Volume Two—Chapter Six.The Anchorite is Consulted Again.“I wonder whether I shall ever have any children of my own,” said John Huish; “and, if I do, whether I shall ever be so hard, cruel, and worldly to them as some people are. Money is very nice, and one would like to see one’s young folks well off; but how a mother and father can deliberately match a beautiful, innocent young girl with some old fellow because he is rich and has a title, is something beyond my comprehension. Sixty and twenty! Oh, it is a disgrace to our boasted civilisation!”John Huish’s breakfast was on the table in his snug room, and the coffee, French rolls, and delicately-brown ham looked enticing, but they did not tempt him. He had made several beginnings, such as taking off the cover that concealed the ham, opening his napkin, pouring out the steaming amber coffee, and the like; but he had touched nothing, for a letter he had received from Gertrude that morning had taken away his appetite.“Poor girl!” he mused; “suffering agonies, and I seem as if I can do nothing to help her. Money! Why have I not plenty of money? I always felt well enough off till this happened, and then all at once I discovered that I was a poor man.”He wrinkled up his brow, and let his cheek down upon his hand, with his elbow in dangerous proximity to his coffee.“I was dreaming of going up to Stonor’s again last night. Good heavens! Is it likely that I shall ever become like one of those poor fellows—unhinged, doing all kinds of things involuntarily? There must be something wrong with me; only Stonor spoke as he did, like all doctors do, to take one’s thoughts away from one’s malady. It is so strange, that perhaps I ought not to think any more of my poor darling; only Stonor encouraged me so. It would be a sin against her to marry if I really am wrong. But am I? Let me think.“Robson, for some reason, cut me dead yesterday; but then he is one of Lady Millet’s intimates. Then Rock Anderson apologised for not paying me that money. What money? I remember no debt. It’s softening of the brain, that’s what it is—memory gradually going; and yet I think of Gertrude and dare—Well, the doctor said I was all right; he ought to know. He said it was only a lapse of memory now and then.“But there are so many things which are so puzzling. Friends seem to be dropping away from me. Man after man with whom I used to be intimate cuts me dead.“No, no, no!” he cried impatiently; “I will not think of it. And as to that woman who came to me and made me worry my brains, it must have been some town trick.”But the cloud hung over him still, various little matters connected with his daily life clinging together like snowflakes from that cloud, till the recollection of his position with regard to Gertrude came back, and her face shone through the darkness to dissipate the mental mist.“Yes!” he cried, brightening up; “the doctor must be right. He encouraged me in my ideas; and my darling will keep away all these wretched morbid fancies. But what am I to do?“Act!” he cried sharply; “act!—not sit down here like a morbid, dreamy fool, and let that old woman have her way in making two people wretched for life. I’ll go to Captain Millet’s and see him. Not so easy, though,” he said, laughing. “Never mind; I’ll go. He must have plenty of influence. Oh, of course; and if he fails, why, there’s the doctor. Hang it! he might interfere, and put in a certificate saying that it would be the death of the poor girl if she is forced into a wedding with that fellow. But the old man told me to—Oh, what a hesitating fool I am!”Meanwhile, matters were progressing in no very pleasant way at the Millet’s. Renée made no confidant of her mother, but clung to her sister, from whom Lady Millet heard a portion of the trouble that had fallen upon her child.“There, I can’t help it,” said her ladyship. “I do everything I can for you children, and if matters go wrong through your own imprudence, you must put up with the consequences. There, there, it is a silly young married couple’s piece of quarrelling, and they must make it up as fast as they can.”“But, mamma!” said Gertrude.“Don’t argue with me, Gertrude. Renée must have been imprudent, and she must take the consequences. She had no business to encourage Major Malpas to visit her; and I trust that this will be a warning to you when you are married.”“Mamma!”“Oh yes, I understand you, Gertrude,” said her ladyship; “but I know your obstinacy, and I maintain that it would be utter madness for you to see that man after your marriage.”“But, mamma, you would not think of pressing on that affair now Renée is in such trouble.”“What has that to do with it, child? What has Renée’s trouble to do with your marriage? Lord Henry has been put off long enough. I wish you to accept him; and I am convinced that a word, even a look, would make him propose.”“Oh, mamma!”“Gertrude, I insist! I know he likes you, and if he is to be kept back like this, a scheming woman will secure him for some creature or another. Why, it is nearly a month since he called, and no wonder, after your icy conduct! I shall take steps at once. Let me see, a dinner-party will be best. There, I’m going out; I’ll resume the subject on my return.”“Oh, mamma, mamma!” cried Gertrude as soon as she was alone. “But I will not; I’d sooner die.”Lady Millet was put off from resuming the subject on her return, and during her absence Gertrude had relieved her troubled heart by writing a letter of no small importance to herself.Next day she was driven to Chesham Place with Lady Millet, who left her there while her ladyship went to attend to some shopping.“Not been back?” said Gertrude eagerly, as she gazed in her sister’s pale face.“No, Gertrude, not yet,” replied Renée; “but he will come soon, I hope,” she continued, with a sigh full of resignation; “I am waiting. And now about your troubles. Is this affair to take place?”“So mamma says,” replied Gertrude, with a bitter smile. “Like you, I am to have an establishment.”“Oh, Gertrude, sister!” whispered Renée, kissing her. “But it makes it less bitter, now that Mr Huish has proved to be—”Gertrude laid her hand upon her lips.“Hush, Renée!” she cried. “I do not know what you may have heard, and I will not listen to it. Neither will I sit and hear a word against Mr Huish.”“I will not speak against him, dear,” said Renée sadly; and she gazed piteously in her sister’s eyes.“And you, Renée? My poor darling! your position gives me the heartache.”“I shall wait, Gertrude. Some day he will find out my innocence and return to ask my pardon. I can wait till then. You see, dear, that, like you, I have faith, and can abide my time.”In place of returning home, Gertrude persuaded her sister to accompany her to her uncle’s, where Vidler admitted them both directly, and showed them up to the darkened drawing-room.It was a curious change from the bright sunshine of the street to the gloom within; but it seemed to accord well with the sadness in the sisters’ breasts, and they sat and talked to the old man, playing to him as well, till it drew near the time for them to return to their respective homes.All this time the pale, almost ghostly-looking hand was playing about in the little opening, and indicating by its nervous action that something was passing in the ordinarily calm mind of its owner.“Renée, my child,” he said at last, “I can hear that you are in trouble.”There was no reply for a few moments, and then she said softly: “Yes, dear uncle.”“I do not ask you for your confidence,” he said, “for if it is some trouble between you and your husband it should be sacred. I dreaded this,” he muttered to himself. “Gertrude, my child, I would not, if I could help it, do anything to encourage you to act in disobedience to your parents’ wishes, but be careful how you enter on this proposed alliance. I like it not, I like it not.”Gertrude did not answer, only stole to the opening, and pressed her warm fresh lips to the cold white hand. Then the young people took their leave, and the yellow-looking house in Wimpole Street resumed its wonted aspect of gloom.
“I wonder whether I shall ever have any children of my own,” said John Huish; “and, if I do, whether I shall ever be so hard, cruel, and worldly to them as some people are. Money is very nice, and one would like to see one’s young folks well off; but how a mother and father can deliberately match a beautiful, innocent young girl with some old fellow because he is rich and has a title, is something beyond my comprehension. Sixty and twenty! Oh, it is a disgrace to our boasted civilisation!”
John Huish’s breakfast was on the table in his snug room, and the coffee, French rolls, and delicately-brown ham looked enticing, but they did not tempt him. He had made several beginnings, such as taking off the cover that concealed the ham, opening his napkin, pouring out the steaming amber coffee, and the like; but he had touched nothing, for a letter he had received from Gertrude that morning had taken away his appetite.
“Poor girl!” he mused; “suffering agonies, and I seem as if I can do nothing to help her. Money! Why have I not plenty of money? I always felt well enough off till this happened, and then all at once I discovered that I was a poor man.”
He wrinkled up his brow, and let his cheek down upon his hand, with his elbow in dangerous proximity to his coffee.
“I was dreaming of going up to Stonor’s again last night. Good heavens! Is it likely that I shall ever become like one of those poor fellows—unhinged, doing all kinds of things involuntarily? There must be something wrong with me; only Stonor spoke as he did, like all doctors do, to take one’s thoughts away from one’s malady. It is so strange, that perhaps I ought not to think any more of my poor darling; only Stonor encouraged me so. It would be a sin against her to marry if I really am wrong. But am I? Let me think.
“Robson, for some reason, cut me dead yesterday; but then he is one of Lady Millet’s intimates. Then Rock Anderson apologised for not paying me that money. What money? I remember no debt. It’s softening of the brain, that’s what it is—memory gradually going; and yet I think of Gertrude and dare—Well, the doctor said I was all right; he ought to know. He said it was only a lapse of memory now and then.
“But there are so many things which are so puzzling. Friends seem to be dropping away from me. Man after man with whom I used to be intimate cuts me dead.
“No, no, no!” he cried impatiently; “I will not think of it. And as to that woman who came to me and made me worry my brains, it must have been some town trick.”
But the cloud hung over him still, various little matters connected with his daily life clinging together like snowflakes from that cloud, till the recollection of his position with regard to Gertrude came back, and her face shone through the darkness to dissipate the mental mist.
“Yes!” he cried, brightening up; “the doctor must be right. He encouraged me in my ideas; and my darling will keep away all these wretched morbid fancies. But what am I to do?
“Act!” he cried sharply; “act!—not sit down here like a morbid, dreamy fool, and let that old woman have her way in making two people wretched for life. I’ll go to Captain Millet’s and see him. Not so easy, though,” he said, laughing. “Never mind; I’ll go. He must have plenty of influence. Oh, of course; and if he fails, why, there’s the doctor. Hang it! he might interfere, and put in a certificate saying that it would be the death of the poor girl if she is forced into a wedding with that fellow. But the old man told me to—Oh, what a hesitating fool I am!”
Meanwhile, matters were progressing in no very pleasant way at the Millet’s. Renée made no confidant of her mother, but clung to her sister, from whom Lady Millet heard a portion of the trouble that had fallen upon her child.
“There, I can’t help it,” said her ladyship. “I do everything I can for you children, and if matters go wrong through your own imprudence, you must put up with the consequences. There, there, it is a silly young married couple’s piece of quarrelling, and they must make it up as fast as they can.”
“But, mamma!” said Gertrude.
“Don’t argue with me, Gertrude. Renée must have been imprudent, and she must take the consequences. She had no business to encourage Major Malpas to visit her; and I trust that this will be a warning to you when you are married.”
“Mamma!”
“Oh yes, I understand you, Gertrude,” said her ladyship; “but I know your obstinacy, and I maintain that it would be utter madness for you to see that man after your marriage.”
“But, mamma, you would not think of pressing on that affair now Renée is in such trouble.”
“What has that to do with it, child? What has Renée’s trouble to do with your marriage? Lord Henry has been put off long enough. I wish you to accept him; and I am convinced that a word, even a look, would make him propose.”
“Oh, mamma!”
“Gertrude, I insist! I know he likes you, and if he is to be kept back like this, a scheming woman will secure him for some creature or another. Why, it is nearly a month since he called, and no wonder, after your icy conduct! I shall take steps at once. Let me see, a dinner-party will be best. There, I’m going out; I’ll resume the subject on my return.”
“Oh, mamma, mamma!” cried Gertrude as soon as she was alone. “But I will not; I’d sooner die.”
Lady Millet was put off from resuming the subject on her return, and during her absence Gertrude had relieved her troubled heart by writing a letter of no small importance to herself.
Next day she was driven to Chesham Place with Lady Millet, who left her there while her ladyship went to attend to some shopping.
“Not been back?” said Gertrude eagerly, as she gazed in her sister’s pale face.
“No, Gertrude, not yet,” replied Renée; “but he will come soon, I hope,” she continued, with a sigh full of resignation; “I am waiting. And now about your troubles. Is this affair to take place?”
“So mamma says,” replied Gertrude, with a bitter smile. “Like you, I am to have an establishment.”
“Oh, Gertrude, sister!” whispered Renée, kissing her. “But it makes it less bitter, now that Mr Huish has proved to be—”
Gertrude laid her hand upon her lips.
“Hush, Renée!” she cried. “I do not know what you may have heard, and I will not listen to it. Neither will I sit and hear a word against Mr Huish.”
“I will not speak against him, dear,” said Renée sadly; and she gazed piteously in her sister’s eyes.
“And you, Renée? My poor darling! your position gives me the heartache.”
“I shall wait, Gertrude. Some day he will find out my innocence and return to ask my pardon. I can wait till then. You see, dear, that, like you, I have faith, and can abide my time.”
