Then exhaustion would bring sleep, but a sleep haunted by dreams, and, at times, visions wild as those of an opium-eater; thus, for many a night, long after this period, the episodes of that eventful evening would come back to memory with all their harrowing details: the advancing tide rolling against the impending cliffs and thundering in the Pixies' Hole, after it had swallowed the drenched sand; her retreating step by step fearfully and breathlessly before it, in terror of being drowned on one hand and of falling down the mine on the other!
Anon, she would imagine herself swung up that terrible shaft through darkness and space, and that the rope was just on the eve of parting, when she would wake with a half-stifled scream to find that she was in the arms of her mamma, who was soothing and caressing her.
CHAPTER XVII.
THE TRECARRELS.
Duly next day, at a proper visiting-hour, the handsome and well-appointed carriage of General Trecarrel, occupied only by his two daughters and Audley Trevelyan, was seen bowling down the avenue of the villa at Porthellick, with Rajah bounding before it in as much glee as if at home in Thibet, "the northern land of snow," where many a time he had scoured along the slopes of the Himalaya range and the Dwalaghiri in pursuit of the Cashmere goat and the Tartarian yak; but, as the event proved, the visit was in vain: the two ladies could only leave their cards, as they were informed that both Mrs. and Miss Devereaux were too much indisposed after the events of yesterday to receive visitors.
"It will be a case which warm drinks and cosseting will soon cure, I hope," said Rose, shrugging her pretty shoulders.
"Where to, Miss Trecarrel?" asked the footman, touching his hat ere he sprang to his place behind.
"To Bodmin," replied the elder sister: "we have shopping to do, Mr. Trevelyan;" and after a pause she added, "I have told you that they were odd people, those Devereaux; we were fools to come—don't you think so, Rose?"
"Perhaps, Mab."
"Do not judge so harshly," urged Audley. "What may be more probable than that both should feel excited after the last night's terror and—and——"
"Chivalry," suggested Rose Trecarrel, a little malice glittering in her fine eyes; but Audley remained silent.
Mabel and Rose Trecarrel were both eminently handsome girls. The elder was tall and showy, having dark grey eyes that filled, at times, with unusual lustre and had a wonderful variety of expression, but her chief beauties were perhaps her purity of complexion and the quantity and magnificence of her rich brown hair.
Rose was somewhat her counterpart—a large but very graceful girl, with clear, sparkling, hazel eyes, and hair much of the same hue, though her lashes and eyebrows were dark and well defined. Without attempting to describe her nose, we shall simply say it was a very pretty one, that seemed exactly to suit the expression of her eyes and the full-lipped yet little and alluring mouth below. Both girls were always dressed rather in the extreme of the mode, and were sure to be prime favourites at all balls, races, or meets to see the hounds throw off; and no entertainment in that part of the duchy was deemed complete without "the Trecarrels." No friend had ever accused them of being flirts, though fair enemies had frequently done so.
The General was very proud of his two daughters, and felt certain that both would make most eligible and wealthy marriages, when he took them to India, where he was in expectation daily of obtaining an important command.
For the time Audley Trevelyan was, what others had been, and others yet might be, a kind of privileged dangler in attendance on both sisters, and seemed to share their smiles and return attention to both in a pretty equal manner; thus both were somewhat disposed to resent the new and sudden interest he manifested in Sybil Devereaux.
Both were eminently dashing girls. Mabel, the elder, was perhaps the statelier of the two, but the beauty and manner of Rose were more sparkling and dazzling. Both sisters were highly accomplished, and both had that affected indifference to their own attractions, which is perhaps an indication of the strongest and most ineradicable vanity—for of those attractions they knew the full power and value.
"But who are those Devereaux?" asked Mabel, as a turn of the road hid the villa, during a pause filled up only by the subdued noise of the carriage wheels in their patent axle-boxes.
"You should know by this time, Trevelyan," added Rose, looking at him from under the long fringes of her eyes and her parasol, as she lay well back indolently yet gracefully among the soft cushions of the carriage.
"Nay; how should I, when you, who are neighbours, know nothing? Her father was a captain in some Line Regiment."
"Her father—of whom were we speaking?" asked Rose.
Trevelyan coloured perceptibly, and Mabel laughed.
"Oh, she occupies his thoughts already, Mab! He was of some Line Regiment, that is pretty vague, and scarcely suits our Cornish standard of such things as family and so forth—least of all the standard formed by your uncle, the late Lord Lamorna."
"Oh, he was an absurd old goose—mad with pride, in fact."
"And barely remembered you in his will?"
"Precisely so," replied Audley, half amused and half provoked.
"They visit no one, and they make no acquaintances," said Rose, resuming the theme.
"They settled here without an introduction, I have heard, and gave it to be understood that they declined all acquaintance save with the Rector and Doctor."
"Neither of whom, Mab, are particular to a shade. I should not wonder, Audley, if your 'captain' were some returned convict or retired housebreaker in easy circumstances."
"Rose, you are too severe," urged Trevelyan; "Mrs. Devereaux is a kind of idol among the poor people here."
