"Spoiling your pretty hands with rough housework!"
"Ah, but I remember what you said the other day, and am going to take great care of my nails. And mother always taught me to wear gloves in housework."
"Don't you sometimes want to go back to England?"
Such a transfiguration took place in her face at the words! Her eyes shone, her cheeks flushed, her lips quivered.
"Ah!" she whispered, "I try not to think how much I want to go back there!"
"Would you thank any one who would take you?"
"As a governess, do you mean? But it would put papa to such expense if I were to leave him. And I think—I think there is something or some one that prevents his ever going back there at all."
"But if, for your sake, some one came forward and paid all your father's debts, and provided for him comfortably, and then sailed away with you in one of those nice white-funnelled steamers, and gave you a beautiful home in England, and surrounded you with everything that money and forethought could provide, and all for love of you, what would you say?"
"Why, who would do such a thing?"
"Some one who is very fond of you. Some one not very good, but who believes you could make him better by your sweet influence. Some one whose home is very lonely without a bright-faced Laline to look after things, and to sing about the house as I have heard you sing at the Rue Planché. Some one who loves you, Laline."
She stared into his face with wondering eyes which betrayed no self-consciousness.
"It sounds like a fairy-tale," she said.
"It is true, all the same. You are Cinderella, and I am a degenerate Fairy Prince, Laline!"
CHAPTER V.
Thus far had Wallace Armstrong proceeded in his unique love-making, when the lady he meant to wed in a few days' time disconcerted him by bursting into a hearty peal of laughter.
"Look at my hand," she said, pulling off her glove and showing a soft pink palm. "I had my fortune told several months ago, and I am not to fall in love until I am years older than I am now."
"Give me your hand," he said. "I know something of palmistry, too."
This statement was absolutely untrue. But, as he meant to leave no means untried to gain his end, and could see that the girl half believed in the fortune told by her hand, he resolved to practise on her childish credulity and superstition. In truth, he did not know one line from another, and could only decide that it was a nice soft girl's hand and eminently kissable.
"Show me your line of fate!" he said, peremptorily.
Laline eagerly pointed it out.
"As I suspected," he said, crumpling her hand together to emphasise the lines and looking absorbed in the study of them; "very early in your career you fall under the influence of a man of far stronger will than yours. His line of fate and yours run side by side, and only death can separate them!"
He spoke with much solemnity, but, more than his words, the magnetism of his touch affected Laline's sensitive nature. She shivered and turned pale.
"Can you really read that in my hand?" she asked, fearfully.
"Clearly. This man will love you, and you will not be able to escape from him. Before you are seventeen you will be his wife."
"Oh, it's impossible!"
"Not at all. It's inevitable," he said—"written indelibly, for all who understand to read, here in the centre of your hand!"
And, as he spoke in slow impressive tones, he pointed his finger at random into her upturned palm. Looking up to see the effect of his prophecy, he found that she was leaning back in her seat, pale to the lips.
"What is the matter, child?" he exclaimed.
"You will laugh," she answered, in a low troubled tone, "but, as you held my hand and told me these things, something flashed into my head that you were right, and that there would be in my life a will against which I should fight in vain. The feeling terrified me, and I can't forget it!"
She raised her hands to her eyes, in which tears were shining, and pressed them close. Wallace Armstrong watched her, surprised and amused by what he considered her folly and weak-mindedness. In reality Laline was neither foolish nor specially weak-minded, only abnormally sensitive to influences to which a coarser nature would have been impervious. Looking into Wallace Armstrong's bold bright eyes, in the depths of which a scornful smile was lurking, the young girl seemed to read there, better than any fortune-teller could inform her, a will, selfish, resolute, and cruel, a nature attracted by and yet strongly antagonistic to her own, a personality she might grow to fear and even, it might be, to hate, but which she would never be able to regard with indifference.
Not in so many words did these convictions come upon her, but the sense of them grew as she gazed, her soft, near-sighted eyes, that had something of the wistfulness of a dumb animal, straining to realize what she saw.
At last Wallace broke the silence with a laugh.
"If we sit so still, staring at each other, people will think that I am mesmerising you," he said. "And, by-the-way, I believe I could."
"Please don't try!" she exclaimed, starting from her seat and pushing her hair from her forehead with a quick nervous gesture peculiar to her. "I must be getting back home now to see after papa's dinner."
"I will walk up with you," he said; "but you haven't yet told me whether you would like to go back to England, leaving your father comfortably settled here, provided for for life, and with all his bills paid."
"Why do you ask me such questions," she said, "when you know what you suggest is impossible?"
Then an inspiration seized Armstrong. In his pocket was another advance from his uncle to provide his niece Laline with medicines, new clothes, and other necessaries. Wallace directed his steps to the Rue Royale.
"Come and look in this jeweller's shop-window," he said, "and tell me whether you are fond of trinkets."
"Very fond," she answered, "and I often look in here."
"Don't you want to have some of the pretty things?"
"I should, I dare say, if I had any money. But I have never had any jewelry except my dear mother's gold watch and chain. I hope I shall never part with that; but I don't wear it, because it is a great deal out of repair, and I can't afford to have it put right."
"Come inside and look at the things," he said. "Oh, it's all right," he added, seeing that she hesitated; "I have to buy something for myself!"
Once within the jeweller's shop, Wallace approached the attendant and held towards him Laline's hand.
"I want a very pretty ring for this young lady," he said in French. "Take off your glove, Laline."
In her astonishment she did not notice that, for the first time, he called her by her name without any prefix. Before she could do more than stammer a few words of inquiry, Wallace had deftly unbuttoned her glove and drawn it off, and the smiling attendant was showing her a trayful of rings.
"Here is one suitable to mademoiselle," the man suggested, showing her two tiny pearl hearts intertwined with a true-lover's knot.
"They are all too large!" Wallace complained. "No—I can't wait for one to be altered. Have you nothing smaller?"
A turquoise heart, surrounded by very small diamonds, proved so small that, once it was thrust upon the girl's finger, it could hardly be withdrawn. Wallace beat the price down to a hundred francs, and paid the money over the counter before Laline could do more than gasp an astonished protest.
"Now that you are formally engaged to me," he said, "I may as well order the wedding-ring, too."
This he proceeded to do, and, having at length discovered one of suitable smallness, he slipped the little parcel into his pocket, after paying for it, and left the shop, drawing Laline's arm through his in an authoritative manner as he did so.
"We will fetch your father," he said, "and we will all dine in the town together to celebrate our engagement."
"But, Mr. Armstrong," gasped Laline, "you must be in fun! Do you know that I am only sixteen?"
"Well, plenty of your friends over here get married at sixteen," he returned, "and my own mother was married before her seventeenth birthday!"
"But I don't want to marry you!"