In place of returning home, Gertrude persuaded her sister to accompany her to her uncle’s, where Vidler admitted them both directly, and showed them up to the darkened drawing-room.
It was a curious change from the bright sunshine of the street to the gloom within; but it seemed to accord well with the sadness in the sisters’ breasts, and they sat and talked to the old man, playing to him as well, till it drew near the time for them to return to their respective homes.
All this time the pale, almost ghostly-looking hand was playing about in the little opening, and indicating by its nervous action that something was passing in the ordinarily calm mind of its owner.
“Renée, my child,” he said at last, “I can hear that you are in trouble.”
There was no reply for a few moments, and then she said softly: “Yes, dear uncle.”
“I do not ask you for your confidence,” he said, “for if it is some trouble between you and your husband it should be sacred. I dreaded this,” he muttered to himself. “Gertrude, my child, I would not, if I could help it, do anything to encourage you to act in disobedience to your parents’ wishes, but be careful how you enter on this proposed alliance. I like it not, I like it not.”
Gertrude did not answer, only stole to the opening, and pressed her warm fresh lips to the cold white hand. Then the young people took their leave, and the yellow-looking house in Wimpole Street resumed its wonted aspect of gloom.
Volume Two—Chapter Seven.Brought to a Double Head.“Ah, my dearest boy!” cried Lady Millet, an evening or two later; “I did not expect you.”“’Spose not,” said Dick shortly; “but I’ve come, all the same.”“You want money, sir, I suppose; and I will not have papa worried.”“No, I don’t want money. I’ve come up on particular business.”“Business! Great heavens, my dear child! what is the matter?”“Well, I don’t know yet. But, I say, is Gertrude going to marry John Huish?”“Certainly not—impossible! I have other views for your sister.”“And what are they?”“This is a subject I should discuss with your papa, Richard; but you are a man grown now, and I am sorry to say papa does not afford me the support I should like, so I will tell you in confidence. I believe Lord Henry Moorpark will propose directly.”“Do you? I don’t.”“What do you mean, Dick?” cried her ladyship sharply.“That’s what has brought me up to town. Lady Littletown has been stealing a march on you, and is trying to egg him on to propose elsewhere.”“The wretched scheming creature! Oh! No, no, it is impossible. You are mistaken, my boy.”“Oh no, I’m not. The old chap is quite on there at Hampton Court. But of course he has no chance.”“Stop! At Hampton Court? Who is the lady?”“One of the Miss Dymcoxes’ nieces, living with her aunts in the Palace.”“Philippa Dymcox’s niece?”“Yes.”“Not a Miss Riversley?”“That’s the name, mamma.”“How horrible!—Riversleys! Why, they are connected with the Huishes. That Mr John Huish’s father married a Miss Riversley.”“Very likely,” said Dick Millet coolly. “That’s the lady, all the same—Miss Dymcox’s niece.”“The Dymcoxes! the paupers! Lady Littletown’s doing! Oh, that woman!”“You don’t like her, then, mamma?”“Like her? Ugh!” exclaimed Lady Millet in tones of disgust; “I can soon put a stop to that, my son.” Her ladyship compressed her lips. “But it is all Gertrude’s fault, behaving so ridiculously about that John Huish. I don’t know what she may not have said to Lord Henry the other night. He was almost at her feet, and now he shall be quite. John Huish indeed!—a man going hopelessly to the bad,” Her ladyship rang. “There is no time to be lost. I must act at once. Lord Henry Moorpark must be brought back to his allegiance. Send Miss Gertrude’s maid to ask her to step down here,” continued her ladyship to the servant who answered the bell.“What are you going to do?”“Arrange for invitations to be sent out at once. Oh, Dick, my boy, the stories I have heard lately about Mr Huish’s gambling and dissipation are terrible! Gertrude has had a marvellous escape. It is very shocking, for your uncle and father have known the Huishes all their lives. Well?”“Richards says, my lady, that Miss Millet went out an hour ago.”“Out? Gone out?”“Yes, my lady; and Richards found this note left on the dressing-table, my lady, stuck down on the cushion with a pin.”“Great heavens!” cried Lady Millet, snatching the note from a salver; “there, leave the room.”The man bowed and moved to the door, in time to open it for Sir Humphrey, who stood beaming at his son, while her ladyship tore open the letter and read:“Dear Mamma,—I cannot marry Lord Henry Moorpark. Good-bye.”“That’s all!” cried her ladyship in a perfect wail. “What does it mean?”“Looks suspicious,” said Dick. “Hullo!” he continued, as the servant reopened the door. “Can’t see visitors.”“Mr Frank Morrison, sir,” said the man, who looked rather scared at seeing her ladyship sink upon a couch, where Sir Humphrey began to fan her.“What the deuce does he want?” grumbled Dick. “Hullo, Frank! I was coming to see you about that row with our Renée. Gertrude wrote and told me.”“My wife here?” said Morrison, who was a good deal excited by wine.“What, Renée? No!”“Damn!” cried the young husband, dropping upon a chair, and looking from one to the other.“Something fresh, then?” cried Dick, growing excited. “Here, why the devil don’t you speak, man?”“Yes, yes! why don’t you speak?” cried Lady Millet piteously. “Oh, Frank dear, what news? Have you seen Gertrude?”“No,” he said thickly. “I want Renée.”“Where is she? Speak, I conjure you!” cried her ladyship.“Don’t know,” said Morrison, glancing round. “Haven’t been home for days. Went home this afternoon. Had some words and came away again.”“Well, well, go on! I saw you playing billiards at the club.”“Yes,” said Morrison, whose brain was clouded with days of excess. “Went home again just now. Going to make it up, and she’d gone. Where is she? Want her directly.”Dick stood thinking for a few moments, while her ladyship looked at him as if imploring him to speak.“She’s in it, p’raps,” he said. “Look here, Frank, can you understand me, or have you got D.T. too bad?”“Yes, I understand,” said the young man thickly.“Gertrude’s gone away. We think your wife must be in the plot.”“No,” said Morrison slowly, as he gave his head a shake to clear it, and stood up angry and fierce, while the others hung upon his words as being likely to dispel their fears. “No, poor girl! too much trouble. I’m a villain,” he groaned, “and I struck her to-night; but—but,” he cried excitedly, “she deceived me. Gone with Malpas. She’s false as hell!”“It’s a lie!” cried Dick fiercely. “Here, father, see to my mother. It’s a lie, I say; and you, Frank Morrison, you’re a cad to dare to—Ah!” said the lad, uttering a shrill cry, and he had just time to drive up a pistol as it exploded, and save his brother-in-law’s brains from being scattered on the wall.Then there was a fierce struggle, as Frank Morrison strove to direct the revolver at his temples once more, and Dick fought with him bravely till overpowered; but two of the frightened servants ran in, and with their help the madman was secured and held down till the arrival of the nearest doctor, a messenger having been also sent for Dr Stonor, who arrived a couple of hours later; and between them the excitement of the would-be suicide was somewhat allayed, though he was still half mad.It was the old story—days and days of heavy use of stimulants, till the fevered madness that generally comes in its wake had seized upon an already too excited brain; and it was only by the use of the strongest measures that the medical men were able to restrain their patient’s violence, as he rambled on wildly hour after hour, the burden of his incoherent mutterings being, “My wife! my wife!”
“Ah, my dearest boy!” cried Lady Millet, an evening or two later; “I did not expect you.”
“’Spose not,” said Dick shortly; “but I’ve come, all the same.”
“You want money, sir, I suppose; and I will not have papa worried.”
“No, I don’t want money. I’ve come up on particular business.”
“Business! Great heavens, my dear child! what is the matter?”
“Well, I don’t know yet. But, I say, is Gertrude going to marry John Huish?”
“Certainly not—impossible! I have other views for your sister.”
“And what are they?”
“This is a subject I should discuss with your papa, Richard; but you are a man grown now, and I am sorry to say papa does not afford me the support I should like, so I will tell you in confidence. I believe Lord Henry Moorpark will propose directly.”
“Do you? I don’t.”
“What do you mean, Dick?” cried her ladyship sharply.
“That’s what has brought me up to town. Lady Littletown has been stealing a march on you, and is trying to egg him on to propose elsewhere.”
“The wretched scheming creature! Oh! No, no, it is impossible. You are mistaken, my boy.”
“Oh no, I’m not. The old chap is quite on there at Hampton Court. But of course he has no chance.”
“Stop! At Hampton Court? Who is the lady?”
“One of the Miss Dymcoxes’ nieces, living with her aunts in the Palace.”
“Philippa Dymcox’s niece?”
“Yes.”
“Not a Miss Riversley?”
“That’s the name, mamma.”
“How horrible!—Riversleys! Why, they are connected with the Huishes. That Mr John Huish’s father married a Miss Riversley.”
“Very likely,” said Dick Millet coolly. “That’s the lady, all the same—Miss Dymcox’s niece.”
“The Dymcoxes! the paupers! Lady Littletown’s doing! Oh, that woman!”
“You don’t like her, then, mamma?”
“Like her? Ugh!” exclaimed Lady Millet in tones of disgust; “I can soon put a stop to that, my son.” Her ladyship compressed her lips. “But it is all Gertrude’s fault, behaving so ridiculously about that John Huish. I don’t know what she may not have said to Lord Henry the other night. He was almost at her feet, and now he shall be quite. John Huish indeed!—a man going hopelessly to the bad,” Her ladyship rang. “There is no time to be lost. I must act at once. Lord Henry Moorpark must be brought back to his allegiance. Send Miss Gertrude’s maid to ask her to step down here,” continued her ladyship to the servant who answered the bell.
“What are you going to do?”
“Arrange for invitations to be sent out at once. Oh, Dick, my boy, the stories I have heard lately about Mr Huish’s gambling and dissipation are terrible! Gertrude has had a marvellous escape. It is very shocking, for your uncle and father have known the Huishes all their lives. Well?”
“Richards says, my lady, that Miss Millet went out an hour ago.”
“Out? Gone out?”
“Yes, my lady; and Richards found this note left on the dressing-table, my lady, stuck down on the cushion with a pin.”
“Great heavens!” cried Lady Millet, snatching the note from a salver; “there, leave the room.”
The man bowed and moved to the door, in time to open it for Sir Humphrey, who stood beaming at his son, while her ladyship tore open the letter and read:
“Dear Mamma,—I cannot marry Lord Henry Moorpark. Good-bye.”
“Dear Mamma,—I cannot marry Lord Henry Moorpark. Good-bye.”
“That’s all!” cried her ladyship in a perfect wail. “What does it mean?”
“Looks suspicious,” said Dick. “Hullo!” he continued, as the servant reopened the door. “Can’t see visitors.”
“Mr Frank Morrison, sir,” said the man, who looked rather scared at seeing her ladyship sink upon a couch, where Sir Humphrey began to fan her.
“What the deuce does he want?” grumbled Dick. “Hullo, Frank! I was coming to see you about that row with our Renée. Gertrude wrote and told me.”
“My wife here?” said Morrison, who was a good deal excited by wine.
“What, Renée? No!”
“Damn!” cried the young husband, dropping upon a chair, and looking from one to the other.
“Something fresh, then?” cried Dick, growing excited. “Here, why the devil don’t you speak, man?”
“Yes, yes! why don’t you speak?” cried Lady Millet piteously. “Oh, Frank dear, what news? Have you seen Gertrude?”
“No,” he said thickly. “I want Renée.”
“Where is she? Speak, I conjure you!” cried her ladyship.
“Don’t know,” said Morrison, glancing round. “Haven’t been home for days. Went home this afternoon. Had some words and came away again.”
“Well, well, go on! I saw you playing billiards at the club.”
“Yes,” said Morrison, whose brain was clouded with days of excess. “Went home again just now. Going to make it up, and she’d gone. Where is she? Want her directly.”
Dick stood thinking for a few moments, while her ladyship looked at him as if imploring him to speak.
“She’s in it, p’raps,” he said. “Look here, Frank, can you understand me, or have you got D.T. too bad?”
“Yes, I understand,” said the young man thickly.
“Gertrude’s gone away. We think your wife must be in the plot.”
“No,” said Morrison slowly, as he gave his head a shake to clear it, and stood up angry and fierce, while the others hung upon his words as being likely to dispel their fears. “No, poor girl! too much trouble. I’m a villain,” he groaned, “and I struck her to-night; but—but,” he cried excitedly, “she deceived me. Gone with Malpas. She’s false as hell!”
“It’s a lie!” cried Dick fiercely. “Here, father, see to my mother. It’s a lie, I say; and you, Frank Morrison, you’re a cad to dare to—Ah!” said the lad, uttering a shrill cry, and he had just time to drive up a pistol as it exploded, and save his brother-in-law’s brains from being scattered on the wall.
