LEVY PROMISES TO DO HIS BEST

XXXVII. BERNARD A PRISONER

XXXVIII. "THERE IS MY HAND. DARE YOU TAKE IT?"

XXXIX. MR. BENJAMIN LEVY IS BUSY

XL. A STRANGE BIRTHDAY PARTY

XLI. INNOCENT

XLII. AT LAST

THE NEW TENANT

CHAPTER I

FALCON'S NEST

Thurwell Court, by Thurwell-on-the-Sea, lay bathed in the quiet
freshness of an early morning. The dewdrops were still sparkling upon
the terraced lawns like little globules of flashing silver, and the
tumult of noisy songsters from the thick shrubberies alone broke the
sweet silence. The peacocks strutting about the grey stone balcony and
perched upon the worn balustrade were in deshabille, not being
accustomed to display their splendors to an empty paradise, and the few
fat blackbirds who were hopping about on the lawn did so in a desultory
manner, as though they were only half awake and had turned out under
protest. Stillness reigned everywhere, but it was the sweet hush of
slowly awakening day rather than the drowsy, languorous quiet of
exhausted afternoon. With one's eyes shut one could tell that the pulse
of day was only just beginning to beat. The pure atmosphere was buoyant
with the vigorous promise of morning, and gently laden with the mingled
perfumes of slowly opening flowers. There was life in the breathless
air.

The sunlight was everywhere. In the distance it lay upon the dark
hillside, played upon the deep yellow gorse and purple heather of the
moorland, and, further away still, flashed upon a long silver streak of
the German Ocean. In the old-fashioned gardens of the court it shone
upon luscious peaches hanging on the time-mellowed red-brick walls; lit
up the face and gleamed upon the hands of the stable clock, and warmed
the ancient heart of the stooping, grey-haired old gardener's help who,
with blinking eyes and hands tucked in his trousers pockets, was smoking
a matutinal pipe, seated on the wheelbarrow outside the tool shed.

Around the mansion itself it was very busy, casting a thousand sunbeams
upon its long line of oriel windows, and many quaint shadows of its
begabled roof upon the lawns and bright flower-beds below. On one of the
terraces a breakfast-table was laid for two, and here its splendour was
absolutely dazzling. It gleamed upon the sparkling silver, and the
snow-white tablecloth; shone with a delicate softness upon the
freshly-gathered fruit and brilliant flowers, and seemed to hover with a
gentl