A draughty old château in Switzerland. Not that it need have been draughty, for it lay at the foot of a mountain, sheltered from the east winds. But the doors did not fit, and the windows rattled, after the custom of most old châteaux: and so the winter air crept in. It stood in a secluded spot quite out of the beaten tracks of travellers; and it looked upon one of the most glorious prospects that even this favoured land of lovely scenery can boast.
That prospect in part, and in part the very moderate rent asked for the house, had induced Sir Sandy MacIvor to take it for the autumn months. The MacIvors, though descended from half the kings of Scotland, could not boast of anything very great in the shape of income. Sir Sandy's was but small, and he and his wife, Lady Harriet, formerly Harriet Chenevix, had some trouble to make both ends meet. The little baronet was fond of quoting the old saying that he had to cut his coat according to his cloth. Therefore, when Lady Adela went to them for a prolonged stay, the very ample allowance made for her to Sir Sandy was most welcome.
Upon the close of Adela's short visit to Court Netherleigh in the autumn, she returned to her mother. The visit had not been productive of any good result as regarded her cheerfulness of mind and manner; for her life seemed only to grow more dreary. Lady Acorn did not approve of this, and took care daily to let Adela know she did not, dealing out to her sundry reproaches. One day when Adela was unusually low-spirited, the countess made use of a threat—that she should be transported to that gloomy Swiss fastness the MacIvors had settled themselves in, and stop there until she mended her manners.
A chance word, spoken at hazard, sometimes bears fruit. Adela, a faint light rising in her eyes as she heard this, lifted her voice eagerly. "Mother, let me go; send me there as soon as you please," she said. "It will at least be better for me there than here, for I shall be out of the world."
"Out of the world!" snapped Lady Acorn. "You can't be much more out of it than you are down here in Oxfordshire."
"Yes, I can. The neighbours, those who are at their places, come in to see us, and papa sometimes brings people home from town. Let me go to Harriet."
It was speedily decided. Lady Acorn, severe though she was with Adela, had her welfare at heart, and she thought a thorough change might be beneficial to her. An old friend, who chanced to be going abroad, took charge of Lady Adela to Geneva: Sir Sandy MacIvor and his wife met her there, and took her back with them to the château.
That was in October. Adela found the château as isolated as she could well desire, and therefore she was pleased with it; and she told Sir Sandy and Harriet she was glad to have come.
They had never thought of staying in this château for the winter; they meant to go to Rome early in December. But as that month approached, Adela evinced a great dislike to move. She would not go to Rome to encounter the English there, she told them; she would stay where she was. It a little perplexed the MacIvors; Adela had now grown so weak and low-spirited that they did not like to cross her or to insist upon it that she must go; neither did they care to give her up as their inmate, for her money was of consequence to them.
"What if we make up our minds to stay here for the winter, Harriet?" at length said Sir Sandy, who was as easy-tempered, genial-hearted a little laird as could be met with in or out of Scotland: though he stood only five feet high in his shoes, and nothing could be seen of his face except his small retroussé nose standing out of the mass of bright yellow hair which adorned it.
"It will be so cold," grumbled Harriet. "Think of all these draughts."
"They won't hurt," said the laird, who was bred to such things, his paternal stronghold in the Highlands not being altogether air-tight. "I'll nail some list over the cracks, and we'll lay in a good stock of wood and keep up grand fires. I think we might be comfortable, Harriet. It must be as you decide, of course, dear; but Adela can't be left here alone, and if we say she must go with us to Rome, she may fret herself into a fever."
"She is doing that as it is," returned Harriet. "We might stay here, of course—and we should get the place for an old song during the cold months. Perhaps we had better do so. Yet I should like to have been in Rome for the Christmas festivities, and for the carnival later."
"We will go next Christmas instead," said Sir Sandy.
As they had no children, they were not tied to their Scottish home, and could lay their plans freely. It was decided to remain in the château for the winter, and Sir Sandy began hammering at the doors and windows.
So they settled down contentedly enough; and, cold though it was, in spite of the list and the hissing wood fires, which certainly gave out more sparks than heat, Sir Sandy and his wife made the best of it.
It was more than could be said of Lady Adela. She not only did not make the best of things, but did not try to do so. Not that she complained of the cold, or the heat, or appeared to feel either. All seemed as one to her.
Her room was large; its great old-fashioned sofa and its heavy fauteuils were covered with amber velvet. Uncomfortable-looking furniture stood about—mahogany tables and consoles with cold white marble tops. The walls of the room were papered with a running landscape, representing green plains, rivers, blue mountains, sombre pine-trees, castles, and picturesque peasants at work in a vineyard. In a recess, shut off with heavy curtains, stood the bed; it was, in fact, a bedroom and sitting-room combined, as is so frequently the case on the Continent.
In a dress of black silk and crape, worn for Margery Upton, who had died the day after Christmas-Day, Lady Adela sat in this room near the crackling wood fire. January was wearing away. She leaned back in the great yellow armchair in listless apathy, her wasted hands lying on her lap, a warm cashmere shawl drawn round her, and two scarlet spots on her once blooming-cheeks. The low fever, that, as predicted by Lady Harriet weeks and weeks ago, she was fretting herself into, had all too surely attacked her. And she had not seemed in the least to care whether or not she died of it.