Then there was a fierce struggle, as Frank Morrison strove to direct the revolver at his temples once more, and Dick fought with him bravely till overpowered; but two of the frightened servants ran in, and with their help the madman was secured and held down till the arrival of the nearest doctor, a messenger having been also sent for Dr Stonor, who arrived a couple of hours later; and between them the excitement of the would-be suicide was somewhat allayed, though he was still half mad.
It was the old story—days and days of heavy use of stimulants, till the fevered madness that generally comes in its wake had seized upon an already too excited brain; and it was only by the use of the strongest measures that the medical men were able to restrain their patient’s violence, as he rambled on wildly hour after hour, the burden of his incoherent mutterings being, “My wife! my wife!”
Volume Two—Chapter Eight.Dick Millet Feels Grown Up.“Bad?” said Dr Stonor, when he was left alone to attend his patient at Sir Humphrey’s. “Yes, of course he is bad—very bad. But I don’t call this illness. He must suffer. Men who drink always do.”“But her ladyship, Stonor?” said Sir Humphrey; “will you come and see her now?”“No,” said the doctor roughly. “What for? Nothing the matter. She can cure herself whenever she likes. What are you going to do about your sister, soldier boy?”“I—I don’t know,” replied Dick. “Ought I to fetch her back?”“Yes—no—can’t say,” said the doctor. “Hang this man, how strong he is! Look here, Dick, my boy: here’s a lesson for you. You will be a man some day. When you are, don’t go and poison yourself with drink till your brain revolts and sets up a government of its own. Look at this: the man’s as mad as a hatter, and I shall have to nearly poison him with strong drugs to calm him down. A wild revolutionary government, with death and destruction running riot. Think your sister has gone with John Huish?”“I’m afraid so,” said Dick, for Sir Humphrey seemed utterly unnerved.“Don’t see anything to be afraid of, boy. John Huish is a gentleman.”“I’m afraid not,” said Dick hotly; “and it isn’t gentlemanly to act as he has done about my sister.”“I shall have to get a strait-waistcoat for this fellow. About your sister. Bah! Human nature. Wait till you get old enough to fall in love, and some lady—mamma, say—wants to marry your pretty little Psyche to an old man. How then, my young Cupid?”Dick changed colour like a girl.“I hold to John Huish being a thorough gentleman, my boy. He’s all right. I wish Renée’s husband was as good a man. Yes, I mean you—you drunken, mad idiot I’m going to bring you round, and when I’ve done so, I hope, Dick, if he ever dares to say a word again about your sister Renée—”“You’ve heard then?”“Heard? Of course. Doctors hear and know everything. Parson’s nowhere beside a doctor. People don’t tell the parson all the truth: they always keep a little bit back. They tell the doctor all because they know he can see right through them. Lie still, stupid. Ha! he’s calming down.”“Isn’t he worse, Stonor?” asked Sir Humphrey.“No; not a bit. And as I was saying, if, when he gets on his legs again, he dares to say a word against his wife, knock him down. I’ll make him so weak it will be quite easy.”“Well, he deserves it,” said Dick.“Of course he does. So do you, for thinking ill of your sister. I’ll be bound to say, if you sent to Wimpole Street, you’d find the poor girls there soaking pocket-handkerchiefs.”“By Jove! yes,” cried Dick, starting at the doctor’s suggestion. “Why, of course. Doctor, you’ve hit it! Depend upon it, they’re gone to Uncle Robert’s, father.”“Think so, my boy, eh?—think so?” said the old gentleman. “It would be very dull and gloomy.”“Nonsense!” said the doctor. “My dear boy, the more I think of it, the more likely it seems to me that they have gone there.”“Yes; that’s it, doctor. Guv’nor, I don’t like to be hard on you, but the doctor’s a very old friend. It’s a nice thing—isn’t it?—that our girls should have to go to Uncle Robert’s for the protection they cannot find here?”“Yes, my dear boy, it is, it is,” said the old man querulously; “but I can’t help it. Her ladyship took the reins as soon as we were married, and she’s held them very tightly ever since.”“Well, we’ll go and see. You’ll stay with Frank Morrison, doctor?”“Stay, sir? Yes, I will. Think I’m going to be dragged down here from Highgate for nothing? I’ll make Master Morrison play the shoddy-devil in his Yorkshire mill for something. He shall have such a bill as shall astonish him.”“Here, fetch a cab,” shouted Dick to the man who answered the bell; and soon after the jangling vehicle was taking them to Wimpole Street.It was four o’clock, and broad daylight, as the cab drew up at Captain Millet’s door, when, in answer to a ring which Dick expected it would take half an hour to get attended to, the door was opened directly by Vidler.“You were expecting us, then?” said Dick, as the little man put his head on one side, and glanced from the young officer to his father, and back again.“Yes, sir. Master said you might come at any time, so I sat up.”“All right, father; they’re here. What time did they come, Vidler?”“They, sir?”“Yes—my sisters,” said Dick impatiently. “What time did they come?”“Miss Renée came here about half-past ten, sir.”“There, dad,” whispered Dick. “And Frank swore she’d gone off with Malpas. I knew it wasn’t true. He wouldn’t insult a brother officer like that.”“I’m very glad, my boy—I’m very glad,” said Sir Humphrey feebly; and Dick turned to Vidler again.“And Miss Gertrude, what time did she get here?”“Miss Gertrude, sir?”“Don’t be a stupid old idiot!” cried Dick excitedly. “I say—what—time—did—my—sister—Gertrude-get here?”“She has not been here, sir,” replied the little man—“not to-night.”Dick looked blankly at his father, and, in spite of his determination not to believe the story suggested about his sister, it seemed to try and force itself upon his brain.“Where is Mrs Morrison?” he cried at last.“Lying down, sir. Salome is watching by her. She seemed in great distress, sir, and,” he added in a whisper, “we think master came out of his room and went to her when we had gone down.”“Poor Robert!” muttered Sir Humphrey.“Master’s very much distressed about her, gentlemen. Miss Renée is a very great favourite of his.”“Is my uncle awake, do you think?”“I think so, sir,” was the reply.“Ask him if he will say a few words to my father and me. Tell him we are in great trouble.”The little man bowed and went upstairs, returning at the end of a minute or two to request them to walk up.“Last time I was here,” thought Dick, “I asked him for a couple of tenners, and he told me never to come near him again. A stingy old hunks! But, there, he’s kind to the girls.”The little panel opened as Vidler closed the door, and Sir Humphrey, looking very old, and grey of hair and face, sat looking at it, leaving his son to open the conversation.“Well, Humphrey, what is it?” said the voice behind the wainscoting.“How do you do, Bob?” began the old gentleman. “I—I—Richard, my boy, tell your uncle; I’m too weak and upset.”“We’re in great trouble, uncle,” began Dick sharply.“Yes, I know,” said the voice. “Renée has fled to me for protection from her husband. You did well amongst you. Poor child!”“Hang it all, uncle, don’t talk like that!” cried Dick impetuously. “You ought to know that we had nothing to do with it. Help us; don’t scold us.”“I am helping you,” said the Captain. “Renée stays here with me till she can be sure of a happy home. And, look here,” he continued, growing in firmness, “she has told me everything. If you are a man, you will call out anyone who dares say a word against her fame.”“It’s all very well, uncle,” said Dick; “but this is 18—, and not your young days. No one has a word to say against Renée. But look here, uncle, that isn’t all. Gertrude has gone off.”“With John Huish, of course. Ah, Humphrey, how strangely Fate works her ways!”“But, uncle, they say John Huish has turned out an utter swindler and scamp. Last thing I heard was that he had been expelled from his club.”“Let them talk,” said Captain Millet quietly. “I say it cannot be true.”“But, Bob,” faltered Sir Humphrey weakly, “they do make out a very bad case against him.”“Then you and your boy can take up the cudgels on his behalf. He is son and brother now. There, I am weary. Go.”“But Renée—we must see her.”“No; let the poor girl rest. When you can find her a decent home, if she wishes it, she can come.”The little wicket was closed with a sharp snap, and father and son gazed at each other in the gloomy room.“Come back home, Dick,” said Sir Humphrey feebly. “And take warning, my boy: be a bachelor. Ladies in every shape and form are a great mistake.”Dick Millet thought of the glowing charms of Clotilde and Marie Dymcox, but he said nothing, only hinted to his father that he ought to give Vidler a sovereign; and this done, they went back into the cab.Half an hour later they were back in the room where Frank Morrison lay talking wildly in a loud, husky voice.“Oh, well, so much the better,” said the doctor, when he heard all. “Capital calming place for your sister at your uncle’s. And as for Gertrude—bless her sweet face!—your uncle must be right. Bet a guinea he knew beforehand. I wish her and John Huish joy, he’ll never make her leave her home, and drink himself into such a state as this.”“I hope not,” thought Dick; but just then some of the ugly rumours he had heard crossed his mind, and he had his doubts.“Precious hard on a fellow,” he said to himself, “two sisters going off like that! I wonder what Glen and the other fellows will say. Suppose fate forced me to do something of the same kind!”
“Bad?” said Dr Stonor, when he was left alone to attend his patient at Sir Humphrey’s. “Yes, of course he is bad—very bad. But I don’t call this illness. He must suffer. Men who drink always do.”
“But her ladyship, Stonor?” said Sir Humphrey; “will you come and see her now?”
“No,” said the doctor roughly. “What for? Nothing the matter. She can cure herself whenever she likes. What are you going to do about your sister, soldier boy?”
“I—I don’t know,” replied Dick. “Ought I to fetch her back?”
“Yes—no—can’t say,” said the doctor. “Hang this man, how strong he is! Look here, Dick, my boy: here’s a lesson for you. You will be a man some day. When you are, don’t go and poison yourself with drink till your brain revolts and sets up a government of its own. Look at this: the man’s as mad as a hatter, and I shall have to nearly poison him with strong drugs to calm him down. A wild revolutionary government, with death and destruction running riot. Think your sister has gone with John Huish?”
“I’m afraid so,” said Dick, for Sir Humphrey seemed utterly unnerved.
“Don’t see anything to be afraid of, boy. John Huish is a gentleman.”
“I’m afraid not,” said Dick hotly; “and it isn’t gentlemanly to act as he has done about my sister.”
“I shall have to get a strait-waistcoat for this fellow. About your sister. Bah! Human nature. Wait till you get old enough to fall in love, and some lady—mamma, say—wants to marry your pretty little Psyche to an old man. How then, my young Cupid?”
Dick changed colour like a girl.
“I hold to John Huish being a thorough gentleman, my boy. He’s all right. I wish Renée’s husband was as good a man. Yes, I mean you—you drunken, mad idiot I’m going to bring you round, and when I’ve done so, I hope, Dick, if he ever dares to say a word again about your sister Renée—”
“You’ve heard then?”
“Heard? Of course. Doctors hear and know everything. Parson’s nowhere beside a doctor. People don’t tell the parson all the truth: they always keep a little bit back. They tell the doctor all because they know he can see right through them. Lie still, stupid. Ha! he’s calming down.”
“Isn’t he worse, Stonor?” asked Sir Humphrey.
“No; not a bit. And as I was saying, if, when he gets on his legs again, he dares to say a word against his wife, knock him down. I’ll make him so weak it will be quite easy.”
“Well, he deserves it,” said Dick.
“Of course he does. So do you, for thinking ill of your sister. I’ll be bound to say, if you sent to Wimpole Street, you’d find the poor girls there soaking pocket-handkerchiefs.”
“By Jove! yes,” cried Dick, starting at the doctor’s suggestion. “Why, of course. Doctor, you’ve hit it! Depend upon it, they’re gone to Uncle Robert’s, father.”
“Think so, my boy, eh?—think so?” said the old gentleman. “It would be very dull and gloomy.”
“Nonsense!” said the doctor. “My dear boy, the more I think of it, the more likely it seems to me that they have gone there.”
“Yes; that’s it, doctor. Guv’nor, I don’t like to be hard on you, but the doctor’s a very old friend. It’s a nice thing—isn’t it?—that our girls should have to go to Uncle Robert’s for the protection they cannot find here?”
“Yes, my dear boy, it is, it is,” said the old man querulously; “but I can’t help it. Her ladyship took the reins as soon as we were married, and she’s held them very tightly ever since.”
“Well, we’ll go and see. You’ll stay with Frank Morrison, doctor?”
“Stay, sir? Yes, I will. Think I’m going to be dragged down here from Highgate for nothing? I’ll make Master Morrison play the shoddy-devil in his Yorkshire mill for something. He shall have such a bill as shall astonish him.”
“Here, fetch a cab,” shouted Dick to the man who answered the bell; and soon after the jangling vehicle was taking them to Wimpole Street.