"We must all admit that she excels in chicken broth, is knowing in coals and tea, and great in corduroys, tobacco, and blankets; but fasten my bracelet, please," and she held forth coquettishly a slender wrist and a well-shaped hand, tightly cased in the finest of straw-coloured kid; and every movement of Rose Trecarrel, however quick and unstudied, was full of the poetry of action. "Thanks. If you will not admit that the mother of your fair friend is odd, you must that her father is so—or at least is ignorant of military etiquette, if he is a military man."
"How?"
"He has never left his card upon papa, which, in a solitary place like this, papa thinks he ought to have done, as it is the fashion in the service—going out I am aware—for the junior officer to wait upon the senior, though uninvited."
"Though a bore at times, it was a good old custom, I admit, but like many other fashions is as much gone out as square letter-paper, sand-boxes and sealing wax, stage coaches and queues."
"Then his son," she continued in an aggrieved tone, "on being appointed to papa's own Regiment, never had the politeness to leave a card upon us either!"
"Rose, you are quite a Code Militaire," said Trevelyan, laughing again. "Those Devereaux are thought handsome—I mean the mother and daughter."
"I have no wish to disparage the taste of the Cornish gentlemen——"
"None could afford to treat their taste with more indifference than you and Miss Trecarrel, who are both——"
"Both what?" asked Mabel, quickly.
"Above all comparison."
"Oh, we did not leave all our gallantry in the old coal-mine!"
"Excuse me, Rose," said Trevelyan, "it was originally a tin-mine."
"Pity it was not brass—eh, Audley?" replied Rose, laughing with a voice like a silver bell.
"Come, come, Rose," said Mabel, "you and Trevelyan are usually such good friends that I shall not have you to spar thus."
"We don't spar, it is only 'barrack-room chaff,' in which, as you may perceive, Mr. Trevelyan excels," retorted the piqued belle.
The truth was rather apparent to Audley, that the pretty—nay, the beautiful and hazel-eyed Rose was nettled, and seriously so. Hitherto she had considered the handsome ex-Lieutenant of Hussars, and now of the Cornish Light Infantry, as her own peculiar property—even more than her sister. He was to be her papa's Aide-de-camp in India—she had settled this, nem. con.; and while on leave at home, he was to be her dangler, secret slave, and open adorer—husband in the end perhaps, if nothing better "turned up;" for Audley's expectations from his father, the barrister, as one of a family of five, were slender enough; and here he was too probably smitten with a little chit-faced interloper whom no one knew anything about!
There was a pause in the conversation, during which the carriage had passed St. Teath and St. Kew, with their quaint churches, and that of Egloshayle, on the right bank of the Camel, where it peeped up among the trees, when Rose returned to the charge.
"And you actually swung together at the end of a rope."
"At the end of a rope, as you say."
"How romantic!—how charming!"
"At least in one sense; yet I was glad enough when it was all over in safety."
"What! though doubtless, as Byron says,
'The situation had its charm.'"
"Fie, Rose—you quote Don Juan!" exclaimed Mabel.
"And why should not I, Mab, if the passage seems so familiar to you?"
"Rose, you are incorrigible!"
"Well, Audley, your fellow-soldiers must be proud of you when they hear of this feat of arms."
"We say brother-soldiers in the service," replied Trevelyan.
"I submit to the correction; it is like one from papa, who deems all civilians stupid fellows. And so you think she is a paragon of loveliness?" continued Rose Trecarrel, so bent on the game of tormenting him, that she cared little for showing her hand.
"I did not say so—do you, Rose?"
"Call me Miss Rose, if you please," said she, with a charming air of pique on her lovely little lip.
"Well—where were we?"
"About the beauty of the girl you rescued—were slung in a rope with. How funny!" said Mabel.
"Of her beauty you can judge for yourselves; I have nothing to do with it," replied he wearily.
"Fortunate for you," laughed Rose, "as the girl's position in society seems so dubious, Audley."
"Call me Mr. Trevelyan, please, as we are to be on distant terms."
"Let us only have you in India, where we shall be ere long," said she, shaking her parasol threateningly, "and I shall have papa to put you under arrest."
"For what?"
"Conduct unbecoming an officer and a gentleman."
"As how, my fair friend?'
"Behaving rudely, petulantly, and insolently."
"To a pretty girl?"
"Yes—moreover, a daughter of the general on whose staff he is serving."
"And the sentence of the court will be, dismissal from her presence for ever."
"Have some mercy on him," said Mabel.
"You seem to know the duties of an aide-de-camp," said Audley, not ill-pleased to find himself an object of interest to two such handsome girls.
"Of papa's at least," said Rose: "to revise the dinner and visiting lists; to see Mab and me to and from all balls, kettle-drums, reviews, durbars, and so forth; to arrange picnics; to do all the squiring and shawling business, and to dance with us whenever we feel bored by some slow griff who can't keep time; to make bets of gloves, fans, and bouquets, and to lose them so nicely and so opportunely, that the payment thereof appears a veritable glory; to see us through the crush of the supper, and procure ices, creams, chicken, champagne, and crackers, no matter how the thermometer may stand, or how weary the punkahwallah may be—all of which are among the duties of an accomplished staff-officer."
