Brownie's triumph

The next day cards were received at Vallingham Hall for the family and all guests, soliciting their presence at a grand state dinner, to be given by his lordship, the Earl of Dunforth, at his country residence at East Malling, about five miles from the west village.

A great deal of excitement prevailed in anticipation of this event, for all recognized the honor conferred by this invitation, as the earl occupied a high position in the world, and owned almost the whole township of East Malling, where Dunforth Castle was situated.

“What shall I wear, mamma?” Isabel asked, when they were talking over the event in their own room.

“That light blue velvet, with the pipings of white satin, and the stomacher of pearls, which came from Worth’s last week, will be the most suitable, I think,” returned Mrs. Coolidge, reflectively.

“That is the one I had in mind. It will be very becoming and with those coral ornaments, and a few flowers, it will be a very lovely costume,” assented the dutiful daughter.

“I want you to look uncommonly well, Isabel, for I heard to-day that any one who is received by the Earl of Dunforth needs no better voucher in the first circles of London. Besides, he is a relative of the family, and it will be wise for you to secure their favor. By the way, has Sir Charles asked you to name the day yet?”

“No, and I’ve played my very prettiest to him this week, hoping he would. I’ve visited all those dirty cottages and hovels, and helped him plan a hundred disagreeable things for suffering humanity around us; but, apparently, he is so bound up in the woes of others that he cannot stop to consider things of such minor importance as his own happiness,” replied Isabel, with bitter scorn, and with an ugly frown upon her brow.

“You must have patience, my dear. A great deal has been accomplished in his proposing to you, and in your acknowledged engagement.”

“Patience! I feel as if I should go wild, at times, with the constant restraint which I put upon myself.”

“I know; you are behaving beautifully,” said Mrs. Coolidge, soothingly, who lived in constant fear lest there should be an outbreak. “Lady Randal,” she went on, “thinks you are just perfect; and even the servants are all enthusiastic in your praise.”

“If only the prize was secure,” muttered Isabel, moodily.

“Only go on a little longer as you have begun and it will be, I am sure,” purred her mother.

The day of the dinner party arrived.

A half hour before the Vallingham company were to start, Lady Randal knocked at Isabel’s door.

“Excuse me, dear,” she said, “but I wanted to see how you look before we start. I am particularly anxious that Lord and Lady Dunforth should be pleased with you. You know he is a relative of the family,” she concluded, with an accent of pride.

“I heard something to that effect,” responded Isabel; “but how is he connected?”

“His lordship and I are own cousins,” explained Lady Randal, while her face clouded for a moment, as if from some painful thought.

Then suddenly changing the subject, she exclaimed:

“But I need not have been anxious about your appearance, for you are just lovely. You have exquisite taste, my love, and I shall feel quite proud when you are my daughter. The blue velvet is charming, and your hair is very becomingly arranged, while that stomacher of pearls is superb. But”—and she started suddenly, while her face grew crimson—“but where did you get those coral ornaments?” and her eyes were fixed in utter astonishment, and with something of terror in them, upon the elegant coral and diamond cross, and butterfly hair ornament, which Isabel has just fastened in her hair, and clasped about her neck.

Isabel colored violently at the question.

Could she never wear those things without some one’s remarking them particularly, and continually reminding her that they were not her own?

Lady Randal marked her confusion, and feeling it might have appeared a rude question, hastened to add:

“Pardon me, but they are so like some that I once saw a long time ago, that I could not help exclaiming at the moment.”

“Ah!” said Isabel, regaining her self-possession, and striving to speak indifferently; “I did not suppose there was another set like them in the world—they were made to order,” and the lie slipped off her tongue without a quaver.

“It is a singular coincidence, surely,” murmured Lady Randal, absently. “Did you ever know——” she began again, then suddenly checking herself, she added: “But, of course, you did not, for she must be over sixty if she is living now. It is strange, though, I could have sworn they are the same.”

“What were you saying?” asked Isabel, who had not distinctly understood what she said last.