"If I die, will my death be sudden?" she one day startled the Swiss doctor by asking him.
"You will not die, you will get well," replied Monsieur Le Brun. "If you will only be reasonable, be it understood, and second our efforts to make you so, by wishing for it yourself," he added.
"I do wish it," she murmured; though her tone was apathetical enough. "But I said to you, 'IfI die,'—and I want the question answered, sir. Would there be time to send for any friends from England that I may wish to see?"
"Ample time, miladi."
"Harriet," she whispered to her sister that same night, "mind you send for Mr. Grubb when I get into that state that I cannot recover—if I do get into it.Will you?"
"What next!" retorted Harriet. "Who says you will not recover?"
"I could not die in peace without seeing my husband—without asking for his forgiveness," pleaded the poor invalid, bitter tears of regret for the past slowly coursing down her cheeks. "You will be sure to send in time, won't you, Harriet?"
"Yes, yes, I promise it," answered Harriet, humouring the fancy; and she set herself to kiss and soothe her sister.
Lady Harriet MacIvor, who resembled her mother more than any of the rest, both in person and quickness of temper, had been tart enough with Adela before the illness declared itself, freely avowing that she had no patience with people who fretted themselves ill; but when the fever had really come she became a tender and efficient nurse.
The sickness and danger had passed—though of danger there had not perhaps been very much—and Adela was up again. With the passing, Lady Harriet resumed again her tendency to set the world and its pilgrims right, especially Adela. January was now drawing to a close.
The fever had left her very weak. In fact, it had not yet wholly taken itself away. She would lie back in the large easy-chair, utterly inert, day after day, recalling dreams of the past. Thinking of the luxurious home she had lost, one that might have been all brightness; picturing what she would do to render it so, were the opportunity still hers.
For hours she would lose herself in recollections of the child she had lost; the little boy, George. A rush of fever would pass through her veins as she recalled her behaviour at its baptism: her scornful rejection of her husband's name, Francis; her unseemly interruption from her bed to the clergyman that the name should be George. How she yearned after the little child now! Had he lived—why surely her husband would not have put her away from him! A man may not, and does not, put away the mother of his child; it could never have been. Would he have kept the child—or she? No, no; with that precious, living tie between them, he could not have thrust his wife from him. Thus she would lie, tormenting herself with deceitful fantasies that could never be, and wake with a shudder to the miserable reality.
Sufficient of the fever lingered yet to tinge with hectic her white face, and to heat her trembling hands. But for one thought Adela would not have cared whether she died or lived—at least, she told herself so in her misery; and that thought was that, if she died, her husband might take another wife. A wife who would give him back what she herself had not given—love for love. Since Miss Upton, perhaps unwittingly, had breathed that suggestion, it had not left Adela night or day.
How bitterly she regretted the past none knew, or ever would know. During these weeks of illness, before the fever and since, she had had leisure to dwell upon her conduct; to repent of it; to pray to Heaven for pardon for it. The approach of possible death, the presence of hopeless misery, had brought Adela to that Refuge which she had never sought or found before, an ever-merciful God. Never again, even were it possible that she should once more mingle with the world, could she be the frivolous, heartless, unchristian woman she had been. Nothing in a small way had ever surprised Lady Harriet so much, as to find Adela take out her Bible and Prayer-book, and keep them near her.
She sat today, buried as usual in the past, the bitter anguish of remembrance rending her soul. We are told in Holy Writ that the heart of man is deceitful and desperately wicked. The heart of woman is undoubtedly contradictory. When Adela was Mr. Grubb's wife, she had done her best to scorn and despise him, to persuade herself she hated him: now that he was lost to her for ever, she had grown to love him, passionately as ever man was loved by woman. The very fact that relations between them could never be renewed only fostered this love. For Lady Adela knew better than to deceive herself with vain hopes; she knew that to cherish them would be the veriest mockery; that when Francis Grubb threw her off, it was for ever.
Many a moment did she spend now, regretting that she had not died in the fever. It would at least have brought about a last interview; for Harriet would have kept her word and sent for him.
"Better for me to die than live," she murmured to herself, lifting her fevered hand. "I could have died happily, with his forgiveness on my lips. Whereas, to live is nothing but pain; weariness—and who knows how many years my life will last?"
Darvy came in; a tumbler in her hand containing an egg beaten up with wine and milk. Darvy did not choose to abandon her mistress in her sickness and misfortunes, but Darvy considered herself the most ill-used lady's-maid that fate ever produced. Buried alive in this dismal place in a foreign country, where the companions with whom she consorted, the other domestics, spoke a language that was barbarous and unintelligible, Darvy wondered when it would end.
"I don't want it," said Adela, turning away.
"But Lady Harriet says you must take it, my lady. You'll never get your strength up, if you refuse nourishment."
"I don't care to get my strength up. If you brought me some wine and water, Darvy, instead, I could take that. Or some tea—or lemonade. I am always thirsty."
"And what good is there in tea or lemonade?" returned Darvy, who ventured to contend now as she never had when her lady was in health, coaxing her also sometimes as if she were a child. "Lady Harriet said if you would not take this from me, my lady, she should have to come herself. And she does not want to come; she's busy."