"Not to go to England, to live in a big, beautiful house under my care and that of my old uncle, one of the worthiest and kindest old gentlemen alive, who is simply longing to welcome you as his daughter, and writes to me about you nearly every day?"
"Why, what can you mean?" she was beginning, when he drew from his pocket the letter from his uncle which he had received that morning, and, carefully folding down one portion, held it before her eyes.
The lines which the girl read ran thus:—
"Give my love to Laline, and tell her how much I look forward to welcoming her in my house. If she is like your description, she must indeed be a sweet and womanly young creature. Be sure to buy her all that she requires. I want my niece to enter her new home in the style that befits a lady of gentle birth and careful training."
"I can't understand it!" exclaimed Laline, bewildered. "You never told me that you had been writing about me to your uncle. And what does he mean by calling me his niece?"
"I told him I hoped to marry you very shortly."
"But you never even asked me!"
"You are too young to know your own mind, so it had to be made up for you," he said, laughing. "Now listen, Laline dear. As soon as I saw you it went to my heart to think that you were wasting your youth and beauty and refinement among such coarse and sordid surroundings. An atmosphere of unpaid bills and greasy cards and cognac was not suited for so fresh and sweet a flower. I know your father thoroughly well. I won't talk about him lest I should hurt your feelings. But he is not the man to be entrusted with the care of a girl like you; and, had your dear mother lived to see you degraded into a half-starved kitchen drudge, friendless and neglected——"
"Don't—ah, don't!" cried Laline, passionately. "I can't bear it!"
By that outburst he understood how keenly the girl felt her position, and how well-timed had been his allusion to her lost mother. At once he followed up his advantage.
"You want a home, my dear little girl," he continued, drawing her hand through his arm and patting it affectionately. "This is not the place for you, and these are not the surroundings you ought to have. In my home you will enjoy what should be your position by right—that of an English lady! You will be petted and loved and cared for, you will have your own rooms and your own furniture, pocket-money to spend on pretty frocks and little presents for your friends, plenty of books to read, ample leisure and servants to wait upon you. My uncle, Alexander Wallace, is one of the richest bankers in London, and I am his favourite nephew and heir. You will have just what money you want now; and, later on, you will be an extremely rich woman, able to buy diamonds and horses and carriages and everything that you wish for in the world."
She turned her wondering eyes upon him.
"And what makes you offer me all these things?" she asked, simply.
"Because I love you," was the answer on the tip of his tongue; and he was angry with both her and himself because he could not speak it. Something in her absolute innocence and candour disarmed him. Almost for one moment he wished that he could tell her the whole truth in words of brutal frankness—"Because I am a ruined and dishonoured good-for-nothing, and my only hope of help consists in the immediate production of a wife at my rich uncle's house! I have chosen you because you are very pretty, and too young and ignorant of the world to disbelieve my lying statements. Also because you have a mercenary scamp of a father, who has sold you to me for my wife for a consideration! I don't pretend to love you; much of your society would bore me to death. But I don't intend to have much of your society; and you are just the good, sweet-faced, refined sort of a little girl to get round my uncle, and coax money out of him for my extravagances!"
This is what Wallace Armstrong longed for one brief moment to say. He felt that he should despise himself less than if he were successful in deceiving her. But he was not in the habit of following good impulses when they stood in the way of his interests; and he slipped again into lying, and cleverly affecting a kindly and tender interest in the girl, until Rue Planché was reached and they entered the street together.
Then suddenly Laline, who had been listening to him in silence, stopped. She had something she wished to say to him before she entered the house. Her tones were low and earnest, and her eyes were grave.
"It is all very strange and wonderful," she said, "that you, who have known me so short a time, and your uncle, who has never seen me, should love me and want me to be with you always. I don't deserve it, and I don't understand it! There must be so many beautiful girls who would be much more suitable to you than I can be. And—I can't understand why, and it seems dreadfully ungrateful—but all the time you are talking I seem to hear whispered in my ear, 'Don't listen; he does not mean what he says!' And though you are so kind, and though I long to go back to England, and cannot bear the life here, I—I am afraid of you!"
Although she half whispered the last words, there was no mistaking the startled look in her eyes. At that moment Armstrong positively disliked her, although her slight opposition only had the effect of making him more than ever determined to carry through his project.
What business had this ignorant child with intuitions warning her against him? Was it possible that under her demure and child-like exterior there lurked a spirit which would not easily be swayed and mastered by his own? Some hint of this flashed upon him as he watched her and listened to her faltering confession.
"You need never be afraid of me," he said, gently. "My ways are unpolished, I know. I have been knocking about in Australia for nearly five years, roughing it in the Bush and among miners. I wanted to see something of the world before marrying and settling down in England. But you shall cure my uncouth ways, and correct all my other defects, too, my dear Laline!"
Once in the house, and alone with Captain Garth in his den, Wallace's tone changed.
"For Heaven's sake give me a drop of brandy to wash out of my mouth the taste of all the lies I've been telling!" he cried, irritably. "It's my opinion, Garth, that little bread-and-butter prig of yours will be dear at the price!"
"She's a good child, and won't give you any trouble," Laline's father assured him, soothingly. "Have you broached the subject of the marriage to her yet?"
"Your fingers are itching to touch the two 'quid' a week, I see!" sneered Armstrong, as he tossed off a glass of neat cognac. "Oh, it's safe enough! She's delighted at the idea, which is more than I am. However, it's got to be gone through with. Unluckily, I've promised to take her and you to dine with me in the town this evening. Can't we put her off?"
Garth shook his head dubiously.
"Better not," he said. "If she's left alone, she'll get thinking—she's a great one for thinking and dreaming and fancying. Now that the thing's settled, she had better not be left alone this evening."
"As you like. But, mind, I've had enough of nursery courtship; and she mustn't expect to see much of me during the next few days. On the third, as soon as the ceremony is over, we will cross by the midday boat; and Mr. and Mrs. Wallace Armstrong will proceed to London and dine on fat veal, au Fils Prodigue! It will be time enough to tell Laline the day when her frocks are ready."
"Here's to your happy married life!" observed Garth, pouring himself out some brandy. "I hope you'll be kind to her, Armstrong, when I am not by to look after her!"
Up-stairs in her own room, Laline was kneeling before her little dressing-table of painted deal, gazing earnestly at her dead mother's portrait.
"Mother," she murmured, with tears in her eyes, "if you could only speak to me and advise me! Is it your voice which seems to tell me not to listen to Mr. Armstrong? And yet he seems so kind, and he is going to be so good and generous to papa! Such a fairy prince to such a poor little penniless Cinderella! How good it is of him to be so sorry for me—to sympathise with me so deeply about losing you, and to understand how much it would hurt you to know just how things have been since you left me! I remember how you once said to me, while I sat reading at your feet and you smoothed my hair, 'I hope and pray that my little girl may some day marry a good man, who will love her for herself, as a woman should be loved!' I have not remembered that speech until to-day. I wanted to wait for years before I thought of love and marriage for myself. There is no one to help me and advise me. Oh, mother, if you could only come back for one moment and tell me what to do!"