It was four o’clock, and broad daylight, as the cab drew up at Captain Millet’s door, when, in answer to a ring which Dick expected it would take half an hour to get attended to, the door was opened directly by Vidler.
“You were expecting us, then?” said Dick, as the little man put his head on one side, and glanced from the young officer to his father, and back again.
“Yes, sir. Master said you might come at any time, so I sat up.”
“All right, father; they’re here. What time did they come, Vidler?”
“They, sir?”
“Yes—my sisters,” said Dick impatiently. “What time did they come?”
“Miss Renée came here about half-past ten, sir.”
“There, dad,” whispered Dick. “And Frank swore she’d gone off with Malpas. I knew it wasn’t true. He wouldn’t insult a brother officer like that.”
“I’m very glad, my boy—I’m very glad,” said Sir Humphrey feebly; and Dick turned to Vidler again.
“And Miss Gertrude, what time did she get here?”
“Miss Gertrude, sir?”
“Don’t be a stupid old idiot!” cried Dick excitedly. “I say—what—time—did—my—sister—Gertrude-get here?”
“She has not been here, sir,” replied the little man—“not to-night.”
Dick looked blankly at his father, and, in spite of his determination not to believe the story suggested about his sister, it seemed to try and force itself upon his brain.
“Where is Mrs Morrison?” he cried at last.
“Lying down, sir. Salome is watching by her. She seemed in great distress, sir, and,” he added in a whisper, “we think master came out of his room and went to her when we had gone down.”
“Poor Robert!” muttered Sir Humphrey.
“Master’s very much distressed about her, gentlemen. Miss Renée is a very great favourite of his.”
“Is my uncle awake, do you think?”
“I think so, sir,” was the reply.
“Ask him if he will say a few words to my father and me. Tell him we are in great trouble.”
The little man bowed and went upstairs, returning at the end of a minute or two to request them to walk up.
“Last time I was here,” thought Dick, “I asked him for a couple of tenners, and he told me never to come near him again. A stingy old hunks! But, there, he’s kind to the girls.”
The little panel opened as Vidler closed the door, and Sir Humphrey, looking very old, and grey of hair and face, sat looking at it, leaving his son to open the conversation.
“Well, Humphrey, what is it?” said the voice behind the wainscoting.
“How do you do, Bob?” began the old gentleman. “I—I—Richard, my boy, tell your uncle; I’m too weak and upset.”
“We’re in great trouble, uncle,” began Dick sharply.
“Yes, I know,” said the voice. “Renée has fled to me for protection from her husband. You did well amongst you. Poor child!”
“Hang it all, uncle, don’t talk like that!” cried Dick impetuously. “You ought to know that we had nothing to do with it. Help us; don’t scold us.”
“I am helping you,” said the Captain. “Renée stays here with me till she can be sure of a happy home. And, look here,” he continued, growing in firmness, “she has told me everything. If you are a man, you will call out anyone who dares say a word against her fame.”
“It’s all very well, uncle,” said Dick; “but this is 18—, and not your young days. No one has a word to say against Renée. But look here, uncle, that isn’t all. Gertrude has gone off.”
“With John Huish, of course. Ah, Humphrey, how strangely Fate works her ways!”
“But, uncle, they say John Huish has turned out an utter swindler and scamp. Last thing I heard was that he had been expelled from his club.”
“Let them talk,” said Captain Millet quietly. “I say it cannot be true.”
“But, Bob,” faltered Sir Humphrey weakly, “they do make out a very bad case against him.”
“Then you and your boy can take up the cudgels on his behalf. He is son and brother now. There, I am weary. Go.”
“But Renée—we must see her.”
“No; let the poor girl rest. When you can find her a decent home, if she wishes it, she can come.”
The little wicket was closed with a sharp snap, and father and son gazed at each other in the gloomy room.
“Come back home, Dick,” said Sir Humphrey feebly. “And take warning, my boy: be a bachelor. Ladies in every shape and form are a great mistake.”
Dick Millet thought of the glowing charms of Clotilde and Marie Dymcox, but he said nothing, only hinted to his father that he ought to give Vidler a sovereign; and this done, they went back into the cab.
Half an hour later they were back in the room where Frank Morrison lay talking wildly in a loud, husky voice.
“Oh, well, so much the better,” said the doctor, when he heard all. “Capital calming place for your sister at your uncle’s. And as for Gertrude—bless her sweet face!—your uncle must be right. Bet a guinea he knew beforehand. I wish her and John Huish joy, he’ll never make her leave her home, and drink himself into such a state as this.”
“I hope not,” thought Dick; but just then some of the ugly rumours he had heard crossed his mind, and he had his doubts.
“Precious hard on a fellow,” he said to himself, “two sisters going off like that! I wonder what Glen and the other fellows will say. Suppose fate forced me to do something of the same kind!”
Volume Two—Chapter Nine.Going to Court.Marcus Glen was not a man given to deep thinking, but one of those straightforward, trusting fellows who, when once he placed faith in another, gave his whole blind confidence, and whom it was difficult afterwards to shake in his belief. He had had his flirtations here and there where his regiment had been stationed, and fancied himself deeply in love; been jilted in a fashionable way, smoked a cigar over it, and enjoyed his meals at the mess as usual. But he had found in Clotilde one so different to the insipid girls of former acquaintance: she was far more innocent in most things, thoroughly unworldly, and at the same time so full of loving passion, giving herself, as it were, to his arms with a full trust and faith, that his pulses had been thoroughly stirred. She told him of her past, and he soon found out for himself that hers had been no life of seasons, with half a dozen admirers in each. He was her first lover, and he told himself—doubtingly—that she was the first woman, and would be the only one, he could ever love.Their meetings became few and seldom, and were nearly all of a stolen nature, for there could be no disguising the fact that when the young officer called the Honourable Philippa Dymcox was cold and stately; and though her sister seemed to nervously desire to further Glen’s wishes, she stood too much in awe of her sister, and with a sigh forebore.Dick Millet then had to put his plan in force, and Joseph began to grow comparatively wealthy with the weight of the Queen’s heads that accompanied the notes he bore to the young ladies, and visions of the lodging-house he meant some day to take grew clearer and less hazy in the distance that they had formerly seemed to occupy.Visits were paid to Lady Littletown’s, and that dame was quite affectionate in her ways, but Clotilde and Marie were rarely encountered there; and when fortune did favour Glen to the extent of a meeting, there were no more inspections of her ladyship’s exotics, no encounters alone, for Lady Littletown was always present; and at last Glen felt that, if he wished to win, it must be by extraordinary, and not by ordinary means.The slightest hint of this seemed to set Dick on fire.“To be sure,” he cried; “the very thing! We must carry them off, Glen, dear boy. Like you know who.”“And do you think our friend Marie will consent to be carried off?”“Well—er—yes; I dare say she would oppose it at first, but the moment she feels certain that her aunts mean to force her into a marriage with old Moorpark, I feel sure that she will yield.”“Ah, well,” said Glen, “we shall see; but look here, most chivalrous of youths, and greatest among lovers of romance—”“Oh, I say, how I do hate it when you take up that horrible chaffing tone!”“Chaff, my dear boy? No, no, this is sound commonsense! I do not say that under certain circumstances I might not have a brougham in waiting, and say to a lady ‘Here is the licence, let us be driven straight to the church and made one;’ but believe me, my dear Dick, all those romantic, elopement-loving days are gone by. We have grown too matter-of-fact now.”“Hang matter-of-fact! I mean to let nothing stand in my way, so I tell you! But, I say, have you heard?”“About your sisters? Yes.”“Hang it, no!” cried Dick angrily; “let that rest. It’s bad enough meeting Black Malpas at the mess-table, and being kept back by etiquette from hurling knives. I mean about the dinner.”“What dinner?”“Dymcoxes’. And we’re not asked. Our dinner’s cold shoulder.”“A dinner-party?”“Yes; and those two old buffers are to be there.”Dick was right, for a dinner was given in the private apartments, where the ladies did their best; but it certainly was not a success, and Marie could not help bitterly contrasting the difference between the repast and its surroundings and that given by Lady Littletown. For the Honourable Misses Dymcox had been unfortunate in the purveyor to whom they had applied to furnish the dinner and all the necessaries. All the linen, the plate, the glass, and, above all, the ornamentation, had a cheap, evening-party supper aspect. There was the plated épergne which showed so much copper that it seemed to be trying to out-brazen the battered Roman cup-shaped wine-coolers, in each of which stood icing a bottle of champagne, quite unknown to fame—a wine with which a respectable bottle of Burton ale would have considered it beneath its dignity to associate. There were flowers upon the table furnished by the pastrycook; and though a couple of shillings would have supplied a modest selection of the real, according to well-established custom these were artificial, many of them being fearfully and wonderfully made.That artificiality pervaded the whole repast, which from beginning to end was suggestive of oil-made, puffed-up pastry, which would crush into nothing at a touch; while soups, gravies, and the preparations of animal flesh, purveyed and presented under names in John Bull French, with a good deal ofà lain the composition, one and all tasted strongly of essence of beef, that delicious combination of tin-pot, solder, resin, and molten glue, which flavours so many of our cheaper feasts.To give the whole adistinguéair, the London pastrycook had sent down, beside his red-nosedchefand dubiously bright stewpans, those two well-known, ghastly-white temples, composed of sugar and chalk, which do duty at scores of wedding-breakfasts, and then stand in the pastrycook’s window afterwards covered with glass shades, to keep them from the unholy touch of flies, and their sides from desecration by rubbing shoulders with the penny buns.It was a mistake, too, to engage Mortimer, the gentleman who waited table for the gentry of Hampton Court, and invariably took the lead in single-handed places and played the part of butler. Mr Mortimer had been in service—theservice, he called it—saved money, applied to a rising brewer, and taken a public-house “doing” a great number of barrels per week, so he was informed; but the remarkable fact about that house was that as soon as Mr Mortimer had paid over his hard-earned savings and taken his position as landlord, the whole district became wonderfully temperate, and, to use his own words, “If I hadn’t taken to paying for glasses of ale myself, and so kept the engine going, there would have been next to nothing to do.” The result was that in six months Mr Mortimer had to leave the house, a poorer and a wiser man, picking up odd jobs in waiting afterwards in the Palace and neighbourhood, but retaining his habit of buying himself glasses of ale to a rather alarming extent.This habit was manifest upon the entrance of the first course, and had greatly exercised Joseph in spirit lest it should be detected. In fact, it became so bad by the time that the remove in the second course was due, that the footman made a strategic movement, inveigling Mr Mortimer into the big cupboard where knives and boots and shoes were cleaned, and then and there locking him up in company with a glass and jug.Perhaps a viler dinner, worse managed, was never set before guests; but to Lord Henry Moorpark it was a banquet in dreamland, to Mr Elbraham it was a feast, for from the moment he took down Clotilde to that when the ladies rose to return to the drawing-room, he literally gloated over and devoured the Honourable Misses Dymcox’s niece.Good dinners, served in the most refined style, had lost their charm for the visitors, who seemed perfectly satisfied, Elbraham’s face shining like a sun when he smiled blandly at hisvis-à-vis, whose deeply-lined, aristocratic countenance wore an aspect of pleasant satisfaction as he gazed back at the millionaire.“I say, Moorpark, they look well, don’t they?” said Elbraham.“They do, indeed,” assented Lord Henry, smiling.“Make some of them stare on the happy day, I think.”“They are certainly very, very beautiful women,” replied Lord Henry, smiling and thoughtful.“Eh—what? Oh, ah—yes: coffee. Thanks; I’ll take coffee.”This to Joseph, who brought in a black mixture with some thin hot milk and brown sugar to match. Lord Henry also took a cup, but it was observable that neither gentleman got much farther than a couple of spoonfuls.“Well,” said Elbraham suddenly, stretching out his hairy paws, and examining their fronts and backs, “it’s of no use our sitting here drinking wine, is it?”“Certainly not,” said Lord Henry, who had merely sipped the very thin champagne at dinner and taken nothing since.So the gentlemen adjourned to the drawing-room, where certain conversations took place before they left, the effect of which was to send Mr Elbraham back to town highly elate, and Lord Henry to his old bachelor home a sadder, if not a wiser, man.He had found his opportunity, or, rather, it had been made for him, and he had plainly asked Marie to be his wife.“I know I ask you to make a sacrifice,” he said—“you so youthful and beautiful, while I am old, and not possessed of the attraction a young man might have in your eyes; but if you will be my wife, nothing that wealth and position can give shall be wanting to make yours a happy home.”He thought Marie had never looked so beautiful before, as with flushed cheeks she essayed to speak, and, smiling as he took her soft, white hand in his, he asked her to be calm and patient with him.“I dread your refusal,” he said; “and yet, old as I am, there is no selfishness in my love. I wish to see you happy, my child—I wish to make you happy.”