To hear that Harriet was busy seemed something new. "What is she busy about?" languidly asked Adela.
"Talking," answered Darvy. "Some English traveller has turned out of his way to call on her and Sir Sandy, my lady, and he is giving them all the home news."
"Oh," was the indifferent comment of Lady Adela. Home news was nothing to her now. And, to put an end to Darvy's importunity, she drank the refreshment without further objection.
Margery Upton had died and was buried; and her will, when it became known, created a nine-days' wonder in London. Amidst those assembled to hear its reading, the mourners, who had just returned from the churchyard, none was more utterly astonished than Mr. Grubb. Never in his whole life had such an idea—that he would be the inheritor of Court Netherleigh—occurred to him. Miss Upton's statement of why it was left to him, as explained by her by word of mouth to Mr. Cleveland, was read out after the will; and Francis Grubb found a private letter, written by her to himself, put into his hand.
Lord Acorn was similarly astonished. Intensely so. But, in his débonnaire manner, he carried it off with easy indifference, and did not let his mortification appear. Perhaps he had not in his heart felt so sure of Court Netherleigh as he had allowed the world to think: Miss Upton's warnings might not have been quite lost upon him. Failing himself, he would rather Francis Grubb had it than any one; there might be no trouble about those overdue bonds; though Lord Acorn, always sanguine, had not allowed himself to dream of such a catastrophe as this.
Perhaps the most unwelcome minor item in the affair to Lord Acorn was having to carry the news home to his wife. It was evening when he arrived there. He and Mr. Grubb had travelled up together: for the easy-natured peer did not intend to show the cold shoulder to his son-in-law because he had supplanted him.
"Will you give me a bit of dinner, Frank?" asked the earl, as they got into a cab together at the terminus, only too willing to put off the mauvais quart d'heure with my lady as long as might be.
"I will give it to you, and welcome, if there is any to be had," smiled Mr. Grubb. "I left no orders for dinner today, not knowing when I should be back."
Alighting in Grosvenor Square, they found dinner prepared. Afterwards Lord Acorn went home. His wife, attired in one of Madame Damereau's best black silk gowns, garnished with a crape apron, was sitting in the small drawing-room, all impatience.
"Well, youarelate," cried she. "What can have kept you until now?"
"It is only ten o'clock," replied the earl, drawing a chair to the fire. "At work, Gracie!" he added, turning to his daughter, who sat at the table, busy with her tatting.
"Only ten o'clock!" snapped the countess. "I expected you at five or six. And now—how are things left? I suppose we have Court Netherleigh?"
"Well, no; we have not," quietly replied Lord Acorn.
"Not!"
"Not at all. Grubb is made the heir. He has Court Netherleigh—and is to take the name."
Lady Acorn's face, in its petrified astonishment, its righteous indignation, would have made a model for a painter. Not for a couple of minutes did she speak, voice and words alike failed her.
"The deceitful wretch!" broke from her at length. "To play the sneak with Margery in that way!"
"Don't waste your words, Betsy. Grubb knew nothing about it: is more surprised than you are. Court Netherleigh was willed to him when Margery first came into it; when he was a young lad. She only carried out the directions of Sir Francis Netherleigh."
Lady Acorn was beginning to breathe again. But she was not the less angry.
"I don't care. It is no better than a swindle. HowdeceitfulMargery must have been!"
"She kept counsel—if you mean that. As to being deceitful—no, I don't see it. She never did, or would, admit that the estate would come to us: discouraged the idea, in fact."
"All the same, it is a frightful blow. We werereckoningon it. Was no one in her confidence?"
"No one whatever except the old lawyer, Pencot. Two or three weeks before she died she disclosed all to Cleveland in a confidential interview. As it is not ourselves, I am heartily glad it's Grubb."
"What has she done with all her accumulated money?" tartly went on her ladyship. "She must have saved a heap of it, living in the quiet way she did!"
"Yes, there is a pretty good lot of that," equably replied the earl. "It is left to one and another; legacies here, legacies there. I don't come in for one."
"No! What a shame!"
"You do, though," resumed Lord Acorn, stretching out his boots to catch the warmth of the fire. "You get ten thousand pounds."
The words were to the countess as a very sop in the pan. Her fiery face became a little calmer.
"Are you sure?" she asked.
"Quite sure," nodded the earl. "You don't get it, though, without conditions. Only the interest for life; the sum itself then goes to Grace, here. I congratulate you, Gracie, my dear."
Grace let fall her shuttle; her colour rose. "Oh, papa! And—what do my sisters have?" she added, ever, in her unselfishness, thinking of others.
"Mary, Harriet, and Frances have a thousand pounds each; Sarah and Adela only some trinkets as a remembrance. I suppose Margery thought they were well married, and did not require money."
"And, papa, who else comes in?" asked Grace, glancing across at her mother, who sat beating her foot on the carpet.
"Who else? Let me see. Thomas Cleveland has two thousand pounds. And Mrs. Dalrymple, the elder, has a thousand. And several of Margery's servants are provided for. And I think that's about all I remember."
"The furniture at Court Netherleigh?" interrupted Lady Acorn. "Who takes that?"