But the wills of two unscrupulous men were warring against the vague intuitions of an inexperienced girl; and every day the net was drawn more closely about Laline's feet, until the dawn of the thirtieth of August, her wedding-morning.
CHAPTER VI.
"Happy is the bride the sun shines on!"
Laline had heard the words somewhere, and remembered them as she woke very early on the thirtieth of August and saw the rain pouring in a steady flood upon the sun-dried earth.
She stood looking out on the mean little back street of St. Denis, commanded by her bedroom window. What outlook would there be from the windows of her new home? she wondered. Old Mr. Wallace's house was vast and dreary, situated over his banking-establishment in the Strand, London; from his nephew's brief description it was a paradise of luxury and comfort. Laline was all agog with excitement. She did not want to marry Wallace Armstrong; she was fascinated by and yet afraid of him. But she had become so convinced of his disinterested goodness to her, and she was so troubled by her father's debts and difficulties, that it seemed wicked to refuse his offer. And yet she had not said "Yes;" her "Yes" had been taken for granted, her father had effusively blessed her as the means of delivering him from his embarrassments, and Bénoîte and her few acquaintances could hardly shower enough congratulations upon her for her unique good fortune, which clearly astonished them.
"So rich a man, so handsome, so distinguished-looking, the heir to a millionaire, and nothing would content him but marrying la p'tite Gart! It was certainly very wonderful, although she had greatly improved in appearance since she had taken to long frocks and put her hair up."
Such were among the neighbours' comments; and every one seemed to envy Laline's good fortune. And yet this little beggar-maid could not subdue a secret fear of her King Cophetua; and as she stood now, looking very fair and saint-like in her long, white gown, with her bright hair floating about her shoulders, and the wistful look of her hazel eyes, a little quiver of dread passed over her as she thought of that unknown future to which the flying minutes were leading her.
Her wedding-dress, which was also to be her travelling-costume, lay on the bed, a plain blue serge of perfect fit and cut, in which she looked very tall and slim, a neat little blue straw hat, and a tweed travelling-cape. Laline had very little more real notion of love or of the responsibilities of a wife than the little Bertins next door; but her heart beat fast as she finished dressing and heard her future husband's voice as he entered the hall below.
"Don't I look grown-up?" she asked, as she ran down-stairs to greet him.
Wallace was in a bad temper that morning, having sat up until four o'clock losing money at cards. He kissed Laline's cheek without much effusion.
"I hope you are going to do your hair up," he observed. "You look about twelve with all that about your shoulders!"
"I haven't finished dressing it. It's all got to be coiled and twisted and pinned away. But I thought you would like to see me in my new gown."
"Well, don't waste time dressing! We have to be at the Consul's at ten; and the boat leaves at ten minutes past two o'clock. It's a beastly morning; I've got wet through coming over from the hotel!"
An hour later the three set forth in a closed fiacre, accompanied by an elderly sporting friend of Captain Garth, to whom the latter owed a good deal of money, and who went ostensibly as a witness, but in reality to make sure that Miss Garth's marriage with Alexander Wallace's nephew was not a creation of his friend and debtor's facile brain.
It was by no means a festive party. The bridegroom was morose and sullen, and did not once glance at the poor little bride, who sat in silence facing him, with a startled look in her eyes. Captain Garth was restless and voluble, striving, by his forced cheerfulness, to impart something like suitable brightness to the occasion; his friend Mr. Mitcham endeavoured to pay compliments to Laline, who received his well-meant efforts with a dreamy wonder that was not encouraging; the cab splashed through the muddy streets, the rain beat upon the windows, and at every yard traversed Laline's spirits sank to a low ebb, and her mind became more and more overshadowed by dismal forebodings of the future in store for her.
The Consul, a grey-haired fussy man, with a preoccupied manner, made short work of the ceremony; and to Laline, whose ideas of weddings were chiefly gained from those she had witnessed in the village church in Westmoreland, there was something bald and unmeaning in the total absence of any religious ceremony, something that savoured of a bargain made across a counter, and not of a holy sacrament to be honoured throughout a lifetime.
A few words spoken by an elderly gentleman in ordinary attire in the presence of his secretary, his clerk, Garth, Armstrong, Mitcham, and Laline, in a bare-looking office, a few statements made by a man and a woman, a few signatures and the payment of certain fees, and Laline Garth had become Laline Armstrong, wife of the tall, frowning young man who stood facing her with an aching head which had not yet recovered from the gambling and brandy-drinking of the preceding evening.
It was all startling, shocking, and painful to Laline. To the last they had not told her that hers was to be solely a civil marriage; to the last she had hoped that a clergyman might bless her in a holier name before she started on her new life. She was half a child still, but woman enough to feel deeply the inadequacy of such a ceremony as had just taken place to satisfy the requirements of her mind.
Almost as soon as the little party left the Consular residence the bridegroom announced his intention of going to his hotel, "to put his things together," a proposition which his father-in-law urgently combated.
"It isn't half-past ten yet!" growled Armstrong. "That Consul-fellow fixed the ceremony so infernally early! What in the world can one do with oneself in the Rue Planché on a pouring wet day like this?"
"There are plenty of little things to talk over," said Garth, slipping his arm through that of his son-in-law. "We have to drink success to your married life too," he added, insinuatingly.
"In that filthy brandy of yours? There's one good thing about going back to England, one can get something fit to drink there!"
With such bad grace Armstrong agreed to accompany his bride and her father home. Captain Garth was fully determined to keep Wallace securely under his eye until he saw the newly-married pair safely on board the boat bound for England. He had had some experience of the young man's moods, and knew that he was quite capable of getting extremely intoxicated in the town out of mere bravado, and in that condition presenting himself at the boat, or even, at the worst, of forgetting that appointment altogether.
"Poor little girl! She's caught a Tartar!" was Mitcham's mental comment, as he took leave of the bridal party, who, in another fiacre, splashed their way back to the High Town.
Here the little bride was dismissed to her room, to complete her packing. But, most unluckily for the plans of Messrs. Armstrong and Garth, it so chanced that almost as soon as Laline arrived up-stairs, and before she had even removed her hat, she remembered that she had left her keys in the salle-à-manger below, and forthwith she descended in search of them.
Nell the cat and her kitten were playing on the floor of the salle, and the little bride slipped on her knees beside them to bid them an affectionate and tearful farewell. Nell's kitten had an untidy habit of dragging any plaything it could find from one room to another about the house; as she caressed it, Laline remembered that her three keys on a little piece of string were among the kitten's favourite toys, which might account for the fact that they were at this present moment nowhere to be found.