“She has accepted him,” thought Marie; and her heart began to beat with painful violence, for, Clotilde away, who could say that Marcus Glen would not come to her for sympathy, and at last ask her love. She felt that she could not accept Lord Henry’s proposal, and she turned her face towards him in an appealing way.“You look troubled, my child,” he said tenderly. “I want you to turn to me as you would to one who has your happiness thoroughly at heart. I want to win your love.”“My—my aunts know that you ask me this, Lord Henry?” she faltered.“Yes, they know it; and they wish it, for we have quietly discussed the matter, and,” he added, with a sad smile, “I have not omitted to point out to them how unsuited to you I am as a match. I throw myself then upon your mercy, Marie, but you must not let fear influence you; I must have your heart, my child, given over to my safe-keeping.”She looked at him wildly.“Is this hand to be mine?” he whispered. “Will you make the rest of my days blessed with your young love? Tell me, is it to be?”“Oh, no, no, no, Lord Henry,” she said, in a low, excited tone; “I could not, I dare not say yes. Pray, pray do not ask me.”“Shall I give you time?” he whispered; “shall I wait a week—a month, for your answer, and then come again and plead?”“Oh, no, no, no,” she said; “I could—I never could say yes. I like you, Lord Henry, I respect and esteem you—indeed, indeed I do; but I could not become your wife.”“You could not become my wife,” he said softly. “No, no, I suppose not. It was another foolish dream, and I should have been wiser. But you will not ridicule me when I am gone? I ask you to try and think of the old man’s love with respect, even if it is mingled with pity, for, believe me, my child, it is very true and honest.”“Ridicule! oh, no, no,” cried Marie eagerly, “I could not do that. You ask me to be your wife, Lord Henry: I cannot, but I have always felt that I loved you as—like—”“You might say a father or some dear old friend?” said Lord Henry sadly.“Yes, indeed yes!” she cried.“Be it so, then,” he said, holding her hand in his in a sad, resigned way. “You are right; it is impossible. Your young verdant spring and my frosted winter would be ill matched. But let me go on loving you—if not as one who would be your husband, as a very faithful friend.”“Yes, yes, please, Lord Henry,” she said; “I have so few friends.”“Then you shall not lose me for one,” he continued sadly. “There, there, the little dream is over, and I am awake again. See here, Marie,” he said, drawing a diamond and sapphire ring from his pocket, “this was to be your engaged ring: I am going to place it on your finger now as a present from the dear old friend.”She shrank from him, but he retained her hand gently, and she felt the ring glide over her finger, a quick glance showing her that her aunts were seeing everything from behind the books they were reading, becoming deeply immersed, though, as they saw how far matters seemed to have progressed.Mr Elbraham’s wooing was moulded far differently to Lord Henry’s.It was an understood thing that he was to propose that evening, the dinner being given for the purpose.“There’s no confounded tom-fool nonsense about me;” and each time Mr Elbraham said this he took out of the morocco white satin-lined case a brilliant half-hoop ring, set with magnificent stones, breathed on it, held it to the light, moistened it between his lips, held it up again, finished by rubbing it upon his sleeve, and returning it to the case.“That’ll fetch her,” he said. “My! what you can do with a woman if you bring out a few diamonds. I shan’t shilly-shally: I shall come out with it plump;” but all the same, when by proper manoeuvring the Honourable Misses Dymcox had arranged themselves behind books and left the two couples at opposite ends of the room, while they themselves occupieddos-à-dosthe ottoman in the centre, Mr Elbraham did not “out with it plump.”He seated himself as close as decency would permit to Clotilde, and stared at her, and breathed hard, while she returned his look with one that was half mocking, half defiant.“Been to many parties lately?” he said at last, nothing else occurring to his mind except sentences that he would have addressed to ballet-girls upon their good looks, their agility, and the like.No; Clotilde had not been to many parties.“But you like ’em; I’ll bet a wager you like ’em?” said Elbraham with a hoarse laugh.Oh yes, Clotilde dearly liked parties when they were nice.There was another interval of hard breathing, during which Mr Elbraham took out and consulted his watch.The act of replacing that made him remember the ring in the morocco case, and he thrust his finger and thumb in his vest pocket, but it was not there, and he remembered that he had placed it in his trousers pocket.This was awkward, for Mr Elbraham was stout and his garments tight. Still, he would want it directly, and he made a struggle and dragged it out, growing rather red in the face with the effort.This gave him something else to talk about.“Ha! it’s nice to be you,” he said, dropping the case in his vest.“Why?” said Clotilde, looking amused.“Because you gal—ladies dress so well; not like us, always in black. That’s a pretty dress.”“Think so?” said Clotilde carelessly.“Very pretty. I like it ever so, but it isn’t half good enough for you.—That’s getting on at last,” he muttered to himself.“Oh yes, but it is. Aunt Philippa said it was a very expensive dress.”“Tchh, my dear, rubbish! Why, I would not see anyone I cared for in such a dress as that. I like things rich and good, and the best money can buy.”“Do you?” said Clotilde innocently; but her cheeks began to burn.“Do I? Yes; I should just think I do. Look here! What do you think of that?”He took out and opened the little case, breathed on the diamonds, and then held them in a good light.“Oh, how lovely!” said Clotilde softly.“Ain’t they?” said Elbraham. “They’re the best they’d got at Hancock’s, in Bond Street. Pretty stiff figure, too, I can tell you.”“Are you fond of diamonds, Mr Elbraham?” she said, with a peculiar look at him from beneath her darkly fringed lids—a strange look for one so innocent and young.“Yes, on some people,” he said. “Are you?”“Oh yes; I love them,” she said eagerly.“All right, then. Look here, Clotilde; say the word, and you can have diamonds till you are sick of them, and everything else. I—hang it all! I’m not used to this sort of thing,” he said, dabbing his moist face with his handkerchief; “but I said to myself, when I came to-night, ‘I won’t shilly-shally, but ask her out plain.’ So look here, my dear, may I put this diamond ring on the finger of the lady that’s to be Mrs Elbraham as soon as she likes?”Clotilde darted one luminous look at him which took in his squat, vulgar figure and red face, and then her eyes half-closed, and she saw tall, manly, handsome Marcus Glen look appealingly in her eyes, and telling her he loved her with all his heart.She loved him—she told herself she loved him very dearly; but he was poor, and on the one side was life in lodgings in provincial towns wherever the regiment was stationed; on the other side, horses and carriages and servants, a splendid town mansion, diamonds, dresses, the opera, every luxury and gaiety that money could command.“Poor Marcus!” she sighed to herself. “He’s very nice!”“Come,” said Mr Elbraham; “I don’t suppose you want me to go down on my knees and propose, do you? I want to do the thing right, but I’m a business man, you know; and, I say, Clotilde, you’re the most beautiful gal I ever saw in my life.”She slowly raised her eyes to his, and there was a wicked, mocking laugh in her look as she said in a low tone:“Am I?”“Yes, that you are,” he whispered in a low, passionate tone.“You are laughing at me,” she said softly.“’Pon my soul I’m not,” he whispered again; “I swear I’m not; and I love you—there, I can’t tell you how much. I say, don’t play with me. I’ll do anything you like—give you anything you like. I’ll make the princesses bite their lips with jealousy to see your jewels. I will, honour! May I? Yes? Slip it on? I say, my beautiful darling, when may I put on the plain gold one?”“Oh, hush!” she whispered softly, as she surrendered her hand, and fixed her eyes in what he told himself was a loving, rapturous gaze upon his; “be content now.”“But no games,” he whispered; “you’ll be my wife?”“Yes,” she said in the same low tone, and he raised the beringed hand to his lips, while the Honourable Isabella uttered a little faint sigh, and her book trembled visibly in her attenuated hands.“Hah!” ejaculated Mr Elbraham; and then to himself: “What things diamonds are!”Perhaps he would have felt less satisfied if he had known that, when Clotilde fixed her eyes upon his, she was looking down a long vista of pleasure stretched out in the future.At the same moment the face of Marcus Glen seemed to rise up before her, but she put it aside as she lifted the hand that Elbraham had just kissed.“He could not have brought me such a ring as that,” she said to herself; and then, “Heigho! poor fellow; but it isn’t my fault. I must tell him I am only doing what my dear aunts wish.”She placed the ring against her deep-red lips and kissed it very softly, her beautiful eyes with their long fringed lids looking dark and dewy, and full of a delicious languor that made Mr Elbraham sit with his arms resting upon his knees, and gaze at her with half-open mouth, while he felt a strange feeling of triumph at his power as a man of the world, and thought of how he would show off his young wife to all he knew, and gloat over their envy.Then a sense of satisfaction and love of self came over him, and he indulged in a little glorification of Mr Elbraham.“Litton’s a humbug,” he said to himself; “I can get on better without his advice than with it. Women like a fellow to be downright with them, and say what he means.”
Marcus Glen was not a man given to deep thinking, but one of those straightforward, trusting fellows who, when once he placed faith in another, gave his whole blind confidence, and whom it was difficult afterwards to shake in his belief. He had had his flirtations here and there where his regiment had been stationed, and fancied himself deeply in love; been jilted in a fashionable way, smoked a cigar over it, and enjoyed his meals at the mess as usual. But he had found in Clotilde one so different to the insipid girls of former acquaintance: she was far more innocent in most things, thoroughly unworldly, and at the same time so full of loving passion, giving herself, as it were, to his arms with a full trust and faith, that his pulses had been thoroughly stirred. She told him of her past, and he soon found out for himself that hers had been no life of seasons, with half a dozen admirers in each. He was her first lover, and he told himself—doubtingly—that she was the first woman, and would be the only one, he could ever love.
Their meetings became few and seldom, and were nearly all of a stolen nature, for there could be no disguising the fact that when the young officer called the Honourable Philippa Dymcox was cold and stately; and though her sister seemed to nervously desire to further Glen’s wishes, she stood too much in awe of her sister, and with a sigh forebore.
Dick Millet then had to put his plan in force, and Joseph began to grow comparatively wealthy with the weight of the Queen’s heads that accompanied the notes he bore to the young ladies, and visions of the lodging-house he meant some day to take grew clearer and less hazy in the distance that they had formerly seemed to occupy.
Visits were paid to Lady Littletown’s, and that dame was quite affectionate in her ways, but Clotilde and Marie were rarely encountered there; and when fortune did favour Glen to the extent of a meeting, there were no more inspections of her ladyship’s exotics, no encounters alone, for Lady Littletown was always present; and at last Glen felt that, if he wished to win, it must be by extraordinary, and not by ordinary means.
The slightest hint of this seemed to set Dick on fire.
“To be sure,” he cried; “the very thing! We must carry them off, Glen, dear boy. Like you know who.”
“And do you think our friend Marie will consent to be carried off?”
“Well—er—yes; I dare say she would oppose it at first, but the moment she feels certain that her aunts mean to force her into a marriage with old Moorpark, I feel sure that she will yield.”
“Ah, well,” said Glen, “we shall see; but look here, most chivalrous of youths, and greatest among lovers of romance—”
“Oh, I say, how I do hate it when you take up that horrible chaffing tone!”
“Chaff, my dear boy? No, no, this is sound commonsense! I do not say that under certain circumstances I might not have a brougham in waiting, and say to a lady ‘Here is the licence, let us be driven straight to the church and made one;’ but believe me, my dear Dick, all those romantic, elopement-loving days are gone by. We have grown too matter-of-fact now.”
“Hang matter-of-fact! I mean to let nothing stand in my way, so I tell you! But, I say, have you heard?”
“About your sisters? Yes.”
“Hang it, no!” cried Dick angrily; “let that rest. It’s bad enough meeting Black Malpas at the mess-table, and being kept back by etiquette from hurling knives. I mean about the dinner.”
“What dinner?”
“Dymcoxes’. And we’re not asked. Our dinner’s cold shoulder.”
“A dinner-party?”
“Yes; and those two old buffers are to be there.”
Dick was right, for a dinner was given in the private apartments, where the ladies did their best; but it certainly was not a success, and Marie could not help bitterly contrasting the difference between the repast and its surroundings and that given by Lady Littletown. For the Honourable Misses Dymcox had been unfortunate in the purveyor to whom they had applied to furnish the dinner and all the necessaries. All the linen, the plate, the glass, and, above all, the ornamentation, had a cheap, evening-party supper aspect. There was the plated épergne which showed so much copper that it seemed to be trying to out-brazen the battered Roman cup-shaped wine-coolers, in each of which stood icing a bottle of champagne, quite unknown to fame—a wine with which a respectable bottle of Burton ale would have considered it beneath its dignity to associate. There were flowers upon the table furnished by the pastrycook; and though a couple of shillings would have supplied a modest selection of the real, according to well-established custom these were artificial, many of them being fearfully and wonderfully made.