“Never mind, dear; but a lady whom I used to know had some ornaments very like these. Have you nothing else which will do to go with this costume?”

She seemed to dislike the idea of her wearing them.

“Oh, yes; I have plenty of others, but these look best with this light blue—they give a dash of color which it seems to need, and I prefer them.”

“Well, never mind; you do look very nice, and,” she added, partly to herself, “perhaps he will not notice.”

Isabel created quite a sensation upon entering the great drawing-room at Dunforth, for there were many people present whom she had never met before, and all were quite anxious to see the bride Sir Charles had chosen.

His lordship was very gracious to her, and seemed desirous to atone for his rudeness on the night of Lady Peasewell’s drawing-room, though Isabel noticed that a spasm of pain contracted his face when his eye first fell upon her as she was presented.

He introduced her to Lady Dunforth, who completely surprised her by turning to a gentleman at her side, and saying:

“Miss Coolidge, allow me to present my grandson, Mr. Dredmond.”

She looked up astonished, and the color flamed into her cheeks at his cold salutation and the well-remembered, scornful curl of his lips, as his critical eye took in every item of her costume from head to foot.

He, too, had recognized those lovely corals, with their diamond garnishings, and he longed to wrest them from her hair and bosom, and denounce her as the false-hearted woman he knew she was.

He, then, was the grandson of the Earl of Dunforth.

Isabel had known all along that he was heir to an earldom, but supposing it to be a nobleman by the name of Dredmond, she had never made any inquiries about the matter.

A feeling of chagrin came over her that she had not played her cards differently, for she knew the Dunforth wealth far exceeded that of the Randals.

A sense of fear, too, arose in her heart lest he should strive to influence Sir Charles against her.

Lady Randal had told her that she and Lord Dunforth were cousins, consequently Sir Charles and Adrian were connected, and might he not tell him what he knew?

Later in the evening she was introduced to Lady Ruxley, whose acquaintance she had long desired to make, and whose favor she was most anxious to secure.

The old lady had arrived at the castle that morning by special invitation, and was to remain a few days to visit Lady Dunforth, who was a favorite with her.

She was a very peculiar body, this old lady of eighty, with her wrinkled, withered face, her scant, wiry, gray hair, her restless black eyes keen and sharp as a briar. She was bent nearly double, and walked with a cane, and when she tried to talk to or look at anybody she twisted her neck and shoulders into all manner of contortions. She was little as well as old—she could not have weighed over ninety pounds—and in her straight, old-fashioned black satin gown she made Isabel think of some witch or sprite of evil.

She felt anything but comfortable beneath those keen, bright eyes, which seemed to read her through and through at a glance, and her blunt way of asking questions disconcerted her not a little.

“False as fair; false as fair!” and “chickens always come home to roost!” muttered the “old crone,” as she watched the handsome couple move away.

“What were you saying, aunt?” asked Lady Randal, sharply.

She had been standing near, and saw the distrustful expression on her face, and heard the muttered tones.

“I said ‘chickens always come home to roost,’” she snapped in reply.

“What do you mean by it? I don’t understand you.”

“I mean that you are going to get your pay through her for some of your own evil deeds in the past,” she answered, pointing her shaking finger at Isabel.

“Don’t be a fool, aunt,” Lady Randal said, sharply, yet growing a shade paler than usual. “What have I done that is so very wicked?”

“Ah, ha! your memory doesn’t serve you as well as mine, for all I am in my dotage,” and the old woman gave a cracked, spiteful laugh.

“I haven’t forgotten how, when you were yonder girl’s age, you played a game upon his lordship in my house which nearly broke his heart, and without accomplishing your purpose, too; and now I say you’re going to get your pay for it.”

“That was years and years ago, and I’m sure I don’t see what it can have to do with Sir Charles or my affairs to-day. Don’t you like Miss Coolidge? I think her very striking in appearance.”

“She has a stately presence, truly; but mark my words, Helen Capel, if you live long enough, you will find that she can plot as cunningly as you did when you admitted Count de Lussan to my parlors to ruin the happiness of an innocent and beautiful girl.”