"Grubb; he takes everything belonging to the house and estate; everything that was Sir Francis Netherleigh's. He is left residuary legatee. Margery Upton has only willed away what was her own of right."
"As if he wanted it!" grumbled Lady Acorn.
"The less one needs things, the more one gets them, as it seems to me. The baronetcy is to be renewed in him, Betsy."
"The baronetcy! Inhim!"
"Sir Francis wished it. There won't be much delay in the matter, either. Margery Upton put things in train for it before she died."
Lady Acorn could only reply by a stare; and there ensued a pause.
"The idiot that little minx Adela has shown herself!" was her final comment. "Court Netherleigh, it seems, would have been hers."
The little minx Adela, wasting away with fever in her Swiss abode, knew nothing of all this, and cared less. The barest items of news concerning it came to the MacIvors; Grace wrote to Harriet to say that Court Netherleigh had been willed to Mr. Grubb, not to her father; but in that first letter she gave no details. That much was told to Adela. She aroused herself sufficiently to ask who had Court Netherleigh, and was told that Margery Upton had left it to Mr. Grubb.
"I knew he was a favourite of hers," was all the comment she made; and, but for the sudden flush, Lady Harriet might have thought the news was perfectly indifferent to her: and she made no further allusion to it, then or afterwards.
But of the particulars, I say, Sir Sandy and Lady Harriet remained in ignorance, for Grace did not write again. No one else wrote. And their extreme surprise at Mr. Grubb's inheritance had become a thing of the past, when one day a traveller, recently from England, found them out and their old château. It was Captain Frederick Cust, brother to the John Cust who stuttered. The Custs and the Acorns had always been very intimate; the young Cust lads, there were six of them, and the Ladies Chenevix had played and quarrelled together as boys and girls. Captain Cust knew all about the Court Netherleigh inheritance, and supplied the information lacking, until then, to Sir Sandy and Lady Harriet MacIvor. No wonder Darvy had said that Lady Harriet was too busy to go upstairs: she was as fond of talking as her mother.
And so, the abuse they had been mutually lavishing upon Mr. Grubb in private for these two or three past weeks they found to be unmerited. He was the lucky inheritor, it is true, but through no complicity of his own.
"You might have known that," said Captain Cast, upon Lady Harriet's candidly avowing this. "Grubb is the most honourable man living; he would not do an underhand deed to be made king of England tomorrow. I am surprised you could think it of him for a moment, Harriet."
"Be quiet, Fred," she retorted. "It was not an unnatural thought. The best of men will stretch a point when such a property as Court Netherleigh is in question."
"Grubb would not. And he could have bought such a place any day had he a mind to do it."
"And he is to take up the baronetcy! You are sure that is true?"
"Sure and certain. And I wish him joy with all my heart! There's not one of us in the social world but would welcome him into our order with drums and trumpets."
Lady Harriet laughed. "You are just the goose you used to be, Fred."
"No doubt," assented Captain Frederick. "Where's the use of being anything better in such a silly world as this? Your wife has always paid me compliments, MacIvor, since the time we were in pinafores."
"Just as she does me," nodded little Sir Sandy. "And how is Mr. Grubb?—I liked him, too, captain. Does he still keep up that big establishment in Grosvenor Square all for himself?"
"Yes. Why shouldn't he? He is rich enough to keep up ten of them. By the way, he is a member of Parliament now—do you know it? They've returned him for Wheatshire."
And thus the conversation continued. But we need not follow it.
After Captain Cust left at night, for he stayed the day with them, Lady Harriet sat in silent thought, apparently weighing some matter in her mind.
"Sandy," she said at length, looking across at him, "I don't think I shall tell Adela anything about this—I mean that her husband is to take the baronetcy. It will be better not."
"Why?" asked Sir Sandy.
"It will bring her past folly home to her so severely. It may bring all the fever back again."
"As you please, of course, dear. But she did not seem to care at all when told he had inherited Netherleigh."
"That's all you know about it, Sandy!" retorted Lady Harriet. "Isaw—all the light in her eyes and the flush in her cheeks. I tell you, sir, she is in love with her husband now, though she may never have been before, and it will try her too greatly, in her weak state. Her chief bone of contention in the old days was his name; that's removed now. And she has forfeited that lovely place, Court Netherleigh!"
"You know best, my dear. Perhaps it will be kinder not to tell her. But you will have to caution Darvy, and those about her: this is news that will not rest in a nutshell. Though," remarked Sir Sandy, after a pause, "with all deference to your superior judgment, Harriet, I do not think she can care much more for her husband now than she cared of old."
"Listen, Sandy," was the whispered answer. "Yesterday evening at dusk I went softly up to Adela's room, and peeped in to see whether she was dozing. She sat in the firelight, her head bent over that little old photograph she has of Mr. Grubb. Suddenly she gave a little cry, and began raining tears and kisses upon it."
In a small "appartement" in the Champs Elysées, so small, indeed, that the whole of it could almost have been put into the salon of the château in Switzerland, and in its small drawing-room sat Lady Harriet MacIvor and Monsieur le Docteur Féron. Lady Adela sat in it also; but she went for nobody now. It was a lovely April day; the sun shone through the crimson draperies of the window, the flowers were budding, the trees were already green.