On consulting Bénoîte, the latter declared that she had seen the "le p'tit chat" amusing itself with some keys on the floor of the salon that morning; but, as she never meddled with anything of Monsieur's, she had not rescued them. Clearly the salon was the place to search for the missing keys, and with that idea Laline turned the handle of her father's den.
The two men were sitting by Garth's desk with their heads bent over a paper; close at hand stood the cognac, a syphon, and two well-filled glasses. They seemed absorbed in the contents of the paper before them, and did not hear Laline's timid turning of the handle of the door. Before, however, she had opened it sufficiently wide to enable her to enter, some words, loudly spoken in her bridegroom's voice, arrested her attention, and made her suddenly stop as though turned to stone.
"You've only got to alter the date of the certificate from the thirtieth of August to the thirtieth of July, and the thing is done. I wrote to my uncle that I was married and that my wife was starving just twenty-four days ago. I didn't say how long I'd been married; and, as I landed at Marseilles in the middle of July on my way to Paris, I should have had plenty of time to get on here and through the ceremony by the thirtieth. Of course, Laline doesn't look as if she were starving, though I think you've kept her pretty short in the matter of food. But, if she's only sea-sick, she may look woebegone enough for the character!"
"Your difficulty will be," said Garth, "to persuade her to back you up in those few little necessary lies. For one thing, I have stated her age as seventeen; for another, she must be made to understand that she's been married a month, and has been starving in Boulogne for some days. But your toughest job will be to induce her to state that she's the orphan daughter of a clergyman, and that she met you coming home from Australia. It's almost a pity to have left all these very important details to the last moment."
"It's all the fault of that humbugging training of hers," growled Armstrong. "But I'm not going to let any whimpering school-girl spoil my prospects. Laline's my wife, and she's got to obey me. I shall impress upon her that my uncle, who is very particular, would never forgive me for marrying the daughter of such a man as you, ex-keeper of a gambling-club, where I got fleeced and ruined five years ago,—a man who daren't show his face in England; and I shall assure her that I invented this story of a dead parson-father in order to spare her natural feelings."
"Stop a bit!" exclaimed Garth, whose flesh-tints had deepened from crimson to purple while Armstrong was speaking. "I draw the line at that. It's bad enough to be deprived of my daughter's companionship; but I won't have her mind poisoned against me; understand that! You can tell her that I am connected with the turf, as I suggested before, and that your uncle has a Puritanical horror of horse-racing. But I won't have my memory blackened in the mind of the only kith-and-kin I have in the world!"
"I shall arrange it as I said!" said Armstrong obstinately, while he helped himself to more brandy. "You've sold me your daughter for a hundred a year, to be afterwards raised on two separate occasions. You wanted money, and so did I. Both of us were stone-broke. I wrote to my uncle, pretending I had a starving wife; he took me at my word, and promised to forgive me and provide for me if I would produce her. It was necessary to find a wife immediately, and desirable that she should be too young or too silly to ask questions. I settled on your daughter. The bargain was struck, and she passed from your keeping to mine, having filled her very proper mission of providing us both with money. But, now that she is mine, and I have saddled myself with a lanky, half-fledged school-girl, you have no more part in her, and I shall speak to her of you or of anybody else in just what terms I choose!"
"My daughter is my daughter until she leaves my roof, at least!" cried Garth his patience suddenly deserting him. "I'm sick of your bullying, blustering, hectoring ways! The settlement as to my future income is all signed and sealed and witnessed, and what is to prevent me from informing Laline of your true character before she leaves this house? What authority would you exercise over her if I told her your record? A gambler, a drunkard, a bully, and a forger, who has only escaped a felon's cell by the leniency of an uncle, who shipped him off to Australia in order to get rid of him!"
Captain Garth rose while he spoke, and made as though he were approaching the door, when, suddenly, Armstrong sprang from his seat with a smothered oath, and caught him roughly by the shoulder. Just for one moment Laline, gazing with distended eyes through the crack of the door, saw them, the faces of both excited and angry—Garth's with a red rage of indignation, and Armstrong's with a white cruelty which was infinitely more dangerous. Then, as the two men struggled, the sound of scuffling commenced, drowning Laline's flying footsteps, and enabling her to gain the staircase and her own apartment unseen and unheard.
One only idea filled her mind—to escape at that instant from both these men; and the strange lucidity of thought which comes to some emotional natures at moments of high tension seemed suddenly to make clear to her ways and means.
It was only a few minutes past eleven; she had heard the church-clocks chime the hour while she listened at the salon door. The Folkestone boat did not leave until ten minutes past two; if Armstrong and her father had their luncheon served to them at twelve, they would not think of her until past one. She would tell Bénoîte that she was going to call upon some friends before leaving Boulogne, and that she would be back in time for the boat; she would lock her bedroom-door and throw away the key in order to still further delay pursuit. But then—where was she to go?
All her thoughts and wishes pointed to England. And yet where in her native country was she to make her home until she could find means to earn her own living, as she had so long desired to?
Her uncle, the clergyman in Sussex, had held no communication with his sister since her marriage with Randolph Garth, and only as a last resource could Laline entertain the idea of seeking shelter under his roof. But there was a much-loved school-friend of the late Mrs. Garth, a widow named Melville, whose constant and affectionate letters had been much looked forward to by the little household in the Westmoreland village. Her messages to her old friend's little daughter had been of the kindest description. She kept a girls'-school in Norwood, and Laline remembered her address; but since her arrival in Boulogne she had had no communication with Mrs. Melville, who, Laline realised, would be shocked by the Bohemian mode of life in the Rue Planché.
Laline had not seen this lady since she was a very little child; but she remembered her as kind, and believed that, for her dead mother's sake, Mrs. Melville might be induced to help her, and to Mrs. Melville's protection Laline resolved to fly.
There was no time to be lost indeed. The girl could hear men's voices in angry discussion below. England must be reached as speedily as possible; and yet to travel by the Folkestone boat was clearly out of the question. The Calais route was shorter, if Laline could only get to Calais; and by that journey she would arrive in London more than hour before her pursuers, should they even guess that she had escaped thither.
Providentially, she recalled the fact that the train from Paris to Calais stopped at Boulogne for a few minutes before proceeding on its journey at a quarter to twelve o'clock. Laline's mind was at once made up; and in less time than it takes to tell it she had seized her cloak and gloves, locked her bedroom-door, slipped the key in her pocket, and astonished Bénoîte by darting into the kitchen and whispering a hurried message in her ear before leaving the house by the way into the Rue St. Denis.
Her entire worldly wealth consisted of one franc and fifty centimes; but her father's chronic impecuniosity had taught Laline the method by which the poor and improvident raise money, and, with a beating heart and a hot flush on her cheek, Laline stopped on her way to the station to change the two rings which Armstrong had given her, the turquoise and diamond engagement-ring, the hated wedding-ring, together with her much-loved mother's watch and chain, for money wherewith to buy her freedom.
