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OUR WAGER;

OR,

HOW THE MAJOR LOST AND WON.

BY OUIDA.

I.

INTRODUCES MAJOR TELFER OF THE 50TH DASHAWAY HUSSARS.

THE softest of lounging-chairs, an unexceptionable hubble-bubble bought at Benares, the last Bell's Life, the morning papers, chocolate milled to a T, and a breakfast worthy of Francatelli,-what sensible man can ask more to make him comfortable? All these was my chum, Hamilton Telfer, Major (50th Dashaway Hussars), enjoying, and yet he was in a frame of mind anything but mild and genial.

"The deuce take the whole sex!" said he, stroking his moustache savagely. "They're at the bottom of all the mischief going. The idea of my father at seventy-five, with hair as white as that poodle's, making such a fool of himself, when here am I, at six-and-thirty, unmarried; it's abominable, it's disgusting. A girl of twenty, taking in an old man of his for the sake of his moneyage,

"But are you sure, Telfer," said I, "that the affair's really on the tapis ?"

"I never

"Sure! Yes," said the major, with immeasurable disgust. saw her till last night, but the governor wrote no end of rhapsodies about her, and as I came upon them he was taking leave of her, holding her hand in his, and saying, 'I may write to you, may I not?' and the young hypocrite lifted her eyes so bewitchingly, 'Oh yes, I shall long so much to hear from you!' She coloured when she saw me-well she might! If she thinks she'll make a fool of my father, and reign paramount at Torwood, give me a mother-in-law sixteen years younger than myself, and fill the house and cumber the estates with a lot of wretched little brats, she'll find herself mistaken, for I'll prevent it, if I live."

"Don't be too sure of that," said I. "From what I know of Violet Tressillian, she's not the sort of girl to lure her quarry in vain."

"Of course she'll try hard," answered Telfer. "She comes of a race that always were poor and proud; she's an orphan, and hasn't a sou, and to catch a man like my father, worth 15,000l. a year, with the surety of a good dower and jointure house whenever he die, is one of the best things that could chance to her; but I'll be shot if she ever shall manage it."

colt

"Nous verrons. I bet you my roan filly Calceolaria against your Jockeyclub that before Christmas is out Violet Tressillian will be Violet Telfer."

"Done!" cried the major, stirring his chocolate fiercely. "You'll lose, Vane; Calceolaria will come to my stables as sure as this mouthpiece is made of amber. Whenever this scheming little actress changes her name, it shan't be to the same cognomen as mine. I say, it's getting deuced warm-one must begin to go somewhere. What do you say to

going abroad till the 12th? I've got three months' leave-that will give me one away, and two on the moor. Will you go?"

"Yes, if you like; town's emptying gradually, and it is confoundedly hot. Where shall it be?-Naples-Paris

"Paris in July! Heaven forbid ! Why, it would be worse than London in November. By Jove! I'll tell you where: let's go to Essellau." "And where may that be? Somewhere in the Arctic regions I hope, for I've spent half my worldly possessions already in sherry and seltzer and iced punch, and if I go where it's warmer still, I shall be utterly beggared.

"

"Essellau is in Swabia, as you ought to know by this, you Goth. It's Marc von Edenburgh's place, and a very jolly place, too, I can tell you; the sport's first-rate there, and the pig-sticking really splendid. He's just written to ask me to go, and take any fellows I like, as he's got some English people-some friends of his mother's. (A drawback that I wonder who they are.) Will you come, Vane? I can promise you some fun, if only at the trente-et-quarante tables in Pipesandbeersbad."

"Oh yes, I'll come," said I. "I hope the English won't be some horrid snobs he's picked up at some of the balls, who'll be scraping acquaintance with us when we come back."

come.

"No fear," said Telfer; "Marc's as English as you or I, and knows the good breed when he sees them. He'd keep as clear of the Smith, Brown, and Robinson style as we should. It's settled, then, you'll All right! I wish I could settle that confounded Violet, too, first. I hope nothing will happen while I'm in Essellau. I don't think it can. The Tressillian leaves town to-day with the Carterets, and the governor must stick here till parliament closes, and it's sure to be late this year."

With which consolatory reflection the Major rose, stretched himself, yawned, sighed, stroked his moustache, fitted on his lavender gloves, and rang to order his tilbury round.