Monsieur le Docteur Féron and Lady Harriet were talking partly to, partlyatAdela. Inert, listless, dispirited, she paid little or no attention to either of them, or to anything they might choose to say: life and its interests seemed to be no longer of moment to her.
When we saw her in January she was recovering from the low fever. But she did not grow strong. The fever subsided, but the weakness and listlessness remained. Do what they would, the MacIvors could not rouse her from her apathy. Sir Sandy tried reasoning and amusement; Lady Harriet alternately soothed and ridiculed; Darvy, even, ventured now and again on a good scolding. It was all one.
That exposé the previous summer, when she was put away by her husband, seemed to have changed Adela's very nature. At first her mood was resentful; then it became repentant: that was succeeded by one of heart-sickening remorse. Remorse for her own line of conduct during the past years. With the low fever in Switzerland, she began to think of serious things. The awakening to the responsibilities that lie upon us to remember and prepare for a future and better state—an awakening that comes to us all sooner or later, in a greater or a less degree—came to Lady Adela. She saw what her past life had been, all its mocking contempt for what was good, its supreme indifference, its intense selfishness. Night by night, on her bended knees, amid sobs and bitter tears, she besought forgiveness of the Most High. Her cheeks turned red with shame whenever she thought of her kind and good husband, and of how she had requited him. Lady Harriet was right too in her surmise—that Adela had now grown to love her husband. How full of contradictions this human heart of ours is, experience shows us more surely day by day. When she could have indulged that love, she threw it contemptuously from her; now that the time had gone by for indulging it, it was becoming something like idolatry.
Adela did not grow strong; perhaps, with this distressed frame of mind, much improvement was not to be looked for. At length the MacIvors grew alarmed, and resolved to take her to Paris for change and for better advice. Contrary to expectation, Adela made no objection; it seemed as though she no longer cared a straw where she went, or what became of her. "If we offered to box her up in a coffin and bury her for good and all, I don't believe she'd say no," said Lady Harriet one day to the laird. To Paris they went, reaching it during March, and Monsieur le Docteur Féron was at once called in, a man of great repute amongst the English. It was now April, and Monsieur le Docteur, with all his skill, had done nothing.
"But truly there's no reason in it, miladi," he was saying this fine day to Lady Harriet, in English, the language he generally chose to use with his patients, however perfectly they might speak his own. "Miladi Adela has nothing grave amiss with her; absolutely nothing. I assert that to sit as she does has no reason, no common sense in it."
"As I tell her continually," rejoined Lady Harriet, inwardly smiling at his quaint phrases.
"What illness she has, rests on the nerves," proceeded the doctor. "A little on the mind. The earliest day I saw her I asked whether she did have one great shock, or trouble: you remember, do you not, madame?"
"But—good gracious!—one ought not to give way for ever to any shock or trouble—even if one has had such a thing," remonstrated Lady Harriet.
"As I say. Can anything be more clear? Miladi has nothing to make her ill, and yet miladi sits there, ill, day after day. You hear, madame?" turning to Adela.
"Oh yes, I hear," she gently answered, lifting her wan but still lovely face for a moment and then letting it droop again.
"And it is time to end this state of things," resumed the doctor to Lady Harriet. "It must be finished, madame."
"It ought to be," acquiesced Lady Harriet. "But if she does not end it herself, how are we to do it?"
"You go out, madame, with monsieur, your husband, into a little society: is it not so?" spoke the doctor, after a pause of consideration, during which he stroked his face with his gloved hand.
"Of course we do, Monsieur Féron; we are not hermits, and Paris is gay just now," quickly answered Lady Harriet. "We go to the Blunts' tonight."
"Then take her at once also; take her with you. That may be tried. If it has no result, truly I shall not know what to propose. Drugs are hopeless in a case like this," added the doctor, as he made two elaborate bows, one to each lady, and went out.
"Now, Adela, you hear," began Lady Harriet, the moment the door closed, and her voice was sternly resolute. "We have tried everything, and now we shall try this. You go with us to Mrs. Blunt's tonight."
She did not refuse—wonderful to be able to say it. She folded her hands upon her chest and sighed in resignation: too worn out to combat longer: or, perhaps, too apathetical.
"What is it, Harriet? Not a dinner-party?"
"Oh dear, no. An evening party: a crowd, I dare say. Music, I think. And now I shall go and talk to Darvy about what you are to wear," concluded Lady Harriet, escaping from the room lest there should come a tardy opposition. But no, Adela never made it. It seemed to her that she was quite worn out with it all; with the antagonism and the preaching, and the doctors and Harriet; wearied to death. Darvy dressed her plainly enough; a black net robe with black trimmings; and Lady Adela quietly submitted, saying neither yes nor no.
"Don't let me be announced, Harriet," pleaded Adela, as they were going along. "No one cares to hear my name now. I can creep in after you and Sir Sandy."
Mr. and Mrs. Blunt's house was small and their company large. Lady Harriet expected a crowd, and she met with it. Adela, unannounced according to her wish, shook hands with Mrs. Blunt, and escaped into a small recess at the end of the further reception-room. It was draped off by crimson-and-gold curtains, and she sat down, thankful to be alone. She turned giddy: the noise, the lights, the crowd unnerved her. It was so long now since she had mingled in anything of the sort.