For it seemed to Laline that she would be free of the horrible, loveless bargain which her marriage had been could she but tear from her finger the gold circlet which Wallace Armstrong had an hour ago placed there, could she but put the sea between herself and him, and, losing herself in the vastness of London, change her name and live out her life away from him and his evil influence.
Her heart was full of the most passionate indignation against both him and her father; of the latter, indeed, she hardly dared to think, so deeply did she resent his treatment of her; but of Armstrong she thought with a growing fear and horror, which dwelt upon the brutality of his speeches and the cruelty of his expression, until he seemed to her to be scarcely human. Rather death than a return to the care of either of those men! Terror lent wings to her feet, until, breathless, panting, but with a great sigh of relief, she jumped into the already moving train for Calais.
Fortune favoured the runaway. The passage was smooth enough under a gray, lowering sky, and Laline's heart leaped within her at sight of the white cliffs of her native land in the afternoon. Before six o'clock on that eventful day the Dover train steamed into Charing-Cross Station, and Laline Armstrong stepped out upon the platform, a slim, girlish figure, alone and friendless in the great city of London.
CHAPTER VII.
On a winter afternoon in London, rather more than four years after Laline's flight from Boulogne, a beautiful young woman stood in the ground-floor sitting-room of a London lodging-house, poring over the advertisements headed "Wanted" in a daily paper.
To the owner of the house, who was a relative of her old friend Mrs. Melville, of Norwood, this young lady was known as Miss Lina Grahame; but the reader has already made her acquaintance as Laline Garth, who, on a certain rainy morning in Boulogne, became the bride of Wallace Armstrong.
For four years Laline had earned her living in the girls'-school kept by her mother's old school-fellow—four well-occupied uneventful years, spent in the schoolroom, the dormitory, the Crystal Palace, and walks in the neighbourhood of Norwood, looking after the younger pupils, teaching French to the elder ones, preparing and correcting lessons and studying for examinations, with the duties of every hour in the day well-defined and clear, a healthy but monotonous life of gray routine and unchangeable discipline.
And now, at the age of forty-two, Mrs. Melville, Laline's employer and friend, had been carried off to Canada by a cousin and old sweetheart, who, finding himself at the age of forty-five a well-to-do widower, with four young children, had bethought him of that eminent instructress of youth, his widowed cousin, and in a very practical letter had proposed to come over to England, marry her, and take her back with him to Canada to look after his household and his children.
Such an offer, in the eyes of a buxom business-like woman of forty-two, was too advantageous to be refused. Mrs. Melville thought so; and, after speedily disposing of her house and selling the scholastic good-will and name to her senior teacher, she married her cousin with the utmost composure, and dutifully accompanied him to his Canadian home in order to undertake the mental and moral education of her four step-children.
To her junior governess, Miss Lina Grahame, Mrs. Melville gave on parting a travelling-clock, an ivory-bound prayer-book, and some excellent advice.
"I have only one fault to find with you, my dear," she had said, kindly—"you are too pretty. It grew to be quite awkward sending away the foreign masters because they made themselves silly about you, and the pupils noticed it. No—I don't tell you to cut your hair off or to wear blue spectacles; but I do say that I am not surprised that Miss Finch doesn't want to keep you on with the school, although you have such nice ways with the children and such a good French accent. I have myself been a very successful teacher—but then I have always been plain. Now, although it goes against the grain to say it, for a girl with your appearance I suppose that the most desirable profession is marriage."
Laline had suddenly flushed at Mrs. Melville's words, and then burst into a peal of laughter.
"Now, Mrs. Melville," she had cried, "that comes very oddly from you, who are just marrying for the second time! And I have often told you that it is useless to talk like that to me, as I shall never marry."
This parting conversation recurred to Laline as she turned over the advertisement-pages of the papers on this wintry afternoon in search of a suitable scholastic engagement.
"I wonder," she reflected, "that all those years I never let out that I was really married in talking to Mrs. Melville. I often felt strongly tempted to tell her, but that it seemed impossible that just a visit to a Consul's house, and some mumbled words, and a ring which I never wore, can mean a tie for life. It is not as if it had been in a church, and I had gone through a proper religious ceremony, with some kindly-faced clergyman to utter the beautiful words I know. I should have held that to be binding; but as to this, it all seems now like an incident in a half-forgotten dream. And yet I suppose that, if Wallace Armstrong is not dead, I really am his wife, and shall be as long as he and I both live. Yet if he saw me now he would not know me, and I think I should hardly recognise him. It seems absurd. Luckily I have never been the least little bit in love, and do not mean to be, except in day-dreams and with wholly imaginary persons. I never felt anything, I know, when Monsieur Marchand and Herr Pfeiffer got sentimental about me. I suppose they behaved like that just because I was what Mrs. Melville called pretty. She thinks my looks will stand in my way; she would have been amused at my impudence in answering yesterday this advertisement, which I see is inserted again to-day."
And, with her soft eyes sparkling with fun, Laline read over the somewhat remarkable insertion to which she had replied.
"Wanted, as companion and amanuensis to a lady, a well-educated young girl, refined and beautiful, of high character and gentle birth. Apply by letter, enclosing photograph, to Occult, Box 72,631, advertisement-office, Daily Post."
"Occult, whoever she may be, must be rather mad," Laline decided. "But I haven't a doubt that she will get dozens of answers. I wonder what she is like? There is an originality about the advertisement which is fascinating; and to be a companion and amanuensis sounds much nicer and more vague than to be teacher in a school."
At that identical moment the repeated double-knock of a telegraph-boy resounded through the hall. Then came a tap at the door of Laline's sitting-room, and a slatternly little servant entered and presented a telegram addressed to "Miss Grahame."
The message ran thus:—
"Re Occult's advertisement. Come at once to 21, Queen Mary Crescent, Kensington. Photograph and letter approved."
It was with excitement not unmingled with a curious sense of trepidation that Laline got out of a hansom cab, the driver of which had had considerable trouble in discovering the narrow cul-de-sac turning which led to St. Mary's Crescent—a row of old-fashioned houses, mellowed by age and smoke to a deep crimson colour. Near them waved the tall trees of Kensington Gardens, and before their narrow green-painted doors two steps led to a walk three feet wide and a stone-paved yard, over which the wheels of Laline's cab clattered noisily, awakening the protests of more than one pet-dog from the quiet houses into which the noise from the busy thoroughfare of the High Street came only as a distant and soothing murmur.
As Laline laid her hand on the knocker of number seven, she became suddenly embarrassed as to the name of its occupant. Could she ask for Miss or Mrs. Occult?