Telfer was an only son, and when he heard it reported that his father intended to give him a belle-mère in a young lady as attractive as she was poor, who, if she caught him, would probably make a fool of the old gentleman in the widest sense of the word, he naturally swore very heartily, and anything but relished the idea. Hamilton Telfer, senior, had certainly been a good deal with Violet that season, and Violet, a girl poor as a rat and beautiful as Semele, talked to him, and sang to him, and rode with him more than she did with any of us; so people talked and talked, and said the old member would get caught, and the Major, when he heard it, waxed fiercely wroth at the folly his parent had fallen into while he'd been off the scene down at Dover with his troop, but, like a wise man, said nothing, knowing, both by experience and observation, that opposition in such affairs is like a patent Vesta among hayricks. Telfer was a particular chum of mine: we'd lounged about town, and shot on the moors, and campaigned in India together, and I don't believe there was a better soldier, a cooler head, a quicker eye, or a steadier hand in the service than he was. He was six-and-thirty now, and had seen life pretty well, I can tell you, for there was not a get-at-able corner of the globe that he hadn't looked at through his eye-glass. Tall

and muscular, with a stern, handsome face, with the prospect of Torwood (where there's some of the best shooting in England, I give you my word), and 15,000l. a year, Telfer was a great card in the matrimonial line, but hadn't let himself be played as yet, for the petty trickery the women used in trying to get him dealt to them disgusted him, and small wonder. Men liked him cordially, women thought him cold and sarcastic; and he was much more genial, I admit, at mess, or at lansquenet, or in the smoking-room of the U. S., than he was in boudoirs and ball-rooms, as the mere knowledge that mammas and their darlings were trying to hook him made him get on his stilts at once.

"I don't feel easy in my mind about the governor," said he, as we drove along to the South-Eastern station a few days after on our way to Essellau. "As I was bidding him good-by this morning, Soames brought him a letter in a woman's hand. Heaven knows he may have a score of fair correspondents for anything I care, but if I thought it was the Tressillian, devil take her"

"And the devil won't have had a prettier prize since Proserpine was stolen," said I.

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No, confound it, I saw she was handsome enough," swore the Major, disgusted; "and a pretty face always did make a fool of my father, according to his own telling. Well, thank God, I don't take that weakness after him. I never went mad about any woman. You've just as much control over love, if you like, as over a quiet shooting pony; and if it don't suit you to gallop, you can rein up and give over the sport. Any man who's anything of a philosopher needn't fall in love unless he likes." "Were you never in love, then, old boy?" I asked.

"Of course I have been. I've made love to no end of women in my time; but when one love was died out I took another, as I take a cigar, and never wept over the quenched ashes. You need never fall in love unless it's convenient, and as to caring for a girl who don't care for you, that's a contemptible weakness, and one I don't sympathise with at all. Come along, or the train will be off."

He went up to the carriages, opened a door, shut it hastily, and turned away with the frigid bow with which Telfer, in common with every other Briton, can say, "Go to the devil," as plainly as if he spoke.

66

"By Jove!" said I, "what's that eccentric move? Did you see the Medusa in that carriage, or a baby?"

"Something quite as bad," said he, curtly. "I saw the Tressillian and her aunt. For Heaven's sake let's get away from them. I'd rather have a special train, if it cost me a fortune, than travel with that girl, boxed up for four hours in the same compartment with such a little intrigante."

"Calm your mind, old fellow; if she's aiming at your governor she won't hit you. She can't be your wife and your mother-in-law both," laughed Fred Walsham, a good-natured little chap in the Carabiniers, a friend of Von Edenburgh, who was coming with us.

"I'll see her shot before she's either," said Telfer, fiercely stroking his moustache.

"Hush! the deuce! hold your tongue," said Walsham, giving him a push. For past us, so close that the curling plumes in her hat touched the Major's shoulder, floated the "little intrigante" in question, who'd

come out of her carriage to see where a pug of hers was put. She'd heard all we said, confound it, for her head was up, her colour bright, and she looked at Telfer proudly and disdainfully, with her dark eyes flashing. Telfer returned it to the full as haughtily, for he never shirked the consequences of his own actions ('pon my life, they looked like a great stag and a little greyhound challenging each other), and Violet swept away across the platform.

"You've made an enemy for life, Telfer," said Walsham, as we whisked along.

"So much the better, if I'm a rock ahead to warn her off a marriage with the governor," rejoined the Major, smoking, as he always did, under the officials' very noses. "I hope I shan't come across her again. If the Tressillian and I meet, we shall be about as amicable as a rat and a beagle. Take a weed, Fred. I do it on principle to resist unjust regulations. Why shouldn't we take a pipe if we like? A man whose olfactory nerves are so badly organised as to dislike Cavendish is too great a muff to be considered."