She sat on, and began thinkingwhenthe last time had been. It came into her memory with a rush. The last time she had made one in these large gatherings was at her own home in Grosvenor Square, not very many days before she finally left it. Ay, and the attendant circumstances also came back to her, even to the words which had passed between herself and her husband. In the bitter contempt she cherished for him, she had not chosen to inform him of the assembly she purposed having, but had sent out the cards unknown to him. He knew nothing about it until the night arrived and he came home to dinner.
"What is the awning up for?" he asked of Hilson, wondering a little.
"My lady has an assembly tonight, sir," was the answer.
"A large one?"
"Yes, sir."
Mr. Grubb knitted his brow, and went on to his wife. It was not the fact of the assembly that vexed him: it was that she had not thought it worth her while to inform him of it. Darvy was putting the finishing touches to her hair. How well she remembered it now; every minute particular came back to her: where she sat in the room—not at the dressing-glass as usual, but before the open window, for it was intensely hot. Her robe was of costly white lace, adorned with pearls. Pearls that he had given her.
"What is this, Adela?" he had asked. "I hear you have a large assembly tonight."
"Well?" she retorted.
"Could you not have told me?"
"I did not see any especial necessity for telling you."
"I might have had an engagement. In fact, I have one. I ought to go to one of the hotels tonight to see a gentleman who has come over from India on business."
"You can go," was her scornful reply to this. "Your presence is not needed here; it is not at all necessary to the success of the evening."
"There is one, at any rate, who would not miss me," had been his reply as he left her, to go to his room to dress for dinner. Yes, it all came back vividly tonight.
She bent her face on her hand as she recalled this, hiding it in very shame that she could have been so wicked. Lady Sarah Hope had once told her the devil had got possession of her. "Not only the devil," moaned Adela now, "but all his myrmidons."
A lady was beginning to sing. She had a sweet and powerful voice, and she chose a song Mr. Grubb used to be particularly fond of—"Robin Adair."
Adela looked beyond the draperies at the crowd, gathering itself up for a momentary stillness, and disposed herself to listen. Her thoughts were full of Mr. Grubb, as the verses went on. Every word came home to her aching heart.
"But him I loved so wellStill in my heart doth dwell—Oh, I shall ne'er forgetRobin Adair."
"But him I loved so wellStill in my heart doth dwell—Oh, I shall ne'er forgetRobin Adair."
Applause ensued. It was much better deserved than that usually accorded in these cases. A minute later, and some one called out "Hush!" for the lady had consented to sing again. The noise subsided into silence; the singer was turning over the leaves of her music-book.
To this silence there arose an interruption. Mr. Blunt's English butler appeared, announcing a late guest:
"Sir Francis Netherleigh."
The man had a low, sonorous voice, and every syllable penetrated to Lady Adela's ear. The name struck on the chords of her memory. Sir Francis Netherleigh! Why, he had been dead many a year. Could another Sir Francis Netherleigh be in existence? What did it mean?—for it must be remembered that all such news had been kept and was still kept from her. Lady Adela gazed out from her obscure vantage-ground.
Not for a minute or two did she see anything: the company was dense. Then, threading his way through the line made for him, advanced a man of noble form and face, the form and face of him she had once called husband.
He was in evening-dress, and in mourning. He seemed to be making direct for the recess, and for Adela; and she shrank behind the draperies to conceal herself.
For a moment all things seemed to be in a mist, inwardly and outwardly. What brought Mr. Grubbthere—and who was the Sir Francis Netherleigh that had been announced, and where was he?
Not to Adela had he been advancing, neither did he see her. Mrs. Blunt chanced to be standing before the recess; it was to her he was making his way.
"How do you do, Sir Francis?" she warmly exclaimed, meeting his hand. "It is so good of you to come: my husband feared you would not be able to spare the time."
"I thought so also when I spoke to him this afternoon," was the answer, given in the earnest pleasant tones Adela remembered so well. "My stay in Paris is but for a few hours this time. Where is Mr. Blunt?"
"I saw him close by a minute ago. Ah, there he is. John," called Mrs. Blunt, "here is Sir Francis Netherleigh."
They moved towards the fireplace; the crowd closed behind them, hiding them from sight, and Adela breathed again. So then,hewas Sir Francis Netherleigh! How had it all come about?
Gathering her shawl around her, she escaped from the recess and glided through the room with bent head. In the outer room, opening to the corridor and the staircase, she came upon her sister.
"Harriet, I must go," she feverishly uttered. "I can't stay here."
"Oh, indeed!" said Lady Harriet. "Well—I don't know."
"If there's no carriage waiting, I can have a coach. Or I can walk. It will do me no harm. I shall find my way through the streets."
She ran down the stairs. Harriet felt obliged to follow her. "Will you call up Sir Sandy MacIvor's carriage," asked Lady Harriet of the servants standing below. "Adela, do wait an instant! One would think the house was on fire."
"I must get away," was the eager, terrified interruption, and Adela bore onwards to the outer door.
The carriage was called, and came up. In point of fact, Sir Sandy and his wife had privately agreed to keep it waiting, in case Adela should turn faint in the unusual scene and have to leave. In the porte cochère they encountered a lady who was only then arriving.