That artificiality pervaded the whole repast, which from beginning to end was suggestive of oil-made, puffed-up pastry, which would crush into nothing at a touch; while soups, gravies, and the preparations of animal flesh, purveyed and presented under names in John Bull French, with a good deal ofà lain the composition, one and all tasted strongly of essence of beef, that delicious combination of tin-pot, solder, resin, and molten glue, which flavours so many of our cheaper feasts.
To give the whole adistinguéair, the London pastrycook had sent down, beside his red-nosedchefand dubiously bright stewpans, those two well-known, ghastly-white temples, composed of sugar and chalk, which do duty at scores of wedding-breakfasts, and then stand in the pastrycook’s window afterwards covered with glass shades, to keep them from the unholy touch of flies, and their sides from desecration by rubbing shoulders with the penny buns.
It was a mistake, too, to engage Mortimer, the gentleman who waited table for the gentry of Hampton Court, and invariably took the lead in single-handed places and played the part of butler. Mr Mortimer had been in service—theservice, he called it—saved money, applied to a rising brewer, and taken a public-house “doing” a great number of barrels per week, so he was informed; but the remarkable fact about that house was that as soon as Mr Mortimer had paid over his hard-earned savings and taken his position as landlord, the whole district became wonderfully temperate, and, to use his own words, “If I hadn’t taken to paying for glasses of ale myself, and so kept the engine going, there would have been next to nothing to do.” The result was that in six months Mr Mortimer had to leave the house, a poorer and a wiser man, picking up odd jobs in waiting afterwards in the Palace and neighbourhood, but retaining his habit of buying himself glasses of ale to a rather alarming extent.
This habit was manifest upon the entrance of the first course, and had greatly exercised Joseph in spirit lest it should be detected. In fact, it became so bad by the time that the remove in the second course was due, that the footman made a strategic movement, inveigling Mr Mortimer into the big cupboard where knives and boots and shoes were cleaned, and then and there locking him up in company with a glass and jug.
Perhaps a viler dinner, worse managed, was never set before guests; but to Lord Henry Moorpark it was a banquet in dreamland, to Mr Elbraham it was a feast, for from the moment he took down Clotilde to that when the ladies rose to return to the drawing-room, he literally gloated over and devoured the Honourable Misses Dymcox’s niece.
Good dinners, served in the most refined style, had lost their charm for the visitors, who seemed perfectly satisfied, Elbraham’s face shining like a sun when he smiled blandly at hisvis-à-vis, whose deeply-lined, aristocratic countenance wore an aspect of pleasant satisfaction as he gazed back at the millionaire.
“I say, Moorpark, they look well, don’t they?” said Elbraham.
“They do, indeed,” assented Lord Henry, smiling.
“Make some of them stare on the happy day, I think.”
“They are certainly very, very beautiful women,” replied Lord Henry, smiling and thoughtful.
“Eh—what? Oh, ah—yes: coffee. Thanks; I’ll take coffee.”
This to Joseph, who brought in a black mixture with some thin hot milk and brown sugar to match. Lord Henry also took a cup, but it was observable that neither gentleman got much farther than a couple of spoonfuls.
“Well,” said Elbraham suddenly, stretching out his hairy paws, and examining their fronts and backs, “it’s of no use our sitting here drinking wine, is it?”
“Certainly not,” said Lord Henry, who had merely sipped the very thin champagne at dinner and taken nothing since.
So the gentlemen adjourned to the drawing-room, where certain conversations took place before they left, the effect of which was to send Mr Elbraham back to town highly elate, and Lord Henry to his old bachelor home a sadder, if not a wiser, man.
He had found his opportunity, or, rather, it had been made for him, and he had plainly asked Marie to be his wife.
“I know I ask you to make a sacrifice,” he said—“you so youthful and beautiful, while I am old, and not possessed of the attraction a young man might have in your eyes; but if you will be my wife, nothing that wealth and position can give shall be wanting to make yours a happy home.”
He thought Marie had never looked so beautiful before, as with flushed cheeks she essayed to speak, and, smiling as he took her soft, white hand in his, he asked her to be calm and patient with him.
“I dread your refusal,” he said; “and yet, old as I am, there is no selfishness in my love. I wish to see you happy, my child—I wish to make you happy.”
“She has accepted him,” thought Marie; and her heart began to beat with painful violence, for, Clotilde away, who could say that Marcus Glen would not come to her for sympathy, and at last ask her love. She felt that she could not accept Lord Henry’s proposal, and she turned her face towards him in an appealing way.
“You look troubled, my child,” he said tenderly. “I want you to turn to me as you would to one who has your happiness thoroughly at heart. I want to win your love.”
“My—my aunts know that you ask me this, Lord Henry?” she faltered.
“Yes, they know it; and they wish it, for we have quietly discussed the matter, and,” he added, with a sad smile, “I have not omitted to point out to them how unsuited to you I am as a match. I throw myself then upon your mercy, Marie, but you must not let fear influence you; I must have your heart, my child, given over to my safe-keeping.”
She looked at him wildly.
“Is this hand to be mine?” he whispered. “Will you make the rest of my days blessed with your young love? Tell me, is it to be?”
“Oh, no, no, no, Lord Henry,” she said, in a low, excited tone; “I could not, I dare not say yes. Pray, pray do not ask me.”
“Shall I give you time?” he whispered; “shall I wait a week—a month, for your answer, and then come again and plead?”
“Oh, no, no, no,” she said; “I could—I never could say yes. I like you, Lord Henry, I respect and esteem you—indeed, indeed I do; but I could not become your wife.”
“You could not become my wife,” he said softly. “No, no, I suppose not. It was another foolish dream, and I should have been wiser. But you will not ridicule me when I am gone? I ask you to try and think of the old man’s love with respect, even if it is mingled with pity, for, believe me, my child, it is very true and honest.”
“Ridicule! oh, no, no,” cried Marie eagerly, “I could not do that. You ask me to be your wife, Lord Henry: I cannot, but I have always felt that I loved you as—like—”
“You might say a father or some dear old friend?” said Lord Henry sadly.
“Yes, indeed yes!” she cried.
“Be it so, then,” he said, holding her hand in his in a sad, resigned way. “You are right; it is impossible. Your young verdant spring and my frosted winter would be ill matched. But let me go on loving you—if not as one who would be your husband, as a very faithful friend.”
“Yes, yes, please, Lord Henry,” she said; “I have so few friends.”
“Then you shall not lose me for one,” he continued sadly. “There, there, the little dream is over, and I am awake again. See here, Marie,” he said, drawing a diamond and sapphire ring from his pocket, “this was to be your engaged ring: I am going to place it on your finger now as a present from the dear old friend.”
She shrank from him, but he retained her hand gently, and she felt the ring glide over her finger, a quick glance showing her that her aunts were seeing everything from behind the books they were reading, becoming deeply immersed, though, as they saw how far matters seemed to have progressed.
Mr Elbraham’s wooing was moulded far differently to Lord Henry’s.
It was an understood thing that he was to propose that evening, the dinner being given for the purpose.
“There’s no confounded tom-fool nonsense about me;” and each time Mr Elbraham said this he took out of the morocco white satin-lined case a brilliant half-hoop ring, set with magnificent stones, breathed on it, held it to the light, moistened it between his lips, held it up again, finished by rubbing it upon his sleeve, and returning it to the case.
“That’ll fetch her,” he said. “My! what you can do with a woman if you bring out a few diamonds. I shan’t shilly-shally: I shall come out with it plump;” but all the same, when by proper manoeuvring the Honourable Misses Dymcox had arranged themselves behind books and left the two couples at opposite ends of the room, while they themselves occupieddos-à-dosthe ottoman in the centre, Mr Elbraham did not “out with it plump.”
He seated himself as close as decency would permit to Clotilde, and stared at her, and breathed hard, while she returned his look with one that was half mocking, half defiant.
“Been to many parties lately?” he said at last, nothing else occurring to his mind except sentences that he would have addressed to ballet-girls upon their good looks, their agility, and the like.
No; Clotilde had not been to many parties.
“But you like ’em; I’ll bet a wager you like ’em?” said Elbraham with a hoarse laugh.
Oh yes, Clotilde dearly liked parties when they were nice.
There was another interval of hard breathing, during which Mr Elbraham took out and consulted his watch.
The act of replacing that made him remember the ring in the morocco case, and he thrust his finger and thumb in his vest pocket, but it was not there, and he remembered that he had placed it in his trousers pocket.
This was awkward, for Mr Elbraham was stout and his garments tight. Still, he would want it directly, and he made a struggle and dragged it out, growing rather red in the face with the effort.
This gave him something else to talk about.
“Ha! it’s nice to be you,” he said, dropping the case in his vest.
“Why?” said Clotilde, looking amused.
“Because you gal—ladies dress so well; not like us, always in black. That’s a pretty dress.”
“Think so?” said Clotilde carelessly.
“Very pretty. I like it ever so, but it isn’t half good enough for you.—That’s getting on at last,” he muttered to himself.
“Oh yes, but it is. Aunt Philippa said it was a very expensive dress.”
“Tchh, my dear, rubbish! Why, I would not see anyone I cared for in such a dress as that. I like things rich and good, and the best money can buy.”
“Do you?” said Clotilde innocently; but her cheeks began to burn.
“Do I? Yes; I should just think I do. Look here! What do you think of that?”
He took out and opened the little case, breathed on the diamonds, and then held them in a good light.
“Oh, how lovely!” said Clotilde softly.
“Ain’t they?” said Elbraham. “They’re the best they’d got at Hancock’s, in Bond Street. Pretty stiff figure, too, I can tell you.”
“Are you fond of diamonds, Mr Elbraham?” she said, with a peculiar look at him from beneath her darkly fringed lids—a strange look for one so innocent and young.
“Yes, on some people,” he said. “Are you?”
“Oh yes; I love them,” she said eagerly.
“All right, then. Look here, Clotilde; say the word, and you can have diamonds till you are sick of them, and everything else. I—hang it all! I’m not used to this sort of thing,” he said, dabbing his moist face with his handkerchief; “but I said to myself, when I came to-night, ‘I won’t shilly-shally, but ask her out plain.’ So look here, my dear, may I put this diamond ring on the finger of the lady that’s to be Mrs Elbraham as soon as she likes?”
Clotilde darted one luminous look at him which took in his squat, vulgar figure and red face, and then her eyes half-closed, and she saw tall, manly, handsome Marcus Glen look appealingly in her eyes, and telling her he loved her with all his heart.
She loved him—she told herself she loved him very dearly; but he was poor, and on the one side was life in lodgings in provincial towns wherever the regiment was stationed; on the other side, horses and carriages and servants, a splendid town mansion, diamonds, dresses, the opera, every luxury and gaiety that money could command.
“Poor Marcus!” she sighed to herself. “He’s very nice!”
“Come,” said Mr Elbraham; “I don’t suppose you want me to go down on my knees and propose, do you? I want to do the thing right, but I’m a business man, you know; and, I say, Clotilde, you’re the most beautiful gal I ever saw in my life.”
She slowly raised her eyes to his, and there was a wicked, mocking laugh in her look as she said in a low tone:
“Am I?”
“Yes, that you are,” he whispered in a low, passionate tone.
“You are laughing at me,” she said softly.
“’Pon my soul I’m not,” he whispered again; “I swear I’m not; and I love you—there, I can’t tell you how much. I say, don’t play with me. I’ll do anything you like—give you anything you like. I’ll make the princesses bite their lips with jealousy to see your jewels. I will, honour! May I? Yes? Slip it on? I say, my beautiful darling, when may I put on the plain gold one?”
“Oh, hush!” she whispered softly, as she surrendered her hand, and fixed her eyes in what he told himself was a loving, rapturous gaze upon his; “be content now.”
“But no games,” he whispered; “you’ll be my wife?”
“Yes,” she said in the same low tone, and he raised the beringed hand to his lips, while the Honourable Isabella uttered a little faint sigh, and her book trembled visibly in her attenuated hands.
“Hah!” ejaculated Mr Elbraham; and then to himself: “What things diamonds are!”
Perhaps he would have felt less satisfied if he had known that, when Clotilde fixed her eyes upon his, she was looking down a long vista of pleasure stretched out in the future.
At the same moment the face of Marcus Glen seemed to rise up before her, but she put it aside as she lifted the hand that Elbraham had just kissed.
“He could not have brought me such a ring as that,” she said to herself; and then, “Heigho! poor fellow; but it isn’t my fault. I must tell him I am only doing what my dear aunts wish.”