"I have come in answer to a telegram about an advertisement," she finally announced, as the door was opened by a neatly-dressed parlour-maid, and Laline found herself in a very small square hall dimly lighted by an oil-lamp, and furnished with tapestry-hangings and two oak settles of old-fashioned make.
The servant opened the door of a room to the right of the entrance, and asked the visitor to step inside. Almost at the same moment a young lady darted down the staircase into the hall, so swiftly and suddenly as to suggest the idea that she had been on the watch for the visitor, and joined Laline at the door of the room into which she was being shown.
"It is my aunt who has sent for you," the new-comer whispered confidentially to Laline, after carefully closing the door behind her; "and I do hope she will engage you! The moment I saw your face at the door I took such a fancy to you!"
The speaker was a girl of apparently Laline's own age, well developed, and of medium height, with curiously lithe feline movements. Her dress, of yellow-green serge, was loosely draped about her and caught here and there by silver buckles, her skin was white as paper and framed in an untidy halo of silky yellow-red hair. Regular features, oddly-gleaming green-gray eyes under pale-yellow lashes, and narrow curved red lips completed an ensemble which to Laline was at once repellent and attractive.
"If this was the niece, what would the aunt be?" she asked herself, fascinated by the strange brightness of the girl's eyes. But, as Laline gazed, her new acquaintance suddenly lowered her white eyelids, and the trick struck the other as affected and insincere.
The same cat-like quality which characterised her movements was shown also in her voice, which was marked by a purring and caressing intonation.
"Do you know who my aunt is?" she asked.
And then, as Laline shook her head, the red-haired girl enunciated her aunt's name with much impressiveness.
"She is Mrs. Vandeleur—Mrs. Sibyl Vandeleur."
The name meant nothing to Laline, but she saw that the red-haired girl expected her to be struck by it, and she hastened to explain her unmoved attitude.
"I know nothing of London celebrities," she said; "I have not lived in London since I was a child."
"Oh, that accounts for your not having heard of her!" said the other, evidently disappointed. "My aunt is extremely well known; and I should have thought that, to any one who reads the papers——"
"But I don't read the papers!" put in Laline. "I have never had time."
The other girl drew back her head, and appeared to be studying her.
"How delightful!" she murmured, sympathetically. "I should like to be like that—it leaves so many things to be found out. You have lived all your life at Norwood, haven't you?"
The question was asked with such point-blank directness, but, at the same time, with such an appearance of spontaneous simplicity, that Laline was a little taken aback. With the strange intuition which she had retained from her childish days, she already distrusted the apparent friendliness of this picturesque stranger, and she accordingly framed her answer in vague and reserved tones.
"I have lived for a part of my life at Norwood," she answered.
"At a girls'-school? That must be a dull life, but nice and restful for the nerves. Have you any nerves? This house is the worst possible place for you if you have."
The last words were uttered in a very low voice, after a quick glance round the room.
"I don't think I am particularly nervous," Laline replied.
"But you look nervous," remarked the red-haired girl. "Those delicate faces, with pale-pink skins and dark eyes and auburn hair, are always the nervous ones. Now I am colourless and lymphatic, so this house doesn't hurt me!"
"And why is it likely to hurt me?" inquired Laline, calmly.
"Hush—don't talk so loudly! I liked your face so much that I thought I ought to speak to you just to put you on your guard!"
She glanced round her again, and, drawing nearer to Laline, breathed rather than spoke in her ear—
"Are you afraid of ghosts?"
Before Laline could answer, a thin but silvery voice broke upon the silence, and caused the red-haired girl to start guiltily from her companion's side.
"Go to your room, Clare—I wish to speak to Miss Grahame alone!"
Without a word Clare stole away, leaving Laline tête-à-tête with a lady whom she rightly judged to be "Occult," otherwise Mrs. Sibyl Vandeleur.
Standing before the picturesque background of dark-red plush curtains which draped the folding-doors through which she had entered, Mrs. Vandeleur appeared to Laline one of the most picturesque figures she had ever seen. Rather under the medium height, and of extreme thinness and fragility, she looked more like a spirit than a woman, an effect heightened by her powdered hair, dressed loosely and high upon her head, her piercing, dark eyes, ivory-white skin, and the soft silvery-gray draperies swathed round her slender form. In her thin hand she held a pair of gold-rimmed glasses, the handle of which was thickly encrusted with turquoise and garnets in an old-fashioned gold setting, and through these she peered in a bird-like manner at Laline, with her head poised a little on one side.
"What is your name," she asked—"your full name, given you at baptism?"
The terms of the question rather disconcerted Laline, and there was a perceptible hesitation in her voice as she replied—
"I am called Lina Grahame."
"That is not your real name!"
"It is the one by which I am known."
"That means," said Mrs. Vandeleur, putting down her eye-glasses and tapping her thin fingers with them, "that you have reasons for concealing your identity?"
"I had at one time, Mrs. Vandeleur, and I have now got used to the names of Lina Grahame, to which I have some right!"
"The surname was a family name?"
"Yes!"
Grahame was indeed the maiden name of Laline's mother, and the girl was startled and interested by Mrs. Vandeleur's surmise.
"I was often called Lina as a child," she added, quickly, to forestall Mrs. Vandeleur's interrogatories.
"The mystery concerns a man," said the little lady in gray, peering again at Laline through her gold-rimmed glasses. "And yet your face——Take off your glove—no, the left hand—and let me look at your lines!"
Laline obeyed. As she did so, with startling distinctness there flashed back upon her memory a similar scene in which she had taken part more than four years ago. In her mind's eye she saw it all again—the hot stirless afternoon in mid-August, the sun's rays shining over a long stretch of gleaming sand and peeping under the straw hat-brim of a big black-haired Englishman with insolent, bright blue eyes. By his side sat a thin over-grown girl of sixteen, listening in rapt silence while he told her fortune by the lines of her hand, and prophesied that all her life through she would be haunted by the influence of a stronger will than hers, and that, before the age of seventeen, she would marry a man who would never cease to dominate her life until death should part them.
Half dreamily, with her thoughts elsewhere, she began to listen while Mrs. Vandeleur, in a level, monotonous voice, as though speaking words dictated to her rather than spontaneous utterances, began to repeat aloud what she professed to read in Laline's hand.
"Early in your life," she murmured, "you were subjected to strangely-opposing influences. Your career has been unlike that of girls of your age. Let me look at your eyes; the light is bad, and I am near-sighted but, before I see them, I will tell you their colour—it will be that of the darkest hazel-nut, a mossy green, with red-brown lights here and there. Do you dream much and vividly?"
"Constantly. And by day as well as by night, I am ashamed to say!" Laline answered, laughing. "I am a born dreamer."