"What, going already!" she exclaimed.
"Yes," replied Lady Harriet; "and I wish you would just tell Sir Sandy for me: you will be sure to see him somewhere in the rooms. Say my sister does not feel well, and we have gone home."
They passed out to the carriage and were soon bowling along the streets. Adela drew into her corner, cowering and shivering.
"Did you see him?" she gasped.
"Oh yes, I saw him," grumblingly responded Lady Harriet, who was not very pleased at having to quit the gay scene in this summary fashion. "I am sure Sandy will conclude we have been spirited away, unless Mrs. Seymour finds him. A fine flurry he'll be in."
"Harriet, what did it mean? They called him Sir Francis Netherleigh."
"He is Sir Francis Netherleigh."
"Since when? Why did you not tell me?"
"He has been Francis Netherleigh since Aunt Margery died: the name came to him with the property. He has been Sir Francis since—oh, for about six weeks now. The old Uncle Francis wished the baronetcy to be revived in him, and his wishes have been carried out."
Adela paused, apparently revolving the information. "Then his name is no longer Grubb?"
"In one sense, no. For all social uses that name has passed from him."
"Why did you never tell me this?" repeated Adela.
"From the uncertainty as to whether you would care to hear it, Adela. We decided to say nothing until you were stronger."
A second pause of thought. "If he has succeeded to the name, why, so have I. Have I not? Though he puts me away from himself, Harriet, he cannot take from me his name."
"Of course you have succeeded to it."
Pause the third. "Then I ought to have been announced tonight as Lady Adela Netherleigh!"
"Had you been announced at all. You solved the difficulty, you know, by telling me you would not be announced—you would creep in after me and Sandy."
"What difficulty?"
"Well, had you heard yourself called Netherleigh, you would have wanted to know, there and then, the why and the wherefore. It might have created a small commotion."
Pause the fourth. "Who is he in mourning for? Aunt Margery?"
"And also for his mother. Mrs. Lynn lived just long enough to see him take up the baronetcy. I think it must have gratified her—that her son should be the one to succeed at last.Shewould have had Court Netherleigh in the old days, Adela, had she not displeased Uncle Francis by her marriage, not Margery Upton. He told Margery so when he was dying."
"The world seems full of changes," sighed Adela.
"It always was, and always will be. But I fancy the right mostly comes uppermost in the end," added Lady Harriet. "Where is Mary Lynn, you ask? She lives with Sir Francis, in Grosvenor Square; the house's mistress."
Adela ceased her questioning. Amidst the many items for reflection suggested to her by the news, was this: that the once-hated name of Grubb had been suppressed for ever. There flashed across her a reminiscence of a day in the past autumn, when she was last staying at Court Netherleigh. She had been giving some scorn to the name, after her all-frequent custom, and Miss Upton had answered it with a peculiar look. Adela did not then understand the look: she did now. That expressive look, had she been able to read it, might have told her that Mr. Grubb would not long retain the name. Adela shrank closer into the corner of the carriage and pressed her hands upon her burning eyes. Foolish, infatuated woman that she had been!
"Did you notice how noble he looked tonight?" she murmured, after awhile.
"He always did look noble, Adela. Here we are."
The carriage drew up. As Lady Harriet, after getting out herself, turned to give her hand to Adela, still weak enough to require especial care, she did not find it responded to.
"Are you asleep, Adela? Come. We are at home."
"I beg your pardon," was the meek answer.
She had only been waiting to stem the torrent of tears flowing forth. Lady Harriet saw them glistening on her wasted cheeks by the light of the carriage-lamps. Bitter tears, telling of a breaking heart.
"Sandy," observed Lady Harriet to her husband that night, "I do not see that a further stay here will be of any use to Adela. We may as well be making preparations for our journey to the Highlands."
"Just as you please," acquiesced Sir Sandy. "I, you know, would rather be in the Highlands than anywhere else. Fix your own time."
"Then we will start next week," decided Lady Harriet. But we must revert for a few moments to Sir Francis Netherleigh before closing the chapter.
His stay in Paris, a matter of business having taken him there, was limited to some four-and-twenty hours. Upon reaching Calais on his return homewards, he found one of the worst gales blowing that Calais had ever known, and he was greeted with the news that not a boat could leave the harbour. All he could do was to go to an hotel, Dessin's, and make himself comfortable until the morrow. Late in the afternoon he strolled out to take a look at the raging sea, and found it was with difficulty he could struggle against the wind. In returning, he was blown against a gentleman, or the gentleman against him; the two laughed, began an apology, and then simultaneously shook hands—for it was Gerard Hope. Sir Francis Netherleigh's heart went out in compassion; Gerard was looking so thin and careworn.
"Come to my hotel and dine with me, Gerard," he said impulsively. And Gerard went.
After dinner, they left the table d'hôte for a private room, to which a bottle of choice claret was ordered. Talking together of past times, the subject of the lost bracelet came up. Sir Francis, listening attentively to what Gerard said, looking at him keenly as he said it, drew the absolute conclusion that Gerard was not the thief: he was quick at distinguishing truth from falsehood.
"Gerard," he quietly asked, "why have you remained so long abroad? It bears a look, you see, to some people, that you are afraid to come back and face the charge."
