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diff --git a/76781-0.txt b/76781-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6cfda0e --- /dev/null +++ b/76781-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,4874 @@ + +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 76781 *** + + + + + + A BROKEN BLOSSOM. + + =A Novel.= + + + BY + + FLORENCE MARRYAT, + + AUTHOR OF “LOVE’S CONFLICT,” ETC., ETC., ETC. + + IN THREE VOLUMES. + + VOL. III. + +[Illustration] + + =London:= + + SAMUEL TINSLEY & CO., + + 10, SOUTHAMPTON STREET, STRAND. + + 1879. + + [_All Rights Reserved._] + + + + +[Illustration: [Fleuron]] + + + CONTENTS OF VOL. III. + + + CHAPTER PAGE + I. A LITTLE QUARREL 1 + II. MR. CHARTERIS 27 + III. THE WOLF 51 + IV. THE BARON’S STORY 77 + V. THE BLACK CLOUD 115 + VI. SALLE DU SABBAT 145 + VII. MASTER FRED 171 + VIII. ACCEPTED 201 + IX. THE DEATH-BLOW 225 + X. BROKEN 253 + + + + +[Illustration: [Fleuron]] + + + A BROKEN BLOSSOM. + + + + + CHAPTER I. + A LITTLE QUARREL. + + +St. Pucelle never looked more beautiful than it did on the day that I +took that walk with Charlie Sandilands. The summer glories, yet unfaded, +had been overtaken by those of autumn, and the rich clusters of purple +grapes that hung upon the walls of my guardian’s house made a brilliant +contrast to the scarlet and white and rose-coloured geraniums that still +bloomed luxuriantly on the window-sills. The purple heather reigned +alone upon the hill-side, but ferns of various sorts were arching their +graceful fronds above it, and the merry brown hares were leaping amongst +the brushwood and filling the place with life. As I led Charlie up the +hill (for I would not let Tessie’s silly remark deter me from showing +him the glorious expanse of scenery to be gained from the summit) I +pointed out the beauties of the country to him with so much interest as +to excite the remark that I appeared entirely to have forgotten poor old +Norwood in my new love for St. Pucelle. + +This was exactly the sort of thing I had hoped Charlie would say to me, +for I had had two reasons in inviting him to a confidential interview: +one was to ask his advice about writing to Mr. Warrington; the other to +find out if he intended to be sensible during his stay in our +neighbourhood, and permit me to enjoy his company without being annoyed +by his sentimentality. So I answered briskly: + +‘I never cared for Norwood itself, you know, Charlie, and you would +scarcely expect me to get up an enthusiastic admiration for a suburb of +London, composed of bricks and mortar and stunted trees. Its +recollections are sacred to me, because my dear mother lies there, but +that is all.’ + +‘I was sure that coming abroad would give you a distaste for all the old +things,’ he said, in a desponding manner. + +‘Don’t talk rubbish, Charlie! You were sure of no such thing! If you ask +me if I was happy at Norwood, I answer “_yes_” most fervently. If you +ask me if I liked the place as a residence, I answer, as fervently, +“_no_.” I should have been happy with my mother in St. Giles’s; but I +should not have admired the locality.’ + +‘Ah well! Let us return to St. Pucelle,’ he said, with a sigh. + +‘No! I refuse to return to St. Pucelle until I have spoken a few words +to you. Do you mean to enjoy your holiday here, Charlie, and to let me +enjoy it, or not?’ + +‘I don’t understand what you’re driving at.’ + +‘I’m driving at you, or rather at that receptacle for nonsense you call +your brain. Now you know I am very fond of you, Charlie, and have been +for years. You are so associated with my darling mother, that you seem +like a link with the past to me; and I should like to treat you like a +younger brother, and to feel that you looked upon me as a sister. But +that can never be whilst you attempt to stuff any of your sentiment down +my throat.’ + +‘Really, Hilda——’ + +‘Really, Charlie, please to hear me out first, and have your say +afterwards. If I thought that what you told me at Norwood proceeded from +a feeling such as men conceive in their maturity, and preserve for their +whole lives, I should not dare broach the subject to you again. But I am +sure it did not.’ + +‘You imagine, in fact, that I am such a _boy_,’ with a withering accent +on the word, ‘that I am incapable of a lasting passion.’ + +‘Just so! That is just what I do think; at least, I am sure the fancy +you took for me was born entirely of association and compassion.’ + +‘I confess I do not follow you.’ + +‘Oh yes, you do! There are several kinds of love, Charlie, but only one +is the right one with which to enter upon a partnership for life. You +had known me for so long: you had become so _used_ to me, in fact, that +when you thought of our separation, and under such melancholy +circumstances, the pain seemed too hard to bear, and your mind flew to +the only means by which you could have kept me with you. I have often +and often thought of it since, and I am sure I am right. It was very +good and sweet and true of you, Charlie, and I love you the better for +it, but you should thank God I was more clear-sighted than yourself, for +we should have been a very miserable couple.’ + +‘Do you think so, Hilda?’ + +‘I am _sure_ of it! My dear boy, you are just at that age when men think +they can live happily with any woman who is young and passably +good-tempered and passably good-looking. But the daily companionship of +a married life is a terrible crucible through which to pass the +affections, and only the true ore will bear the test of it.’ + +‘I suppose you have found the “true ore” in St. Pucelle,’ he grumbled. + +‘Don’t be impudent, Charlie! Every word you say convinces me more and +more of the truth of my conviction. Now do be reasonable, my dear +child——’ + +‘I won’t be called your “dear child.”’ + +‘My dear boy, then.’ + +‘Nor your “dear boy.”’ + +‘What then, my dear Mr. Sandilands? Oh, you baby! If you were fifty-two +instead of twenty-two, you would be skipping with pleasure at being +called a child. However, I will try not to hurt your feelings again. I +won’t call you “dear” at all.’ + +‘No, Hilda! don’t say that.’ + +‘Confess, then, that you made a mistake the other day at Norwood, and +that I, with my independent spirit and intolerance of control, would +never have made you happy in the way you wished me to do.’ + +‘I will confess no such thing!’ + +‘But your heart is not broken, Charlie. Come!’ I said, looking round +into his face. + +He caught my glance and smiled. + +‘Eureka!’ I exclaimed; ‘I knew I should get at the truth at last.’ + +‘Well! of course it’s not _broken_,’ he replied, in a foolish, +half-shamed manner; ‘or I shouldn’t be walking here, but you made me +very miserable, you know, Hilda! I am sure I hardly ate anything for a +month after you left. But you had said it was of no use, and you never +should change your mind, and so I tried to make the best of it. A man +cannot go on crying over spilt milk for ever, can he?’ + +‘Of course not,’ I said energetically; ‘and it is so brave and nice of +you to tell me the truth, Charlie. It makes me feel we shall be such +real friends henceforward. And I want your friendship so much. I should +have been unhappy to think that you had put it out of my power to +confide in you; for things are not quite so straight here as they ought +to be.’ + +‘What! with the Lovetts! Aren’t they kind to you?’ + +‘The girls are sweetness itself. I never had more lovable companions.’ + +‘The one I saw first seemed very jolly; the pretty one, I mean!’ + +‘What, Tessie? the one with fair hair?’ + +‘Yes!’ + +‘Oh! we call little Ange the beauty! Her face is perfectly lovely when +you look into it.’ + +‘I didn’t see so much of her. She kept right behind her sister. But Miss +Lovett appeared the prettiest girl I had ever seen, to me—except +yourself, Hilda, of course,’ added Charlie, pulling himself up with a +sudden recollection of the proprieties. + +I laughed so heartily that I entirely discomposed him. + +‘Oh, Charlie! you have not half learned your lesson yet! I know I’m a +very pretty girl, because you’ve so often told me so; but I do not +expect nor wish that you should never meet somebody you think much +better-looking than myself. And Tessie Lovett and I are formed upon two +such entirely opposite models! How could you think my wounded vanity +would require that little postscript of yours as salve?’ + +‘I’ll tell you what I _do_ think, Hilda,’ said Charlie, with sudden +bluntness, ‘and that is, that you are the most honest and +straightforward woman I’ve ever known; and I’m sure the man who gets you +will be an out-and-out lucky fellow, whoever he may be.’ + +‘Well, never mind him, Charlie; he has not appeared upon the scene as +yet, so we can go on very well without him. Tessie has, as you say, a +very sweet and pretty face, and the goodness of her heart shines through +her eyes and makes it beautiful. She has a great deal of trouble and +anxiety to bear, and she bears it with the utmost meekness and patience. +I have a great affection for her, and I hope I shall live to see her the +wife of some good man whose love will make up for the sorrows of her +youth. And as this brings me to the very point on which I want to +consult you, Charlie, suppose we sit down on this bank whilst I tell you +my difficulties.’ + +We had reached the Calvary now, the very place where I had first met the +Mère Fromard, and were as much alone and more secure from listeners than +if we had been shut up within four walls. So I commenced to recount the +perplexity in which I found myself with regard to money—the attempts I +had made to procure it and the failures that had succeeded them—and +ended by asking him to tell me whether it would be advisable to +communicate with Mr. Warrington on the subject, or to wait and see what +time might bring me. + +I had called Charlie Sandilands a ‘baby,’ and in some things a young man +in love, or supposing himself to be so, is a very great baby compared to +an energetic and helpful woman with all her wits about her. Yet I knew +when it came to a question of business, _pur et simple_, that his +decision would be worth twenty of mine, being less likely to be actuated +by any other feeling than a desire to see justice done to his friend. +His advice was that I should write without any delay to Mr. Warrington, +and tell him all I knew. + +‘Who had the management of your mother’s affairs during her lifetime, +Hilda?’ + +‘Mr. Lovett entirely, I believe; at least, you see it was on this wise, +Charlie. My mother had a small pension granted to her by Government, on +account of my father’s scientific discoveries being adopted by the +nation, but that dies with her. The only real property my father left +behind him consists of shares in a tea-raising company in the Himalayas, +producing annually one hundred and fifty pounds, and that is the money +for which Mr. Lovett is still trustee for me.’ + +‘But there should be two trustees, Hilda.’ + +‘There were two, I think; but the other one died, and mamma never +appointed a successor to him. Mr. Warrington mentioned something about +it to me, I remember, but I forgot it again. Will you be the other +trustee, Charlie?’ + +‘I should like to be so very much, but I cannot say if I am fitted for +such a post. You had better ask Warrington. Used Mr. Lovett to send you +mamma the interest of these shares regularly?’ + +‘I don’t think he did, of late years; but it always came eventually, or +we should not have been able to live. It seems very strange, though, +that now he should be unable to lay his hand on a few pounds for me, +does it not?’ + +‘I don’t like it at all, Hilda, and I wish you would write to Warrington +about it by this night’s post.’ + +‘Suppose my letter should bring him over here?’ + +‘All the better if it is necessary! You may be sure he will not come +unless he considers it so.’ + +‘I shall tell him with twice the confidence now that I have had your +advice, Charlie. I was so very undecided whether to write to him or your +mother. In fact, I had begun a letter to Mrs. Sandilands when you +arrived.’ + +‘Mother couldn’t have advised you on her own responsibility. It isn’t a +matter for a woman’s decision—nor for a man’s, except he be a lawyer. I +hope Warrington may ask you to sell out your shares and invest them in +something else. I don’t like tea; it’s so very uncertain. A rainy +season—or a dry one—might deprive you of half your income.’ + +‘That would be awkward! But I confess to an entire and appalling +ignorance concerning shares and selling out and all that kind of thing. +I am afraid I did not even know where the money came from till Mr. +Warrington told me.’ + +‘That is not like your usual sense, Hilda; and since it is all you have +to depend upon, I should think the sooner you made yourself acquainted +with its source and securities the better.’ + +‘Yes, I feel I have been foolish. There is another thing, Charlie. Do +you think I could get my money into my own hands? Mr. Warrington +promised me I should be quite independent, and I should feel so much +more so if I paid Mr. Lovett what we agreed upon, instead of having it +kept back from me like a child.’ + +‘I should say it would be not only feasible but right that you should +manage your own income. I don’t think you have been treated at all +fairly, Hilda, and I have not conceived a very high idea of your +reverend guardian in consequence.’ + +‘You had better wait till you see him and judge for yourself, Charlie. +You know the old adage, “What is one man’s meat is another man’s +poison.” I may have been viewing the old gentleman through distorted +lenses. But I fear the rosiest glasses would never make him look a saint +to me again.’ + +‘Who’s that foreign-looking chap staring at you, Hilda?’ interposed +Charlie, abruptly. + +I followed his glance and encountered the graceful form of the Baron de +Nesselrode. He was attired in a velveteen shooting-suit of a +golden-brown hue; had a game-bag slung across his shoulder, and carried +a gun in his hand. Following at his heels were several dogs, amongst +which the two gaunt wolf-hounds that we had seen at the château +contributed to form a most picturesque group. + +As the Baron met my gaze, he smiled slightly, lifted his _sombrero_, and +with a low bow passed on his way. But not before I had caught the look +of decided dissatisfaction he threw towards my companion, who was +sitting very close to me upon the bank. The look annoyed me, though I +scarcely knew why. I certainly did not wish Monsieur de Nesselrode nor +anybody else in St. Pucelle to think I was indulging in a flirtation +with Charlie Sandilands, but at the same time I liked him too well to +see any slight cast upon him without inwardly resenting it. So a blight +fell on my spirits as the Baron passed out of sight. + +‘Who is he? do you know him?’ asked Charlie, as soon as we were alone +again. + +‘Of course I know him, or I should not have returned his bow. That is +the Baron de Nesselrode—a great friend of all the Lovetts—and a +particular one of Tessie’s.’ + +‘A particular friend of Miss Lovett’s!’ repeated my companion. ‘How do +you mean?’ + +‘I mean what I say; and I hope and think that at some future time he +will be more than a friend to her. They would make a charming couple, +for he is so thoroughly well-bred and courtier-like, and she has been +reared in the atmosphere of a Court, although her father is now too poor +to permit them to mix in society.’ + +‘Do you mean that he’ll marry her?’ demanded Charlie, who was rather +dull of comprehension. + +‘What else do you suppose I could mean? Nothing is settled, remember; +but the Baron wants a wife terribly, and Tessie is so sweet, I think she +would love anybody who was kind to her.’ + +‘Well, I should have thought she could do a deal better than that for +herself.’ + +This disparaging remark was a signal-match for my bad temper, and I +fired up immediately. + +‘What a commonplace manner you have of expressing your ideas, Charlie. +Besides, you do not know what you’re talking about. Monsieur de +Nesselrode belongs to one of the first and oldest families of France. +His ancestors have been barons by feudal right ever since the days of +Charlemagne; and if it were not that he had been a little wild and +careless of his money, you would not have seen him in a place like St. +Pucelle at all. The Château des Roses, which he occupies here, is the +least important portion of his estates. He possesses land in +Switzerland, and Normandy, and Anjou, and is the owner of extensive +house property in Paris. The De Nesselrodes have been attached to the +King’s service ever since one of their ancestors saved a royal life. I +believe you would not find better blood in all France than runs in the +veins of the gentleman who has just passed us.’ + +‘Well, you seem to know all about him, at any rate, Hilda,’ replied +Charlie, when want of breath compelled me to stop my running commentary +on the Baron’s pedigree. ‘I dare say it’s all true, but his title and +estates don’t alter my opinion one bit. I should still think Miss Lovett +a great deal too good for him.’ + +‘But why? He is very handsome and accomplished, and you know nothing +against his character?’ + +‘He’s a Frenchman! that’s quite enough for me,’ said Charlie, with +beautiful British depreciation of everybody who did not belong to the +same nation as himself. ‘And an English girl must be too good for him, +if he’s a lord or a costermonger.’ + +‘What absurd prejudice!’ I replied, with a curling lip; ‘and I should +have credited you with more good taste than to speak of a noble of +France in that way.’ + +‘Noble of fiddlesticks! Does he ever wash himself, that’s the question, +Hilda? I don’t believe any of these foreigners do.’ + +‘Why don’t you call him a “frog” at once, or a “Johnny Crapeau”?’ I +returned witheringly. ‘It would be about as brilliant and as much in +accordance with modern enlightenment as what you are saying now. I +declare you put me out of all patience. And to think, too, that a man +like Armand de Nesselrode should have been laid open, by his own folly, +to the animadversions of a—a—Somerset House clerk!’ + +‘Hullo, Hilda! are you really angry with me? Why, what is this fellow to +you, even if he should be going to marry the pretty Miss Lovett?’ + +‘Tessie is my friend, Charlie, and if she ever becomes the Baronne de +Nesselrode, her husband will be my friend also. You can judge for +yourself, then, if it is very pleasant for me to sit by and hear you +talk in that way of him.’ + +‘You must have enough to do if you take up the cudgels for all your +friends’ friends after this fashion. However, I am very sorry if I have +offended you, Hilda, and I will try and believe that your fine Baron +_does_ wash himself, if it pleases you I should do so.’ + +‘Please not to mention the subject again; it disgusts me,’ I said +loftily, as I rose from my seat and commenced to descend the hill. + +Poor Charlie walked by my side in silence till we had got nearly +half-way home, when he said: + +‘You’re not cross with me still, are you, Hilda?’ + +‘I have no right to be cross, but you disappoint me. Are these old +prejudices never to be done away with, and the two finest nations in the +world to meet on terms of perfect amity and mutual esteem? The greater +intellects of earth have abandoned them long since, and it is lowering +to one’s conceptions of human generosity to find they still linger in +the breasts of one’s intimate friends. Why, I suppose, in the whole +course of your life, you have never associated with so intellectual and +highly-bred a man as Monsieur de Nesselrode; indeed, I am _sure_ you +have not. Men like himself are not to be met with in the purlieus of +Somerset House, or amongst the “snobbery” of London suburbs. And yet you +think you have a right to laugh at him, simply because he is not an +Englishman. You make me hate British patriotism! Displayed in this +fashion, it is vulgar, offensive, coarse! You would receive more +politeness and appreciation yourself from the commonest labourer you met +on these country roads than you have accorded to-day to Monsieur de +Nesselrode.’ + +‘Hilda, I’m awfully sorry! I had no idea you thought so much of this +chap as all that.’ + +This insinuation nettled me still further. + +‘I wish to goodness you wouldn’t call him a “chap”—your cockneyisms +grate on my ears like a file,’ I said angrily. ‘Please to remember that +for the last three months I have been unused to hear the elegancies of +the English language.’ + +This put a summary end to all conversation between us until we reached +the Lovetts’ house, when Charlie timidly offered me his hand, and said +he supposed he had better go back to the hotel. + +‘Good-bye,’ I answered curtly, without any comment on his remark, and +the poor young fellow turned away and walked down the street with a very +crestfallen air. + +I think I was a little _too_ hard upon him, but the conviction did not +strike me until some hours afterwards. I don’t remember feeling at all +penitent until I went to bed that night, and then, on reviewing the +day’s proceedings, I was not only sorry but surprised to think that I +should have quarrelled with Charlie Sandilands, and for the first time +in the course of our long acquaintanceship. + +Why was it? What could have made me so quick and peppery? It could never +have been a foolish disappointment because Armand de Nesselrode had +passed me without speaking. As that thought struck me I buried my +burning face in the pillows for shame, and resolved that I would +apologise to dear old Charlie, and make it up with him again the very +first thing in the morning. + + + + +[Illustration: [Fleuron]] + + + CHAPTER II. + MR. CHARTERIS. + + +I hoped all the next day that Charlie would come, but he didn’t. My +rough speech had hurt his feelings too much, and I heard afterwards that +he wandered about the country in a melancholy mood, from sunrise to +sunset, making fierce resolutions to return home by the very next +opportunity, which, of course, never came to anything. + +I sat indoors all the morning,inditing my letter to Mr. Warrington, in +which I told him exactly what had occurred, and begged him to let me +have the management of my money in my own hands. I gave him a most +faithful account of torn dresses, worn-out gloves, and shabby bonnets, +and assured him that the very stamp I used to convey my wishes to him, I +should not have been able to procure, had I not found a few centimes +lying on the mantelpiece in the _salle à manger_, and annexed them +boldly, under Mr. Lovett’s own eyes. + +Having finished my epistle I put it in my pocket, ready for the post, +and went downstairs to join the girls. As I passed through the kitchen, +I saw Madame Marmoret leaning her two elbows on the open window-sill, +whilst she talked with the same tradesman, in the peaked cap and the +belted blue blouse, who had drawn my trustee aside for a private +conference as he was conducting me from the diligence to the house, on +the occasion of my arrival in St. Pucelle. + +‘_Tiens_, m’sieu!’ she was saying in a friendly and confidential tone, +as I placed my foot on the top step of the stairs. ‘You are not worse +off than I am: we must wait, wait, wait! There is no other chance for +us. The time cannot be far off now. Sooner or later it must come.’ + +‘But what will there be for us when it _does_ come?’ grumbled the man; +‘that is the question, Madame! I heard a great deal of this demoiselle +Anglaise and all the money she was to bring with her, but where is it? I +should like to see some in my hand, were it ever so little.’ + +‘Bah! you are a fool to have believed the old man. You know him of old. +What would he not say to silence your importunities? The demoiselle +Anglaise has nothing—next to nothing! She is a pauper, _une avare_, and +close-fisted as a German; and the sooner she goes back to her own +country, I say, the better! We shall make nothing out of her.’ + +This was a pleasant speech to overhear made of myself by an insolent old +woman who chose to resent her master’s impecuniosity upon me. But I +resolved Madame should know that I _had_ overheard it, and stamped my +foot in consequence. + +‘_Tiens!_ there is some one,’ exclaimed the man, drawing backwards. + +Madame turned her brown face with its wicked-looking eyes towards me +without altering the position of her elbows on the window-sill. + +‘_Eh bien_, mamselle!’ she said, without the slightest appearance of +confusion. ‘You have a light foot! I hope your heart corresponds to it!’ + +‘Thank you, Madame!’ I replied, in the same manner. ‘I have a light step +I believe, and a quick ear, and a retentive memory. You will never find +me forget one compliment you are kind enough to pay me!’ + +‘That is well,’ she laughed, as though she took my words in perfect good +faith, ‘for I am very poor, you see, and any little remembrance mamselle +sees fit to bestow upon me will be gratefully acknowledged.’ + +Really, this woman’s insolence was past bearing! That, and the +conversation I had overheard, which so plainly betrayed what use my +arrival at St. Pucelle had been put to, made my cheeks flame with +indignation, and I walked past her to the sitting-room with the air of a +queen. I had expected to find Tessie and Ange there, engaged in +needlework, but I was mistaken. Except for Cave Charteris, sitting in +the window reading a French novel, the room was empty. + +I have already attempted to describe the terms on which I found myself +with this gentleman, but they are not easy of portraiture. We were +perfectly friendly and polite to one another, but he was already more +intimate and confidential with the girls than with myself. The new +acquaintanceship appeared to be terribly kept back by the remembrance of +the old friendship, and the mutual fear we secretly entertained, lest a +free intercourse might lead to some allusion to the past, deterred us +from ever seeking the company of one another. + +Confidence was at an end between us, and ease had followed it. I liked +him still—thought him very handsome—and wished him no evil, but there my +interest ended. The advice which I had sought from Charlie Sandilands, +and which could have been so much better accorded me by a man of thirty, +I had never dreamed of asking at the hands of Cave Charteris. I should +have left the room again now, not directly I perceived he was in it, but +at the first reasonable opportunity, had he not deterred me by broaching +the very subject that had set my face in a flame. + +‘There appears to be a very animated conversation going on in the +kitchen, Miss Marsh,’ he commenced. ‘Is anything wrong there?’ + +‘Nothing worse than the tongue of Madame Marmoret, which is a continual +scourge,’ I answered hotly. ‘The impertinence of that woman knows no +bounds. How the Lovetts can endure it as they do, I can’t imagine; but +for my own part I shall be compelled to make a formal complaint on the +subject, if it is not put a stop to. I have not been accustomed to be +insulted by servants, and I will not submit to it.’ + +‘Has she dared to insult you?’ he asked quickly. + +Then I remembered the exact bearing of the affront I had overheard, and +wished I had not mentioned it. Of all people in the world, I would not +have told Mr. Charteris my money troubles. He might have offered to +assist me out of them. + +‘I overheard part of the conversation you have alluded to, and it was +not complimentary to myself. Madame Marmoret hates me and says so +openly, though I am not aware I have ever given her cause of offence. It +is nothing to me what she thinks or does not think, but I will not +suffer it to be bawled out of a kitchen window loud enough for the whole +of St. Pucelle to hear.’ + +‘I should think not, indeed! You should speak to Mr. Lovett about it. +Hilda, are you happy here?’ + +I started. It was the first time he had called me by my Christian name +since the moment he recognised me in the _salle à manger_. + +‘Yes,’ I answered quietly. ‘I am quite happy, thank you.’ + +‘I do not know, of course, anything of your private affairs, neither +have I the right to ask, but I don’t consider things are as comfortable +here as they ought to be. I am only on a shooting excursion myself, and +prepared to live “in the rough,” but even I could wish for a few more of +the luxuries of civilisation. Mr. Lovett calls you his adopted daughter, +still——’ + +‘I am not his adopted daughter,’ I interrupted quickly, ‘nor have I any +desire to be so. I do not know what motive he has in saying it. I pay +for my board and lodging here, just as you do. Mr. Lovett offered me the +home, after my mother’s death, and I accepted it, for the sake of rest +and quiet. But I do not at all know how long I shall remain with them.’ + +‘Is it so? The old gentleman made me understand quite differently. But I +am very glad to hear you are independent, Hilda. Forgive me for being so +bold as to say so; but I know of old what a proud spirit you have, and +can imagine nothing more galling to you than to eat the bread of +charity.’ + +‘Nothing would have induced me to do so. I would have scrubbed floors +first.’ + +‘I am sure of it. Neither does our reverend friend appear to me to be in +a position to extend hospitality to his friends. I have been assailed +more than once since my sojourn here, by people entreating me to use my +influence with him to make him pay what he owes them.’ + +‘Have you really, Mr. Charteris!’ + +This was a subject on which I felt I _could_ speak with him—on which, +too, he might give me some valuable advice. + +‘Oh, it is no secret! The old man is in debt all over this town and a +dozen others. I knew that before I had been here a week. But it is no +concern of ours. All we have to do is to pay our way as long as it suits +our convenience, and to leave him when it ceases to do so. But the old +sinner has contrived to book me for the next two months, anyway!’ + +‘How so?’ I demanded, with interest. + +‘Why, the second or third day I was here—before I knew all this, you +know—he asked me, as a great favour, to advance him fifty pounds—for +something that he wanted on _your_ account, I believe.’ + +‘On _my_ account!’ I cried, flaring up. ‘How _dared_ he? Oh, Mr. +Charteris, I hope you will believe this is perfect news to me! I owe Mr. +Lovett nothing. He is my trustee, and has all my money in his own hands. +It was shameful of him to use my name in the matter!’ + +‘Now, don’t agitate yourself in that fashion. I knew at once it was a +ruse of the old boy’s, but it was not my business to say so, and it made +no difference to me if he had the money in advance or not.’ + +‘And you paid him fifty pounds for two months’ board!’ I said +incredulously. + +‘Something like it. I believe the agreement was that I should pay five +pounds a week.’ + +At this I could not help laughing. + +‘You must be very rich to be able to afford to throw your money away in +that way.’ + +‘I am not poor,’ he answered slowly; and I wondered where his money had +come from. + +He had not been independent in the old days—far from it; for he had +often talked to me of the necessity of his working to provide a home +before he could take a wife to himself. Perhaps his father had died in +the silent interim that stretched between the present and the past. +Before I quite knew what I was about, I had asked the question: + +‘Is your father alive still?’ + +‘Yes. Why do you ask?’ + +‘I don’t know. Merely for the sake of talking, I suppose. I am not above +that womanly weakness.’ + +‘I have thought, since I have been here, that you had got altogether +above it. It seems as if I had hardly heard your voice: you are so +unusually silent and reserved.’ + +‘I have had a great sorrow, you must remember, Mr. Charteris, and I +cannot yet laugh and talk as I used to do.’ + +‘Ah, how you used to laugh in the old days! I fancy I can hear you now! +Hilda, do you ever think of that time, and of the hours we spent +wandering up and down the Crystal Palace Gardens together? How beautiful +those gardens were! They have nothing like them abroad, unless we except +the grounds at Versailles, after which, I believe, they were modelled.’ + +We were getting on dangerous ground now, and I felt it. I had no desire +to renew anything like a sentimental flirtation with Mr. Charteris; the +scar, which his past conduct had left upon my heart, though now +painless, was too deep for trifling even with memory; and therefore I +did my best to turn the conversation. + +‘Ah, Versailles! I have never seen those gardens, though I have heard so +much about them. I am a great ignoramus, Mr. Charteris, you must know, +in all things connected with travel. This is actually the first time I +have ever set my foot out of England!’ + +‘So much the better! You have all your pleasure to come, instead of +having exhausted before you know how to appreciate it. I can well +imagine how an intelligent mind like yours will expand beneath the +wonders of nature and art with which it has still to become acquainted. +You are marvellously young and fresh for your age, Hilda.’ + +‘You are the first person who has ever said so. I think, on the +contrary, that I am marvellously old and used-up. To judge from my +general feelings, I might be sixty.’ + +‘Just at present I dare say you might. You must have felt your late loss +terribly!’ + +My lip trembled, and I turned away from him. I could not have answered +even ‘Yes’ at that moment without breaking down, and I would have died +sooner than break down before Cave Charteris. + +‘I can’t tell you what a shock it was to me to hear it!’ he went on +softly. ‘It seemed to revive the past, and bring it back as if it had +occurred only yesterday. She was always good and kind to me, and you +too, Hilda—indeed, I used to dare to think at that time that you +regarded me as a _very dear_ friend.’ + +_He used to dare to think!_ He cast his calculating untrue eyes upon me +as he spoke; and I knew that he remembered as vividly as I did, and was +only trying how far he could impose on my credulity and make me think +him blameless. The idea nerved me for action. Had I followed the bent of +my inclinations, I should have hurled indignant reproaches on his head, +and made him, in consequence, believe that his conduct had still the +power to pain me. But I stamped on my inclination, and answered him as +coolly as if the subject were of the utmost indifference, and revived no +recollections whatever, pleasant or unpleasant, with regard to himself. + +‘And so I did,’ I replied. ‘I had so few companions of my own age at +Norwood, I remember hailing your advent as a perfect godsend. It was a +very dull place for a girl to live in, particularly in the quiet way we +used to do.’ + +‘I never thought it dull,’ he sighed—‘that is, when I was with you.’ + +‘Oh, you forget! It happened such a long time ago! But I can remember +some very dull afternoons we spent there, when the roads were all mud +and it rained continuously, and we had no resource indoors except +playing at cards and singing over those eternal old songs of mine.’ + +‘You never sing now,’ he said eagerly. ‘How charmed I should be to hear +some of the dear old songs! Won’t you sing them to me, Hilda?’ + +‘No, I never sing now, Mr. Charteris. My voice is not strong, and I have +too many other things to do.’ + +‘You might sing for _me_ though, just to revive that happy memory. I +suppose the _reality_ will never come over again, will it?’ + +I looked in his face with well-feigned surprise. + +‘How can what is past come over again? and with my dear mother gone, +too! I think you are talking nonsense, Mr. Charteris.’ + +‘You must know what I mean. Will the old feelings we had for each other +never be revived?’ + +I knew as well as he did what he meant. He wanted to make love to me +again—to make me believe once more that his soft tones and looks and +words were good for what they seemed. But the spell was broken, the old +glamour had faded away. I saw him as the world saw him, and I was not to +be taken in a second time. + +‘I don’t see that they want reviving, Mr. Charteris. We liked each other +very well then, and I suppose we like each other very well now. We +haven’t quarrelled, have we? Perhaps I am a graver woman than you +expected to see; but five years is a long interval, you know: and it is +more likely you have forgotten what I was, than that I have altered as +much as you seem to suppose.’ + +‘You don’t see it in the same light as I do,’ he said, with a deep sigh +that he pumped up from the lowest depths of his waistcoat. + +He wanted me to blush and look conscious and uncomfortable, and then he +would have seized the opportunity to swear he had been loving me through +all the period of our separation, and should be miserable until he heard +that I loved him in return. + +But with all his desire to get up a small excitement, wherewith to while +away the hours when he could not be shooting in the forest of Piron, Mr. +Charteris was not so foolish as to commit himself where there appeared +no chance of remunerating his trouble; and so he gave me up as a bad +job, and, with a gesture of impatience, resumed the study of his French +novel. But I would not leave one stone unturned by which I thought to +convince him that he was utterly mistaken in thinking I had ever given a +second thought to his heartless desertion of me. + +‘How is your cousin Fred Stephenson, Mr. Charteris?’ I asked, with a +jaunty air. + +‘Oh, he’s well enough,’ he replied sulkily. + +‘I thought you were going to ask him over here for a day. I wish you +would—I should like to see him again. He seemed such a nice pleasant +boy. I took quite a fancy to him.’ + +‘And I suppose you are afraid, if you don’t see him soon, that your +fancy will evaporate. It is “out of sight, out of mind” with you, Miss +Marsh, like the generality of women.’ + +‘Well, you wouldn’t have me in the minority, would you? I always stick +up for my sex, and have no desire to fare better than the rest of them. +Since I am a woman, I’ll be one all over. I don’t like half and half +animals.’ + +‘You need have no fear of being mistaken for anything else, Miss Marsh. +You have all the sex’s attributes strongly marked upon you, even to +asserting the right to change your mind as often as you choose.’ + +‘I am so glad!’ I said gleefully. ‘I like to claim my privileges, and a +masculine woman never gets any. But what has all this to do with your +cousin Fred Stephenson?’ + +‘Why, that as you have taken a fancy to him, I don’t think I shall ask +him over here. I am a sort of guardian of his whilst abroad, and he is +of a susceptible age when the heart is more readily affected by +unkindness and neglect than at any other.’ + +‘And you think I shall be unkind to the boy.’ + +‘I think you will be too kind, and then you will forget all about him. +Some carroty-haired creature will come in the way’—this was a hit at +poor Charlie Sandilands, whose hair, _en passant_, was not a bit more +carroty than his own—‘and then Fred will be forgotten and left out in +the cold, and will be as little able, perhaps, to read the meaning of +the riddle as some other of your friends have been who have suffered a +similar neglect at your fair hands.’ + +This was very pretty fencing, but I felt I must put a stop to it. It was +becoming ridiculous to me, which was proof sufficient how entirely it +had lost its sting. + +‘Look here, Mr. Charteris,’ I said decidedly, ‘you can do as you like +with regard to your cousin, but I wish you would not talk such nonsense +to me. I have never left anybody out in the cold. If you are alluding to +yourself, all I can say is that I feel for you exactly what I did +before’—I was really obliged to make a little reservation here, and +whisper inwardly ‘before you spoke to me to-day’—‘we were always +excellent friends in my dear mother’s lifetime, and I have no wish to be +less to you now. But it is hardly reasonable to suppose that during a +separation of five years our tastes may not have grown a little apart. I +don’t say they have, but meeting as we have done is really like making a +fresh acquaintance, and the old ground has to be gone over again. I wish +you would believe, however, that I have none but kindly feelings towards +you—why should I have?—and am quite ready to be as good friends as you +are.’ + +I did it very well, I think, because the only effect my communication +had was to turn him still more sulky. ‘Pray don’t make any apologies,’ +he replied, without looking up from his book; ‘I perfectly understand +all you would say, and I think I perfectly understand you into the +bargain.’ + +He was going to be rude now. Cave Charteris was the sort of man who +becomes rude directly his self-love is wounded, and that is what I have +never put up with from any one. So I gathered my work together, and +walked out of the room with dignity, and did not return to it again +until the sound of the girls’ voices assured me that I should not be +left alone with Mr. Charteris. + + + + +[Illustration: [Fleuron]] + + + CHAPTER III. + THE WOLF. + + +The day wore on, and Charlie Sandilands did not come. I was standing at +the window towards evening, wondering at his absence, and blaming my +folly in having spoken to him as I did, when I perceived the white hat +and red cherries of Miss Markham bobbing up the street. I had taken +quite an aversion to this woman. I had detected her in so much falsehood +and exaggeration, and I knew her to be so malicious and ill-natured, +that I avoided her company whenever it was possible to do so. I should +have been obliged, however, to live in my bedroom had I contrived to +elude her altogether; for hardly a morning passed without her spending +two or three hours at our house. The only days she did not honour us +were those on which she knew that Mr. Charteris would be shooting in the +forest. On his fishing excursions she was almost sure to track and +follow him. When her dear friend, Mrs. Carolus, had told me that her +conduct with this gentleman was a scandal, I had been quite unable to +believe that any woman of middle age and mediocre attractions could +possibly be so foolish as to think herself capable of touching the heart +of a young, handsome, worldly man like Cave Charteris. But it was easy +for any one to believe it now. + +I had seen Mr. Charteris laugh at or repulse her, just as the humour +took him; but, apparently impervious to either ridicule or rudeness, she +still pursued him, indoors or out of doors, although he often put on his +hat as soon as she appeared, and left the house by the back way. To +Tessie, and Ange, and myself, Miss Markham had become a perfect +nuisance, for, wherever she might be, she monopolised the conversation, +which always ran in the most egotistical manner on herself, her +admirers, and her triumphs. Mr. Lovett was the only creature who +welcomed her; and whether it was that they were equally vain, +self-seeking, and fond of flattery I know not, but they always seemed to +get on together. The old man continued to affirm that Miss Markham was +one of the most intelligent and agreeable ladies he knew, and she never +lost an opportunity of lauding his personal merits and his talents, or +of rebuking the girls for not paying him sufficient attention. Until at +last I began to fear whether she might not turn the foolish old man’s +brain to that extent that he would really imagine his daughters were not +as devoted and loving and obedient as they possibly could be. + +It had become a joke with Tessie and Ange and me to give Mr. Charteris +warning of Sophy Markham’s approach, but I was angry with him and angry +with myself that evening, and I watched the bobbing cherries draw nearer +and nearer without saying a word. So she was flung into the midst of us +like a grenade. + +‘How d’ye do! how d’ye do! to everybody,’ she exclaimed, nodding to the +company in general, and then she pounced upon the unhappy Cave in +particular. ‘Ah! you naughty fellow, come and make confession of your +sins at once! What did you mean by cutting me this morning after that +fashion? I’ve a great mind to give you a dreadful penance, one that you +will not forget in a hurry; only you mustn’t make those saucy eyes at +me, or I shall forget all about it.’ + +‘Cutting _you_, Miss Markham,’ he replied with serio-comic gravity. ‘How +_can_ you think so? Where was it, and when?’ + +‘Where indeed?—why, close by the _Grotte de S. Jean_, of course. Now +don’t pretend you didn’t see me, because I know you did. You began to +run directly I turned the corner.’ + +‘That must be a mistake! I never run.’ + +‘Well, you walked very fast then, so fast that I couldn’t overtake you. +And you dropped a rose-bud from your button-hole in your flight, and I +picked it up, and here it is,’—displaying it in the bosom of her +dress—‘and you shan’t have it back again,’ with infantine fervour, ‘no! +not if you begged on your bended knees for it, you naughty boy! So +there—there!’ ended Miss Markham playfully, as she struck his face two +or three times with the flower which she had taken in her hand. + +‘I believe you’ve put my eye out,’ he said quite crossly, as he covered +the injured member with his hand. + +‘Oh, poor little eye! let me see,’ cried Miss Markham, as she bent over +his chair. ‘Shall I try and make it well again?’ + +‘No! leave me alone!’ he answered, in a tone which caused even her +unsensitive cheek to grow red as she attempted to cover her confusion by +addressing herself to the rest of the party. ‘Dear Mr. Lovett! I have +not spoken to you yet. But I always keep the best to the last, you know. +You’re my _bong bouche_! How tired you look this evening. Tessie, you +should take more care of your papa! I don’t at all hold with running +after poor people and forgetting those at home.’ + +‘I hope we don’t do that. Do we, papa?’ said Tessie, with her quiet +smile. + +‘No, my dear! certainly not! But I think I overwalked myself a little +this morning. These warm days in autumn are more enervating sometimes +than those of summer.’ + +‘But you shouldn’t overwalk yourself, dear Mr. Lovett, and you should +have broth or something good prepared for you against your return. Do +you have broth made for your father, Tessie?’ + +‘Papa has everything he requires, thank you, Miss Markham,’ replied +Ange, briskly. ‘If he asked for the Coliseum at Rome, Tessie would get +it for him if she could.’ + +‘Ah! but you mustn’t wait till he asks for it. You should anticipate his +wishes. That is not a very tidy fashion of wearing your hair, Ange. It +is half-way down your back.’ + +‘I know it is,’ said Ange, bluntly. + +‘Go and put it up, my dear! go and put it up!’ said her father, with +kindly authority. + +And the girl, little pleased at an order which had originated with Miss +Markham, left the room with a lingering step and a grimace. + +‘I passed you last evening, Miss Marsh,’ continued our visitor; ‘but you +appeared to be so _deeply_ engaged that I wouldn’t stop to speak, for +fear of spoiling sport.’ + +‘You were wise, perhaps,’ was my reply. + +‘Not that I envied you your admirer, you know; he, he, he! He was rather +too bucolic-looking for my taste. I should say he had never been farther +than a turnip-field in his life before.’ + +‘You’re quite right, Miss Markham, as you always are.’ + +‘Well, my penetration is not often in fault.’ + +‘I am sure of it! Considering that Mr. Sandilands is a regular cockney +and has lived in London all his life, you have made a first-rate shot!’ + +She reddened somewhat and began to sniff, after a peculiar manner she +had whenever she found herself in the wrong. + +‘Ah, well! his looks belie the fact, that’s all! if it _is_ a fact. Is +that little black monkey off your back yet, Mr. Charteris?’ + +‘I am not aware it was ever there, Miss Markham.’ + +‘Never mind; we won’t say anything more about it, but make it up next +time we are alone. Have you heard the last rumour about those dreadful +Johnstones, Mr. Lovett? They actually say that she was nothing but a +milliner’s apprentice, whom he picked up in the streets carrying a +bandbox in her hands. What shall we come to next, I wonder, when such +creatures are permitted to move about society without being labelled?’ + +At this juncture I slipped out of the room to put on my hat and see if I +could shake off some of the unholy influence this woman shed around her, +in the open air. As I passed through the garden and quietly unlatched +the gate, a figure started up from the shadow of the wall as if to join +me. It was Mr. Charteris. + +‘May I walk a little way with you, Hilda, and smoke my cigar in your +company?’ he asked. + +‘No, thank you,’ I replied abruptly.’ I would rather not.’ + +‘Yet you spent two or three hours in Mr. Sandilands’ society yesterday,’ +he said, with a reproachful air. + +‘I know I did; but I had not seen him for some time, and we had much to +talk of. To-night I would rather be alone.’ + +‘As you will. I have no desire to intrude my company upon you. _Bon +voyage!_’ + +I saw he was offended, but I could not help it. The conversation we had +held that morning was too fresh in both our minds. He would have renewed +the subject, which, as far as I was concerned, was exhausted. I had +nothing more to say about it, and I feared lest in discussion I might be +led to betray my past regard for him. Besides, although I wished him no +harm, I did not consider that Mr. Charteris’s behaviour to me entitled +him to rank as one of my friends. He had proved himself false, fickle, +and cold-hearted. No man can have worse attributes for any position in +life. He was not worthy of any woman’s confidence or regard, and I was +quite sure he could never have more from me than my acquaintance. + +It was a luscious, balmy evening, with just sufficient coolness to make +walking a pleasure. To leave the clang of that woman’s tongue behind me, +and to encounter the soft stilly atmosphere, was like entering a church +from a public-house. I breathed more freely as I found myself alone, at +liberty to think without disturbance. It was but just six o’clock. The +shadows had not yet fallen to blot out the beautiful, delicate hues of +the wild-flowers that bordered the roadway; nor to hush the evening +hymns of the birds that were singing from every bough. + +I would not take my favourite walk, which led towards the Château des +Roses, because I was alone, and a silly fear of ridicule from Tessie and +her sister always made me avoid anything that looked like a desire to +meet the Baron de Nesselrode. So, as soon as the house I had quitted was +out of sight, I struck up a side-path which led in the opposite +direction and towards the forest of Piron. This forest, which has been +rendered so celebrated by poets and writers of romance, is still the +great point to which the eyes of all sportsmen in the Wallon are +lovingly directed, although the march of civilisation has here, as +everywhere else, driven the larger game farther and farther back into +the recesses of their covert, until it is now as difficult to find them +as it was once to extirpate them. + +Many stories had been told me of the difficulties encountered even by +the royal sportsmen of the realm, in their desire to obtain good +specimens of wolves, boars and wild turkeys from the forest of Piron; +and Armand de Nesselrode had been quoted in my presence as the most +successful hunter that had been known to penetrate it. The floor of his +hall at the château was covered with wolf-skins, the contemplation of +which had more than once made me shudder as I thought of the risks he +must have run in procuring them. + +Cave Charteris and he were constantly together at this time, shooting on +horseback and on foot, and the bags of small game which the former used +to bring home for our table proved that there were plenty of other marks +in the forest besides those dangerous wolves and thrice dangerous wild +boars. + +I knew the road to it well. It was lonely; but we never associated +danger with loneliness at St. Pucelle; and at one point of it there +stood a wayside shrine, a pretty, romantic, ruined piece of +architecture, that I had sketched more than once, and from which a +narrow path led through fields of grass and turnips back to my home +again. + +The Piron road had not much in it to attract the eye before this little +shrine was reached, and I walked along its side-path rapidly, as was my +custom to walk when alone, with my eyes cast down and my brain working +away as fast as it could go, at every subject that passed through it. + +I had left St. Pucelle a mile—perhaps a mile and a half—behind me, when +something, I knew not what, impelled me suddenly to look up and scan the +surrounding landscape. I had reached the centre of a long straight road, +on either side of which ran a narrow footpath, fringed by the smallest +of hedges, in many places trampled down by feet passing over it into the +fields beyond. Not a tree sheltered the road anywhere, it was simply a +highway to the next town. The dark mass of trees composing the forest +loomed in the distance, but so far off as to appear like one clump +against the greyish-blue sky of evening; behind me lay St. Pucelle, but +I had placed a hill between us, and could only see the top of the spire +of St. Marie and the wreaths of smoke that ascended from a little +factory at the bottom of the town. I cast my eyes again in front. What +was that dark figure advancing to meet me, that was sometimes in the +light and sometimes in the shade, and seemed so uncertain in its +movements and designs? Could it be a donkey? I smiled as the idea +crossed my mind. + +How could a donkey slouch in that absurd manner, and move with a +shuffling, trotting gait, as though its shoulders were higher than its +head! But the next moment I had turned as pale as death, and my heart +almost stopped its beating from terror. Could it be—was it possible it +could be—_a wolf_? + +Directly I had conceived the thought I felt sure that I was right. Here, +in the gloaming, without shelter of any kind, alone and unarmed, I was +to meet one of these fearful beasts out of the forest, whose very names +were sufficient to fill my breast with terror. + +I don’t think I ever felt so frightened in my life as I did at that +moment. Where should I run? What could I do? + +I looked across the fields on either side. They were sown with turnips, +and stood upon a slope. If I attempted to plod my way through them I +should only be impeding my progress, and making my presence more +conspicuously apparent to the animal than it was now. + +Was I deceiving myself through fear? I strained my sight again to make +sure what it was that advanced upon me. + +Oh! there was no doubt about it! I could distinguish the brute’s +appearance perfectly as he shambled along the pathway. And he was coming +faster. He had broken into a swinging trot, with his nose to the ground. +He had scented me, there was no hope but in flight. + +All this, which takes so long to write, had taken but a second to flash +through my brain, and in another I had turned, and was running back to +St. Pucelle as fast as ever my legs could carry me. I dared not stop to +look round, but in my terror I fancied I heard the breathing of the +animal close behind me, and his steps gaining upon mine. After a quarter +of a mile, perhaps, I had run myself out of breath; each step seemed as +if it would choke me, and I believed that I was lost, and must succumb. +‘I shall never see St. Pucelle again,’ I thought sobbingly, as I flew +along. ‘I shall be torn to pieces in the most horrible manner, and no +one will even hear of my fate. I shall never know if Armand and Tessie +are happy—or if——’ + +But here some great obstacle interposed itself between my blinded eyes +and the pathway, and I fell with a loud scream of terror into the very +arms of Monsieur de Nesselrode. + +‘Mademoiselle Marsh!’ he exclaimed, in accents of the greatest surprise. +‘What is the matter? who has dared to frighten you?’ + +‘The wolf! the wolf!’ I cried, struggling with him. ‘Let me go—save +yourself—it is close upon us!’ + +‘A wolf—and here! _Mais, mademoiselle, c’est impossible!_ it is not to +be credited. Some one has been wicked enough to frighten you without +cause.’ + +His words and manner somewhat reassured me, but I was still very much +alarmed. + +‘Indeed—indeed I am right. Look up the road for yourself! It is coming +fast from the forest.’ + +Without relinquishing his hold of me, I saw him glance from right to +left, over my shoulder, trying to distinguish the cause of my fear. + +‘_Sacré_, Mademoiselle! you are correct. Something does advance this +way.’ + +‘I told you so!’ I exclaimed, in a fresh paroxysm of terror. ‘Oh! leave +me, monsieur, leave me! Run for your life—it is impossible both of us +can be saved.’ + +‘_Je ne veux pas te quitter_,’ he answered, using the soft personal +pronoun that with a Frenchman means so much; and then he shouted aloud: +‘_Hillo! hillo! à bas la! Hillo!_’ + +‘You cannot frighten it away,’ I said imploringly. ‘Oh, go—for my sake! +Armand, pray go!’ + +‘It is not a wolf at all, mademoiselle,’ he replied calmly. ‘I see it +now plainly, but I do not wonder at your taking it for one.’ + +‘What is it, then?’ + +‘One of our half-bred sheep-dogs finding his way home to his master. +See! here he comes. He is about to pass us. Do not tremble any longer, +mademoiselle. Your enemy has just trotted by, looking like a veritable +wolf indeed, and very much ashamed of himself for doing so.’ + +I glanced up, and there, shambling along the road peaceably enough, but +looking very dangerous notwithstanding, with his huge size, rough coat +and glaring red eyes, was one of those creatures, half wolf, half dog, +which the shepherds of the Piron prize so much as guardians of their +flocks against the very animals from which they sprung. + +‘What must you think of me?’ I said, as the huge brute shuffled out of +sight, and I remembered what an exhibition I had made of myself. + +‘I think that you are a brave woman who would have persuaded me to save +myself, and leave you to what you believed would prove a terrible +death.’ + +‘I hope I said nothing absurd—I entirely forget what I did say,’ I +stammered, with vivid consciousness that I had called him by his +Christian name. ‘And all for a stupid sheep-dog, too; I am so ashamed of +myself.’ + +‘But you are trembling still, and you must sit down for a little while +before you attempt to return to St. Pucelle. Do you often take such +solitary walks, mademoiselle?’ + +‘Yes, I like to walk alone, and I did not think there could be any +danger.’ + +‘Neither is there. These dogs look very formidable, but they have never +been known to attack anybody unprovoked. The next time you meet one, all +you have to do is to stand aside and let him pass.’ + +‘Oh! I hope I shall not meet another,’ I said, shuddering. ‘I do not +like them. We have no such dogs in England, and I shall never forget the +fright it gave me.’ + +Monsieur de Nesselrode had selected a grassy knoll by the roadside for +me to rest upon, and my heart was beating more in its proper time. What +a difference a few seconds had effected in my feelings! A minute ago I +firmly believed myself to be in the jaws of death. Now it seemed as if +nothing could have the power to hurt or alarm me. I turned towards +Armand de Nesselrode gratefully. + +‘I wish you would not look so pale,’ he observed; ‘you are not still +frightened, I hope?’ + +‘Oh no! that is all passed away, and I am quite at my ease again. How +good it was of you, monsieur, to stand by me as you did.’ + +He smiled at me. His was such a beautiful smile. It came rarely, but +when it did, it lighted up all his features like a glory. There was no +mirth in it—I think self-reproach at that period had chased away from +his spirit all the merriment which later I saw shine forth—but it was +thoroughly appreciative and genuine. On the present occasion his smile +seemed to say much more than he chose his lips should utter. + +‘You will not let me thank you,’ I continued, ‘but I must. Thank God! my +fears were not well founded, and we did not both perish. For I feel you +would have died sooner than let me be torn from your grasp.’ + +‘Of course I would!’ + +‘Oh! I think a brave man is the most wonderful and beautiful thing God +ever made. Why should you have sacrificed your life for me, of whom you +know nothing?’ + +‘It would have been my duty to lay it down under such circumstances, +mademoiselle, for any woman—and of all women——’ + +But here he stopped short, as though ignorant how to finish his +sentence, and I did not see the way to help him. Presently he began +again: + +‘You were good enough to say once, mademoiselle, that it would interest +you to hear the means by which I was brought down to my present +position. Shall I tell you the story now?’ + +‘Do, monsieur,’ I said, turning my eyes upon him. + +He was seated at a little distance from me, with both his hands between +his knees, digging up the earth under his feet with the light cane he +usually carried. His eyes were downcast, and I noticed the length of the +dark lashes that lay upon his cheek, and contrasted with the grave +pallor that seemed suddenly to have overspread his countenance. Whatever +this story might be, it was evidently hard to tell, and I prepared +myself to hear a confession of much folly and evil, and +perhaps—dishonour. Should I like him the less, I asked myself, when his +tale was finished? + +I did not believe I should like him the less. I felt so confident that +whatever his sins might have been, Armand de Nesselrode possessed the +power of rising above them. + + + + +[Illustration: [Fleuron]] + + + CHAPTER IV. + THE BARON’S STORY. + + +‘I am afraid you will weary of me before I have finished my recital,’ +commenced the Baron. + +‘I shall not weary, monsieur,’ I answered simply. + +‘You will keep my confidence, I know! This is the first time I have ever +told the history of my folly to a living creature.’ + +I wondered for a moment, then, why he should have elected to tell it to +me. But he went on too rapidly for me to put the question to him. + +‘I have never had the happiness to possess a mother, a sister, or even a +female relation sufficiently near to whom I could confide my sorrows or +my perplexities. From a little child I was brought up in the society of +men, and taught, as far as possible, to guide myself. That circumstance +has been a terrible drawback to me, mademoiselle.’ + +‘Yes—so long as you were a little child.’ + +‘And not afterwards?’ + +‘Not so much afterwards! The mother is the God of the child, monsieur, +and if a boy has a good, true, pure-hearted mother who loves him, he can +have no better friend nor _confidante_ than herself, until he becomes a +man. But then their positions should alter. The _man_ who leans upon his +mother is a milksop. He should be her protector—her guide—even her +counsellor. It is thus that women are rewarded for the care and pains +with which they have watched over the infancy of their little ones.’ + +‘How true a woman you are!’ he said, earnestly. + +‘I hope so, monsieur! I should be sorry to deserve any other name. But +we are wandering from your story.’ + +‘My mother died when I was quite a baby. She was very beautiful, and my +father, who held a high position at Court, was so distracted by her loss +that he threw up his appointment, left all his friends, and wandered for +many years in foreign countries. Meanwhile, I was transferred from my +nurse’s arms to those of a private tutor, whose house I left only to go +to college. I had an uncle on the mother’s side, Le Sieur de Beaupré, +the father of the cousin to whom I told you I was once betrothed. This +betrothal was contracted when I was very young—not yet sixteen, whilst +Blanche had only completed her fourteenth year. We were betrothed with +the consent and at the desire of my father, who was at that time +wandering about the Brazils, and expressed his intention of not +returning to Paris until I had passed through the _Athénée_, and was +ready to be married. I had grown, therefore, up to eighteen years of age +without ever having seen my father.’ + +‘What a sad, desolate childhood!’ I exclaimed; ‘and how different from +mine, monsieur! My father died, it is true, but my dear mother never +left me, day nor night, from the hour of my birth. No wonder that you +should have gone wrong, without affection, counsel, or home. Those who +left you so are more to blame for what followed than you are.’ + +‘You pity me, mademoiselle?’ + +‘I do indeed! From the bottom of my heart! I see you as a child and a +growing man, lonely and unloved, and I could weep for the many desolate +and unhappy hours you must have passed.’ + +‘_Que le bon Dieu te bénisse!_’ he said softly, as he lifted the hand +that was lying idly on my lap to his lips, and let it quickly drop +again. The action sent the blood rushing to both our faces, and for a +minute or two we were silent altogether. + +‘Yes! I was very unhappy at that period,’ continued the Baron. ‘It +seemed to me that Heaven was unjust in so unequally dividing its +favours. I had every luxury, because my father was rich, but I would +have exchanged them all for a caress when I went to bed at night, or for +the touch of a soft hand upon my head. I saw other fathers proud of +their sons, and I wondered what I had done that mine should never care +to see or hear from me, and scarcely took the trouble to write home to +ask if I were dead or alive. Such thoughts embittered my mind and made +it callous, and after I entered the _Athénée_ and joined the wild band +of students assembled within its walls, I soon became the wildest of +them all, and well known to the authorities as a dangerous leader into +all sorts of mischief. Why should I not be? what was there to restrain +me? No mother’s look of pain—no father’s frown—nothing but a +remonstrance from Monsieur de Beaupré, that my allowance did not last +long enough, and that if I could not moderate my expenses he should be +obliged to inform his brother-in-law. So things went on till I was +twenty-one, when the news reached Paris of my father’s death. I came +into my title and my fortune, and was considered to be one of the best +matches in Paris. But, mademoiselle, I am fatiguing you. Why should I be +so vain as to imagine that all these paltry details can hold any +interest for you?’ + +‘Indeed, monsieur, I am deeply interested. Pray believe me when I say +so.’ + +‘Why should I tell this tale of folly and dissipation to you?’ he went +on, musingly; ‘I knew I should have to confess it some day, to the woman +I should make my wife—if such an event ever happens—but I never thought +to disclose it before. _Hélas!_ this world brings strange things to +pass! As soon as my uncle Beaupré heard of my father’s death, he tried +to persuade me to complete the marriage with his daughter at once, but I +was averse to the idea of tying myself down so soon, and refused to do +so until the time named in the contract, which was on the attainment of +my twenty-fourth year. I left the _Athénée_, of course, and, settling in +my own _hôtel_, on the Boulevards des Tuileries, plunged, with the aid +of my old college companions, into every sort of dissipation. Will +mademoiselle pardon me for mentioning such a thing?’ + +‘We are better used to the mention of it in England, monsieur, than your +ladies are in Paris, although we recognise its necessity less, and +deplore its existence more. We Englishwomen are permitted to know that +our men lead very different lives from ourselves, but we are taught at +the same time that, for that very reason, it behoves us to be all the +purer and more discreet, in order to win them back to a right and +virtuous living.’ + +‘And you do so win them! In all the world there are no such lovers of +domestic life as there are in England.’ + +‘I believe it,’ I answered, for I am very proud of and very devoted to +my own country-people, whatever friends I may have found in other +nations. + +‘I am speaking now, mademoiselle, of ten years ago—when the first notes +of that terrible discord that shook France to her foundations were +beginning to be heard, and Paris was in a state of ferment and +expectation. The revolution had not commenced, but disaffection was +already pre-evident amongst the labouring classes, and _émeutes_ and +brawls were of hourly occurrence in the city. It was on the occasion of +the last night of the old year, which devotees celebrate in the churches +and roysterers in the streets. I was returning home after the theatre +with some of my friends, about the hour of midnight mass, when, just +outside the church of the Madeleine, I saw a young girl standing up +against the wall, and prevented from passing on her way by a band of +tipsy artisans who surrounded her, calling out, “_A bas_ the +aristocrat!”—“Pull off her hood and rub her face in the mud!”—“Down on +her knees and make her pray for the _bonnets rouges_!” and other phrases +of similar import. You may suppose that was more than I and my friends +could stand, and we went at once to her rescue. The poor child caught +hold of my arm, crying, “Oh! save me, monsieur; I am no aristocrat. My +father is a commoner, and lives but a couple of streets from here.” A +few blows and rough words soon dispersed the rioters, and I took the +young lady home under my protection. I found that her name was Corinne +Duplat, and her father was a man of letters. She was very beautiful——’ + +‘Oh yes, I know! You needn’t tell me,’ I interrupted him, impatiently. +‘She was the loveliest creature you had ever seen, and you became +enamoured of her at once. You can skip all that! I have heard it so +often before.’ + +The Baron fixed his dark eyes upon me with an expression of the greatest +surprise. After all my amiability and interest, he did not know what to +make of the sudden change. I suppose I looked as sulky as a bear, for he +immediately began to apologise. + +‘I felt I should weary mademoiselle. Let me say no more than to thank +you for the patience with which you have listened to me.’ + +But this was not what I wanted. + +I sat there, biting my lip and feeling very much as if I should cry; +whilst Armand de Nesselrode looked deeply annoyed and a little bit +wounded. + +‘I have abused your goodness,’ he continued, ‘and I shall never forgive +myself.’ + +‘No, no, monsieur! Do not think so. It was only because I was in such +haste to hear the end of the story. Go on about Corinne! She was very +beautiful, and you loved her!’ + +‘I _thought_ I loved her,’ he corrected me, gently. ‘I was very young +and knew no better; I have found out since what true love is.’ + +‘Yes, monsieur?’ + +‘Her father neglected her dreadfully, and let her go anywhere alone, +which is unheard of amongst young ladies in Paris. It was natural that +after a while I should constitute myself her protector. She was only +seventeen, and very fragile—almost ethereal in appearance; and when I +had known her for about six months, I felt I should like to make her my +wife. I forgot my betrothal to my cousin Blanche. All my wishes centred +in the hope of marrying Corinne. I broached the subject one day to her +father, almost timidly. He was taken aback by my communication. + +‘“Marry my daughter!” he exclaimed. “You cannot know what you are asking +for.” + +‘“I know I am not worthy of her,” I began, but he cut me short. + +‘“My dear Baron, such an alliance as you would offer Corinne is beyond +all my hopes. But it is impossible.” + +‘“Why?” + +‘“Because she is doomed. She carries in her the seeds of a disease which +must terminate her existence within a few years. She can marry no one.” + +‘This intelligence was a great blow to me. I would not believe it—she +looked so healthy, though delicate. I urged Monsieur Duplat to permit +the marriage to take place, and I believe it would have been +accomplished, had a sudden chill not taken the poor child off before +another month was over her head.’ + +‘She is _dead_!’ I exclaimed, pity taking the place of all other +feelings. ‘Oh, how you must have grieved for her!’ + +‘Yes, I was very inconsolable for a time, and it was this grief, +mademoiselle, that led to all my subsequent misfortunes. Monsieur Duplat +was a _littérateur_ whose very uncertain income was dependent on his +humour for writing, and unfortunately his humour too often took the +direction of drinking instead. In my sorrow for the loss of Corinne, I +conceived the romantic idea of being a son to her father, and invited +the old man to come and live with me in my hôtel. I had so much money, +there was plenty for us both. Why should he not enjoy it also? Amidst +all my former dissipations I had never been a gambler, and it was +Monsieur Duplat himself who had on our first acquaintanceship introduced +me to the gaming-tables of Paris. After he came to live with me, +idleness and regret for his daughter’s death seemed to drive him to them +oftener than before, and wherever he went I accompanied him. I felt +reckless too at that time, and quite indifferent as to my future. I +believed, like most young mourners, that I should never be happy again, +and it did not signify what became of me. This is how I contracted the +spirit of gaming. Two of us were drawing on my (apparently) +inexhaustible fortune at the same moment, for you may be sure I paid all +Duplat’s debts before my own. My uncle Beaupré was not long in hearing +of my lavish expenditure, and remonstrated with me in his daughter’s +name. But a devil seemed to have entered into me—and when I found that I +had caused a large portion of my fortune to disappear, I attempted to +remedy the evil by staking more recklessly than before. At last the +crash came, and my eyes were opened. Monsieur Duplat had persuaded me to +stand security for an extravagant sum of money by which, as he said, he +was to be made independent for life, and the day after he got it he +decamped, leaving me in the lurch to meet all his liabilities as well as +my own. The creditors swooped down upon me like birds of prey. I found +that Duplat had procured valuables all over the town in my name, besides +forging it for a large amount of ready money from my bankers, and I was +literally ruined.’ + +‘What an ingrate!’ I exclaimed. ‘Oh, monsieur! I am sure that, with your +generous spirit, the ingratitude of it was the hardest part to bear.’ + +‘It was not calculated to raise my opinion of human nature, +mademoiselle, and when I thought of poor little Corinne, and how it +would have broken her heart to see her father’s conduct to me, I was +glad that she was safe in heaven, and freed from it all. My uncle came +to Paris as soon as he knew of my ruin, and informed me that all idea of +a marriage between _mademoiselle ma cousine_ and myself was at an end, +which I was not sorry to hear. It was found that twelve years’ income +would only suffice to discharge the debts for which I was liable; my +estates in Versailles and Lausanne being entailed and consequently not +marketable. I had the choice, therefore, of two alternatives—to +expatriate myself to this place and live upon a yearly sum of six +thousand francs allowed me by my creditors, or to go to gaol. I chose +the former, though there is but little to choose between them. St. +Pucelle is like a prison to me, and I have only vegetated since I came +here. Conceive if you can, mademoiselle, the change from the life I led +in Paris, and the solitude I now enjoy.’ + +‘But it will not last for ever, monsieur. How many years have you lived +at the château?’ + +‘Nine. I was thirty on my last birthday.’ + +‘Then the time of your probation will soon be up, will it not?’ + +‘There are three or four years more to run. _Three or four years! Mon +Dieu!_ what an eternity it seems in prospect!’ + +I hardly knew how to answer him. I longed so much to give him comfort, +but if he could not see the lesson this trial was calculated to teach +him in the same light that I did, I feared my words might irritate +instead of soothe him. So I only said: + +‘Monsieur le Baron, don’t despair! There is one person feels very deeply +for you, and that is myself.’ + +‘You do not despise me, then! You have heard all, and you can still be +my friend.’ + +‘Most certainly! You have been very weak, but you have not been wicked. +The money you wasted was your own. It was that base ungrateful creature +Duplat that caused your ruin.’ + +‘Remember that I have told it you in confidence. Even Monsieur Beaupré +does not know the extent to which he robbed me. He was Corinne’s father, +and for her sake I wish, as far as possible, to spare him.’ + +‘I respect you for the wish; but, monsieur, now that the worst is over, +will you not take courage and look forward to the time that is coming, +when you will begin life anew, and be able to show the world that you +are capable of upholding the honour of your name and of your family?’ + +‘These terrible years that must intervene,’ he groaned. ‘Sometimes I +wonder if I shall live through them.’ + +‘Oh yes, you will! You are young and strong. Why should you fear +otherwise? I wish you were married, monsieur! and had a nice wife at the +château, to make it pleasant and cheerful for you. Then the time of +waiting would not seem so long.’ + +‘Where am I to find a wife, mademoiselle, who will consent to bury +herself in St. Pucelle, on six thousand francs a year, for the next four +years? Tell me, and I will offer her my hand and heart upon the spot.’ + +Now, I thought, is the time to put in a word for Tessie. His eyes have +but to be opened to see all her virtues for himself. + +‘I know of several,’ I answered confidently: ‘sweet good girls, who +would love you for your own merits, and care nothing about your money. +There is Tessie Lovett, for instance. Where could you find a woman that +would make a better wife than she?’ + +His face fell to about a yard long. + +‘Miss Lovett! the very pale one, you mean, with blond locks. Why, she is +like a statue, mademoiselle! She hardly ever opens her mouth. She has no +spirit—no _chic_ about her. I don’t think she would brighten up the old +château very much—nor me either, for the matter of that.’ + +Oh, the insolence of men! I really began to believe they were all alike, +and never too miserable nor unfortunate to lose their self-conceit. Here +was a young fellow, who had just acknowledged himself to be everything +that was bad and wicked, and unworthy the regard of any woman, turning +up his nose at one of the best and sweetest creatures God ever made, +just because she had not got cheeks as red as peonies, and a tongue that +clacked like a water-mill all day! + +‘Why, she is all the better for not talking!’ I exclaimed indignantly. +‘Do you mean to tell me that you like a woman who chatters like a +magpie?’ + +‘No, mademoiselle. But I like a woman who can converse with me and +sympathise with me; who can scold me a little when I do wrong, and +advise me for my good; and who is brave and unselfish, and has been +brought up by a good mother in whose footsteps she will follow.’ + +I blushed at this eulogium, because it sounded so much as if it was +meant for myself. But I was true to Tessie notwithstanding. + +‘And how do you know, monsieur, that Miss Lovett is not all that you +say?’ I inquired. + +‘I do not know—but I have my opinions.’ + +‘I thought you liked her so much,’ I said disappointedly. + +‘So I do. But I will not _like_ my wife, I will _love_ her.’ + +‘_Petite_ Ange is more sprightly and talkative than her sister,’ I +observed. + +‘_Petite_ Ange is a lovely child,’ he answered: ‘nothing more. She is +open and innocent as the day. Any one might deceive her who had the mind +to do so. She loves birds and flowers and the poor, and considers +_monsieur son père_ to be a saint from heaven. _Voilà!_ that is _petite_ +Ange.’ + +‘Do you think she will make the worse wife for being so sweet and +innocent?’ + +‘Not for a good man, mademoiselle, who can guide her aright; but I am a +bad man who requires guidance. And the woman who can do that must be +something very much higher and better than the ordinary run of women.’ + +‘Oh, then you had better marry old Denise,’ I said, out of patience with +his trifling. ‘She is old enough and steady enough to keep you straight, +and as she whipped you when you were in petticoats, it will come quite +naturally to her.’ + +How he laughed at the idea! I had never heard Armand de Nesselrode laugh +before, but now his voice rang out sweet and clear along the deserted +road, and woke the echoes in the hills beyond. + +‘I am glad you approve of my proposal,’ I continued, fain to laugh with +him, though I tried hard to prevent it. + +‘Mademoiselle, you do me too much honour! I have never yet aspired to a +Baronne de Nesselrode without a tooth left in her head. Now, have +patience whilst I give you a description of the sort of woman I want to +win for my wife.’ + +But something in his eyes alarmed me, and I would not let him speak. + +‘No, no, no!’ I exclaimed hastily, as I jumped up from my grassy seat, +and shook the dust from my skirts. ‘I don’t want to hear it, monsieur: I +have not time. It is very late, and I must go home at once. What will +they all say when they hear of my adventure?’ + +‘You must not come this way again alone, since you are easily +frightened, mademoiselle. But if you will let me know—me only, you +understand, it is not necessary we should tell our private affairs to +all the world—when you intend to make your promenade upon the Piron +road, I will take care to be within call—not to intrude upon your +privacy, but to be ready in case you desire to appeal to me for +assistance.’ + +Was he laughing at me, or did he imagine it possible I could permit him +to follow at my heels like a dog or a lacquey, waiting to receive my +orders? I glanced up at his face, expecting to see a twinkle in his eyes +which should prove he was only in jest, but they were solemn as those of +a judge. The Baron de Nesselrode, in his beautiful chivalry and devotion +to the weaker sex, had been really in earnest in making this offer. But +of course I rejected it. + +‘It is impossible!’ I replied. ‘You must not dream of such a thing. You +would set all St. Pucelle talking about me!’ + +‘You think I would be barbarous enough to take advantage of such a trust +by forcing my conversation upon you! Ah, mademoiselle, you do me wrong! +No saint in her niche could be farther removed from the annoyance of my +presence than you should be, if you thought fit to accept my protection +in your solitary rambles.’ + +‘But I shall not come this way again, monsieur, when I am by myself. And +I could not think of putting you to all the trouble you propose. I am +not used to be attended on, nor to have a _preux-chevalier_ at my heels, +thank you all the same for thinking of it!’ + +We were walking back to St. Pucelle together now, through the field-path +that I have mentioned. It was a very narrow way; there was scarcely room +sometimes for us to walk abreast, and our conversation was necessarily +impeded. + +‘I have not touched a card since the evening that we spoke of it +together,’ said the Baron presently. + +‘I thought so, monsieur, and I am so glad to hear it. I am sure you will +never regret your determination. How do you employ your evenings now?’ + +‘I read and write and smoke; but I am very lonely. Sometimes I almost +think that I shall cut my throat.’ + +‘Hush! don’t say that! You hurt me.’ + +‘At first I considered the possibility of turning my talents, such as +they are, to account, in any post of responsibility that a gentleman +might accept. But whilst I remain under the black cloud of debt, there +is no chance of my procuring a Court appointment such as my father held; +and the De Nesselrodes have never stooped to anything lower.’ + +‘There is no “stooping” in honest labour, monsieur.’ + +‘I believe you; but caste has its prejudices. No member of my family has +ever been a tutor or a secretary; and if I became so, I should cut off +all hope of reconciliation with my relations when my term of penal +servitude is ended.’ + +‘Cannot you write and employ your time in instructing or amusing others? +You can see no degradation in that! Men of the noblest blood have been +authors before now.’ + +‘Oh yes! and raised themselves by the distinction. But one must have +talents to shine before the world, and I am not clever.’ + +‘Are you not? Mr. Lovett considers you have a mind of a very high order, +and having been intimately associated with some of the first in Europe, +he ought to be a good judge.’ + +‘He flatters me. But if I have a mind, or any gift for teaching others, +I know how I should like to employ it.’ + +‘In what way?’ + +‘You will not be offended, nor say I am very presumptuous?’ + +‘I think not.’ + +‘Then I should like to teach you how to speak French.’ + +If the evening shadows had not fallen by this time, the Baron would have +seen that his remark made me redden. I knew I spoke his language with a +horribly Anglicised accent, but I was ashamed to be told so. + +‘I am quite aware I pronounce it like a barbarian,’ I said bluntly. + +‘Ah, mademoiselle, now I have offended you. You do not speak it like a +barbarian. Your voice is very sweet, and makes every word that comes +from your mouth sweet also. But there are certain little niceties, the +lights and shades of our language, that it is impossible to acquire +except from conversing with a Parisian; and it is on these points, +unnecessary as they may appear, that I should like to see you perfect. +There is so little to correct, it is but a word or an expression here +and there that betrays you have not acquired the language abroad; and +since I know you have the ambition to speak it well, I thought, if you +would permit me, to aid you——’ + +‘Monsieur!’ I interrupted him, for my false shame had evaporated by this +time, ‘pray say no more. I know that my accent and my grammar must set +your teeth on edge every time you hear them, and it is very good of you +to wish to correct them. I am infinitely obliged, but what am I to say +about it? What would your relations think if they heard that a De +Nesselrode had turned French tutor to a raw English girl?’ + +‘Let them say what they will! Only say yourself that I may give you a +few lessons.’ + +‘But where am I to take them?’ + +‘Here—anywhere—so it be out in the beautiful country, with the blue sky +over our heads and the flowers springing around us, and not shut up in a +dull room in the house.’ + +This seemed so much like making appointments with him, that I hardly +knew what to answer. + +‘I cannot agree to meet you at any particular time, monsieur, without +telling my guardian. It would not be _comme il faut_. We English girls +are allowed more liberty than our French sisters, but to make +appointments with gentlemen without the knowledge of our friends is +going a little too far. If we meet by accident, however, I shall always +be glad to take any hints you may be good enough to give me.’ + +‘I will walk about every day and all day till I _do_ meet you,’ he +replied fervently. + +I laughed, but I felt flattered. Why should Armand de Nesselrode take +such an interest in my rough unmusical tongue? + +‘And what are you going to charge for your lessons?’ I asked him +jestingly; ‘I am not very rich, you know, so you must not lead me into +extravagance.’ + +‘_What am I to charge for my lessons!_’ he repeated after me slowly. +‘Ah! mademoiselle, the price will be very, _very_ high, but you shall +take your own time to pay me.’ + +I was just going to ask what he meant, when we came within sight of +another couple advancing to meet us. Not really to meet us though, but +creeping slowly along the pathway deeply engaged in talk, with their +heads close together and their eyes cast on the ground. The Baron and I +were walking one after the other, duck fashion, but our two friends were +side by side. + +‘It is Monsieur Charteris!’ exclaimed my companion, who had the eye of a +hawk. + +‘_Is_ it?’ I returned incredulously. ‘Are you sure? Who can the lady +be?’ + +As I mooted the question, I thought of Miss Markham. I knew how silly +and romantic she was, delighting in moonlight walks and secret +assignations, and could imagine how she had waylaid Cave Charteris +smoking under the garden wall, and dragged him out into the fields, with +his will or against it. A man can hardly refuse a woman’s request point +blank to her face. + +Silly creature that she was! How could she possibly remain so blind to +the fact that her attentions were not agreeable to him! + +As I meditated somewhat in this strain, we came right upon the +opposition couple before they were aware of our propinquity, and I +almost ran into Mr. Charteris’s arms. + +‘Here is an encounter!’ I said merrily. The woman by his side lifted her +head, and, to my utter astonishment, I saw the beautiful face of Angela +Lovett. ‘_Ange!_’ I exclaimed, ‘what are you doing here—where is Tessie? +Why didn’t she come with you?’ + +There was such a ring of wonder and, I suppose, dissatisfaction in my +voice, that Mr. Charteris at once took up the cudgels in defence of his +fair companion. + +‘I think we shall be justified in putting the same question, Miss Marsh. +What are _you_ doing here, walking alone with Monsieur de Nesselrode?’ + +‘Oh! _our rencontre_ was a mere accident,’ I replied, with vexation. ‘I +was on the Piron road when I met a horrid animal, half wolf and half +dog, and I thought it was a real wolf and was terribly frightened, and +the Baron happened to meet me, and so——’ + +‘Oh! did you see one of those savage-looking sheep-dogs, Hilda dear!’ +exclaimed Ange, who appeared as ready as myself to drop the subject of +the company she had been detected in keeping. ‘I do not wonder it +alarmed you. I was very nearly bitten by one once. It flew out of a +cottage and attacked me. Papa was so frightened, he wanted to have it +killed; but it wasn’t mad, you know. The village children had been +teasing it, and it took fright at a stick I carried in my hand. But I am +surprised you have not seen one before. There are so many about St. +Pucelle.’ + +She had left Mr. Charteris’s side and linked her arm in mine, and she +leaned on me with a confiding pressure which seemed to say, ‘Don’t tell +of me.’ I didn’t quite like it, and yet it would have been hard to say +why I was annoyed, for Ange ran about St. Pucelle as she listed, and +gave account of her proceedings to no one. + +‘Where is Tessie?’ I reiterated, looking down into the soft violet eyes +that were raised so confidingly to mine. + +‘At home, dear, reading to papa. It was so hot indoors, I thought I +should prefer the fields.’ + +‘Did you come this way to meet me?’ + +‘No! I didn’t know where you were. Tessie thought you had gone to see +Mrs. Carolus. It is more than two hours since you left home.’ + +I started guiltily. Put upon my oath to guess the time of my absence, I +should really have thought it had been about thirty or forty minutes. + +‘Let us go back as fast as we can then, Ange, or they will begin to +think we have eloped altogether.’ + +We were both so evidently anxious to have nothing more said about the +companions of our pilgrimage, that we talked on every subject but that +of our evening stroll, and left the gentlemen to amuse each other in the +rear whilst we scuttled home together arm-in-arm, like two rabbits that +had taken fright and were hurrying back to the warren. + +But after I had retired to rest that night, I could not help thinking of +dear little Ange, and wondering how she came to choose Mr. Charteris for +her cavalier. I supposed it was very natural she should do so. I had +left him smoking sulkily under the garden wall, and when she came out +for her evening stroll, he had probably proffered the same request to +her that he did to me, and she could hardly have refused him. What +nonsense it was to think twice about such a trifle! Yet I did think of +it, many more times than twice. + +Ange was too good and pious to derive any harm from ordinary intercourse +with Cave Charteris, whose opinions on most subjects would be more +calculated, I thought, to shock than to charm her; but she was very +young and unsophisticated, and her father was far too careless of her. +Yet what business was it of mine? The fear of being thought meddlesome +has more than once deterred me from doing what I considered right in +life. It deterred me now. + + + + +[Illustration: [Fleuron]] + + + CHAPTER V + THE BLACK CLOUD. + + +I find I have arrived at an epoch in my story—an epoch from which I can +date a remarkable change in the character of my surroundings—I seemed to +have got on the black books of the entire household. In the first place, +Mr. Lovett had scarcely spoken to me since the day that I had extracted +the twenty-five francs from him wherewith to pay my debt to Mrs. +Carolus. Whether he considered my subsequent silence dangerous, or read +a determination in my eye which did not accord with his own intentions, +I know not; but he assumed a great distance towards me, and never +addressed me except it were absolutely necessary. He did not parade his +altered feelings before the others, but, all the same, they were evident +enough to me. The studied politeness of his manner and the increased +blandness of his tone, when we met in public, would have betrayed the +truth of themselves to my understanding, had not the ominous silence +that reigned between us, whenever we found ourselves alone together, +made it still more patent. + +My guardian’s suspicions or distrust, however, did not seriously affect +me. I had a rod in pickle for the old gentleman, and thought it just as +well he should be a little prepared for what was coming. But I did think +it hard that Tessie should avoid me. + +Since the day that we had visited the Fromards’ cottage together, I had +not breathed a word to her of the disclosures that had been made me +there. Poor Guillaume had been taken to his last home. And the funeral +_cortége_, followed by half the town, had passed our door without my +making the slightest reference to the unpleasant topic which the sight +brought to my mind. I had even listened with patience to the beautiful +and touching discourse which Mr. Lovett had given us on that occasion, +and in which he set forth the folly of the poor in not husbanding their +resources against a time of want and emergency. + +Tessie had looked painfully shy and uneasy, whilst her father bade us +all pray for the bereaved widow and orphans, but I had stood the +exordium manfully, although I could have boxed Ange’s ears for dilating +her eyes as though she were gazing at a saint from heaven. + +Yet Tessie shunned my company in the most evident manner, and was very +subdued, not to say melancholy, at all seasons. Why was it so? Did she +suspect me of treachery, and was afraid that, notwithstanding my +promise, I should enlighten Ange upon the subject? Or had her father +represented my conduct to her in his own light, and made her feel +resentment on his account? I could not tell. I only knew that something +had arisen between us, and we were not on the friendly terms we had been +hitherto. Mr. Charteris was another defaulter, though regarding his +temper I troubled myself but little. My rebuffs of him, trifling as they +were, had evidently upset his equanimity; and if a gentleman who omits +none of the common courtesies of society can be called rude, I should +have said that Cave Charteris’s behaviour to me amounted to rudeness. + +Anyway, from that day he devoted himself to outdoor amusements, and +scarcely seemed to be in the house for ten minutes together. Last, but +not least, dear little Ange began to brood and be melancholy, in common +with the rest. The season was not a healthy one, and there was a great +deal of fever and sickness amongst the poor people. Perhaps this +somewhat accounted for the decrease of brilliancy in her eyes, and lack +of power in her limbs. Her slight delicate frame was weakened by the +long hot summer, and required the dry frost of winter to brace and set +it up again. There was too much feverish colour, I thought, in her +cheeks for health, and too much languor in her usually active body. + +Tessie did not see it as I did. She said that St. Pucelle was always +considered to be rather enervating in the autumn months, and Ange looked +much the same as usual. From the ‘little maid’ herself I could get no +satisfactory information. She had become as shy of me as her sister, and +seemed quite nervous of being left in the same room. + +I began to think I must be a species of Jonah, got aboard by haphazard +in this peaceful foreign ark, and that the sooner I was cast forth into +the sea the better. Even Monsieur de Nesselrode appeared to have been +frightened by my proposal to get him a wife, and to come less often to +the house than before. + +My only resource was Charlie Sandilands, who had, of course, reappeared +upon the scene of action, faithful as ever. Charlie was just that sort +of man who might be counted upon to reappear, never mind how often he +was snubbed, always amiable and forgiving, and for that very reason he +was the sort of man that I never could have submitted my judgment to. + +But he was an immense comfort to me at that period, and having once +thoroughly knocked the truth into his stupid old head that he could be +nothing more, we got on capitally together, and scarcely passed a day +without meeting, either in the house or out of it. + +I had received an answer to my letter from Mr. Warrington; one that made +me feel both comfortable and uncomfortable at the same time. In it he +had enclosed a draft for twenty pounds, with the intimation that for the +next few weeks imperative business would keep him in London, but that as +soon as it was concluded he should run over to St. Pucelle, and inquire +into my money affairs himself. + +Meanwhile, he trusted that what he sent would free me from any further +annoyance until his arrival. This was just what I had dreaded; and had +it not been for Charlie Sandilands, I should foolishly have written +back, and begged Mr. Warrington to try first what he could do by letter. +But my friend dissuaded me from interfering in the matter. In the first +place, he pointed out that the lawyer must know his own business best; +in the second, that an epistolary war between him and Mr. Lovett would +be none the pleasanter for me than a wordy one, and I should be +compelled to bear the brunt of it without the weight of Mr. Warrington’s +presence to back me. + +There was much good sense in this advice, which I resolved to take, and +Charlie and I had many discussions as we trod the lonely environs of St. +Pucelle together, as to what future course of life it would be advisable +for me to adopt, for that I should be able to continue in any comfort +with the Lovetts after the exposure that must follow the solicitor’s +visit, I never for a moment anticipated. + +Somewhere near Tessie and Ange I resolved if possible to stay, but not +under the same roof-tree. Charlie talked of Germany and Italy, and the +delight the art treasures of these countries would afford to my æsthetic +tastes, but somehow I could not make up my mind to leave St. Pucelle. It +was a stupid, pottering little town, true enough, and I knew every inch +of it by that time, and I had no ties to keep me there; still, whatever +the reason, I always came back to the same decision, that, for the +present at least, I did not fancy the idea of quitting it. + +One day, on an unusually oppressive afternoon, about the middle of +October, I substituted a white cambric dressing-gown for the heavy +mourning robes I still wore, and sat down in my own room for a couple of +hours’ quiet reading. I had been thinking of all the disagreeable things +of which I have just written, and resolved to try and banish them from +my mind. + +Charlie had brought over several cheap novels with him for the +nourishment of his mental appetite, and I had greedily pounced upon one +of Miss Braddon’s, and carried it off for my own delectation. I had met +Ange dressed for walking as I entered the corridor, on her way to the +kitchen to fetch the basket which she usually carried when visiting the +poor, and I had remonstrated with the child for exposing herself to such +heat, and prophesied all sorts of fevers and horrors for her if she +insisted upon being so obstinate. + +But she had only shaken her head at me in reply, and I had considered my +good advice wasted, and made myself very comfortable in the society of +Miss Braddon. I had heard light steps traverse the corridor and leave +the house by way of the garden, and thought what a little saint of love +and charity the child was, and how far behind her I came in all things +worthy of praise, when the latch of my door was softly raised (all the +doors in St. Pucelle were latched instead of locked), and lo! the face +of St. Ange, not pale but feverishly red, like the opened heart of a +great crimson rose, was thrust silently into view. + +‘Why, Ange! I thought you had left the house ten minutes ago.’ + +‘No, it was Tessie. I felt so tired that she took the basket from my +hands and went instead of me. How cool you look in here, Hilda! The sun +is glaring in on the other side of the house till it is like an oven.’ + +‘Come in then, dear, and sit with me. I have got one of the most +charming stories that was ever written, here, and if you like I will +read aloud to you.’ + +She almost dragged herself across the room to where I sat. I saw at once +that she was not well. + +‘What is the matter, darling?’ + +‘Nothing in particular, Hilda. Only I have such a headache, and feel so +tired.’ + +‘Take my chair, Ange; you will catch the breeze from the hill-top as it +blows across the courtyard. It is deliciously cool.’ + +‘No, I would rather sit here,’ she answered, as she sunk down upon a +stool at my feet and rested her head against my knee. + +I read aloud for a few minutes, but I soon found that even Miss Braddon +had not the power to-day to chain Ange’s wandering thoughts, which, it +was plain to see from the expression of her dreamy eyes, were far away +from the matter in hand. + +‘Ange, you are very sad to-day. What makes you so?’ + +‘I _am_ a little sad. Jeanne Guillot’s little baby Fanchon is dead, and +I nursed her the very day she was born. Such a dear, fat little thing +she was, Hilda, and only just two years old. I feel almost as if she had +belonged to me.’ + +‘What did she die of?’ + +‘I don’t know—some kind of fever, I think. Several children in the town +are ill with it.’ + +‘Is it safe for you to go amongst them so constantly as you do, Ange?’ + +‘Why?’ + +‘The fever may be infectious—you might catch it yourself.’ + +‘What then, Hilda? One can die but once, you know, and I often think +those who die are much better off than those who are left in this +world.’ + +‘Perhaps so, but you are too young to believe it. You have all your life +before you, child, and should look forward to a sunny one. Why, what has +come to my light-hearted laughing Ange this afternoon?’ + +‘I have a headache,’ she repeated wearily. + +I let her rest in peace then, though I could not help stealing an +occasional glance at the marvellously pretty face that was pillowed on +my knee. Was it my fancy, or had a look of greater age really come over +Ange’s childlike features during the last few weeks? I thought her nose +seemed longer and thinner than before, and that her brows were not quite +so smooth and open as they had been. But it must have been my fancy, or +the appearance was merely evanescent. No storm, domestic or otherwise, +had occurred to ruffle the even tenor of her life. The unusual look of +care must have been the effect of the headache only. It was she who +broke the silence between us. + +‘Hilda, are you going to marry Mr. Sandilands?’ + +‘Marry Charlie Sandilands? certainly _not_, my dear Ange. Whatever can +have put such an idea into your head?’ + +‘Miss Markham said you were engaged to him.’ + +‘What rubbish! Pray don’t put faith in anything that woman tells you. +She has no authority for her assertions. I am not going to marry +anybody, Ange; rest sure of that.’ + +I was vexed at this retailed piece of scandal, nevertheless; though what +else could I have expected at the hands of a set of chattering old +women, who had seen me walking out every afternoon with the same +gentleman? + +‘I suppose I have no right to be angry,’ I continued; ‘but it is always +vexatious to be talked about. I have known Charlie Sandilands for years, +Ange. He is younger than I am, and I look upon him as a brother. Don’t +let any one connect our names together again in your presence, will +you?’ + +‘No, I will not, Hilda. But I thought Mr. Charteris would be sure to +know.’ + +‘You said Sophy Markham had been your informant.’ + +‘So she was, but when I repeated it to Mr. Charteris, he said nothing +was more likely.’ + +‘Mr. Charteris ought to know me better,’ I returned, with ridiculous +heat, considering that I had not condescended to inform that gentleman +of any of my private affairs. + +It seemed hopeless to engage in conversation that afternoon. Every +subject we started came to a dead-lock, and I returned to my novel with +an impatient sigh. Presently Madame Marmoret’s harsh voice rung out +across the courtyard in expostulation with some one unseen. + +‘_Eh bien!_ you are there again, pig! Have you come to bring me what I +asked for?’ + +‘Madame sweetly singing, as usual!’ I remarked, as the tones reached us. + +I suppose my words drowned the reply to the woman’s question, for she +continued rapidly: + +‘Lies, as usual! I know you have it! I saw you borrow one hundred and +twenty-five francs from Monsieur Charteris this morning. It cannot be +gone already. _Pauvre homme!_ he has not yet found out what it is to +lend money to those that will never return it!’ + +‘_Tais toi!_’ responded the voice of my guardian; ‘mind your own +business. He will be repaid, never fear!’ + +‘Ah! yes, certainly, when the Lord comes to judgment,’ replied Madame, +sarcastically. + +Ange had not appeared to hear the first two sentences as she lay with +her head upon my knee, her eyes closed and the deep crimson mantling on +her cheek. But when her father’s voice was heard in answer, I watched +her colour fade to a dull white, and she opened her eyes and knit her +brows as though she were listening with all her soul. + +‘Hilda!’ she inquired eagerly, ‘is that papa’s voice?’ + +‘Yes, Ange, I think so.’ + +‘What was he saying?’ + +‘I don’t know. I didn’t hear.’ + +She raised herself and looked at me in a scared, half-comprehending +manner. + +‘You are deceiving me, Hilda! You must have heard! What is it? What does +it mean? Did Marmoret say that papa owed Mr. Charteris money?’ + +I remembered my promise to Tessie, and resolved that Ange should learn +the truth through any lips but mine. + +‘I know nothing about it, Ange,’ I repeated firmly; ‘you heard what +passed just as well as I did. And if it were the case,’ I added, with +beautiful inconsistency, ‘it is no such great matter. Men borrow money +of one another constantly.’ + +‘_It is no such great matter!_’ she repeated slowly; ‘no matter that +dear papa should be so poor as to be obliged to borrow of Mr. Charteris: +papa, who holds such strict views on all money matters that he thinks +people should lie down and starve sooner than beg or borrow of their +friends. Oh! we must be very poor indeed—much poorer than I have ever +dreamed of—if papa has been obliged to do this thing.’ + +I saw the proud blood rush back again to her face, though only for a +moment, and thought, with a pang, what a blow the disclosure of the +truth, when it came, would be to her! At that moment the bedroom door +opened, and Tessie appeared. The sight of her sister seemed to rouse +Ange to action, for she leapt to her feet and rushed into her arms, +crying: + +‘Tessie! Tessie! tell the truth. Does papa owe money to Mr. Charteris?’ + +Tessie looked over the child’s shoulder at me with a reproachful air, +which I read too well. + +‘You wrong me,’ I said, in answer; ‘I am not the delinquent. Ange has +overheard your father and Madame squabbling in the courtyard.’ + +At these words Tessie’s face became as white as the ‘little maid’s.’ + +‘Why did I not tell Madame I was going to carry Ange’s basket to the +poor?’ she said, with a self-condemnatory air. + +I knew what she meant. That if Madame had known that _petite_ Ange was +anywhere within hearing, she would have placed some restraint upon her +unruly tongue. + +‘Well, it cannot be helped, Tessie; and, after all, Ange is making a +great fuss about a very little thing. She merely heard Madame say that +Mr. Lovett had borrowed a five-pound note of his boarder.’ + +‘Five pounds,Tessie; one hundred and twenty-five francs!’ said Ange, +with open eyes of horror; ‘and how will he ever pay it back again, so +poor as we are?’ + +‘Oh! leave papa to find out the ways and means, darling,’ replied +Tessie, cheerfully; ‘it is no concern of ours, you know, and he would +not like, perhaps, to think that we knew about his private concerns.’ + +‘That is just what I have been telling her, Tessie; but Ange is such a +little goose, she seems to think five pounds a perfect fortune. +Gentlemen constantly accommodate each other in such trifles. Mr. +Charteris is sure to have his money back in a day or two, and, for my +part, I think we have wasted too much time already in discussing the +business.’ + +So I said, in my desire to reassure them both, but Ange still continued +to look up in her sister’s face with wide, imploring eyes. + +‘Tessie, how can he pay him back? I heard papa tell the _facteur_ this +morning that he must wait till to-morrow for the money for the unpaid +letter.’ + +‘That was because he had no change,’ I interposed quickly. + +‘Tessie, how will he ever be able to pay back five pounds?’ continued +Ange, without heeding my interruption; ‘there are so many things to buy +each day, and Madame killed our best pair of pigeons this morning +because she had no money to go to market with.’ + +‘Oh, Ange! you do not understand such things. You have had no +experience. People may have very little money to-day and plenty +to-morrow. It _comes in_, you know. The richest are sometimes out of +pocket for a few days, aren’t they, Hilda?’ + +‘Of course,’ I answered stoutly. ‘I dare say the Duke of Westminster has +to borrow sometimes. The more we have, the more we spend. How very much +amused Mr. Charteris would be if he could hear the debate we are holding +over his stupid bank-note. By the way, is he home from shooting yet, +Tessie?’ + +‘I don’t know; I have not seen him,’ she replied, as she gently put her +sister from her, and, walking up to the mirror, removed her hat and +arranged her tumbled hair. Ange stood where she had left her for a few +seconds motionless, and then, with a deep sigh, walked out of the room. + +‘Oh, Hilda! how could you let her hear it?’ exclaimed Tessie, as soon as +she was gone. + +‘How could I help it, rather? If you will gag Madame Marmoret, or reduce +her brazen clarion of a voice to whispering music, I may be able to +avoid such things, but not before.’ + +‘How impudent of her to shout in that way across the yard, and why does +dear papa provoke her tongue by infringing on her premises? Why doesn’t +he keep out of her way?’ + +‘Don’t ask me. Why does everything in this world go by contraries? The +best thing we can do now is to try and make Ange forget what she +overheard as soon as possible.’ + +‘Oh! she is sure to forget it. After all, it is not much. The only thing +is to prevent its leading to more.’ + +‘You had better arrange that with Madame Marmoret, since she is at the +bottom of all the mischief.’ + +When we met at the dinner-table I thought that Ange had already +forgotten the little episode we had alluded to. The lovely damask colour +bloomed once more on her cheek; her soft eyes beamed with light, and her +manner to her father was even more tender and caressing than usual. + +As soon as the meal was concluded, she perched herself upon his knee, +and kept on fondling him to an unusual degree as she stroked down his +silver locks, calling him ‘Poor dear papa,’ and ‘Poor darling old +father,’ accompanying each phrase of affection with a kiss. + +I fancied that Mr. Lovett palled of this excess of filial devotion, but +the girl could not see it. Her little soft heart was full to the brim +with compassion for what she considered the deplorable condition to +which he had been brought, and she was powerless to perceive that his +did not beat in unison with hers. + +At last he twitched his venerable head from under her smoothing hands to +turn it towards Madame Marmoret, who entered the _salle_ with a message +from Jean Marat, the cobbler; a humble message, delivered in the most +respectful manner, to the effect that if it were quite convenient to +Monsieur le Curé, would monsieur oblige Jean Marat with a few +francs—just a few francs—on account of his bill, because madame _sa +femme_ had laid-in that morning of the eighth little Marat, and money, +under the circumstances, would be very acceptable. + +To listen to Madame’s oily voice at that moment, who would have dreamt +it could ever be so harsh and virulent as we had heard it at other +times! + +She looked the personification of a respectable servant as she stood at +the open door with her hands rolled up in her apron; and with all my +dislike for the woman, I recognised something touching in the restraint +she put on her naturally evil nature for the sake of _petite_ Ange. + +Mr. Lovett, however, saw nothing ‘touching’ about the matter. His brows +contracted as the message was delivered to him, and he put Ange off his +lap with a brusqueness that was almost rough. + +‘What do you mean by bringing such a message in to me in the midst of +dinner?’ he demanded. ‘Tell Jean Marat to go——’ + +But there he remembered himself and came to a full stop. Whatever he may +have been in private, he was always very particular in keeping up the +name of his profession in public. + +‘Tell Jean Marat that it is _not_ convenient, that I am occupied at +present—and he must wait,’ he continued, correcting the former sentence. + +‘If monsieur could spare but five francs,’ pleaded Marmoret. ‘The Marats +are very poor.’ + +‘_Ciel!_’ exclaimed Mr. Lovett, losing his temper entirely. ‘What do you +mean by talking to me in that manner when I haven’t got a five-franc +piece in the house? Give it to them yourself if you are so anxious for +their comfort; but get out of this room, and leave me in peace to finish +my repast.’ + +Madame Marmoret immediately disappeared, and harmony was restored +amongst us. But an ominous silence succeeded her departure. + +Tessie sat with eyes downcast upon her lap. Mr. Charteris whistled and +looked out of the window. Ange seemed restlessly miserable. + +The cause of the disturbance tried to cheer up the spirits of his +family, but, finding his remonstrances of no avail, took his hat and +stick discontentedly and walked off to visit some of his friends. + +The girls disappeared together, as I thought, to their garden or the +kitchen, and I retreated to the inner _salle_ to have another chat with +Miss Braddon. When it grew too dusk to read I went upstairs, intending +to finish some needlework or writing in my bedroom by the light of a +little lamp which I had purchased for my own use with some of the money +Mr. Warrington had sent me. But, passing the room occupied by the +sisters, my attention was arrested by the sound of a low sobbing, and I +entered it expecting to find my poor friend Tessie bewailing in secret +the troubles she had to bear. To my surprise, however, it was not Tessie +who was cast prostrate on the bed. It was Ange! + +‘Ange, my child!’ I exclaimed. ‘What is the matter that you should weep +like this?’ + +‘Oh! don’t speak to me, Hilda,’ she said mournfully; ‘leave me to +myself. It seems as if a great black cloud had come down over +everything.’ + +Poor Ange! Dear, innocent Ange! + +So the curse had begun to work here also, and her fresh young life was +to be involved in trouble like the rest. + + + + +[Illustration: [Fleuron]] + + + CHAPTER VI. + SALLE DU SABBAT. + + +How we all came to visit the _Grottes de S. Jean_ in one large party, I +never quite made out, but the fact remains that we went. Some one +proposed it, probably Miss Markham (for that gay young creature was +always on the alert to concoct a plan by which she should secure the +privilege of Mr. Charteris’s company), and some one agreed to it, but +neither of them was I. + +I found myself one morning in the centre of a group consisting of Mr. +and Mrs. Carolus, Sophy Markham, Arthur Thrale and Charlie Sandilands, +Cave Charteris, and Ange and Tessie, all habited in walking costumes, +and armed with thick sticks, ready to start on an expedition to these +famous grottoes of stalactites, and I was told to put on my hat and +accompany them. + +There was no particular interest to me in the expedition; indeed, had I +been given my choice, I would much rather have stayed at home on the +chance of getting a lesson in French from the Baron de Nesselrode—the +public will see that I am frank in these records, even to detailing my +errors of judgment—but consciousness that it was so, and that I showed +weakness in encouraging it, urged me to the opposite course, and I +agreed, with alacrity, to do all that they required of me. So in a few +minutes we had started on our way. Sophy Markham clinging close, of +course, to Charteris’s side, as Charlie Sandilands did to mine, and the +rest walking, as Ange expressed it, _heegledy-peegledy_. How well I +remember that morning: we were all so terribly young. Mrs. Carolus +skipped round and about her Willy, whom, more than once, she nearly +knocked over in her airy evolutions, as a bride of sixteen might have +done; whilst Miss Markham hung upon Charteris’s arm and gazed up into +his face with the rapture of a first attachment. The boys caught the +youthful infection, and raced Tessie and me down the green slopes we had +to traverse, until I told them they reminded me of Greenwich fair. Of +all the company only two seemed unequal to taking part in the general +hilarity. These two were Cave Charteris and _petite_ Ange. + +He walked along with his head in the air, without appearing to take much +interest in the conversation of his self-elected companion. Did he or +did he not care for the attentions which this woman was always pressing +upon him? To love her I was quite sure would be impossible to him—the +great difference in their ages alone would render it most unlikely—but +he had certainly been more polite and amiable to her lately than he had +ever been before. + +What motive could he have for it? for I was certain Cave Charter never +did anything without a motive. Did he entertain any thoughts of marrying +her? Miss Markham was reported at that time to have money, and Madame +Marmoret had more than once openly expressed her disgust to see the +lady’s favours transferred to the wrong quarter. But Mr. Charteris had +told me he was rich; he could never be so mean as to sell his liberty to +an old woman when he was not even in want of pecuniary assistance. Yet +on what other grounds, except the desire to ingratiate himself with her, +could one account for his former rudeness being changed to a curt +familiarity? The other dullard of our party, dear Ange, was not so +melancholy as she was silent. The burst of grief she had given way to, +now more than a week ago, had been succeeded by an unusually subdued +manner—an _older_ manner if I may express it so. It was as if the +discovery of that day had swept her youth away before it. So I believed, +at least, then—now I know that subtler influences were at work to +destroy her gaiety. + +I tried on that morning, by every means in my power, to make Ange like +her former self, but it was in vain. She laughed, it is true, and when +we pulled her down the steep hills, the crimson blood mantled in her +peachy cheeks and made her beautiful, but there was a sense of care +underlying the laughter that spoilt the joyousness of its echo, and the +colour faded too fast after each exertion to have been called there by +healthy exercise. + +The grottoes we were about to visit extended for a great distance under +the grounds of Monsieur de Condé, whose property they were, and who +charged a certain sum for admission to them. They had been discovered by +some workmen whilst excavating on his estate, and had been quite a +source of profit to their owner ever since. The visitors to St. Pucelle, +naturally, had already heard a great deal about these famous grottoes, +and Sophy Markham ‘gushed’ over them to her heart’s content. + +‘Oh! I am so _anxious_ to see them! I am anticipating so much pleasure +from this little excursion!’ she exclaimed, with a violent and most +palpable squeeze of Mr. Charteris’s arm. ‘I have been looking over the +book in the hotel where visitors have written down their impressions of +them, and they are so terribly tantalising. A Persian describes himself +as having been suddenly transported into fairyland—didn’t he, Lizzie +dear?—positively into fairyland, and says he can compare the vast +caverns to nothing but the palace of his great master the sultan, and +the forms of the stalactites to lovely houris frozen around him. Isn’t +it poetical? _Frozen houris!_ Oh! I do love poetry so! It is the very +life of my soul.’ + +Tessie laughed quietly. + +‘I’m afraid if you do not lessen your anticipations, Miss Markham, that +you will be disappointed. I went over the grotto years ago with some +friends, but I saw nothing at all like “frozen houris” there.’ + +‘Ah! but then, my dear Tessie, you are not imaginative. Now, I _am_. I +always have been, and it is my _métier_ to make the very best of +everything I see. You don’t blame me for it, or think me foolish, Mr. +Charteris, do you?’ + +Of course Mr. Charteris assured her that folly and herself were the two +things in his ideas farthest removed from one another, and just as he +had given vent to this opinion, we came in sight of the mouth of the +grotto, where two _guides_, each bearing a petroleum lamp, awaited our +arrival. They tendered us little hats made of grey linen, each trimmed +with a cockade and a bunch of red feathers in front, very much after the +pattern of those adopted by the monkeys on the organs, and for which we +were expected to exchange those we wore, which were liable to be damaged +by the drippings from the cave. + +They were comical-looking head-dresses, and I hardly wondered at Mrs. +Carolus and the fair Sophia hesitating to surmount their hard-lined and +puckered faces by them, although Ange and Tessie looked all the prettier +from the contrast. + +Miss Markham in particular, I could see, would rather have spoiled a +dozen hats than assumed the unbecoming linen one, had she not been +ridiculed into doing so. + +‘Oh! Lizzie dear, we never _can_ wear such things—now can we?’ + +‘I’m sure I don’t know, dear. I’d much rather keep on my bonnet, but +then it cost five guineas, and I shall be crazy if it gets hurt. I +really think I must venture to try one of the caps.’ + +‘Oh! my dear girl, you do look so comical! Excuse my laughing—but you’ve +no idea—and grey never did suit your complexion, you know.’ + +‘Well, I don’t think you need talk, Sophy. So plain a headdress is by no +means suited to your own style of features, I can tell you!’ + +‘Oh! the horrid thing—I will never, never wear it!’ cried the childish +Sophia, as she threw the offending cap upon the ground; and I believe, +if she had not overheard Mr. Charteris grumble at being kept waiting so +long, that she would have been as good as her word. + +But, finding that we were all wearing them and she would be singular if +she did not do the same, she consented at last to crown her _chignon_ +with it, and came simpering forth like a bashful girl that was afraid of +being looked at. + +No one troubled her, however, and the whole party being ready, we began +to descend the first flight of wooden steps which were steep but easy, +and went down, down, down, until the ivy and fern covered entrance was +left far above us, and we had reached the very centre of the cave, which +was yet light enough to let us see that there were several more such +flights to be descended before we could touch level earth again. + +This was a fine opportunity for Miss Markham and Mrs. Carolus to shriek +and laugh hysterically, and cling like grim death to whoever happened to +be nearest to them, and they made every use of it. But Mr. Charteris and +Mr. Carolus had been wise in their generation, and insisted upon going +down first, leaving their women-kind to struggle in the rear with any +one they could lay hold of. So poor Charlie and Arthur Thrale had them +all to themselves, whilst Tessie and I laughed wickedly in each others’ +ears. + +At last we stood on level ground, in a cavern as dark as Erebus; there +was no light anywhere, except from the lamps of the guides, who waved +them over their heads and introduced us to _la grande salle_. I looked +up and down and round about me; but all was black as pitch. I felt that +I was standing on broken flints and thick mud, and as the guides’ lamps +threw their faint gleam here and there, I perceived that the cave we +stood in was very vast and damp, and uncommonly like a huge cellar, but +I can’t say that I saw anything more. + +‘Are these the “frozen houris?”’ asked Cave Charteris, sarcastically. + +‘Oh no! I should hardly think so,’ replied Miss Markham, quickly; +‘and—where are you, Mr. Charteris? I feel so dreadfully timid, I can’t +tell you—and would give anything to have hold of the hand of some one +that I knew!’ + +‘Take mine!’ I said, with _malice prepense_; ‘it’s quite strong enough +to keep you from slipping.’ + +‘Oh no! I couldn’t think of it. I might fall and pull you down with me. +But if Mr. Charteris would help me——’ + +‘All right! You can take my arm if you wish it. But we can’t walk +abreast through the passages,’ he answered, with anything but lover-like +alacrity, and something made me turn to Ange and whisper: + +‘Are you not frightened, dear, too? If so, I can hold you up.’ + +But she said calmly: + +‘There is nothing to be frightened of, Hilda. We are on the solid ground +now, and can fall no lower.’ + +In another minute the guides had turned and led us through a passage cut +in the rock. We were not going up nor down stairs now, but picking our +way over slippery stones, and between places sometimes so narrow and so +low, that gaunt Mr. Carolus knocked his head more than once, as he +disregarded the guides’ warning cry of ‘_Tête!_’ and the majority of us +got bruised arms and shoulders. Every now and then we came upon a larger +excavation which was called a _salle_, and bore some name consequent on +the likeness assumed by the stalactites it contained. One was termed +_Salle de Brahma_, because it held a lump of crystal somewhat resembling +the idol of that name. Another _Salle du Sacrifice_, its principal +attraction being a large flat stone, at the foot of which was another, +shaped like a sausage and entitled _tombeau de la victime_. + +We paced after the guides through these cavernous passages for what +appeared to me to be miles, my mind, meanwhile, being divided between +fear that I should leave my best pair of boots behind me in the slushy +clay, and apprehension as to the appearance my crape would present when +I reached home again. I heard Mrs. Carolus, every now and then, +querulously complaining to ‘Willy’ of the pains she was acquiring in her +back from the constant stooping, and I knew that Sophy Markham was +dogging Mr. Charteris’s steps as closely as the circumstances would +admit of, and that Tessie and Ange plodded behind me silent and +uncomplaining. + +I was beginning to think that we had come on a very foolish expedition +and were likely to have more pain than pleasure for our trouble, when I +found we were ploughing our way up again, on fungus-covered ladders and +wet slippery stairs upon which it was most difficult to keep a footing, +until we arrived at what was decidedly the finest sight there, the +_Salle du Sabbat_. Here the guides proposed to send up a spirit balloon, +in order to show us the height and extent of the vast cavern, and went +away, taking the lamps with them, having first planted us in a row on +the edge of a precipice, and conjured us not to stir until their return. +I think we felt little inclination to do so. The blackness about us was +so thick that we could almost _feel_ it, and the silence was that of +death. Ange slipped her little hand in mine, and whispered: + +‘Hilda, suppose they should never come back!’ and I could not say the +supposition was a pleasant one. She had been standing between Sophy +Markham and myself, but as she said the words, she slipped round my back +and linked her arm in mine on the other side. + +Miss Markham, for a wonder, was silent, but Mrs. Carolus was plaintively +trying to make her spouse partake her girlish fears, and he was +ridiculing them with a kind of rough good sense that made me laugh. +Under cover of their expostulations with one another, a mouth approached +my ear on the side left vacant by Ange, and I heard a voice say gently: + +‘My own darling! How much I love you!’ + +The announcement took me so completely by surprise, that, for the +moment, I imagined it had proceeded from Charlie Sandilands, and it was +quite a mercy that, under cover of the darkness, I did not turn round +and smartly box his ears in return for his impudence. But before I had +had time to prepare the weapon of chastisement, the speaker continued, +still in the same soft tones: + +‘What a nuisance it is having to play propriety before all these bores! +How I long to be alone with you again, and able to tell you what I +feel!’ + +Before this sentence was concluded, I had recognised the voice as that +of Cave Charteris, and was bristling with indignation. + +‘What do you mean by speaking to me like that?’ I said angrily. + +‘Good God, Hilda!’ he rejoined, ‘is it you?’ + +‘Yes, it is I! Who did you take me for?’ + +‘Then—where—where—’ he stammered, in order to give himself time to think +of what to say, ‘where is Miss Markham?’ + +We had both raised our voices in our mutual surprise, and his last +question was overheard. + +‘Here I am, Mr. Charteris!’ ejaculated the fair Sophy, from his other +side—I know she had shifted her quarters in hopes of extracting some +familiarity from him before the lights came back. ‘Close to you—see!’ + +The order to ‘see’ was apparently accompanied by a playful pinch, for +Charteris gave a sudden yell, and a step forward that might have sent +him over the precipice. + +‘Do be careful, Miss Markham,’ I exclaimed, with an expression of +annoyance, ‘and keep your facetiæ until we stand on safer ground. You +might have caused Mr. Charteris to make a false step.’ + +‘Oh, you needn’t be so alarmed, Miss Marsh,’ she answered meaningly; ‘I +assure you I am quite as anxious for Mr. Charteris’s safety as you can +be, and I should think you had quite enough to do to look after Mr. +Sandilands without troubling yourself about other people!’ + +‘I don’t know what you mean,’ I retorted; but at that moment the spirit +balloon rose in the air, and half a dozen voices joined in a chorus of +admiration at the height and depth and length and breadth of the cavern +we stood in, and the glittering clusters of stalactites which the light +momentarily revealed as it majestically sailed past them. I looked with +the rest, but my thoughts were far away from the scene around me. A +question was puzzling my brain which I felt I could not give up until I +had unravelled. _For whom_ had Cave Charteris intended the whisper which +by mistake he addressed to me? + +It worried me all the way home, and long after I had reached it. His +subsequent query seemed to imply that he had believed Sophy Markham +stood next him, but I could not credit that he had said those words +except with the intent to mislead me. Was it possible that he could have +seriously called Miss Markham by such a term of endearment, or addressed +her with so much earnestness in his voice? And if it were not possible, +then—did he intend that speech for Ange, who would have been standing +between us had she not slipped round to my other side at the very moment +we were left in darkness? + +_Cave Charteris and Ange!_ The very combination of names seemed like +sacrilege in my ears. The man who had made love to me, and left me in +years gone by—who had tried to make love to me only a few weeks back—to +have the happiness of that innocent trusting child in his hands! It was +too horrible to think of. Whatever his protestations or passions for the +moment might be, he was cold and cruel by nature. I could read it in his +eyes and the sentiments in which he expressed his opinions, and I +trembled to think what Ange’s fate might prove, if he aroused all her +deepest feelings, and then basely deserted her as he had deserted me. +What was I to do? What was it my duty to do—both towards her and him! If +the sentences I heard were meant for Ange, it was not the first time Mr. +Charteris had addressed her as a lover. That was evident. + +‘My own darling!’ he had said, ‘how much I love you!’ + +Men don’t call women their ‘own’ until they have proved they are willing +to be so. I knew enough of human nature to know that. And then he had +added, ‘How I long to be alone with you _again_,’ which showed that +whoever he spoke to had already kept appointments with him. + +Oh! could it—could it be our little Ange? All my knowledge of her +childish manner, her shyness and her modesty, seemed to refute the +suspicion as an impossibility; but it was still more impossible to +believe that Mr. Charteris had seriously addressed those lover-like +speeches to old Sophy Markham. My mind became distracted in its +ignorance what to think, and how to act. If he were making love to Ange, +I felt as if, at all risk, I ought to fly to her rescue; but if he were +only making fun of Miss Markham’s undisguised _penchant_ for himself, +why my interference would appear very ridiculous, and bring not only +discredit on me as a busybody and meddler, but perhaps lay me open to a +false inference of jealousy. + +It was evening—nine or ten o’clock—and I was sitting in my own room, +leaning my elbows on the open window-sill, and gazing up into the +starless sky. The night was very dark—I remember thinking _how_ dark, as +I sat and mused there, sadly. I had seen Madame Marmoret, arrayed in her +best gown, with her scarlet shawl across her shoulders, her gold +earrings dangling from her ears, and the broad strings of her snow-white +cap pinned carefully together at the back of her neck, leave the +courtyard some time ago, on a visit of ceremony, I presumed, to some of +her friends. I knew that Mr. Lovett was busily engaged in the _salle_ +playing _écarté_ with Monsieur Condé, who had looked in to hear if we +had enjoyed our visit to his immortal grotto: and I had left Tessie and +Ange ironing their father’s shirts in the kitchen. Mr. Charteris I was +unable to account for, as he had left the house immediately after +dinner, and was probably smoking the calumet of peace with his friend +Monsieur de Nesselrode, or perhaps repeating the words which so much +troubled me for the benefit of Miss Sophy Markham. + +Whose then was the figure, decidedly a man’s, which had just entered the +courtyard by way of the stables and cow-house, and leant up against the +wall outside the kitchen-door? He was smoking a cigar, for I could +distinguish the red light as he blew the thin wreaths of smoke into the +air; but that was no guide to his personality, since every man in St. +Pucelle enjoyed the same privilege. The kitchen window was full in view +from where I sat, but the shutters were closed, so I could not see if +the girls were still at work within or no. But why did not the stranger, +whoever he might be, knock for admittance? Could he have entered the +yard with any nefarious intentions? In another moment I am sure I should +have spoken to him, had not the kitchen-door opened suddenly, and a +second figure stepped out into the darkness. + +‘Don’t stay here!’ said a tender voice, which I recognised at once; ‘I +cannot come to you. Tessie wants me in the little _salle_!’ + +‘Cannot my angel spare me _one_ minute?’ asked Cave Charteris. + +‘No! not one, until to-morrow! You will not try to keep me now, will +you?’—imploringly, as if to say that if he _did_ try, he would certainly +succeed—‘because they might hear of it and be angry.’ + +‘You shall do just as you think best, my darling, on one condition.’ + +‘What is that?’ + +‘That you tell me you love me before you go—I cannot sleep without it.’ + +I could not see, but I fancied, from her stifled tones, that he had +clasped his arms about her. + +‘Oh! my love! my love!’ she repeated fervently; ‘_I do love you!_’ + +And then she slipped away and closed the kitchen-door softly, and after +an interval of half a minute I heard the other figure step carefully +across the paved court and pass into the open street again. + +And I turned from the window and sank down on my knees beside my bed, +and prayed for a long, long time, for _petite_ Ange and for myself, and +judgment to know what best to do. + + + + +[Illustration: [Fleuron]] + + + CHAPTER VII. + MASTER FRED. + + +The reverie which followed this, to me, astounding revelation resulted +in the decision that it was my duty to tell Mr. Lovett what I had +overheard. I hardly know, at this period, whether I did right or +wrong—whether I should have shown more wisdom in speaking to Tessie or +to Ange herself—whether, in fact, any other course of action could have +averted the calamity that so quickly followed it. But it can be well +understood how difficult a part I had to play in warning my friends +against the man who had wronged me. A thousand times during that night I +told myself that I could not do it; that my motives would be +misinterpreted, and that if Cave Charteris had failed in his allegiance +to me, it was no reason he should be untrue to Angela Lovett. She +evidently liked him. No girl of her modesty and virtuous bringing up +could have said the words I had heard her say unless she meant them from +the bottom of her heart. Yet she was so easily deceived. She was so much +too credulous of the goodness of human nature to be fit to judge for +herself. Had it been Tessie whom Charteris had selected for his +attentions, I should have left them to their own devices. Tessie knew +something of the world: her eyes had been opened to a part, at least, of +its iniquity; but Ange was a perfect child, both in mind and experience. +The complete faith she put in her father’s saintliness was a proof of +this, and I felt sure, upon reviewing the discovery I had made, that she +would never have kept her relations with Mr. Charteris a secret from +those she so much loved and trusted, had he not brought some powerful +motive to bear upon her reticence. + +What could he have said to persuade this child, who was all frank, +ingenuous simplicity, that it was right to hold secret appointments with +himself? And why, if his intentions towards her were what they should +be, had he not at once avowed them to Mr. Lovett? He was free and +independent—at liberty to choose a wife as he listed—and he could have +no fear that the poverty-stricken minister would object to see one of +his daughters well provided for. + +The more I thought of it, the more I felt persuaded that something was +wrong. A terrible fear took hold of me that Ange was in similar danger +to that I had passed through—perhaps worse, Heaven only knew. And when +daylight dawned I had made up my mind, whatever happened, to inform my +reverend guardian of what I had seen and heard. + +The task was anything but a pleasant one. As I have already mentioned, +since the adventure of the twenty-five francs, I had had little or +nothing to say to Mr. Lovett, and I saw that he regarded me with +suspicion and dislike. It was for the sake of Ange alone that I +conquered my aversion to enter upon any but general topics with him, and +small thanks as I expected to receive in return for my moral courage, +the event proved that I had over-rated the little interest he had left +in me. + +Breakfast was over, and the moment had arrived in which to attack him. +Ange, who had been looking unusually pale and languid during the meal, +and had scarcely eaten anything, announced her intention of spending the +morning with Jeanne Guillot, the mother of the little child that had +died of fever, though I wronged the poor girl by believing that she was +going to walk with Cave Charteris instead. + +‘Why do you let your sister go to those infected cottages?’ I demanded, +almost sharply, of Tessie; ‘you had much better keep her at home. She +will catch her death there some day, and then you will be sorry.’ + +Tessie regarded me with mild surprise. + +‘Why, Hilda, the fever is not infectious! The doctor says it is purely +due to the effects of the long dry summer we have had! And where should +Ange be, but amongst those who have suffered from it? The people would +not know what had come to St. Pucelle if they missed _petite_ Ange from +their sides when they were in trouble.’ + +‘Oh! very well! Do as you choose, but don’t blame me afterwards,’ I +responded curtly; for I felt very sore on the subject, and was ready to +think Tessie a fool for not being more alive to the moral and physical +risks which her sister ran. + +They all disappeared after this, and I would not inquire even where they +were going. Mr. Lovett and I were left alone in the _salle_, and I might +have spoken to him, perhaps, without interruption, but I wished him to +attach as much importance as possible to the communication I was about +to make. + +‘Mr. Lovett,’ I commenced, ‘I have something of the greatest consequence +to tell you. When will it be convenient for you to listen to me?’ + +I suppose he thought I was going to speak again about my money matters, +for I could see the impatient jerk of the shoulders with which he +answered: + +‘I can anticipate what you are about to say, my dear Hilda; and can +assure you that as soon as your dividends——’ + +‘No, no, it is not that!’ I interrupted eagerly. ‘I don’t want money, +because Mr. Warrington has sent me some to go on with.’ + +I am afraid this was a false move. I saw that my guardian took it in +anything but good part by the way in which he frowned at me. + +So you have applied to Mr. Warrington on the subject.’ + +‘I did not ask him for any money, if that is what you mean. He sent it +me spontaneously. But that has nothing to do with my present business. +Can I speak to you alone?’ + +‘You can say what you wish, although I cannot imagine what else of a +private nature you can have to communicate to me.’ + +‘You will soon find out. But I cannot tell it to you here, with every +door and window open.’ + +‘This is very strange,’ he remarked. ‘Where would you have me go?’ + +‘Will you come into my bedroom, or may I accompany you in your walk?’ + +‘The last will be the least remarkable proceeding,’ he replied, as he +rose to find his hat and stick. + +In a few minutes we were on the highroad together. When it came to the +point I found it very difficult to begin; but I had made up my mind that +I was right, and was determined to go through with it. + +‘Mr. Lovett,’ I said, ‘do you approve of confession?’ + +‘Well, that is rather a difficult question to answer. I approve of it +for the Church of which it forms a law, but not for its own particular +merits.’ + +‘But do you hold with the sacredness of its obligations to secrecy?’ + +‘Certainly.’ + +‘Then will you consider that what I am about to tell you is under the +seal of confession, and promise me beforehand to keep my communication +private?’ + +‘If it relates to yourself, I will.’ + +‘I only claim your secrecy on behalf of myself. You have heard that Mr. +Charteris and I knew each other many years ago; and perhaps I ought to +have told you before now, Mr. Lovett, that in those days he professed to +be attached to me.’ + +‘I don’t see what business that is of mine, my dear Hilda.’ + +‘Yes, it is your business, because he greatly deceived me, and you have +daughters whom he might treat in the same manner. For months my mother +and I believed that Cave Charteris intended to marry me; but it all came +to nothing, and for many years his desertion was the source of my +bitterest trouble.’ + +‘In that case, I should think the less you say about it the better; and +I cannot at all imagine why you should have chosen to make me the +confidant of so unpleasant a portion of your history.’ + +There was so much coldness and selfishness in his words, so little +sympathy or interest in his voice, that I looked at him with +astonishment. Was this the bland, soft-toned old gentleman whom I had +heard talking with such benign pity and charity for all mankind, and who +now had apparently not one syllable of compassion or reproach for the +heartless marring of a young girl’s life? I was so angry with him for +the manner in which he had received my communication, that I did not +care what I said. + +‘Then I will tell you, sir,’ I went on hotly. ‘The reason I have +troubled you with an account of my sufferings at Mr. Charteris’s hands, +is because I have every reason to believe that he is carrying on the +same game with your daughter Ange.’ + +Mr. Lovett stopped short in his walk, and, leaning on his stick, turned +round and regarded me fully. I can recall the cold light in his blue +eyes, and the fixed look of his marble features as he did so, to this +day. + +‘What proofs have you to advance for the truth of what you say?’ he +demanded, in the most frigid tones. + +‘I was sitting at my bedroom window last night when they met in the +courtyard. I could not help overhearing their conversation, and I am +quite convinced that he is persuading Ange to love him. I lay awake all +night, thinking what was best for me to do; and I decided that, at all +events, you ought to be told of what is going on between them.’ + +‘You lay awake all night, you mean, plotting how you might best destroy +an innocent young girl’s happiness, in revenge for having missed your +own.’ + +‘Oh, Mr. Lovett!’ I cried, horrified at the interpretation he had put +upon my words. ‘How can you think so! I love Ange dearly: I would do +anything to secure her happiness; and as for my own, it is very long +since it was connected with Cave Charteris. I believe him to be neither +good nor true. I do not consider he is capable of making any girl happy; +and all I beg of you is to watch over Ange, and to see he does not teach +her what is wrong. If he is an honourable suitor, why should he not make +known his wishes concerning her to you?’ + +‘I am not prepared to discuss such delicate questions with a young lady, +and one who evidently bears no goodwill towards the supposed offender. +You seem to have overlooked one thing, Miss Marsh, in mentioning Mr. +Charteris: and that is, that you were speaking of a friend of mine.’ + +‘Is it possible you are going to take his part against your own child!’ +I exclaimed, in amazement. + +‘I have yet to be convinced that I _am_ taking it against my own child. +All the information I have received has come through a woman who, by her +own account, has every motive for jealousy, and is an eavesdropper into +the bargain.’ + +‘Thank you, Mr. Lovett!’ I said grandly. ‘I am much obliged to you for +your good opinion. I shall not soon forget that I tried to do you a +benefit, and you credited me with the worst of feelings in return. I see +what I believe to be wrong, and I tell you of it, simply from a sense of +duty, and a desire to preserve your daughter from a similar fate to +mine. But since you choose to misinterpret my meaning in so gross a +manner, I shall interfere no further in the matter.’ + +‘I beg you will _not_,’ he replied sternly. ‘I have every faith in the +honour of Mr. Charteris and of my daughter, and require no assistance in +looking after their interests.’ + +‘You resent my confidence, then, as an insult.’ + +‘I cannot help seeing that it has been actuated by lower motives than +you would have me believe. I do not discredit what you have told me; but +I am perfectly content to leave such things to Providence and the good +principles in which Ange has been brought up.’ + +‘You wish her, in fact, to marry Cave Charteris?’ + +‘I know nothing as yet to make me _not_ wish it.’ + +‘You do not consider his dishonourable conduct to myself any drawback to +his becoming the lover of Ange?’ + +‘I should like, before I pronounced any opinion on the subject, to be +assured that you did not deceive yourself in the matter. Young women are +sometimes apt to make a mistake about gentlemen’s attentions. And even +if you are right, by your own showing it happened several years ago, and +we may charitably conclude that Mr. Charteris’s character has +strengthened and improved during the interval.’ + +‘I am very sorry I took the trouble to speak to you,’ I said bitterly. + +And I was exceedingly sorry. I had meant to do good, and I had done +nothing but harm. Mr. Lovett evidently liked the idea of Cave Charteris +entangling himself with Ange, and perhaps he had even seen what was +going on and encouraged it; and I stood in the despicable light of an +eavesdropper and scandalmonger, who was actuated by jealousy to play the +spy! I could have cried with vexation and indignation, and, indeed, for +a while I had not sufficient command over myself to continue the +conversation. + +‘There is one thing I must request of you, my dear Hilda,’ Mr. Lovett +went on mildly: ‘and that is, not to mention this subject to my +daughter. It is neither necessary nor delicate—and, in fact, I must +forbid it.’ + +‘You need not be afraid, sir. I shall never interfere with anything +concerning either of them again.’ + +‘That is right. It would vex Tessie beyond measure to hear her sister’s +actions discussed in this free manner, and it might ruin Ange’s +prospects for life.’ + +‘I shall leave you to manage them both for the future without any +assistance from me,’ I said, turning away, ‘but, mark my words, Mr. +Lovett, you will live to regret this day.’ + +As I walked homewards by myself I wondered I had been so bold, but I +would not have said one word less had the interview come over again. I +read the old man’s selfishness at a glance. He was afraid of losing +Charteris as a boarder and money-lender if he brought him to book for +his actions, and he preferred to risk his innocent little daughter’s +happiness to giving up a few of his creature-comforts. + +How despicable and mean he appeared to me as I reviewed the conversation +that had just taken place between us. + +I was hurrying home, with my eyes on the ground and my thoughts all +engrossed with the subject in hand, when I was attracted by a loud +shouting and hallooing, and, looking up, perceived some one in front of +me long and lanky, waving his arms round and round like a windmill. + +‘Hollo, Miss Marsh! don’t you know me?’ he exclaimed; and then I +recognised my youthful companion of the steamboat, Master Frederick +Stephenson. + +‘Why, Master Fred, is that really you?’ I said, as I shook hands with +him. ‘I believe you have grown, even in the short time since I saw you. +And does your cousin expect you? He said nothing to us about it.’ + +‘Expect me! Not he, the scrubby fellow! He promised a dozen times that +he’d ask me over here for a day’s shooting, and I’ve written almost +every week to remind him, but ’twas no go. So I got old Felton to give +me a holiday, and took French leave; and here I am, and if Cave don’t +like it, he can do the other thing, for I don’t mean to go back till my +time’s up.’ + +‘And when will that be?’ + +‘Last train this evening; but I say, by Jove! Miss Marsh, how jolly you +look! You’re twice as fat as you were when we crossed over together, and +you’ve got such a colour. You’re first rate, you are.’ + +‘Am I?’ I said, hardly able to help laughing at the rough compliment, +though I felt so sad. ‘I am glad you think so, Fred, for I would much +rather look nice to my friends than nasty.’ + +‘Well, you do look nice, then, and no mistake. And are both the Miss +Lovetts at home?’ + +‘Yes.’ + +‘I’m in luck, by George! won’t that beggar Charteris be surprised to see +me walk in! I’d a mind to show him I was not going to be humbugged in +that way. He thought he’d keep all the fun to himself, I suppose.’ + +‘I am afraid you have not come on a shooting-day, at least I heard +nothing about it this morning.’ + +‘I don’t mind. I’d rather stay with you. Is that the house? It _is_ +pretty! Just like an old Swiss châlet. And, by the way, Miss Marsh, how +do you get on with old Lovett?’ concluded the young gentleman, with a +peculiar twinkle in his eye. + +‘Oh! very well. How should I get on with him?’ + +‘Isn’t he a good, pious, benevolent, amiable old gentleman, eh? Isn’t he +self-denying, and prudent, and saving, and all that sort of thing?’ + +‘Hold your tongue, sir,’ I replied, ‘and don’t speak in that way of your +betters.’ + +For all the windows and doors were open, and I had no wish that Tessie +or Ange should overhear the remarks of my impudent young friend. + +‘My _betters_!’ reiterated Master Fred. ‘Oh! come now, Miss Marsh, do +draw it mild.’ + +‘I hope you are not going to indulge us with that sort of schoolboy +slang all dinner-time, or you will shock the Miss Lovetts,’ I told him, +‘and, if I am not much mistaken, you will offend your cousin also.’ + +‘Ah! the elegant and accomplished Cave. Yes, I shouldn’t wonder if I +did, and it would not be the first time either. But I see his cropped +flaxen poll bobbing up at the window. By Jove! didn’t he look black when +he caught sight of me! I’m in for it, Miss Marsh, and no mistake; but I +rather like a row than otherwise. There’s so little excitement about +here, that one’s digestion is ruined for want of it.’ + +‘Oh! I hope you won’t have a row,’ I replied; but when we entered the +_salle_, where Mr. Charteris was seated with the two girls, I was really +afraid Master Fred’s prophecy would come true. I could not account for +the extreme annoyance that clouded his cousin’s face at the sight of +him. It could not have arisen simply from the fact of the boy having +made his appearance without leave, and yet one would have thought he had +committed the most serious offence by doing so. + +‘Well, Cave, you don’t look over and above pleased to see me!’ exclaimed +the lad, as soon as he had renewed his acquaintance with the Lovett +girls. + +‘I can’t say I am. Why didn’t you wait till I sent for you, instead of +running over in this unceremonious fashion?’ + +‘Wait till you sent for me! I fancy I might have waited till the crack +of doom, in that case. Why, how much longer do you intend to remain here +yourself?’ + +‘I don’t know, and it’s no concern of yours,’ replied Charteris, with +visible annoyance. + +‘Of course not! You’re your own master, and the longer you stay away the +better, at least for those at home.’ + +‘Now, Fred, I don’t want any of your nonsense. Please to understand +that.’ + +‘I can’t give you sense if I haven’t got it. But my dad writes me word +that they’ve a clean bill of health down at Parkhurst now, and that Mary +is very anxious to see you back again.’ + +If Charteris had been suddenly shot he could hardly have jumped up more +quickly than he did at these words. + +‘Fred, my boy!’ he exclaimed, with a total change of manner, ‘don’t you +want to have a little shooting in the forest?’ + +‘Well, of course I do, if it’s possible! But I didn’t expect to get it, +as I came over without warning.’ + +‘I should like to oblige you if I can, but if we are to do anything we +must start at once. I left my guns up at the château, and we must call +for them on our way. Are you game for a long walk, Fred?’ + +‘Pretty well! but is there any such hurry?’ Can’t we get an hour or two +after _goûter_? I’m no great shakes with a gun, you know, Cave—not a +bigwig like you or the Baron—so that I dare say I shall have had enough +of it long before you have. And I’m so hungry.’ + +‘Bother your hunger! we can get something up at the château. If you want +to shoot, say so; and if you don’t, you’d better go back to Rille, for +there’s no other amusement for you at St. Pucelle.’ + +I could not imagine why he should be so cross with the lad, and Tessie +and Ange seemed as puzzled as myself. Fred Stephenson was nothing but a +boy—troublesome, no doubt, and often saucy, as boys will be—but a frank, +gentlemanly young fellow that no man need have been ashamed to own as a +relation. As Mr. Charteris spoke to him in the rough way related, he +stood silent for a moment, and then said with a kind of nervous laugh: + +‘There’s evidently no room for me here, so perhaps I should be wiser to +go back.’ + +‘No, no!’ I urged; ‘stay and shoot. Mr. Charteris only wants you to make +up your mind.’ + +‘If he’s got one!’ sneered his cousin. + +‘Blowed if I haven’t got as big a one as you!’ exclaimed the lad; ‘and a +better temper into the bargain. I’m sure I pity your people at home——’ + +But before he could finish his sentence Charteris had turned on him with +a face pale with passion. + +‘Are you going to hold your tongue or not?’ he said. + +‘I see no reason why I should.’ + +‘Then I shall have to make you.’ + +‘You’d better try!’ + +Their conversation was so inevitably leading to a quarrel that I thought +it time to interfere. I had no clue to the mystery that had raised Mr. +Charteris’s temper, but I was sorry for Fred Stephenson, whom I could +see was feeling all a boy’s disappointment at the prospect of having his +holiday cut short. So I attempted the _rôle_ of peacemaker. + +‘Mr. Charteris, pray don’t have any words with your cousin. You are +frightening Ange and all of us. And, Fred, you shouldn’t speak in that +way; you are spoiling your holiday, and making everybody uncomfortable. +Mr. Charteris, won’t you take him to the forest?’ + +‘If he wishes it I will. I have already said so.’ + +‘I am sure he wishes it. He only came over for that purpose; didn’t you, +Fred?’ + +‘I shan’t care to go if Charteris speaks to me in that manner,’ grumbled +the boy. + +‘I shall not do it if you keep a civil tongue in your head. Will you +come out shooting, then, or not?’ + +‘Yes.’ + +‘Very well; I shall be ready in half a minute.’ + +Charteris turned on his heel as he spoke and left the room, but I +detected an uncomfortable look of suspicion on his face as he did so. + +This unpleasant episode had made us all feel conscious, and not tended +to increase the hilarity of my temperament. Fred stood thoughtfully at +the window after his cousin had disappeared, and I drew near to speak a +few words of comfort to him. + +‘I am sorry this has happened, but it will all blow over in the forest. +I suppose you will come back to dinner with him.’ + +‘I don’t know. If I don’t get on his black books again, I may. What +makes him so grumpy, Miss Marsh?’ + +‘I have no idea! He seemed annoyed at your mentioning Parkhurst. Is that +where his family live?’ + +‘Yes! And you know it’s such a shame, he’s been away from home now for +nearly six months, and of course it’s put them out, and my dad says it’s +all a pretence his being afraid of the scarlet fever. Only two had it, +and they were well weeks ago, and poor Mary——’ + +‘That’s his sister, isn’t it?’ I interposed. + +But Cave Charteris re-entered the room at that very moment, and Fred did +not answer my question. I was sorry for it, for I wanted to learn +something about his cousin’s family, for Ange’s sake. But he was hurried +off to the château, and there was no further opportunity to exchange a +word with him. He departed with many _au revoirs_, promising himself to +meet us again at dinner; but when that meal was served, to our great +surprise Mr. Charteris walked in alone. + +‘Where is your cousin?’ we simultaneously asked him. + +‘My cousin!’ he ejaculated, as if he had quite forgotten his existence. +‘What! Fred Stephenson! I’ve sent him back to school by the diligence.’ + +‘Without his dinner?’ said Tessie, in a voice of pity. + +‘Oh! he had an excellent lunch at the Baron’s—ate enough for two, I can +assure you; and I knew if I brought him back here that he would outstay +his leave. Mr. Felton is very particular about the boys being punctual, +and Master Fred is _not_ particular about anything at all; and so, as I +am a sort of guardian of his, responsible to his father for his good +behaviour and all that sort of thing, I thought it better to take the +law into my own hands and see him safely off before I sat down to +dinner.’ + +It sounded plausible. There was no particular fault to find with the +man’s anxiety to save his young cousin from getting into a scrape with +his master, still, coupling it with the reception he had given the lad +that morning, and the haste with which he had hurried him out of the +house, I could not help suspecting that Cave Charteris had some other +reason beside what he stated for trying to keep Master Fred Stephenson +out of the way. + + + + +[Illustration: [Fleuron]] + + + CHAPTER VIII. + ACCEPTED. + + +‘Why do you go up to the convent every morning, dear? It is far too long +a walk for you.’ + +I was standing in the little _salle_, holding Ange’s hot hand in my own. +Six days had elapsed since Master Fred Stephenson had appeared and so +mysteriously disappeared from amongst us, and on each one of them Ange +had toiled up to the Convent des Petites Sœurs, which was situated on +the brow of a hill, two miles on the road to Artois, and not come back +again until it was time for dinner. + +I believed that in her feverish and unsettled state of mind, and with +her loose notions of theology, she was doing some sort of penance to +satisfy her self-accusing conscience, and I so much wished that the dear +child would open her mind to Tessie and me instead, and let us give her +all the sisterly counsel in our power. But each day she seemed to shrink +more and more from us, as well she might, whilst that man was persuading +her to stain her fair soul with the blot of deceit. + +But there were other reasons for my trying to dissuade Ange from going +to the convent. She was very far from well, or fit for the exertion. +Whether it proceeded from mind or body, I could not tell, but since the +day she had overheard Madame Marmoret’s speech to her father, in the +courtyard, she had been quite unlike her former joyous, light-hearted +self. Her cheeks were always either unnaturally flushed or unnaturally +pale, she complained of a dull headache, and all the bounding elasticity +I had so much admired seemed to have deserted her limbs. She was very +particular about her religious services at this time, poor dear little +Ange, spending an hour almost every evening in the church of St. Marie, +and poring over her Bible long after Tessie and I had gone to rest. + +Still, neither religion nor exercise and fresh air made any palpable +difference in the appearance of the little maid, and I felt sure that +something was very wrong. My expostulations on the subject with Tessie +only brought to light another instance of Mr. Lovett’s selfishness. She +looked very grave over the details of her sister’s symptoms, but was +afraid to mention them to her father, because it would seem as though +Ange required a doctor, and there was none nearer than Rille. + +He visited St. Pucelle once a week, and when he next came she would ask +him to prescribe for Ange; but to send for him especially to visit her +was to entail an expense which she was sure ‘dear papa’ could not +afford. The time was past for disguising my sentiments in Tessie’s +presence, and I told her plainly what I thought on this occasion. + +Yet she was too timid to move in the matter. ‘Dear papa’ had evidently +inspired her with so much wholesome dread of provoking his annoyance, +that she preferred to shut her eyes to the fact of there being any +danger in delay. But all this time I am standing in the inner _salle_ +with that little hot feverish hand in mine. + +‘Why must you go to the convent, Ange?’ + +‘There is no particular necessity, Hilda,’ she answered, yet she would +not meet my eyes as she did so, ‘but it is a pleasure to me, and I feel +as if I could not breathe in the house this weather. I know all the +sisters well, and their parlours are so cool and pleasant. I feel like +another creature inside the convent walls.’ + +‘I hope you are not thinking of joining their community, Ange?’ + +‘Oh no—oh no!’—with a vivid blush; ‘I am not good enough.’ + +‘I don’t know about that, but we certainly can’t afford to lose you! +However, if you are bent upon going this morning, may I go with you?’ + +A startled look came into her eyes. + +‘Into the convent, do you mean?’ + +‘No! not so far as that! Only to walk to the gates with you.’ + +‘Oh! do, Hilda! I shall be very glad of your company. It is a lonely +path over the hill.’ + +So I was mistaken, after all, and had wronged the little maid in +thinking that Mr. Charteris must be her cavalier on these occasions. + +We walked together through the blazing light over the fern covered hill, +and conversed pleasantly on all the topics that interest young women +most. Once I tried to sound her on the subject of Charteris, but she +shrunk from it so visibly that I had not the heart to try again. It was +as if I had plunged a surgeon’s probe into a bleeding wound. + +When I had kissed her pretty face for the last time, and left her behind +the great iron grille of the convent, I could not help believing that my +former supposition was correct, and Ange was brooding over the prospect +of shutting herself up for ever within its walls. This idea worried me +sadly. It would be like a living death for her! + +And what else but the burden of a committed wrong could have made Ange’s +thoughts turn that way? Could she have discovered more of her father’s +pecuniary affairs than Tessie and I knew of? and did the knowledge of +disgrace and debt weigh her mind down to that extent that she longed to +bury herself from the sight of the world? Or did the poor child imagine +that the burthen of one less to keep and provide for would be of any +substantial benefit to the family purse? + +These questions occupied my mind for half the way back again—until I +came, indeed, upon a figure in a velveteen shooting-suit, stretched out +at full length upon the thyme-scented grass, and lazily inhaling the +light breeze that was wafted across the stream in the valley, and just +lifted occasionally a curl of dark hair from his brow. + +It was that of my French master, Armand, Baron de Nesselrode. + +I feel I have reached a point when I must make a confession—namely, that +since the memorable day upon which I was frightened by the dog-wolf on +the Piron road, I had received more than one French lesson from the +gentleman in question. I had never made a single appointment with him +for the purpose; but he seemed to be ubiquitous, and to pop up wherever +I went, so that although the verbs I mastered with him were +_accidentals_, I had acquired quite a remarkable fluency in +conversation, and never felt at a loss to express what I meant. + +He said I learned quicker than anybody he had known before; but I +suppose, if ‘practice makes perfect,’ there was not so much credit due +to me as he would have made me believe. Once I remember I stopped to ask +myself if I were studying the French language so diligently _for +Tessie’s sake_, and I was fain to answer ‘No.’ + +Indeed, I am afraid that by this time Tessie’s interests had been +withdrawn from the firm altogether. She was very stupid so I inwardly +decided; she would not come forward and make the best of herself in the +Baron’s presence, and in consequence it was impossible he could discover +what a good wife he would gain in her, and so I had given them both up +as a bad job. + +If people _wouldn’t_ find out what was best for themselves, it was +useless wasting my time upon them. So Tessie’s merits had ceased to be +dragged in by the head and shoulders, as a topic of conversation between +Armand and me, and we only talked of such things as were most agreeable +to ourselves. + +‘Well, monsieur,’ I exclaimed, as I came up with him, ‘and what may you +be doing here?’ + +‘I followed you, mademoiselle.’ + +‘That is a pretty confession! How could you tell I had come this way?’ + +‘I saw Mademoiselle Ange and you leave the curé’s house together.’ + +‘And so you have been dogging our footsteps,’ I said, as I threw myself +down on the grass he had just quitted. + +The Baron accepted my action as an invitation to resume his seat. + +‘It is about time you accounted for yourself,’ I continued jestingly. ‘I +don’t think we have seen you for two whole days.’ + +‘Is it only two days?’ he said, in a melancholy voice. ‘It seems like +two weeks to me.’ + +‘Why, monsieur, what is the matter with you? Not moping again, I hope! I +thought you promised me to be brave and keep your heart up, in hope of +better times.’ + +He sighed deeply. + +‘That was a week ago,’ he answered. + +‘And what of that? You are talking mysteries to me.’ + +‘Mademoiselle,’ said the Baron, suddenly changing the topic, ‘do you +remember telling me the day we talked together on the road to Piron, +that there is no “stooping” in honest labour?’ + +‘I do.’ + +‘I have thought much and earnestly of your words since then. I look back +on the years that have passed since my great misfortune, and I see they +have all been spent in idleness and waste of mind and body! I cannot +recall them: they are gone and done for: they must be left to give their +own account hereafter. But for the few that remain before I hope to take +my station in society again I am determined, if possible, not to blush. +I have made up my mind, mademoiselle. I am going to work.’ + +‘I am sincerely glad to hear you say so!’ I exclaimed. + +‘If you are glad, it is all I ask. I will try to be glad also.’ + +‘But what are you going to do?’ + +‘I wrote to a friend at Court some weeks ago, telling him all, and +asking his assistance to procure me fit employment until I should hold +my own again. His answer arrived three days back. In it he offers me the +post of _Ministre d’affaires_ in—in—Algiers.’ + +‘_Algiers!_’ + +As I repeated the word after him, all the broad smiling landscape of +hill and dale and stream which lay spread out before me seemed to be +enveloped in a black mist that hid it from my view. A hoarse sound like +the rushing of water was in my ears, and a horrid ‘whirring’ like wheels +in my brain; then it all cleared off again. The sun broke out over the +valley, my senses had returned; but I thought that the earth would never +look the same to me again. + +‘Do you not congratulate me?’ inquired Monsieur de Nesselrode, quietly. +‘It is a charming climate, I understand, and the place is peopled with +French. The salary is almost nominal, so are the duties; but the +position is one that I can accept without blushing, and I shall, at all +events, have an arena for work amongst my countrymen, small as it may +be.’ + +‘Yes.’ + +‘Does not the appointment meet your views for me? Will it not be better +than dragging out four more years of idleness and false shame at the +Château des Roses?’ + +‘Oh yes.’ + +‘I am not capable of much at present, you know, whatever I may be +hereafter. You—in the goodness of your heart and friendship—may think me +fit for a higher post, but I feel I am not. I have crippled my powers by +nonusage: I must crawl now before I can fly. Perhaps, after a year or +two, I may be fit for something better than the ministration of affairs +in such a place as Algiers.’ + +‘I am sure you will.’ + +I was so angry with myself for not being able to say something better to +him than this. I saw he wanted encouragement to take up this paltry +appointment in a strange country. He had applied for it solely on my +recommendation, and now that it had come, I had no words in which to +praise and thank him for the compliment he had paid to my advice. + +But Algiers—a place so far removed from all his friends, and replete, as +I ignorantly imagined, with dangers from climate and people—I did not +expect that my counsel would have taken so unwelcome a form. + +‘You do not congratulate me, mademoiselle,’ he repeated presently. ‘Do +you not consider the prospect a good one?’ + +‘Oh yes,’ I answered nervously; ‘very good indeed—that is, it is rather +far from here, is it not, monsieur?’ + +‘It is very far,’ he said gravely. ‘I do not suppose, when I have once +left it, that I shall ever see St. Pucelle again; for the remembrances +of the old château have no charm for me. A few weeks back, I would have +declared myself ready to bear anything sooner than go to Algiers; but +things that have come to my knowledge lately have made me think that the +greater distance I put between myself and this place the better.’ + +‘Have you any fresh trouble?’ I inquired anxiously, for he was my best +friend in St. Pucelle, and I had come to be interested in all that +befell him. + +‘Yes, a very deep trouble!’ + +‘What is it, monsieur? Will you not tell me?’ + +He turned round upon his side, so that his face could look directly into +mine. + +‘If I tell you, will you promise not to be angry with me, nor to feel +less my friend than you do now?’ + +‘I promise!’ + +But there was an expression in his eyes that made me drop my own, I +could not look at him. + +‘Remember, before I speak, how much I wish you well. Hilde!’ (he had +never called me by that name before), ‘if I could give you happiness by +cutting off my right arm, I would do it at this moment. So that I am +really and honestly glad to know that you are glad. The pain only is +mine, _amie chérie_; and I can bear that bravely, so long as all is well +with you.’ + +‘Monsieur, I do not understand what you mean!’ + +‘When this appointment was first offered me, I thought I could not take +it. I thought it would be impossible to leave St. Pucelle and you. But +only a few hours afterwards I met Mademoiselle Markham, and she told me +all about your _affaire de cœur_, and I was happy it should be so; only +I felt I could not stay and see it.’ + +‘What did she tell you?’ I asked quickly. + +‘That you are _fiancée_ to Monsieur Sandilands. Ah, you need not blush, +Hilde! It is all right if you wish it so. But for me it is better I +should go to Algiers, and forget the pleasant times that we have spent +together.’ + +‘Armand!’ I said vehemently, ‘it is a lie! I am not _fiancée_ to Mr. +Sandilands, nor to anybody.’ + +How his face changed from quiet melancholy to radiant hope. The dullest +eye might have interpreted that look. + +‘What!’ he exclaimed. ‘You are free!’ + +‘I _am_ free.’ + +‘And you are sorry I am going to Algiers?’ + +‘I _am_ sorry!’ + +I do not know if there ever lived any women in this world (such as some +novelists depict for us) who could cast away the whole of their lives’ +happiness for want of a single word to clear up a misunderstanding—but +if so, I am not one of them. Armand de Nesselrode looked me full in the +face as he put that question, and I should have been ashamed of myself, +if I had not answered him truthfully. + +‘Hilde!’ he said passionately, ‘will you go with me?’ + +Then I felt that my woman’s victory was won, and I could afford to be +silent and let silence speak for me. + +‘I should not have dared to ask for this,’ he went on rapidly, ‘had it +not been for the sweet encouragement your words have given me. You have +told me that you despise wealth in comparison with love; that you rank a +true heart and a strong arm above any earthly advantage, and that you +think my honour still unstained. Will you take me, then, beloved Hilde, +a poor man, disgraced in the eyes of the world, and with nothing to +offer the woman he would make his wife, except a true affection and an +earnest desire to prove himself worthy of hers? Oh, Hilde! do not keep +me in suspense. I have loved you ever since the day you prayed for me in +St. Marie?’ + +I raised my eyes and looked at the dear face lifted so pleadingly to my +own, and felt that nothing on this earth could repay me for the loss I +should sustain in losing him. + +‘Armand,’ I said tremblingly, ‘I must go with you to Algiers—because I +don’t pronounce French half as well yet as you would wish to hear me do +it, you know!’ + +And then I put my head down in my hands and burst into tears, from sheer +excess of happiness. + +I shall not write down here how he soothed me. Were I not my own +biographer I might be able to tell it, but from the moment Armand said +he loved me, our affection has been too sacred a thing for me to make +public. In half an hour we were still sitting on that grass, chatting +away as if we had been engaged for years, and making all sorts of plans +for the future. + +I confided to him my money matters and Mr. Lovett’s strange dealings +with me regarding them, and he told me how much his card transactions +with the reverend gentleman had got him into debt, and how he proposed +to liquidate it so that we might start free when we were married. + +And we mutually agreed not to say a word of what had passed between us +that morning, until after Mr. Warrington’s visit had been paid to St. +Pucelle, and my affairs with my guardian set straight again. + +‘Oh, how charming it was sitting in that lovely sunlight, and talking of +the happy days to come! Algiers no longer seemed a horrid desert, +situated a thousand leagues away from St. Pucelle. Our love had drawn it +closer, and peopled it with pleasant forms and faces, until it looked +like fairyland! I had but one regret amidst my pleasure: that my dear +mother had not lived to see it! Bear witness for me, best beloved of +parents, that you were not forgotten in your lonely grave in Norwood at +that most ecstatic moment of my existence, for the tears ran down my +cheeks as I recalled your love for me, and I told Armand what he had +lost in never knowing it.’ + +‘I will be thy mother and thy father and thy everything to thee, +_chérie_,’ he answered, with the sweet _tu-toy_ that sounded like music +in my ears; ‘only let me wipe away those tears, and see my Baronne smile +again!’ + +It was difficult to remain subject to any melancholy long, whilst under +the influence of Armand’s new-born happiness. His face positively beamed +with joy. I had never caught even a glimpse of such an expression on his +countenance before. + +‘I let thee go, my Hilde!’ he said, when I had persuaded him that after +four hours’ absence from the house I ran the risk of being questioned as +to how I had spent my time, ‘but I shall count the moments till we meet +again.’ + +‘But thou wilt never feel lonely now, Armand,’ I replied. ‘Thou wilt +look forward to the future we shall spend hand-in-hand.’ + +‘I shall look forward to the time, my friend, when the angel who watches +over me shall fold her wings upon my heart,’ he answered. + +It is very nice to be called an angel! I almost believed I was one by +the time we got back to the house. But we had to walk with the utmost +propriety through the town—at least three feet apart—and to bow to each +other most politely as we parted at the door. + +‘Art thou sure thou art not _fiancée_ to Monsieur Sandilands?’ whispered +Armand, as he doffed his hat to me, and the look of perfect happiness +upon his face as he said so, gave me the strangest joy my life had ever +known. + + + + +[Illustration: [Fleuron]] + + + CHAPTER IX. + THE DEATH-BLOW. + + +I had been hugging this dear delicious secret to my breast for the last +three days; going apart at intervals to gaze upon it and assure myself +that it was mine; and quite unable to believe in so much joy after the +hopeless desolation of the last few months when that happened, which any +one with discernment must have foreseen long ago, _petite_ Ange +succumbed to the illness which had been hanging over her for weeks past. + +It was one morning when she had left the room as usual, _en route_ to +her convent, and Mr. Lovett had set off on a round of what he called his +parochial duties, that Tessie and I were startled by the sound of a loud +clamour and confusion arising from the courtyard. + +‘Good gracious!’ I exclaimed, as it struck my ears; ‘what on earth is +that?’ + +Tessie, who had turned as white as a sheet, would have detained me in +the little _salle_, but I broke from her grasp, and rushing into the +kitchen, looked through the open window. There I saw assembled in the +court a group of about a dozen men and women, amongst whom I immediately +distinguished the figures of Madame Marmoret, the Mère Fromard, and Jean +Marat, who were all surrounding my reverend guardian and preventing his +egress from his own domains. They had evidently waited to waylay him on +his leaving the house, and were screeching or howling, according to +their various sexes, as they made their fierce demands upon him for +justice. + +Mutiny was strongly marked on every countenance, and they pressed upon +the old man as though they would lay violent hands upon him. Of course I +guessed the reason of the uproar. It was the old story; they wanted +their money, and he had none to give them! I glanced from the crowd +towards my guardian, and for the first time I pitied him. He looked so +pale and crestfallen as he leaned against the courtyard wall, fending +off his creditors with the stick on which he supported himself. It was a +sickening and humiliating spectacle, and I thanked Heaven in that moment +that no blood of his ran in my veins. + +‘Where are the twelve francs you owe me, monsieur?’ shouted Marat the +cobbler. ‘I tell you I must have them. My wife is ill in bed, and +requires broth and white bread to get up her strength again. Do you +think I am going to let her want for lack of that which is my own? Hand +them out, I say, for I will have them.’ + +‘Bah!’ cried the scornful voice of Mère Fromard. ‘What is thy wife’s +illness to him? Didn’t he steal my poor Guillaume’s money, and the +little _dot_ I brought him on our marriage day? Five hundred and fifty +francs, messieurs—every _sou_ owed us by that black-hearted old villain! +and he let my husband die for want of bread and meat. I wish I could +tear him in pieces, and would be too good an end for him. _Sacré!_’ + +‘And much good you’d get out of his carcase, Mère Fromard!’ interposed +Madame Marmoret; ‘better wait, I tell you, till it’s all over, and then +the law must give us our rights!’ + +‘Madame! Madame!’ said her master, in a mildly reproachful voice, ‘is it +you that can say no better of me than that! You, who have lived under my +roof and eaten my bread for more than twenty years!’ + +‘Lived under your roof—pig! Aye! that I have, and done you good service +for it too! Haven’t I baked and boiled and mended and cleaned for you +and yours for twenty-two years last Candlemass! And what wages have I +received in return? None! Not a _sou_—not a _centime_! I have gone on +and on, because I knew if I left you I should get nothing, and you have +promised and promised till I’m sick of the sound of your voice or the +sight of your face. I should have summoned you before the _préfet_ and +had my rights years ago if it hadn’t been for _la petite_ Ange, and you +know it—_vaurien_ as you are—and have held the child as a threat over my +head in consequence.’ + +‘Down with him!’ shouted half a dozen voices; ‘down with the man who +uses his own child as an instrument wherewith to scourge the poor, whom +she is so good to! Don’t show him any pity! He has never shown any for +our wives or children!’ + +They pressed so closely upon him, and their faces were so distorted by +passion, that I became horribly alarmed for his safety. Had Mr. +Charteris been in the house, I should have summoned him at once to my +assistance, but he had gone out shooting with Armand, and was miles and +miles away. Mr. Lovett’s face was as pale and set as marble, but he +continued in the same position and evinced no outward signs of fear. + +‘Cannot you speak a little lower, my friends?’ he expostulated, in a +firm voice. ‘I suppose you do not wish the whole town to hear your +complaints?’ + +‘What do we care who hears us?’ replied the man in the blouse and the +peaked cap, whose name was Dubois; ‘all St. Pucelle knows you to be a +robber! The wider the truth is spread the better!’ + +‘I know I owe you all some money,’ said Mr. Lovett, ‘and when I can pay +you, I will. At present it is impossible, and you will get no good by +keeping me a prisoner in my own yard. You had much better disperse +quietly, and leave me in peace to see what arrangements I can make to +satisfy you.’ + +‘Aye—aye!’ responded Dubois, ‘leave you to go out and order in more +champagne and burgundy, and truffled turkeys and smoked hams, for your +own table, whilst we go home to feast on rye-bread and water. That’s +what you’ve been doing for the last twenty years. Eating your head off +on honest people’s credit, and giving them buttered words instead of +cash. But you’ve come to the end of your tether at last.’ + +‘_Ahi! Ahi! Ahi!_’ yelled the rest, as they brandished their bare arms +and made grimaces at him. + +‘Truffled turkeys and champagne!’ screamed the Mère Fromard; ‘I’ll give +him a truffled turkey to remember me by!’ and, seizing a huge wooden +_sabot_ from her foot, she prepared to hurl it at his head. + +In a moment I had dashed through the kitchen-door, and was standing in +front of the old man. My sudden and unexpected appearance created +somewhat of a diversion. + +‘How dare you attempt violence!’ I cried excitedly; ‘put down that +_sabot_, Mère Fromard, or I will send at once for the _gendarme_. You +are fools, every one of you, to risk a prison for the sake of indulging +your venomous tongues.’ + +‘Mamselle does not understand,’ commenced the cobbler, with a view to +explanation. + +‘I understand everything, Jean Marat, and I see that you are a set of +cowardly ruffians instead of respectable tradespeople as I took you to +be. Twelve to one! That is a brave proceeding, isn’t it? Why, if you +hadn’t watched Monsieur Charteris out of the house, you wouldn’t have +dared to enter the yard.’ + +‘We want our money, mamselle,’ squeaked a woman’s voice. + +‘Well, you shan’t have it! not until you have apologised to Monsieur le +Curé for the indignities you have put upon him, and gone quietly away to +your own homes. If you will do that, I promise you your bills shall be +paid.’ + +‘Aye! but have you any right to promise?’ grumbled one of the men. + +‘I have money of my own, and I will pay them myself. Will that satisfy +you?’ + +‘You may trust the word of mamselle,’ said Madame Fromard, addressing +the crowd. ‘I know a true face when I see it, and she has been very good +to me since Guillaume died.’ + +‘And nicely you have requited my kindness, Madame Fromard,’ I retorted. +‘You, who call yourself a Christian, to attempt to injure an old man +like this, and a minister of religion. Are you not afraid of bringing +down the anger of Heaven upon your family? What would Monsieur l’Abbé +say to such a disgraceful proceeding?’ + +‘Monsieur l’Abbé owes no man anything,’ grumbled the woman. + +‘And because he is good, is that any reason you should be bad? I’m +ashamed of the whole lot of you. Come now! clear out of this courtyard +at once. If there is a single man or woman left here in two minutes’ +time, I shall send for the _gendarme_ to restore order. And you, +Marmoret, go back to your kitchen and remain there!’ + +I suppose my determined voice and manner had some effect in making them +obey me, for they certainly disappeared with marvellous alacrity. But I +was terribly frightened the while, and when the last one had filed out +of the yard, I was trembling all over from excitement. + +‘Mr. Lovett,’ I said quickly, as I turned to my guardian; ‘pray come +back into the house. I am sure you must want a glass of wine after such +an unpleasant scene.’ + +The old man looked just the same as he had done before: very pale and +fixed, but unmoved; and I could not help admiring his British +determination not to show the white feather. Yet, when he answered me, I +saw that his lip trembled, and I could hardly understand what he said. + +‘Thank you, my dear Hilda,’ were his first words; and then I think he +added, in a lower tone, ‘I have not deserved this at your hands.’ + +We passed through the kitchen arm-in-arm, and I threw a defiant glance +at Madame Marmoret, in exchange for the scowl with which she honoured +me, and led my guardian to the little _salle_, where Tessie, who had +nearly frightened herself into a fit, was waiting to receive us. + +‘Oh, papa! dear papa!’ she exclaimed, as she flung herself into her +father’s arms and burst into tears. ‘What _shall_ we do? Are those +horrid people gone? Is there nothing we can say to keep them quiet?’ + +But Mr. Lovett had quite recovered himself by this time, and was ready +to rebuke his daughter for her folly in making a mountain out of a +mole-hill. + +‘Calm yourself, my dear Tessie,’ he said, as he patted her on the back; +‘there is nothing to be so agitated about. These poor souls are +certainly very ignorant of etiquette, and we must make allowances for +them, although they must be taught that they cannot take the law in +their own hands. They appear to have a little misunderstanding amongst +them, and to fancy I do not intend to pay them their money. I must set +this straight at once, and for that purpose I think it will be better if +I go to Rille for a few days and consult my man of business, Monsieur +Richet. Let me see, to-day is Tuesday, and I shall be back, at the +latest, on Friday. Will you put a couple of shirts into my small black +bag, my dear, and anything else you may think necessary, whilst our dear +Hilda pours me out a glass of burgundy, for I really require something +after all that talking.’ + +I had not been his ‘dear Hilda’ for many a long day, but I was in no +frame of mind to resent the liberty then. My reverend guardian’s +coolness took me completely aback. Did he think that Tessie and I were +to be gulled by his proposals to see his man of business, or had he +talked in that pompous manner so long that he had outgrown the +perception of its absurdity? At any rate, however, I was thankful he was +going to Rille. To get him out of the way for the present was the chief +thing, and whilst there, we might come to some conclusion as to the best +way to patch up his affairs, which were so evident a scandal in the +parish. + +‘Let us walk with your father to the diligence, Tessie,’ I suggested, as +she reappeared with his travelling-bag, for I felt quite afraid lest +something might happen in the middle of the town if he were allowed to +go by himself. + +Every one was agreeable to this arrangement, so we accompanied him as +far as the Hôtel d’Etoile, and saw him safely seated in the coach and +started on the road to Artois. And then we returned home again, I +exhorting Tessie all the way to try and control her feelings, and keep +her own counsel with respect to the morning’s alarm, lest some report of +it should reach the ears of Ange. + +When we arrived at the house we ran upstairs together to make the beds, +a domestic duty which we had taken upon ourselves and should have +accomplished directly after breakfast had it not been for the +unfortunate interruption to which we had been subjected. The first room +we entered was that occupied by Ange and Tessie. The first thing I saw +on entering it was a black heap upon the floor. + +‘Hullo!’ I exclaimed, thinking it was a fallen dress, and about to +reprimand the Miss Lovetts for their untidiness; but the next moment my +voice had changed to a shrill alarm. ‘Tessie, Tessie! look here—for +God’s sake! _it is Ange!_’ + +We rushed up to the figure on the floor and knelt beside it. I raised +the head and laid it gently back upon my arm. The girl was in a state of +complete unconsciousness. + +‘She has fainted!’ cried Tessie. ‘Oh, my poor darling, how ill she +looks! And how did she come here? I thought she had gone to the +convent.’ + +‘So did I! She certainly said good-bye to us as she left the _salle_. +Can she have felt ill and returned whilst we were absent?’ + +‘But then Marmoret would have seen her, Hilda. The door of the corridor +is locked; I have the key in my pocket.’ + +‘Well, we mustn’t stay to speculate how it happened. Put a pillow under +her head, Tessie. We must lay her flat down on the ground and loosen her +clothes. Oh! how I wish you had sent for Dr. Perrin when I asked you.’ + +‘How could I tell she was so ill?’ asked Tessie, weeping. + +‘Any one could have told it! She has been ill and feverish for weeks +past, and I am not sure if her mind or body are suffering the most. What +a pity we didn’t find her before your father left the house. He might +have sent Monsieur Perrin back from Rille at once.’ + +‘We must write and tell him by this afternoon’s post, Hilda. Oh! why +doesn’t she open her eyes? What shall we do?’ + +‘Set the door and window wide open, and run down and fetch some spring +water to sprinkle her face with. Don’t cry so, Tessie; it can do no +good, and will distress her when she is coming to herself again.’ + +Tessie flew downstairs to do my bidding, and returned in company with +Madame Marmoret, to whom she had confided her sister’s condition. To see +that woman as she bent over the insensible form of her nursling, with +all the rancour faded out of her black eyes, and her hard-lined, brown +face twitching with emotion, one would never have believed she was the +same creature who had urged on her master’s creditors to take their +vengeance with the malignity of a she-devil. + +‘_Eh! bah! ma petite Ange!_’ she exclaimed, in a tone of anguish, as she +kissed the unconscious face. ‘What art thou dreaming of? It is not time +to go to heaven yet, _bébé_, though thou art fitter for that than for +such an earth as ours. What can have brought thee to such a state, +_enfant chérie_? _Ay mi, ay mi!_’ + +‘It is my belief you have only yourself to thank for it, Madame,’ I said +curtly, as I unceremoniously thrust her to one side. + +‘Does mamselle wish to insult me?’ she demanded. + +‘I wish to tell you the truth. I believe that Mademoiselle Ange never +went to the convent at all this morning, but came up to her room +instead, and then overheard the disgraceful tumult you permitted in the +courtyard. You may fancy how that would affect her when she has been +kept in ignorance even of her father’s debts.’ + +‘_Mon Dieu!_’ cried Madame, aghast. ‘You do not mean to tell me the +child was _here_ the while?’ + +‘I feel sure she was. She could not have left the house and returned to +it without our notice. We forgot all about her in our excitement, while +she stood here and received a sword in her tender little heart. Poor +Ange!’ + +‘Oh, my _bébé_, my _bébé_!’ said Madame, with the tears running down her +cheeks; ‘it is not true—it cannot be true! For nineteen years have I +borne it patiently for her sake, and would have bitten my tongue out +sooner than have told her what I suffered. And now, through my own +wickedness, in an evil moment, she has heard all!’ + +‘Hush!’ I exclaimed authoritatively. ‘She is coming to herself. Don’t +make her worse by the sight of your agitation.’ + +As I spoke the words, Ange slowly unclosed her violet eyes—dimmed +violets they looked now, as if a cloudy mist had spread over them—and +turned them inquiringly upon me. + +‘It is all right, darling,’ I said cheerfully, to reassure her. ‘You +have been a stupid girl and fainted, but now that you have revived +again, we will lift you on the bed, and let you lie still and rest’ + +We all three raised her as I concluded, and helped to lay her on her +bed, but the only sign of consciousness she gave was the visible shudder +with which she greeted Madame Marmoret’s touch. + +The woman stooped down and kissed her hand, but I saw Ange draw it +away—very feebly it is true, but sufficiently to mark her dislike of the +action—and then I knew that I had guessed aright, and she had been +witness to the indignities heaped upon her father. + +‘Hilda,’ said Tessie to me that afternoon, in a frightened whisper, ‘we +_must_ write for Dr. Perrin.’ + +I quite agreed with her; for though four hours had gone by since we had +laid Ange upon her bed, she had not spoken a single word to either of +us; and, except that her eyes were open, and she occasionally heaved a +deep sigh, she appeared almost as unconscious as when we found her on +the floor. + +We had not left her for a moment since that time, but had been unable to +persuade her either to speak or swallow nourishment; and I, for one, was +becoming seriously alarmed. + +‘We must not only send for the doctor, but your father must come home +again, Tessie,’ I answered, ‘for I am afraid that Ange is going to be +very ill. If you will write the letter at once, I will run down with it +to the post before the afternoon diligence starts for Artois.’ + +‘What a pity Mr. Charteris is away to-day. He might have been so useful +to us,’ sighed Tessie. + +‘Oh! we can do very well without _him_,’ I responded impatiently. + +I don’t know how it was, but at that moment I hated the thought of Cave +Charteris in connection with our little Ange more than I had ever done +before. + +Some people might imagine that in an emergency Madame Marmoret, being +our servant, might have taken a letter to the post for us; but such +people could never know what Madame Marmoret was like. + +She was far too fine and mighty to run menial errands, and this was +certainly not the day on which I should have asked her to do so. + +So, without taking any notice of her as she sat in the kitchen, dropping +tears into the _potage_ she was preparing for our dinner, I ran through +the house into the street, and made my way to the post-office with +Tessie’s letter. + +It was quite at the bottom of the town, and as I reascended the steep +hill I came in collision with Mrs. Carolus, evidently bristling with +some news of importance. + +‘My dear Miss Marsh, how fortunate I am to meet you! I have just called +at your house, but, hearing you were out, I refused to enter, though +Sophy insisted upon going in to see Miss Lovett.’ + +‘I am afraid she will hardly find it worth her while, for Tessie could +not stay to talk to her. We are in great distress at home to-day, Mrs. +Carolus. Ange has been suddenly taken very ill, and I have just posted a +letter for the doctor.’ + +‘Oh! indeed! I am most distressed to hear it. There seems nothing but +misfortune in St. Pucelle to-day. Sophy has been nearly out of her mind +all the morning, and, to tell truth, I was glad of any excuse to be rid +of her company for a little while, for she quite drives me distracted by +the way in which she goes on.’ + +‘Miss Markham has had no bad news, I hope.’ + +‘Well, my dear, it _ought_ not to have been bad news to her, for of what +moment can the doings of a young man like Mr. Charteris be to a woman of +the age of Sophy Markham? But you know how ridiculous she makes herself, +and the absurd notions she gets into her head, and I suppose she was +really persuaded that the man liked her and so forth, and now she says +that he has blighted her whole life, and she can never be happy again.’ + +‘But _why_, Mrs. Carolus? You have not yet told me the reason.’ + +‘Oh! I suppose you have known it all along, as Mr. Charteris has been +living with the Lovetts, but poor Sophy never heard till yesterday, when +she was in Rille and met young Frederick Stephenson, that his cousin was +a married man.’ + +‘Mr. Charteris _married_!’ I exclaimed. ‘Oh no! she must be mistaken. It +is _impossible_. It cannot be the case.’ + +‘What! _You_ had not heard it either, then?’ inquired Mrs. Carolus, +curiously. ‘This beats everything! But you may rely on the truth of my +assertion. Young Mr. Stephenson told Sophy who his wife had been—a Miss +Mary Ferrier, a great heiress, and they have a beautiful place called +Parkhurst in Devonshire, and two children, and they’ve all had the +scarlet fever, and that is the reason that Mr. Charteris was afraid to +go home. Shabby of him, _I_ call it, to desert his family in an +extremity like that; but men are all selfish, my dear. Yet why he should +have considered it necessary to come amongst us as a bachelor, puzzles +me altogether.’ + +‘_Married!_’ I repeated, as various recollections tending to confirm +Mrs. Carolus’s statement floated in upon my mind, and then, a sudden +fear seizing me, I exclaimed: ‘Oh! I hope Miss Markham has not gone into +the Lovetts’ especially to tell them this!’ + +‘I can’t say, Miss Marsh, but she is very full of it, and you know what +Sophy is over a piece of news. But where are you going?’ + +‘Home—home!’ I cried, as I commenced to run up the hill. ‘Don’t try to +detain me. I must get home if I can, and prevent this story reaching +Ange’s ears.’ + +I have no doubt I left Mrs. Carolus in a state of the utmost perplexity +and bewilderment, but I had no time for explanation. All my desire was +to reach Tessie’s side before she had communicated Miss Markham’s news +to her sister. As I raced towards the house, I met Sophy tripping +downwards, but I would not stop even to inquire how much mischief she +had done. I gained the door, panting and breathless, and came upon +Tessie in the _salle_, still more tearful and alarmed than she had been +before. + +‘Oh, Hilda! I am afraid that Ange is worse.’ + +‘How? why? Who has been here?’ + +‘Only Sophy Markham, and she didn’t stay a minute. And she told us the +most wonderful news——’ + +‘Never mind the news! Where did you see her?’ + +‘She came up to Ange’s bedroom! I couldn’t leave her, you know.’ + +‘And she told her wonderful news by that child’s bedside, and Ange heard +every word of it! Oh! Tessie—Tessie! you have killed your sister!’ + + + + +[Illustration: [Fleuron]] + + + CHAPTER X. + BROKEN. + + +It was a hard thing to say to Tessie, who knew nothing of Ange’s love +for Charteris, but it was wrung from me in the extremity of my fear and +pity for the child. + +Tessie naturally demanded an explanation of my words, and then and there +I made a clean breast of it, telling her what I had seen and heard, and +how I had told her father of my discovery, and the unsatisfactory result +of my communication. + +We flew into each other’s arms when the recital was finished, and wept +together over the misery of it all, as it behoved us, like true friends +and sisters, to do. + +‘And now, Tessie!’ I said, as I wiped my streaming eyes, ‘hide nothing +from me. Let me know how much she heard and how she heard it, that we +may be able to judge what is best to do to avert the consequences from +her.’ + +‘I never left her side for a minute,’ sobbed Tessie, ‘but Sophy Markham +pushed her way into the bedroom, and I could not turn her out. Ange was +lying just as you left her, quite still and quiet, with her eyes fixed +upon the ceiling. I whispered her condition to Miss Markham, and +cautioned her to speak in a low voice, and I believe she did so. She was +full of the news of Mr. Charteris turning out to be a married man, and +of the shock it was to her; and how he had spent all his evenings lately +in the billiard-room of the Hôtel d’Etoile, and everybody had remarked +upon his pronounced attentions to herself. She was talking a great deal +of nonsense about wishing she had a brother to bring him to book for his +scandalous behaviour to her, though I don’t believe a word of all that, +you know, Hilda.’ + +‘I should think not, my dear! Cave Charteris may be a villain, but he is +not a fool. But go on. What did Ange say to it all?’ + +‘She never said a word; but as Miss Markham was running on at this rate, +I thought I heard a rustle on the bed, and, turning round, I saw Ange +sitting bolt upright with her eyes fixed upon us. Oh, Hilda! her face +looked dreadful! You would never have forgotten it. It seemed as if her +cheeks and her jaws had suddenly fallen in. I rushed to her side and +laid her down again, and she never uttered a syllable, but only stared +at me with those melancholy wide-open eyes. I hurried Miss Markham out +of the room, although I knew nothing of what you have now told me, and +had no idea that Ange’s appearance was due to anything she had said. Oh! +do you really think it will hurt her?’ + +‘How is she now, Tessie?’ + +‘I think she must be asleep, but I cannot tell. She began to moan so, +that I got frightened, and ran down here to watch for your return.’ + +‘Let us go to her at once; and mind, not a word, even to one another, of +this wretched business. We must hope that Ange did not hear or +understand it, or that, if she did, she may forget it again. It is most +important to keep the news from her till she is stronger. I am afraid +that, at the best, it will prove a terrible blow to her.’ + +We hastened back to the bed-chamber, but there was no apparent change in +our patient. She still lay on her side, staring into vacancy and +occasionally moaning in a low tone to herself. I felt her head and +hands; they were burning hot, and her lips had become dry and cracked. +There was no doubt of it—Ange was in a raging fever, and every hour we +became more alarmed. + +‘What a mistake it is to live such a distance from a doctor!’ I +exclaimed impatiently, as the evening drew on. ‘I wish I had gone into +Artois myself by the diligence this afternoon, or sent Charlie +Sandilands, and got Monsieur Perrin to ride over to-night. Is there no +help nearer at hand, Tessie? Cannot the _petites sœurs_ administer +medicines on an emergency?’ + +‘I never heard of their doing so, Hilda. Monsieur Perrin is their +hospital surgeon. If it were not for the convent, I don’t think we +should get him in St. Pucelle at all.’ + +‘Just listen to her moans!’ I said, in despair. ‘Do ask Madame Marmoret +to bring up another pitcher of spring water, Tessie. We must keep wet +bandages round her head continually. I know of nothing better to do.’ + +With dinner-time came home Cave Charteris from shooting, and hearing the +state of affairs upstairs from Madame Marmoret, he asked to speak to me. +One may fancy the blazing eyes with which I went to meet him. + +‘What do you want?’ I demanded brusquely, as I entered the little +_salle_. + +‘Only to hear how much of this sad account that Madame has given me is +true. Is it really the case that Mr. Lovett has gone to Rille, and Ange +is so ill she can see nobody?’ + +‘Certainly, she can see nobody. She is in a strong fever, and confined +to her bed. Have you anything more to say?’ + +‘Yes! That I am not aware what I have done that you should speak to me +in such an uncourteous manner!’ + +‘Are you not? Then you must have a tougher conscience than even I gave +you credit for.’ + +‘What do you mean, Miss Marsh?’ he inquired. ‘You appear to resent my +taking an ordinary interest in Miss Lovett’s health. If you knew all, +you would see that——’ + +‘I _do_ know all!’ I interrupted him sternly, ‘and a great deal more +than you have any idea of. I know that you are a married man, and that +you had much better be at home with your wife and children than +affecting this interest in a girl who can never be anything to you +_again_.’ + +I put in _again_, that he might see we had already guessed something of +his philandering with poor Ange. + +‘Has _she_ heard of this?’ he asked me quickly, with the colour flaming +in his face. + +‘What is that to you?’ I replied angrily; ‘if you are an honest man, why +should you be ashamed to tell the world that you are a married one? I +refuse to inform you if Ange has heard the truth or not, but you may +rest assured that she will not hear it from you. Her father will be home +to-morrow, and the first thing I shall do will be to caution him to +protect the interests of his daughter!’ + +Something very like an oath passed Mr. Charteris’s lips at this +juncture, but he was at my mercy. + +‘You are shooting very wide of the mark,’ he replied, with an attempt at +nonchalance, ‘and, forgive me for adding, talking of what you know +nothing. I am not in the habit of confiding the details of my domestic +life to everybody I meet in this world, but had the fact of my marriage +been likely to affect Mr. Lovett or his daughters, I should certainly +have announced it. Since you refuse to gratify my curiosity any further, +may I ask to see Miss Lovett?’ + +‘She will not consent to see you,’ I replied, ‘for she is as well aware +as I am of the way in which you have treated her sister.’ + +‘Under these circumstances, I presume that I had better relieve you both +of my presence until Mr. Lovett’s return.’ + +‘You can do as you choose about that,’ I said, as I left him standing +there and took my way upstairs again. + +In another minute he had passed into the street and was on his road, as +I concluded, to the Hôtel d’Etoile, where he had been in the habit of +spending his evenings since Armand had given up playing cards; and +Madame Marmoret informed me that he did not return to the house that +night. + +It was a sad and anxious vigil that we spent beside the bedside of poor +Ange, who, towards the small hours, began to toss her arms and head +about and mutter rapid incoherent words of which we could not catch the +import. + +As morning dawned, she lay more quiet, but the cruel fever still raged +on, and she was very, very weak. + +‘How soon can the doctor arrive, Tessie?’ I inquired, as we met over a +melancholy breakfast at a side-table in the kitchen. ‘When does the +diligence come in?’ + +‘At eleven o’clock, Hilda. It is the only one, you know, so they are +both sure to be with us by that time. What a comfort it will be to have +papa at home once more!’ + +We sat together, anxiously waiting the advent of the diligence, and +scarcely daring to make a surmise as to the probable issue of the +doctor’s verdict on our poor little sister’s case. + +Eleven o’clock struck! Half-past eleven, and then there was a sound of +feet in the _salle_ below. I did not stop to let Madame Marmoret +announce any names, but flew past her on the stairs and into the room. +Neither Monsieur Perrin nor Mr. Lovett awaited me there. The new arrival +was Mr. Warrington. In my astonishment at seeing him, I forgot for a +moment the absence of the others. + +‘Why! Mr. Warrington! You are the last person in the world I expected to +see.’ + +‘And yet I sent Miss Hilda notice of my intended visit,’ he answered, +shaking hands with me. + +‘True! but not of the probable time. However, I am very glad you are +come. If I needed your advice when I wrote to you, I want it tenfold +more now. I am in a sad tangle and perplexity, Mr. Warrington.’ + +‘Sorry to hear that! I must have a long talk with your trustee about +your financial concerns. I have come over for no other purpose. Do you +wish your money to remain invested as it is at present?’ + +‘No, I think not. The fact is, Mr. Warrington, I—I—(I have not told the +Lovetts yet, as it is no concern of theirs) but—I am engaged to be +married.’ + +‘Hallo! That is sharp work, Miss Hilda. Not to a foreigner, I hope!’ + +‘Now, Mr. Warrington, I thought you would be above such vulgar +prejudice. He _is_ a foreigner—Baron Armand de Nesselrode—but he is +better than all the Englishmen put together.’ + +‘Oh! that of course. And do you intend to settle your income upon this +gentlemen, then?’ + +‘I have not decided that yet; but I do want to have it transferred to my +own keeping. And oh! Mr. Warrington, you will have to pay a few debts of +Mr. Lovett’s out of it too, because I promised the poor people I would +be responsible for their money.’ + +At this announcement the solicitor looked grave. + +‘We must speak further on that subject, Miss Hilda. I can do nothing in +a hurry. Where is Mr. Lovett, and how soon shall I be able to see him?’ + +Then I remembered that my guardian ought to have arrived with the doctor +from Rille by the same conveyance as Mr. Warrington had travelled in. + +‘Why, he was at Rille, and didn’t he come with you in the diligence?’ I +exclaimed hastily. ‘An old man with white hair and very blue eyes, and +accompanied by a foreign doctor?’ + +‘No; there were no gentry at all in the diligence. Only a few peasants +and a sister of mercy.’ + +‘What can have delayed them?’ I said, in distress. ‘We are in great +trouble here to-day, Mr. Warrington. The youngest Miss Lovett was taken +ill yesterday, and we have no medical assistance nearer than Rille. I +wrote to her father by last night’s post, begging him to return this +morning and bring a doctor with him, and I cannot imagine what should +have prevented their arrival. What shall we do?’ + +‘Is the case serious, then?’ + +‘I fear it is—very serious!’ + +‘Can I do nothing to help you, Miss Hilda?’ + +‘Nothing, thank you, Mr. Warrington! We can but watch her and wait. Are +you staying at the Etoile?’ + +‘No, at the Cloche. The other looked too noisy for me. I will say +good-bye now, then, as you are busy, and you must let me know as soon as +Mr. Lovett returns.’ + +‘I will—good-bye!’ + +I was so glad to see the last of the dear little man who looked as +dapper as if he had travelled up from London in a sealed envelope, for +my mind was too much occupied to attend to him. As soon as ever his back +was turned, I flew to Tessie to speculate on what unforeseen accident +could possibly have occurred to prevent her father joining us. + +But speculation was of no use. We were utterly helpless. Wringing our +hands would not abate one breath of the dreadful fever that was burning +in Ange’s veins. All we could do was to pray to God. + +Madame Marmoret had spread the news through St. Pucelle, and many a poor +peasant woman came up that afternoon and pleaded for admission, only +just to look upon the face of _petite_ Ange. But I would let no one pass +the threshold of her door, for her delirium was now at its height, and +she talked continually. + +Tessie, who had no stamina, looked worn out with one night’s watching; +and I persuaded her to go to my room and sleep, whilst I sat with her +sister. It was a melancholy task to listen to the poor child’s ravings, +and I had to call up all my dearest thoughts of Armand, and to try and +look steadily forward to the future that was opening for me, in order to +keep my courage up to the sticking-point. + +‘I do not believe it,’ Ange muttered rapidly—‘I do not believe it. I +cannot believe it! He is _not_ married. Well, then, I will ask him +myself. Where is he? At the Hôtel d’Etoile. I will go at once and ask +him. It is but a step. What do my bare feet signify! I do not feel the +stones. I only want to ask Cave if he is married. Yes, yes, I will go at +once!’ and in a moment she was half out of bed, with her fevered feet +upon the floor. + +‘Dear, _dear_ Ange!’ I expostulated with her. ‘Get into bed again! Where +would you go to, my darling? You are not dressed. You cannot leave the +room. You must lie down like a good child and go to sleep.’ + +She stared at me as if I had been a stranger. + +‘Who is it? Why would you keep me? I do not mind the cold. I must go to +the Hôtel d’Etoile. Sophy says he is there every evening, and perhaps he +is waiting for me. He used to be angry sometimes because I did not go to +meet him; but I was afraid papa would hear of it. And papa is so good! +Oh, he is so good! so good! He is like a bright saint from heaven. Do +you believe he would do anybody a wrong? If people tell lies, that is +not his fault. He has a glory round his head. Now it is a rainbow +bridge, stretching right into heaven! Let me climb up it—up—up—up—till +we go through the shining gates together! But there is such a pain in my +head! It dazzles me to look at them.’ + +‘Lie down, my darling Ange! and let me bathe your poor head with this +cold water.’ + +‘Oh, sister Celeste, is it you? I have not finished the priest’s +vestment yet, _ma sœur_. There are so many stitches in it, and the gold +thread sparkles so, it makes my head ache. But I shall finish it soon! +very, very soon! and then dear papa shall pay Cave the hundred and +twenty-five francs he owes him. They will give me all that, will they +not, _ma sœur_—and perhaps more? Yes, yes; I know—you said so; and then +Cave shall have one hundred and twenty-five francs—one hundred and +twenty-five francs—one hundred and twenty-five francs! Oh, don’t ask me +to count them over any more! They shine so, they make my head ache!’ + +So this was the secret of the little maid’s daily visits to the convent. +She had been assisting the nuns in the embroidery orders they executed +for the church, with the intention of paying back to Cave Charteris the +money her father had borrowed from him. + +Sweet, tender, self-denying little heart! Had it broken in the effort to +sacrifice itself? + +‘Oh, Cave!’ she screamed suddenly, as the fever made a fiercer grasp +upon her brain, ‘tell me you are _not_ married! You cannot be! It is +impossible, because you love me so! And you are going to tell papa! You +have promised me that you will tell papa directly you receive that +letter from England. Why can’t you tell him now? Is he busy? Who are +those people in the yard? How fierce and strange their faces look! Do +they want to kill him? Oh, Cave, save my father! save my poor father! +Look at all the wolves round him! Save him from the wolves!’ + +She was becoming so terribly excited, that I was obliged to hold her +down in her bed by main force. + +‘Down, down!’ I heard her mutter. ‘Look at the gold pressing me +down—till I sink into the earth! Napoleons—bright yellow Napoleons! How +nice and cool they feel! but they are very heavy—much too heavy for me! +I am not very old, you see. I was eighteen on the day I had those silver +earrings you like so much—and you are thirty! How can you love me when I +am so much younger than yourself? Yet you do, don’t you? You have sworn +it so many times! Oh yes, yes; I understand. You needn’t be afraid. I +shan’t tell Hilda!’ + +The fever was running so high, and the dear child was becoming so +violent, that I felt desperate. What could I do to quiet her? I had a +bottle of laudanum in my room that I kept in the event of toothache, and +I poured twenty or thirty drops of it in a little water, and gave it her +to drink. + +Rightly or wrongly done, it had the effect of making her doze off for an +hour, during which time I sat with bated breath and folded hands, lest I +should disturb the charm. + +At seven o’clock Tessie crawled into the room again, looking like a +washed-out rag. She seemed as if she wanted almost as much care as her +sister, although I do not believe she at all realised the danger Ange +was in. + +‘Oh, I am so weary!’ were the first words she said to me. + +‘I see you are. Well, look here, Tessie: I am going downstairs now to +make you a good strong cup of coffee, and then I shall lie down till +twelve o’clock, when you must come and call me again.’ + +‘Oh, that won’t be fair, Hilda! You sat up all last night.’ + +‘Never mind! I am stronger than you are, and a few hours’ rest will make +me quite fresh. Ange is sleeping quietly now, and I hope she may +continue to do so. But, at any rate, you are to wake me at twelve.’ + +Notwithstanding my boasted strength, however, I was very glad to close +my eyes in sleep; for to hold a night’s vigil is very trying when one is +unaccustomed to it. But I have always possessed the ability to wake +myself at any given hour. I lay down that evening, expecting to be +roused at midnight: and at midnight I roused myself, without giving any +one the trouble to call me. I waked in the darkness, struck a match, and +perceived the hands of my little clock stood at fifteen minutes past the +hour. + +‘Just like Tessie!’ I thought. ‘She thinks to cheat me into snoring till +six o’clock in the morning. But I am one too many for her!’ + +I lit my candle, slipped on the shoes, which were the only articles of +dress I had disencumbered myself of, and stole noiselessly across the +corridor into the sisters’ room. + +How quietly Ange must be sleeping! There was not a sound but her +breathing to be heard. Surely she must be better! The room was wrapt in +gloom; it was foolish of Tessie not to have procured a lamp. I threw the +light of my taper across the bed. The first thing I perceived was the +form of Tessie, seated on the ground, with her head against the +counterpane, and fast asleep. The words of Scripture flashed across my +mind, ‘Could ye not watch one hour?’ But I excused her. + +‘Poor girl,’ I thought, ‘she is really weak! It is a physical +impossibility for her to keep awake.’ + +The next moment I had thrown my light _upon_ the bed to see how Ange +fared. + +Merciful heavens! _Where was she?_ I rushed up to the couch and pulled +down the clothes impetuously. It was empty—void! + +I glanced round the room: it was in the same condition. _Ange was gone!_ + +‘Tessie, Tessie!’ I exclaimed loudly, as I shook that young lady into +consciousness again. ‘Where is your sister? Where is Ange?’ + +She waked with a start of bewilderment, and became as horrified as +myself. + +‘But she was _here_—she was _here_!’ she kept on repeating. ‘I only went +to sleep for a minute, indeed, Hilda! I left her sleeping safely here.’ + +‘I believe it; but while you slept she has escaped. We must search every +corner of the house at once. Come with me! there is not a moment to +lose!’ + +We rushed from room to room without success. Ange was apparently nowhere +on the premises. I clasped my hands upon my forehead to try and decide +what to do next. Escaped! and in the middle of the night! Where could +she have gone to? Where could she _wish_ to go? I had it! Like an +inspiration the answer came to me: ‘To the Hôtel d’Etoile!’ + +‘Tessie!’ I cried, ‘you must stay here, in case Ange returns. Go and +wake Madame Marmoret to keep you company. And I will go and search for +her in the town.’ + +‘_In the town!_ Oh, Hilda, how could she be in the town? It is +impossible!’ + +‘Find her in the house then!’ I exclaimed, as I ran out of the front +door, which was never fastened, night nor day, and flew down the steep +stony street, in the direction of the Hôtel d’Etoile, as fast as my feet +could carry me. + +It was the principal hotel in the place, and boasted of a billiard-room, +which was on the ground-floor and fronted the street. The young men in +St. Pucelle made this billiard-room their nightly rendezvous: and it was +here that Sophy Markham had averred that Charteris spent all his +evenings. + +Long before I reached it I could see the stream of light which its lamps +threw across the road, and hear the sound of men’s voices, laughing and +talking together, and the click of the billiard-balls cannoning each +other on the table. I felt sure it was here that Ange’s delirious fancy +would lead her, and I was right. As I arrived opposite the open window +of the billiard-room, I caught sight of a dark figure half hidden in the +shadow of the wall, and springing towards it, I clasped her in my +arms—Ange, with only her black dress covering her nightgown, her +bronze-coloured hair floating over her shoulders, and her poor naked +feet upon the ground. + +‘Ange! Ange! my darling!’ I exclaimed, as I folded her to my heart. +‘Come back! Come home with me! You will be so ill if you remain here!’ + +‘_Hush! Hark!_’ she said, with such wide-open, fixed and solemn eyes, +and in such a tone of awe, that I felt constrained to obey her. + +There were perhaps a dozen men or more, knocking the billiard-balls +about and filling the atmosphere with smoke, but Cave Charteris’s voice +was to be distinguished above them all. + +‘Reckless old dog, that _Papa_ Lovett,’ I heard him say. ‘He’s a regular +out-and-out swindler! I’ve lent him more cash myself since I’ve been +here than his whole carcase would pay for, but I knew I should never see +the colour of it again when I parted with it.’ + +‘Took the change out in other ways, I suppose, _mon cher_?’ suggested a +foreigner. ‘The _bon papa_ has two pretty daughters, _n’est ce pas_? and +it is said you have evinced a decided predilection for the little one.’ + +‘_Ah! fi donc_, monsieur!’ cried Charteris, jestingly; ‘don’t make +profane remarks! I am a married man! and other men’s pretty daughters +are of no further use to me.’ + +‘_Vraiment!_ I shouldn’t have thought it!’ rejoined the other, +incredulously. + +I had felt the slight form in my clasp shiver under these words, as if +it had been struck, and I could bear it no longer. + +‘Ange!’ I exclaimed vehemently, ‘you _must_ come home! this is no place +for you! and you will catch your death of cold if you remain here any +longer. I _insist_ upon your returning with me!’ + +But there was no answer to my appeal, only the form I held seemed to +sink lower and lower, until I could support it no longer. + +‘Ange! Ange!’ I went on in terror, ‘try and hold yourself up, or I must +call for assistance. I cannot carry you. Oh, darling! make one effort +and let me get you home!’ + +Still she sunk down—down—heavier each moment in my arms. + +‘Mr. Charteris!’ I screamed in my alarm; ‘Mr. Charteris! Come here! Come +at once—Ange is dying!’ + +There was a sudden commotion in the billiard-room as my voice reached +its occupants—a few exclamations of surprise—a cessation of sound—and +then Cave Charteris came flying through the open window to my aid. + +‘Hold her up!’ I panted; ‘I have no strength left! She escaped from us +in her delirium, and I must have her carried home at once.’ + +He seized the little figure from me and laid the head against his arm. +The light from the billiard-room streamed over her pallid face: her +violet eyes were closed and sunken: there was a grey shade about the +mouth that was not to be mistaken. + +‘Ange! Ange! speak to me!’ I cried, in my anguish and dismay. + +‘Ange! _petite_ Ange! say you forgive me,’ chimed in the deeper tones of +Cave Charteris’s voice. + +At that sound she opened her eyes, very, very slowly, as if the action +gave her pain, and fixed them upon his. I saw the words, ‘I _forgive_,’ +tremble upon the quivering lips, which closed again and then fell open +as her spirit passed away upon the wings of Night! + + * * * * * + +I feel that no description I can append to this simple recital can +increase its pathos. Ange died—just as I have told you—and I never +looked upon the face of Cave Charteris after that night. I never wish to +look upon it. He ranks in my memory as one of the worst men I ever met. + +Mr. Lovett arrived home on the next day, with the doctor in his train, +when _petite_ Ange was lying stretched and still upon her bed, with her +waxen hands filled with the autumn flowers the poor of St. Pucelle had +placed in them. Her father’s grief was naturally very violent—such +saintly mourners usually mourn noisily. Yet he had not considered his +child’s illness of sufficient importance to oblige him to give up a +dinner at Rille, which he had been pledged to attend on the previous +day. + +I almost wondered, as I watched him bury her in the little strip of +ground appropriated to those of her faith, in the Abbé Morteville’s +cemetery, that he did not fall headlong on the coffin and denounce +himself as Ange’s murderer. But no such idea ever entered his venerable +head. He lived for several years afterwards, to talk of virtue and +practice vice, and when he died, his creditors howled like hungry wolves +above his grave, and had to recoup themselves by abusing him for the +rest of their lives. Some few got their money—those to whom I had +promised it in the courtyard—but their demands were but as a drop in the +ocean. Mr. Warrington’s advent in St. Pucelle was a terrible blow to Mr. +Lovett, especially when his legal research on my behalf resulted in the +discovery that a large portion of my little patrimony had been wasted or +spent. But I would not let him prosecute my guardian, for Tessie’s sake. +I felt that she had sorrows enough to bear, poor girl, without this open +disgrace being added to them. By the time that Mr. Lovett died, my +Armand’s term of probation in Algiers was ended, and he had got his own +again, so I made Tessie come and live with us. + +That was a happy period. It was so delightful to watch the roses return +to her cheeks, and the roundness to her form, and to feel that the +saddest part of her life was over, and she was free to choose her future +destiny. But we did not keep her with us long. In Paris that was hardly +to be expected! Every one prophesied she would marry a foreigner, yet +she married—— + +Stay! Armand and I are going over next week to England, to spend a whole +month in Norwood, with my dear old friend Mrs. Sandilands, to whom I am +very anxious to introduce my husband and my son, Godefroi de +Nesselrode—who is already seven years old. + +And Charlie, dear old boy! is anticipating our arrival as if he were +still my mother’s ‘blue-eyed baby’ of twenty-two, instead of a sober +citizen of thirty, because he wants me, not to be introduced to, but to +renew my acquaintance with, _his wife_—Mrs. Sandilands Number Two—my +dear friend Tessie! + +It all came about as naturally as possible, although it sounds so +romantic, for Charlie came to stay with us in Paris, and popped the +question to her there, without even asking my advice upon the subject, +and took her home with him to be his mother’s eldest daughter! + + * * * * * + +So they all lived happy ever afterwards. Yes, that is true—strictly and +literally true—because they were not such fools as to expect, or wish +for, unalloyed happiness in this world of shadow. They had been hungry, +and they were filled—they had been naked, and they were clothed—they had +suffered, sometimes very acutely—and they were loved and looked after, +and guarded by good and true men, and would have been ingrates as well +as fools, not to recognise how much more fortunate they were than many +of their fellows. + +But there is one dark passage in Tessie’s life and mine which we shall +never forget—the night that Ange’s spirit spread its wings and flew away +from us. Sometimes I wonder, when Armand is more than usually tender to +me, or little Godefroi more than usually good, if _she_ is hovering +round us who are so happy, and rejoices because we rejoice. Or does she +stand by Cave Charteris’s side, for the sake of the love she bore him, +to urge him on to better thoughts and a higher career? Or is she +wandering through the Elysian fields with the old father whom she +believed in so faithfully, until his blazoned disgrace snapped her +tender heartstrings! + +Who can tell me? No parson, no priest, no book! Nothing but the great +mystery that bore her from us—the solver of all our doubts, the cure for +all our sorrows: Death! + +Let us thank God that amidst the troubles He ordained for this earthly +pilgrimage, He left us a sure and certain remedy that cannot fail to +come to every one at last! + +Ange and Tessie and I shall walk together once more, through flowery +paths, more beautiful than those in St. Pucelle, and talk of everything +that may have befallen us since we last parted! And my mother—my +unforgotten, lamented mother, shall smile on us there, and bid us +welcome. Reader! do you not believe it? + +Then, I pity you! Farewell! + + + THE END. + + + BILLING AND SONS, PRINTERS, GUILDFORD, SURREY. + +------------------------------------------------------------------------ + + + + + TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES + + + Page Changed from Changed to + + 227 leaned against the courtyard leaned against the courtyard + wall, fencing off wall, fending off + + ● Typos fixed; non-standard spelling and dialect retained. + ● Enclosed italics font in _underscores_. + ● Enclosed blackletter font in =equals=. + + + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 76781 *** |