She placed the ring against her deep-red lips and kissed it very softly, her beautiful eyes with their long fringed lids looking dark and dewy, and full of a delicious languor that made Mr Elbraham sit with his arms resting upon his knees, and gaze at her with half-open mouth, while he felt a strange feeling of triumph at his power as a man of the world, and thought of how he would show off his young wife to all he knew, and gloat over their envy.
Then a sense of satisfaction and love of self came over him, and he indulged in a little glorification of Mr Elbraham.
“Litton’s a humbug,” he said to himself; “I can get on better without his advice than with it. Women like a fellow to be downright with them, and say what he means.”
Volume Two—Chapter Ten.Glen Declares War.Dick Millet placed a note in his friend’s hand one day during parade, and Glen thrust it out of sight on the instant, glancing sidewise to see if Major Malpas had noticed the act, and then biting his lip with vexation at Dick being so foolish.A good deal of the foolishness was on his own side, for had he taken the letter in a matter-of-fact manner, no one would have paid the slightest heed, or fancied that it came from a lady in a clandestine way.But, as is generally the case in such matters, the person most anxious to keep his correspondence a secret is one of the first to betray himself, and, feeling this, Glen was in no very good humour.The secret correspondence he had been carrying on with Clotilde was very sweet; but it annoyed him sadly, for his was not a nature to like the constant subterfuge. By nature frank and open, there was to him something exceedingly degrading in the fact that servants were bribed and the aunts deceived; and with a stern determination to put an end to it all, and frankly speak to the Honourable Misses Dymcox concerning his attachment to Clotilde, he went on with his duties till the men were dismissed.“How could you be so stupid, Dick!” he exclaimed, as soon as they were clinking back, sabre and spur, to their quarters.“Foolish!” said the little fellow, with a melodramatic laugh; “I thought you would like to get your letter. I don’t care about keeping all the fun to myself.”“What’s the matter?” said Glen, smiling. “Has the fair Marie been snubbing you?”“No. Look at your letter,” said the little fellow tragically.Glen placed his hand in his breast, but, altering his mind, he walked on to his room before taking out the letter and glancing at it; then leaping up, he strode out into the passage and across to Dick’s quarters, to find that gentleman looking the very image of despair.“Here, what does this mean?” exclaimed Glen. “Why did you not send my note with yours?”“Did!”“Then how is it you have brought it back?”“That scoundrel Joseph!” exclaimed Dick. “I won’t believe but that it’s some trick on his part, for I don’t trust a word he says.”“What does he say, then?”“That they returned the notes unopened, and that—can you bear it?”“Bear it! Bear what? Of course—yes; go on.”“I’ve heard that Clotilde has accepted Mr Elbraham, and they are going to be married directly.”Glen stood and glared at him for a moment, and then burst into a hearty laugh.“Absurd! nonsense! Why, who told you this?”“Joseph.”“Rubbish! Joseph is an ass. The fellow forgot to deliver the letters.”Dick spoke to him again, but Glen did not hear his words in the anger that had taken possession of him. He had, against his will, allowed himself to be swayed by Clotilde, and carried on the clandestine correspondence that was repugnant to his frank nature; and now he blamed himself for his conduct.“Look here, Dick,” he cried at last, “we have been behaving like a couple of foolish boys ashamed of their feelings, and the consequence is we have been unable to take the part of those two when they have been urged to accept proposals by their aunts.”“Don’t saythey; it is only Clotilde.”“I’ll wager it is Marie as well, my boy; else why did you get your note back?”Dick looked staggered, and gazed in his friend’s face.“I say, you know, what are you going to do?” he said it last.“Going straight to the private apartments to see the aunts. Come with me?”“What, to meet the old dragons, and talk about it?”“Yes, of course. It is cowardly to hold back.”“That’s—er—a matter of opinion,” said Dick, who looked uneasy. “I—er—don’t think it would be quite wise to go.”“As you like!” said Glen shortly; and before the boy could quite realise the position the door swung back heavily and his visitor was gone.“Well,” said Dick thoughtfully, “I could go through a good deal for Marie’s sake, and would give a good deal to see her now, but face those two old Gorgons? No, not this time; I’d rather take a header into the Thames any day, and I don’t believe Glen has gone, after all.”But he had gone straight to the private apartments, rung, and sent in his card to where the Honourable Misses Dymcox were discussing preparations for the marriage, with their nieces in the room.“Captain Glen!” exclaimed the Honourable Philippa, starting as she read the card; “so early! What can he want?”Marie glanced at her sister, and saw that she looked flushed and excited; but as soon as Clotilde found that she was observed, she returned a fierce, defiant glance at Marie’s inquisitive eyes.“Had—hadn’t we better say ‘Not at home’?” whispered the Honourable Isabella.“No: it would be cowardly,” replied her sister. “Joseph, you can show up Captain Glen.”Clotilde rose and left the room, and Marie was following, but her aunt arrested her.“No, my dear, I would rather you would stay,” she exclaimed; and full of sympathy, but at the same time unable to control a sense of gladness at her heart, Marie resumed her seat just as Ruth entered the room.The next moment Glen was shown in, and after the customary salutations and commonplace remarks asked for a few minutes’ conversation with the ladies alone.The Honourable Philippa was a good deal fluttered, but she preserved her dignity, and signed to Marie and Ruth to withdraw, the former darting a look full of meaning as she passed Marcus, who hastened to open the door, the latter glancing up at him for a moment, and he smiled back in her face, which was full of sympathy for him in his pain.Glen closed the door in the midst of a chilling silence, and returned to his seat facing the thin sisters, feeling that the task he had undertaken was anything but the most pleasant under the sun.He was, however, too much stirred to hesitate, and he began in so downright a manner that he completely overset the balance—already tottering—of the Honourable Isabella, who felt so sympathetic that she was affected to tears.“I wished to have a few minutes’ conversation, ladies,” he said, in rather a quick, peremptory tone, “respecting a question very near to my heart, and concerning my future happiness. Let me say, then, plainly, in what is meant to be a manly, straightforward fashion, that I love your niece Clotilde, and I have come to ask your consent to my being a constant visitor here.”The Honourable Isabella could not suppress it: a faint sigh struggled to her lips, and floated away upon the chilly air of that dismal room, like the precursor of the shower that trembled upon the lashes of her eyes.“Captain Glen!” cried the Honourable Philippa, making an effort to overcome her own nervousness, and dreading a scene on the part of this downright young man, “you astound me!”“I am very sorry I should take you so by surprise,” he said quietly. “I hoped that you would have seen what my feelings were.”“Oh, indeed no!” cried the Honourable Philippa mendaciously, “nothing of the kind—did we, sister?”The Honourable Isabella’s hands shook a great deal, but she did not speak—only looked piteously at their visitor.“Perhaps I ought to have made my feelings known sooner,” said Glen. “However, I have spoken now, Miss Dymcox, and—”“But, Captain Glen, pray spare us, and spare yourself what must be a very painful declaration, when I tell you that our niece is engaged to be married to Mr Elbraham.”“Then it is true?”“Oh yes, perfectly true,” said the Honourable Philippa.Glen drew a long breath, and sat for some moments silently gazing down at the carpet as if he could not trust himself to speak. When he opened his lips again his voice was changed.“Am I to understand, madam, that Miss Clotilde Dymcox accepts this Mr—Mr Elbraham of her own free choice and will?”It required a tremendous effort to get out that name “Elbraham,” but he forced it from his lips at last.“Captain Glen,” said the Honourable Philippa, rising and darting a very severe glance at her sister because she did not rise as well, “this is presuming upon your position here as an acquaintance—a very casual acquaintance. I cannot discuss this matter with you.”“As you will, madam,” replied Glen, who felt hot with indignant rage. “May I ask your permission to see Clotilde?”“To see Miss Clotilde Dymcox?” said the Honourable Philippa, with dignity. “Under the circumstances, I think, sister, certainly not.”She darted another fierce look at the Honourable Isabella, who was growing weaker and more agitated moment by moment, as she asked herself whether it was possible that, in spite of the disparity of their ages, she might yet try to soothe Marcus Glen’s wounded spirit, and offer him the sympathy of her virgin heart.“I ask it in justice to myself, madam,” cried Glen, “for your niece—”He was going to say more, but he checked himself, and bit his lips. “Of course, ladies, you would be present.”“Impossible!” said the Honourable Philippa grimly.“Don’t—don’t you think, sister,” faltered the Honourable Isabella, “that—that—Captain Glen might—might just see—just see Clotilde—for a few moments?”“No!” said the Honourable Philippa, with quite a snap of her artificial teeth, and the Honourable Isabella seemed to shrink back into herself, quite dismayed by her sister’s almost ferocious way.“I thank you, Miss Isabella,” said Glen, so warmly that the poor old lady’s heart began to palpitate at an unwonted rate, and she trembled and her hands were agitated, as if she would gladly have laid them in their visitor’s broad palms.—“You decline, then, to allow me to see Miss Clotilde?”The Honourable Philippa bowed, and turned to her sister to see if she made as dignified a response to his appeal; but to her horror she saw her sister shaking her head violently as Glen now appealed to her in turn.“Then, madam,” cried Glen angrily, “I give you fair warning that I shall spare no pains to gain an interview with your niece, for I do not, I will not believe that this is honest. It cannot be, and I am certain that the poor girl has been forced into this engagement. Ladies, I will say no more, for I fear that if I do I shall lose my temper. Miss Dymcox, good-morning. Miss Isabella, I thank you for your show of sympathy; good-bye.”He felt that there could be no excuse for a longer stay, and strode angrily from the room; but he had hardly reached the foot of the stairs before he became aware of the fact that Marie was coming out of the schoolroom, where Ruth was now alone and a witness of what passed.“Thank goodness!” exclaimed Glen joyously, as he sprang forward and caught both Marie’s hands in his, making her flush and tremble with the warmth of his greeting. “Tell me, dear Marie, the meaning of all this dreadful news.”She did not speak, but, giving herself up to the joy of the situation, she let her hands rest in his and gazed wistfully in his face, while Ruth sat in her place in the schoolroom and trembled, she knew not why.“You do not speak,” said Glen. “Tell me, for heaven’s sake tell me, that this is all in opposition to your sister’s wishes.”Marie still gazed wistfully in his face, and her hands, in spite of herself, returned the warm pressure of his.“Surely—oh no; I will not believe it!” cried Glen. “It cannot be so. Marie, dear Marie, pray have compassion on me and tell me the truth.”“Do—you wish me to tell you?” she said in a low voice that trembled with suppressed emotion.“Yes, everything. If you have any feeling for me, tell me honestly all.”Marie’s hands trembled more and more, and her colour went and came as she spoke.“I will tell you what you wish, Captain Glen,” she said, in her low rich tones; “but do not blame me if it gives you pain.”“I will not; only pray put an end to this terrible anxiety.”There was a few moments’ silence, and then Glen said huskily:“You know how Clotilde loved me, Marie?”Marie’s dark eyes gazed fully, pityingly into his, but there was a slight curl of scorn upon her upper lip as she remained silent.“No,” she said slowly, as she shook her head; “no, I do not.”“You—do not!”Marie hesitated to plant so sharp a sting in his heart, but, still, she panted to speak—to tell him that he had wasted his honest love upon one who did not value it, in the hope that he might turn to her; but at the same time she feared to overstep the mark, and her compunction to hurt the man she loved came and went.“Why do you not tell me what you mean?” he said, pressing one of her hands so that he caused her intense pain.“Because I shrink from telling you that Clotilde never cared for you in the least,” she said bitterly.“How dare you say that?” he cried.“If she had loved you, Captain Glen, would she have accepted Mr Elbraham for the sake of his wealth?”He would have dropped her hand, but she held fast, full of passionate grief for him as she saw how deadly pale he had turned, and had they been in a less public place she would have clung to him, and told him how her heart bled for his pain.“You are her sister, and could not say that which was false,” he said simply. “Tell me, then, is this all true?”“Do you doubt me?” she asked, looking full in his eyes.He held her hands, and looked down in the dark, handsome face that gazed so unflinchingly in his.“No,” he said softly, “no;” and raising one of her hands to his lips, he kissed it, and then turned and left the place.Marie’s reverie, as she stood there holding one soft hand pressed over the back of the other, where Marcus Glen’s lips had been, was interrupted by the voice of Clotilde.“Rie: has he gone?”“Yes,” said her sister, with a look of disgust, almost loathing, in her face.“Poor boy! I hope he won’t mind much. I say, Rie, you can have him now. I’ll make you a present of his love. No, I won’t,” she said, flashing into life. “You shan’t look at him. If you do, I’ll tell him such things about you as shall drive him away.”The sisters stood there upon the stairs gazing angrily one at the other, and Ruth, whose heart felt very sore, watched them in turn, and thought how hard all this was for Captain Glen, and also, with a sigh, how weak he must be.“But they are both so handsome,” she said to herself half aloud; and then, with a kind of shiver, she began to think about Mr Montaigne.