"It's not that," returned Gerard. "What I can't face is my body of creditors. They would pretty soon lay hold of me, if I went over. As to the other affair, what could I do in it? Nothing. My uncle will never believe me not guilty; and I could not prove that I am innocent."
"Fill your glass, Gerard. How much do you owe?"
"Well, it must be as much, I'm afraid, as five hundred pounds."
"Is that all?" spoke Sir Francis, rather slightingly.
Gerard laughed. "Not much to many a man; but a very great deal to a poor one. I don't know that I should be much better off at home than here," he added in a thoughtful tone. "So long as that bracelet affair lies in doubt, the world will look askance at me: and I expect it will never be cleared up."
"It was a most singular thing, quite a mystery, as Lady Sarah always calls it. I suppose you have no suspicion yourself, Gerard, as to the culprit."
"Why, yes, I have, unfortunately."
Sir Francis caught at the words. "Who was it?"
Gerard Hope's pale face, so much paler than of yore, turned red. But that he had been in a reverie he would not have made the unguarded admission.
"I am sorry to have said so much, Sir Francis," he avowed hastily. "It is true that a doubt lies on my mind; but I ought not to have spoken of it."
"Nay, but you may trust me, Gerard."
"I don't like to," hesitated Gerard. "It was of a lady. And perhaps I was mistaken."
"Not Alice herself," cried Sir Francis, jestingly.
"No, no. I—think—Alice—holds—the—same—suspicion," he added, with a pause between each word.
"You had better trust me, Gerard. No harm shall come of it, to you or to her; I promise you that."
"I thought," breathed Gerard, "it was Selina Dalrymple."
"Selina Dalrymple!" echoed Sir Francis, utterly surprised. "Since when have you thought that?"
"Ever since."
"But why?"
"Well, partly because no one but myself and Selina went into the room; and I know that it was not I who took it. And partly because her visit to the house that evening was kept secret. Her name, as I dare say you know, was never spoken of at all in connection with the matter. Alice did not say she had been there, and of course I did not."
"But how do you know she was there?"
"I opened the door to her. As I left that back-room where the jewels lay upon the table, I looked round to speak to Alice, and I saw that self-same glistening bracelet lying on the table behind the others. I did not return into the room at all; what I had to say to Alice I said with the door in my hand. Upon opening the front-door, to let myself out, there stood Selina Dalrymple, about to ring. She asked for Alice, and ran upstairs to her quietly, as if she did not want to be heard. That Selina went into the room where the jewels were and admired them, Alice casually said to me when we met in the street next day. But her visit was never spoken of in the house, as far as I know."
Sir Francis made no remark. Gerard went on.
"In the first blush of the loss, I should as soon have suspected myself as Selina Dalrymple; sooner perhaps: but when it came to be asserted at the investigation that no other person whatever had been in the room than myself, excepting Alice, I could not see the reason of that assertion, and the doubt flashed upon me. For one thing"—Gerard dropped his voice—"we learnt how terribly hard-up poor Selina was just then. Worse than I was."
"I am very sorry to have heard this, Gerard," said Sir Francis, perceiving at once how grave were the grounds for suspicion. "Poor Selina, indeed! It must never transpire; it would kill Oscar. At heart, he is fond of her as ever."
"Of course it must not transpire," assented Gerard. "I have never breathed it, until now, to mortal man. But it has made things harder for me, you see."
"It was said at the time, I remember, that you denied the theft in a half-hearted manner. Lady Sarah herself told me that. This suspicion trammelled you?"
"To be sure it did. I vowed to them I did not take the bracelet, but in my fear of directing doubts to Selina, I was not as emphatic as I might have been. I felt just as you express it, Sir Francis—trammelled. And I fear," went on Gerard, after a pause, "that this same suspicion has been making havoc with poor Alice's heart and health. When I receive a letter from Frances, as I do now and then, she is sure to lament over Alice's low spirits and her increasing illness."
Francis Netherleigh sat thinking. "It seems to me, Gerard," he presently said, "that you are being punished unjustly. You ought to return to England."
"Ah, but I can't," answered Gerard, shaking his head. "The sharks would be on to me. Before I could turn round I should be lodged in the Queen's Bench."
"No, no; not if they saw you wished to pay them later, and that there was a fair probability of your doing so."
"My wish is good enough. As to the probability—it is nowhere."
"Creditors are not as hard as they are sometimes represented, Gerard. I can assure you of that. I have always found them reasonable."
Gerard laughed outright. "I daresayyou have, Sir Francis. It would be an odd creditor that would be hard to you."
"Ah, but I meant when I have dealt with them for other people," replied Sir Francis, joining in the laugh.
"And if I did get back to London, I should have nothing to live upon," resumed Gerard. "The pittance that I half starve upon in these cheap places, I might wholly starve upon there. I often wish I could get employed as a clerk; no one but myself knows how thankful I should be. But with this other thing hanging over my head, who'd give me a recommendation, and who'd take me without one!"
"Well, well, we will see, Gerard. It is a long lane that has no turning."
They talked yet further, and then Gerard said good-night. And in the morning Sir Francis Netherleigh heard the welcome tidings that the wind had gone down sufficiently to allow the mail-packet to venture out. So he went in her to England.