"You are just the person I want!" exclaimed Mrs. Vandeleur, a touch of restless excitement showing itself in her voice and manner. "My niece Clare cannot dream. A dreamer—a day-dreamer—must have a pure white soul, must be untouched by the world, and far above all monetary considerations. What is your age? I could find out by your hands, but I know that I can believe your words."
"I was twenty last August."
"You look younger; you have not yet lost your child-mind. You have never been in love—oh, I know you haven't—you need not tell me!"
"I have certainly never been in love with any one alive."
"That means that you have had ideals, and have loved them in dreams and waking fancies?"
"Sometimes."
"Keep your ideals for your dreams, child, and love them there. In real life you will never meet them. There is but little ideality in end-of-the-century Englishmen. We read the old fairy-tale of the Briar-Rose Princess, and are glad that she awakes at the Prince's kiss. But she was much happier dreaming. In her dreams he and she would never grow old, would never fall sick, would never tire of loving, would never die: autumn winds would never blow down summer leaves, or spring flowers wither at the touch of frost. Life is full of sadness, full of disillusions! Only in dreams and fancies can true happiness be found!"
Something in the sadness of Mrs. Vandeleur's sweet voice brought the tears to Laline's eyes. This woman, with her fairy-like appearance and disconnected talk, her pretensions to sibylline magic, her ready intuition, quick observation, and random guesses at truths she could not know, possessed an undeniable fascination, to which older and more experienced brains than Laline's were wont to succumb. The girl felt that she had met a friend, and one wholly in sympathy with an especial side of her nature; and Mrs. Vandeleur, for her part, had discovered just such a personality as she required, sensitive, impressionable, yet maidenly, reserved, and proud.
"You will make your home here with me, of course," she said, patting Laline's hand. "Bring your things here directly; your room has been waiting for you a long time. Fifty pounds a year and all your expenses. You won't find it too much, for I shall want you always to be picturesquely dressed; but come to me when you require more, and you shall have it. No—I ask no references. Your face and your hand are sufficient references for me. I shall study your hand when I mean to know more. One thing I have learned from it already: in the troubled time before you will want me as a friend—you will come to me for counsel, and I will give it."
CHAPTER VIII.
Laline dined that evening with Clare Cavan, Mrs. Vandeleur's niece.
"Aunt Cissy never eats before people," the latter explained. "She thinks it's a great pity we have to eat at all. She's a dear sweet thing, and I quite agree with her that eating is very mundane; but we can't all of us live on air. Aunt Cissy tries to, but even she can't quite succeed. I call her Aunt Cissy when we are alone because her real name is Cecilia. But since she became celebrated she has taken the name of 'Sibyl,' which is more suggestive of mystery, you know."
There was a veiled sneer in the words which made Laline glance quickly across the table at Clare's face. But Miss Cavan was eating her dinner with a placid countenance untouched by sarcasm, her light-yellow eyelashes veiling her eyes.
"I am perfectly beside myself with delight that aunt has chosen you!" Clare presently remarked. "You have no idea what a number of answers she had to her advertisement. That was through putting in the word 'beautiful.' Such old bags sent their photographs, too, and answers and pictures are still pouring in by every post. Did Aunt Cecilia tell you anything about the nature of your duties?"
"No."
"That is just like her! She is always so vague. Perhaps, when you know all about this house, you won't stay. It's rather uncanny. The only servants aunt can keep are an old Scotch cook, who doesn't know what nerves mean, and the maid who opened the door to you. She stays because she's afraid to run away."
"Afraid?"
"Yes. Aunt Cecilia is a Devonshire woman, and can put a wish upon any one she's vexed with. She leaves the most valuable things about; but though at one time she was always changing her parlour-maids, no one has ever dared to steal anything from her private sitting-room up-stairs. You'll understand why when you've once been inside it."
Clare's white face grew, if possible, a shade whiter as she spoke, lowering her voice to a very subdued key.
"Are you afraid of your aunt too?" Laline asked.
Clare shivered and glanced towards the door.
"Horribly!" she replied, in a very low voice. Then she gave a little nervous laugh. "It sounds absurd to you, doesn't it? But Aunt Cecilia is a wonderful woman! I am an orphan, and she was my mother's younger sister. My mother often told me how Cissy used to terrify her as a child by prophesying things. Well, she has cultivated her powers in that direction until she almost forgets she has a body at all; she is all mind and spirit and that sort of thing, you know! Won't you have some more apple-pie? Aunt Cissy's cook makes such capital pastry, it's a pity to neglect it! As I was saying, my aunt, who isn't forty yet, in spite of her powdered hair, went in for spiritualism and all that sort of thing quite early. She was the seventh child of a Scotchwoman and a Devonshire man, and both my grandparents were dreadfully superstitious. Aunt Cissy was very pretty, my mother told me, in a sort of ethereal way—a figure like yours, I should say, only not so tall and a little thinner—you are so charmingly slender that I feel a great fat thing beside you!"
"I think you have a beautiful figure!" said Laline, simply.
"Oh, it's very sweet of you; but there are too many curves about me! I know I must appear very plump and earthly in Aunt Cissy's eyes. Men like curves, I know; but then I don't care about pleasing men a little bit—they simply bore me when they try to make love to me! Do you feel the same about them?"
"I don't know. No man has ever tried to make love to me."
And then Laline, although she had answered with perfect truthfulness, suddenly blushed, remembering that she was actually a married woman. Clare noted the blush and decided that her new friend was lying.
"I am so fond of women," she proceeded, with apparent enthusiasm. "Men are all very well in their way—I don't mind talking to them for a few minutes; but for a friend, a companion, a confidant, give me a woman. You and I ought to get on splendidly together. We are both orphans—at least, I am an orphan—and your parents are dead, are they not?"
Again Laline flushed deeply.
In truth she had neither seen nor heard anything of her father since that fateful thirtieth of August more than four years ago. But she was by no means inclined to confide in Miss Cavan, whom she admired but instinctively mistrusted; and she therefore contented herself by stating that her mother was dead, and that she had not seen her father for some years.
"How sad!" cooed Clare. "Well, to go back to Aunt Cissy. When she was five- or six-and-twenty she married Mr. Vandeleur, a distinguished man, a good deal older than herself, who held a good government post in India. Out there Aunt Cissy got friendly with Buddhist priests and jugglers and snake-charmers and all sorts of wonderful people, and picked up the most interesting things travelling about the country. After some years of study at occult subjects she found out that Mr. Vandeleur's soul didn't soar high enough to reach the rarified atmosphere she had herself attained, and that comparative solitude was essential to her. So she left him quite amicably in India and came and settled in Kensington, to pursue her studies undisturbed. I believe he had a liver, and was very fond of eating, and had most conservative and orthodox notions. So that altogether he must have been a trial to Aunt Cissy."
"And have you lived here with your aunt ever since?"