As ill luck would have it, when we crossed to Dover, who should cross, too, but the Tressillian and her party-aunt, cousins, maid, courier, and pug. Telfer wouldn't see them, but got on the poop, as far away as ever he could from the spot where Violet sat nursing her dog and reading a novel, provokingly calm and comfortable to the envious eyes of all the malades around her.

"Good Heavens!" said he, "was anything ever so provoking? Just because that girl's my particular aversion, she must haunt me like this. If she'd been anybody I wanted to meet, I should never have caught a glimpse of her. For mercy's sake, Vane, if you see a black hat and white feather anywhere again tell me, and we'll change the route immediately." Change the route we did, for, going on board the steamer at Dusseldorf, there, on the deck, stood the Tressillian. Telfer turned sharp on his heel, and went back as he came. "I'll be shot if I go down the Rhine with her. Let's cut across into France." Cut across we did, but we stopped at Brussels on our way; and when at last we caught sight of the tops of the fir-trees round Essellau, Telfer took a long whiff at his pipe with an air of contentment. "I should say we're safe now. She'll hardly come pig-sticking into the middle of Swabia."

II.

VIOLET TRESSILLIAN.

ESSELLAU was a very jolly place, with thick woods round it, and the river Beersbad running in sight; and his pretty sister, the Comtesse Virginie, his good wines, and good sport, made Von Edenburgh's a pleasant house to visit at. Marc himself, who is in the Austrian service (he was winged at Montebello the other day by a rascally Zouave, but he paid him off for it, as I hope his countrymen will eventually pay off all the Bonapartists for their galimatias)-Marc himself was a jolly fellow, a good host, a keen shot, and a capital écarté player, and made us enjoy ourselves at Essellau as he had done before, hunting and shooting with Telfer down at Torwood.

"I've some country women of yours here, Telfer," said Marc, after

we'd talked over his English loves, given him tidings of duchesses and danseuses, and messages from no end of pretty women that he'd flirted with the Christmas before. 66 They're some friends of my mother's, and when they were at Baden-Baden last year, Virginie struck up a desperate young lady attachment with one of them

"Are they good-looking ?-because, if they are, they may be drysalters' daughters, and I shan't care," interrupted Fred.

Telfer stroked his moustache with a contemptuous smile-he wouldn't have looked at a drysalter's daughter if she'd had all the beauty of Amphitrite.

"Come and see," said Marc. "Virginie will think you're neglecting her atrociously."

Horridly bored to be going to meet some Englishwomen who might turn out to be Smiths or Joneses, and would, to a dead certainty, spoil all his pleasure in pig-sticking, shooting, and écarté, by flirting with him whether he would or no, the Major strode along corridors and galleries after Von Edenburgh. When at length we reached the salon where Virginie and her mother and friends were, Telfer lifted his eyes from the ground as the door opened, started as if he'd been shot, and stepped back a pace or two, with an audible, "If that isn't the very devil!"

There, in a low chair, sat the Tressillian, graceful as a Sphakiote girl, with a toilet as perfect as her profile, dark hair, like waves of silk, and dark eyes, full of liquid light, that, when they looked irresistible, could do anything with any man that they liked. Violet certainly looked as unlike that unlucky ogre and scapegoat, the devil, as a young lady ever could. But worse than a score of demons was she in poor Telfer's eyes to have come out to Essellau only to be shut up in a countryhouse for a whole month with his pet aversion!-certainly it was a hard case, and the fierce lightning glance he flashed on her was pardonable under the circumstances. But nobody's more impassive than the Major: I've seen him charge down into the Sikhs with just the same calm, quiet expression as he'd wear smoking and reading a novel at home; so he soon rallied, bowed to the Tressillian, who gave him an inclination as cold as the North Pole, shook hands with her aunt and cousins (three women I hate : the mamma's the most dexterous of manoeuvrers, and the girls the arrantest of flirts), and then sat down to a little quiet chat with Virginie von Edenburgh, who's pretty, intelligent, and unaffected, though she's a belle at the Viennese court. Telfer was pleasant with the little comtesse ; he'd known her from childhood, and she was engaged to the colonel of Marc's troop, so that Telfer felt quite sure she'd no designs upon him, and talked to her sans gêne, though to have wholly abstained from bitterness and satire would have been an impossibility to him, with the obnoxious Tressillian seated within sight. Once he fixed her with his calm grey eyes, she met them with a proud flashing glance; Telfer gave back the defiance, and guerre à outrance was declared between them. It was plain to see that they hated one another by instinct, and I began to think Calceolaria wasn't so safe in my stables after all, for if the Major set his face against anything, his father, who pretty well worshipped him, would never venture to do it in opposition; he'd as soon think of leaving Torwood to the country, to be turned into an infirmary or a

museum.