Dick Millet placed a note in his friend’s hand one day during parade, and Glen thrust it out of sight on the instant, glancing sidewise to see if Major Malpas had noticed the act, and then biting his lip with vexation at Dick being so foolish.
A good deal of the foolishness was on his own side, for had he taken the letter in a matter-of-fact manner, no one would have paid the slightest heed, or fancied that it came from a lady in a clandestine way.
But, as is generally the case in such matters, the person most anxious to keep his correspondence a secret is one of the first to betray himself, and, feeling this, Glen was in no very good humour.
The secret correspondence he had been carrying on with Clotilde was very sweet; but it annoyed him sadly, for his was not a nature to like the constant subterfuge. By nature frank and open, there was to him something exceedingly degrading in the fact that servants were bribed and the aunts deceived; and with a stern determination to put an end to it all, and frankly speak to the Honourable Misses Dymcox concerning his attachment to Clotilde, he went on with his duties till the men were dismissed.
“How could you be so stupid, Dick!” he exclaimed, as soon as they were clinking back, sabre and spur, to their quarters.
“Foolish!” said the little fellow, with a melodramatic laugh; “I thought you would like to get your letter. I don’t care about keeping all the fun to myself.”
“What’s the matter?” said Glen, smiling. “Has the fair Marie been snubbing you?”
“No. Look at your letter,” said the little fellow tragically.
Glen placed his hand in his breast, but, altering his mind, he walked on to his room before taking out the letter and glancing at it; then leaping up, he strode out into the passage and across to Dick’s quarters, to find that gentleman looking the very image of despair.
“Here, what does this mean?” exclaimed Glen. “Why did you not send my note with yours?”
“Did!”
“Then how is it you have brought it back?”
“That scoundrel Joseph!” exclaimed Dick. “I won’t believe but that it’s some trick on his part, for I don’t trust a word he says.”
“What does he say, then?”
“That they returned the notes unopened, and that—can you bear it?”
“Bear it! Bear what? Of course—yes; go on.”
“I’ve heard that Clotilde has accepted Mr Elbraham, and they are going to be married directly.”
Glen stood and glared at him for a moment, and then burst into a hearty laugh.
“Absurd! nonsense! Why, who told you this?”
“Joseph.”
“Rubbish! Joseph is an ass. The fellow forgot to deliver the letters.”
Dick spoke to him again, but Glen did not hear his words in the anger that had taken possession of him. He had, against his will, allowed himself to be swayed by Clotilde, and carried on the clandestine correspondence that was repugnant to his frank nature; and now he blamed himself for his conduct.
“Look here, Dick,” he cried at last, “we have been behaving like a couple of foolish boys ashamed of their feelings, and the consequence is we have been unable to take the part of those two when they have been urged to accept proposals by their aunts.”
“Don’t saythey; it is only Clotilde.”
“I’ll wager it is Marie as well, my boy; else why did you get your note back?”
Dick looked staggered, and gazed in his friend’s face.
“I say, you know, what are you going to do?” he said it last.
“Going straight to the private apartments to see the aunts. Come with me?”
“What, to meet the old dragons, and talk about it?”
“Yes, of course. It is cowardly to hold back.”
“That’s—er—a matter of opinion,” said Dick, who looked uneasy. “I—er—don’t think it would be quite wise to go.”
“As you like!” said Glen shortly; and before the boy could quite realise the position the door swung back heavily and his visitor was gone.
“Well,” said Dick thoughtfully, “I could go through a good deal for Marie’s sake, and would give a good deal to see her now, but face those two old Gorgons? No, not this time; I’d rather take a header into the Thames any day, and I don’t believe Glen has gone, after all.”
But he had gone straight to the private apartments, rung, and sent in his card to where the Honourable Misses Dymcox were discussing preparations for the marriage, with their nieces in the room.
“Captain Glen!” exclaimed the Honourable Philippa, starting as she read the card; “so early! What can he want?”
Marie glanced at her sister, and saw that she looked flushed and excited; but as soon as Clotilde found that she was observed, she returned a fierce, defiant glance at Marie’s inquisitive eyes.
“Had—hadn’t we better say ‘Not at home’?” whispered the Honourable Isabella.
“No: it would be cowardly,” replied her sister. “Joseph, you can show up Captain Glen.”
Clotilde rose and left the room, and Marie was following, but her aunt arrested her.
“No, my dear, I would rather you would stay,” she exclaimed; and full of sympathy, but at the same time unable to control a sense of gladness at her heart, Marie resumed her seat just as Ruth entered the room.
The next moment Glen was shown in, and after the customary salutations and commonplace remarks asked for a few minutes’ conversation with the ladies alone.
The Honourable Philippa was a good deal fluttered, but she preserved her dignity, and signed to Marie and Ruth to withdraw, the former darting a look full of meaning as she passed Marcus, who hastened to open the door, the latter glancing up at him for a moment, and he smiled back in her face, which was full of sympathy for him in his pain.
Glen closed the door in the midst of a chilling silence, and returned to his seat facing the thin sisters, feeling that the task he had undertaken was anything but the most pleasant under the sun.
He was, however, too much stirred to hesitate, and he began in so downright a manner that he completely overset the balance—already tottering—of the Honourable Isabella, who felt so sympathetic that she was affected to tears.
“I wished to have a few minutes’ conversation, ladies,” he said, in rather a quick, peremptory tone, “respecting a question very near to my heart, and concerning my future happiness. Let me say, then, plainly, in what is meant to be a manly, straightforward fashion, that I love your niece Clotilde, and I have come to ask your consent to my being a constant visitor here.”
The Honourable Isabella could not suppress it: a faint sigh struggled to her lips, and floated away upon the chilly air of that dismal room, like the precursor of the shower that trembled upon the lashes of her eyes.
“Captain Glen!” cried the Honourable Philippa, making an effort to overcome her own nervousness, and dreading a scene on the part of this downright young man, “you astound me!”
“I am very sorry I should take you so by surprise,” he said quietly. “I hoped that you would have seen what my feelings were.”
“Oh, indeed no!” cried the Honourable Philippa mendaciously, “nothing of the kind—did we, sister?”
The Honourable Isabella’s hands shook a great deal, but she did not speak—only looked piteously at their visitor.
“Perhaps I ought to have made my feelings known sooner,” said Glen. “However, I have spoken now, Miss Dymcox, and—”
“But, Captain Glen, pray spare us, and spare yourself what must be a very painful declaration, when I tell you that our niece is engaged to be married to Mr Elbraham.”
“Then it is true?”
“Oh yes, perfectly true,” said the Honourable Philippa.
Glen drew a long breath, and sat for some moments silently gazing down at the carpet as if he could not trust himself to speak. When he opened his lips again his voice was changed.
“Am I to understand, madam, that Miss Clotilde Dymcox accepts this Mr—Mr Elbraham of her own free choice and will?”
It required a tremendous effort to get out that name “Elbraham,” but he forced it from his lips at last.
“Captain Glen,” said the Honourable Philippa, rising and darting a very severe glance at her sister because she did not rise as well, “this is presuming upon your position here as an acquaintance—a very casual acquaintance. I cannot discuss this matter with you.”
“As you will, madam,” replied Glen, who felt hot with indignant rage. “May I ask your permission to see Clotilde?”
“To see Miss Clotilde Dymcox?” said the Honourable Philippa, with dignity. “Under the circumstances, I think, sister, certainly not.”
She darted another fierce look at the Honourable Isabella, who was growing weaker and more agitated moment by moment, as she asked herself whether it was possible that, in spite of the disparity of their ages, she might yet try to soothe Marcus Glen’s wounded spirit, and offer him the sympathy of her virgin heart.
“I ask it in justice to myself, madam,” cried Glen, “for your niece—”
He was going to say more, but he checked himself, and bit his lips. “Of course, ladies, you would be present.”
“Impossible!” said the Honourable Philippa grimly.
“Don’t—don’t you think, sister,” faltered the Honourable Isabella, “that—that—Captain Glen might—might just see—just see Clotilde—for a few moments?”
“No!” said the Honourable Philippa, with quite a snap of her artificial teeth, and the Honourable Isabella seemed to shrink back into herself, quite dismayed by her sister’s almost ferocious way.
“I thank you, Miss Isabella,” said Glen, so warmly that the poor old lady’s heart began to palpitate at an unwonted rate, and she trembled and her hands were agitated, as if she would gladly have laid them in their visitor’s broad palms.—“You decline, then, to allow me to see Miss Clotilde?”
The Honourable Philippa bowed, and turned to her sister to see if she made as dignified a response to his appeal; but to her horror she saw her sister shaking her head violently as Glen now appealed to her in turn.
“Then, madam,” cried Glen angrily, “I give you fair warning that I shall spare no pains to gain an interview with your niece, for I do not, I will not believe that this is honest. It cannot be, and I am certain that the poor girl has been forced into this engagement. Ladies, I will say no more, for I fear that if I do I shall lose my temper. Miss Dymcox, good-morning. Miss Isabella, I thank you for your show of sympathy; good-bye.”
He felt that there could be no excuse for a longer stay, and strode angrily from the room; but he had hardly reached the foot of the stairs before he became aware of the fact that Marie was coming out of the schoolroom, where Ruth was now alone and a witness of what passed.
“Thank goodness!” exclaimed Glen joyously, as he sprang forward and caught both Marie’s hands in his, making her flush and tremble with the warmth of his greeting. “Tell me, dear Marie, the meaning of all this dreadful news.”
She did not speak, but, giving herself up to the joy of the situation, she let her hands rest in his and gazed wistfully in his face, while Ruth sat in her place in the schoolroom and trembled, she knew not why.
“You do not speak,” said Glen. “Tell me, for heaven’s sake tell me, that this is all in opposition to your sister’s wishes.”
Marie still gazed wistfully in his face, and her hands, in spite of herself, returned the warm pressure of his.
“Surely—oh no; I will not believe it!” cried Glen. “It cannot be so. Marie, dear Marie, pray have compassion on me and tell me the truth.”
“Do—you wish me to tell you?” she said in a low voice that trembled with suppressed emotion.
“Yes, everything. If you have any feeling for me, tell me honestly all.”
Marie’s hands trembled more and more, and her colour went and came as she spoke.
“I will tell you what you wish, Captain Glen,” she said, in her low rich tones; “but do not blame me if it gives you pain.”
“I will not; only pray put an end to this terrible anxiety.”
There was a few moments’ silence, and then Glen said huskily:
“You know how Clotilde loved me, Marie?”
Marie’s dark eyes gazed fully, pityingly into his, but there was a slight curl of scorn upon her upper lip as she remained silent.
“No,” she said slowly, as she shook her head; “no, I do not.”
“You—do not!”
Marie hesitated to plant so sharp a sting in his heart, but, still, she panted to speak—to tell him that he had wasted his honest love upon one who did not value it, in the hope that he might turn to her; but at the same time she feared to overstep the mark, and her compunction to hurt the man she loved came and went.
“Why do you not tell me what you mean?” he said, pressing one of her hands so that he caused her intense pain.
“Because I shrink from telling you that Clotilde never cared for you in the least,” she said bitterly.
“How dare you say that?” he cried.
“If she had loved you, Captain Glen, would she have accepted Mr Elbraham for the sake of his wealth?”
He would have dropped her hand, but she held fast, full of passionate grief for him as she saw how deadly pale he had turned, and had they been in a less public place she would have clung to him, and told him how her heart bled for his pain.
“You are her sister, and could not say that which was false,” he said simply. “Tell me, then, is this all true?”
“Do you doubt me?” she asked, looking full in his eyes.
He held her hands, and looked down in the dark, handsome face that gazed so unflinchingly in his.
“No,” he said softly, “no;” and raising one of her hands to his lips, he kissed it, and then turned and left the place.
Marie’s reverie, as she stood there holding one soft hand pressed over the back of the other, where Marcus Glen’s lips had been, was interrupted by the voice of Clotilde.
“Rie: has he gone?”
“Yes,” said her sister, with a look of disgust, almost loathing, in her face.
“Poor boy! I hope he won’t mind much. I say, Rie, you can have him now. I’ll make you a present of his love. No, I won’t,” she said, flashing into life. “You shan’t look at him. If you do, I’ll tell him such things about you as shall drive him away.”
The sisters stood there upon the stairs gazing angrily one at the other, and Ruth, whose heart felt very sore, watched them in turn, and thought how hard all this was for Captain Glen, and also, with a sigh, how weak he must be.
“But they are both so handsome,” she said to herself half aloud; and then, with a kind of shiver, she began to think about Mr Montaigne.