"Oh, no," returned Clare, opening her glittering green eyes; "I have only been with Aunt Cissy a few months, since my mother died in Dublin last summer and left me in her care. I am not in mourning, because Aunt Cissy objects to it. She doesn't believe in death, you know! That is one of her notions. She thinks that dead people are all about us in the air, and that, if we keep our spirits sufficiently clear, we are able to see and talk to them. It makes my flesh creep even to think of it!"
"Do you do any work for your aunt?" asked Laline, wondering greatly what the nature of her own duties would be.
"No. I wanted to, but she found me too 'earthly.' That means, I suppose, that I am not skinny enough to please her," Clare added, rather viciously—"at least," she corrected herself, glancing at Laline's slim figure, "I don't exactly mean skinny—I mean spiritual-looking."
Laline burst into a hearty laugh.
"I don't in the least mind being called skinny, I assure you," she said, good-humouredly.
The two girls offered a very marked contrast in appearance. Clare Cavan's startling fairness and pallor, her abundant hair, red by day, but converted by artificial light into a ripe gold, the voluptuous curves of her figure, her aquiline features, almost Egyptian in profile from the sharp outlines of the nose and chin and curled upper lip, her scarlet mouth that constantly smiled, her heavy white eyelids drooping over her brilliant eyes, and complexion "pale with the golden gleam of an eyelash dead on the cheek"—all these items combined to form a most picturesque and unique personality, and a type of beauty certain to provoke discussion and arouse in some keen admiration, and in others a feeling akin to repulsion.
In Laline Armstrong, or "Lina Grahame," as she now called herself, there was no element to provoke spontaneous dislike. A little above the medium height, her girlish slenderness made her appear taller than she really was; but her quick, graceful movements were rather those of a short than a tall person. Her habitual expression was alternately eager and dreamy. Her soft auburn hair, which had grown some shades darker within the past few years, was coiled neatly at the back of her shapely head, and rippled in natural waves above her broad brow. Her nose was short and straight, her mouth rather large than small, and full of charming curves, humorous and tender, her chin was round, and under her level dark eyebrows her eyes, of wonderful depth and darkness, looked out with a wistful intentness, accentuated by the comparative shortness of her vision. When Laline was amused she laughed outright, showing two rows of dazzling teeth; whereas Clare never passed beyond a smile, in spite of her native Irish humour.
In colouring, too, the girls offered a marked contrast. Laline's complexion was of a pinky fairness, varying from cream to a rose-flush in her cheeks, which came and went with the least excitement. Her voice was lower in pitch, and of a more contralto quality than that of Clare, who to the silvery sweetness of Mrs. Vandeleur's tones added a touch of caressing "Irish blarney" in her intonation.
"I should so very much like to help Aunt Cissy in her work!" resumed Miss Cavan. "And it seems rather hard that I can't just because I am rather plump, doesn't it? In evening-dress I am only twenty-two inches round the waist—and that isn't absolutely unwieldy, is it?"
"Not at all," said Laline.
She was beginning to wonder whether she herself would get discharged from her post if she grew any fatter; but she had already decided that in this household she must get used to surprising incidents and alarming statements, so she made no further comment at the time.
Clare was going to an evening "At home" at nine o'clock, she informed her new acquaintance.
"And I shall be so grateful if you will help me to dress and give me your opinion of my frock. It is a deep-red velvet, cut square. Rather daring with my red hair, isn't it? But I think the effect is nice."
Susan, the maid, entered at that moment with a message to the effect that Mrs. Vandeleur would be glad if Miss Grahame would come up-stairs to see her in her study.
"I can't come with you," said Clare—"I've got to dress; and, besides, aunt hasn't asked me. But I shall just pop my head in before I go. I hope she won't frighten you too much! She's dreadfully weird at times; and I believe she drove one of her secretaries into an asylum. Oh, you're not the first secretary she's had by at least a dozen! They've all been too mundane or too unimpressionable, or too illiterate or not beautiful enough, or else Aunt Cissy has sent them quite off their heads and they've been packed off to asylums! Of course she might have saved herself all the expense of a secretary by employing me—indeed, that was poor mamma's idea when she left me in Aunt Cissy's care, and my aunt's idea, too. But, as soon as she saw me, she wouldn't hear of my touching her precious papers and things! However, I am beginning to do her a great deal of good socially by going out and talking of my wonderful aunt, and making people want to consult her; so that I am worth having after all."
Laline was convinced by this speech that Miss Cavan deeply resented her aunt's refusal to employ her as her secretary, and that she cherished a keen jealousy against any other applicant for the post, and would not be loath to warn them away by exaggerating its difficulties and dangers. But Laline's life had taught her self-control, and it was with a firm step and composed manner that she proceeded to the room on the first floor, given up to Mrs. Vandeleur's "studies."
The apartment occupied the entire first floor of the house, which was by no means large. Folding-doors had once filled an archway in the middle of the room, but they were now replaced by hangings of tapestry. Dark oak panelling, mellowed by age, went up to within a few feet of the ceiling, across which the stars in their courses were painted upon a midnight sky, while a frieze of tapestry, which in faded colours and mediæval outlines pictured the "Dance of Death," completed the wall-decoration of the apartment.
The room was full of furniture, chiefly of oak and elaborately carved, and many curious old-fashioned cabinets and cupboards of various shapes and sizes were to be found in the corners and against the walls. A high carved oak mantelshelf was surmounted by a mystical picture, incomprehensible to the uninitiated, but which was named the "Awakening of the Spirit World;" and everywhere, scattered over the mantelpiece, on shelves, within glass-covered antique tables, and in the cabinets about the room, there was a multitude of curios, of old-fashioned charms and relics, of amulets, and metal images of roughly-beaten gold, ornaments from the East, fat little gods in soapstone and ivory, bead fetiches of North American Indians, and delicately-carved skulls and skeletons in German work of the Middle Ages—a heterogeneous collection, to which the superstitions of the entire world seemed to have each contributed their part.
In a deep arm-chair of dark oak, with a high-carved back, the little priestess of the room sat among cushions of Oriental brocade. The chair was so large and the little lady so small and fragile that she seemed to Laline to encamp rather than to sit in it; but the darkened wood formed a most effective background for her pale face and powdered hair. Mrs. Vandeleur was writing at a table littered with papers; but as Laline entered she laid down her pen and put her gold-rimmed spectacles on the table.
"Sit down, child," she said, pointing to a low-cushioned seat near the wide fireplace, furnished with red tiles and shining brass-dogs, upon which logs of wood were burning, it being one of Mrs. Vandeleur's principles to ignore the existence of gas and of coals alike—"sit down, and let me look at you! To-morrow morning you must come to me for money and buy something else to wear. I detest black, and black silk most of all!"
"What would you like me to wear?" asked Laline, smiling.
"White—white in soft folds. There should be no stiff outlines about you; your skin and hair supply the requisite colour."