part in life is rather that of observer of other men's follies than partaker in their delusions. I contrive to dispose of my surplus idiotcy in magazine articles." "Isn't your Mrs. Brandreth a woman with a history?" asks Dewrance. "I seem to remember having heard-” "There's a history in all men's lives.' Yes, they tell divers romantic legends of Mrs. Brandreth." "I believe your sulphur and saline springs are a gigantic humbug," cries Herman Westray, looking round him with the artist's love of the beautiful. "But those hills and this pure air might reanimate exhausted mankind on the brink of the grave. I'm very glad my good old doctor sent me here." "You look twice as good a man as you did "Antecedents rather discreditable than otherwhen you came, answers Dewrance. "I nev-wise," hazards the curate, who from the spiritual er saw such an exhausted specimen of humanity. altitude he inhabits bends his ear occasionally to You looked like a consumptive vampire." murmurs from the mundane level beneath. "I had been working six hours a day, or six hours a night, at literature for the last three years. That sort of thing does tell upon a man, especially when he tries to combine social enjoyment with intellectual labor-dines out three or four times a week, wastes his afternoons at garden parties, goes to the opera whenever the heavy swells sing, attends all first performances at the theatres, and so on; thus reducing his working time to the small hours between midnight and morning." "Dreadful!" cries Dewrance. you're alive." "I have not listened attentively to the various rumors about the lady," replies Herman, coolly. "But I believe she has been rather sinned against than sinning.' "I haven't been inside a theatre since I took orders," says Mr. Dewrance. "The opera, of course, is different. I take a seat in a friend's box now and then." They are close to the tent by this time, and the twanging of a harp within announces that the competition is in progress. They pay for "I wonder their tickets at a little wooden watch-box outside the tent, and then, instead of entering with the commonalty, go round to the back, and make their way straight to the platform, Mr. Dewrance being a privileged person, for whom a place is reserved among the magnates of the land. "Oh, that's habit. If I were to think of the unwholesomeness of my life, I dare say I should die. The quiet of the grave would seem preferable to such high pressure. But I take things easily." These magnates consist of a few country gen"You look like it," says Dewrance, with a side tlemen, with their wives and daughters, who ocglance at his friend's hollow cheeks and darkly cupy a double row of benches on the platform, circled eyes. and thence survey the crowded audience below. "Llandrysak has done me no end of good. | Mr. Morton Jones, the chairman; Mr. Slingford |