“Pshaw! what has put those absurd fancies and memories into your head to-night?” and Lady Randal tried to laugh, though she shuddered at the same time.

“Laugh away, my lady, while you can,” snapped the old woman, viciously, “but you’ll change your tune before long. I never quite forgave you for that night’s work, Helen; it was the first time such a man ever disgraced my house, to say nothing about her coming to such grief there. But, ah! that was more than forty years ago. I wonder whatever became of her! I am sorry for Charles, though—he is a noble fellow, and ought to have a good wife,” and Lady Ruxley heaved a sigh of regret.

“Then you don’t approve of his choice, aunt; I’m sorry. She is certainly fine looking, and then she belongs to a very wealthy family.”

“That’s it; that’s it, you were never satisfied with what you had,” was the impatient interruption. “You always want to hear the jingle of gold. I’d rather the boy would marry a girl like my companion, without a penny, than forty such stately, false-hearted dames, with a million apiece.”

“You continue to like the girl as well as ever, then,” said Lady Randal, glad to change the subject.

“Like her! There isn’t her equal here to-night, for all you were so sure I’d be taken in. I tell you, Helen, these eyes of mine are good yet, if they have been well used for eighty years.”

“Where is she to-night?”

“Upstairs, reading; she would not come down, though I tried hard enough to make her. But go along to your friends, an old woman like me is not worth minding, besides, I’m going to bed presently.”

She waved her hand the same as she had to Isabel, and Lady Randal moved away, feeling anxious and miserable, despite her assumed indifference.

Unpleasant memories had been rudely aroused to-night, and the sting of conscience, mingled with remorse, was severe.

“Whatever could have made her rake up those old times?” she muttered, uneasily, as she glanced at her son, who was hovering about Isabel like a moth about a candle. “Can it be that she also noticed those jewels? It is lucky for me that Lord Dunforth never discovered the part I played in that tragedy—he never would have forgiven it. I wonder what I did with that note—destroyed it, I suppose. Oh, dear, what a memory Aunt Ruxley has! It is as keen as her tongue, and she has made me exceedingly uncomfortable; but I would not offend her for anything, on Charles’ account. I do hope he will be happy, and that he has chosen wisely; he is too good to be deceived—he is like his father, poor man! Ah, me! how many men have been taken in by the girls they have married; however, it is too late to be helped now.”

Such were Lady Randal’s reflections after leaving her aunt.

Doubtless she has been recognized before this as being the girl of whom Miss Mehetabel Douglas had told Brownie as having been the cause of her lifelong misery.

Yes, Lady Randal was that same Helen Capel. Finding, after she had accomplished her foul purpose, that she could not console her cousin, Lord Dunforth, for his loss, she turned her charms in another direction, and at last succeeded in winning a good and true man, Sir Ralph Randal, for a husband.

She had not lived the pleasantest life in the world with the baronet, or rather, it should be said, that he had discovered his mistake when it was too late.

She could not deceive him always, and after the irrevocable step had been taken he found that instead of a true, loving, and domestic wife, he had been entrapped into marrying a vain, frivolous girl, who cared more for fashion and society than she did for her family. His death had not seemed to break her heart, for after the year of mourning expired, she returned to society with as much zest as ever.

But when her eldest son was taken from her she felt the blow more keenly, and it seemed to change her.

Charles, the younger son, had always been the favorite, and she feared lest she should lose him, too, and from that time she devoted herself to him, and during her later years became apparently the self-sacrificing and loving mother.

All her hopes now centered in him, and she bent all her energies toward carving out a brilliant future for him. And yet there were times when she seemed so troubled and melancholy that for days, and even weeks, she would be unlike herself, and as if brooding over some hidden grief or sin.

She had long since banished the memories of those deeds of her early life.

They were not pleasant to recall.

But to-night those homely old proverbs, “Chickens always come home to roost,” “You’ll get your pay,” as uttered by Lady Ruxley, seemed to possess a strange significance, and sounded like uncanny prophecies in her ears.