"Oh, Rose, how your tongue runs on!" said Mabel.
"Poor fellow, I must spare him, for his heart seems divided between the mother and daughter; so I hope that this Captain Devereaux may soon be home, lest evil happen. But here we are at Bodmin!" she added, as the carriage, after quitting the highlands of granite and dreary moorland which extend to within four miles of the ancient assize town, rolled through its centre street.
"And now, if you choose," said Mabel, "Trevelyan, you may enjoy the indispensable cigar while we investigate the industrial treasures of a country draper's shop. We have but one hour to spare, and then homeward."
"Or we shall have papa consulting that remarkable watch, which he got from Sir John Keane after the storming of Ghuznee," added Rose, as disdaining Audley's proffered hand, she sprang lightly from the carriage steps.
So, for a time he was left to "do" the lions of Bodmin, the handsome old Norman church, the few pointed arches and dilapidated walls of the Leper Hospital, and so forth; and to his own reflections and thoughts, which, heedless of the sharp banter he had undergone, were all of Sybil—at that very moment struggling back into perfect consciousness from feverish delirium, and stealing from Winny Braddon the visiting-card he had recently left, that she might conceal it under her pillow.
To her, he was fast becoming the realisation of all her day-dreams—"the one moving spirit that animated the whole world of her united romances." He was,
"her first and passionate love, that all
Which Eve hath left her daughters since her fall."
To Rose and to Mabel Trecarrel, he was simply one among the many "nice fellows" they had met with in society, and should meet again in plenty.
CHAPTER XVIII.
HE LOVES ME, TRULY!
To Audley's mind there was a freshness and innocence about Sybil, that made her image dwell in his heart prominently, and more vividly than the dashing and showy Mabel and Rose Trecarrel could have conceived to be possible. Moreover, there was, to him, something glorious in the conviction that for the sake of this lovely young girl he had confronted a manifest peril; that by doing so he had saved her and established—as he hoped—a tie of no ordinary strength and peculiarity between them, linking, in the future, their histories if not their lives together; for to him she owned now, most probably, the fact that she existed at all.
Such were the kind of thoughts to which Trevelyan, hitherto a heedless and pleasure-loving young subaltern of Hussars, indulged in many a dreamy hour, even when half flirting or "chaffing" with the Trecarrels, riding or driving abroad with them, turning the leaves at the piano while Rose displayed the perfection of her white shoulders and taper arms after dinner, and dawdled languidly over the airs of Verdi and Balfe; and to which he fully abandoned himself, when he strolled forth alone, to enjoy a cigar in the lawn or in some secluded lane.
Sybil on her part deemed it equally delightful, to think that she owed her life to him; for had not Audley and others said (and she felt the truth of it) that, ere the ebb of the tide should have left the lower end of the cavern open and free, she must have perished of cold or terror, or both.
She had read the contents of many a box from "Mudie's," but no episode in any of the three volumes octavo therein seemed exactly to resemble hers in the Pixies' Hole. It was very romantic and strange, no doubt; but to Constance it appeared that the still concealed part of their relationship was the most strange and romantic feature in the affair.
Like most, if not all, young girls, she had read all about love in novels and romances; she had talked about love to school-companions, some of them enthusiastic Italian girls at Como, by the Arno, and elsewhere; and now a lover had actually come, one who on three successive days had left cards, with earnest inquiries concerning her health and that of her mamma.
She remembered the endearment of his manner when he saved her, but feared, at times, that such might only have been caused by the peculiarity of their situation; and then she would blush with annoyance at herself, as she recalled the somewhat too pointed way in which she questioned him about Rose Trecarrel, to whom she was still a stranger, and of whom she had thus evinced a jealousy—actually a jealousy, as if thereby assuming a right to question his actions!
But had he not called her Sybil, and said that he loved her, and her only?
The afternoon of the fourth day saw Audley Trevelyan—always careful of his costume, on this occasion unusually so—passing slowly down the willow avenue towards the villa; and as he approached the latter, the beating of his heart quickened on perceiving the light figure of Sybil pass from the pillared portico into a conservatory that adjoined the house. So she was convalescent—had recovered at last; and now he would speak with her alone, and might resume perhaps the thread of that hurried but delightful topic, which was so suddenly cut short on the evening he saved her, by the voice of the impatient General.
He approached the glass door of the conservatory, which she had left invitingly open, his footsteps being completely muffled by the soft and close-clipped turf of the little lawn.
The conservatory was handsome, lofty, and spacious, floored with brilliantly coloured encaustic tiles, and constructed of iron, like a kiosk; its shelves were laden with delicate ferns, with cacti and gorgeous exotics in full bloom, though the season was in the last days of autumn, and over all drooped, almost from the roof to the ground, the far-stretching and slender green sprays of a graceful acacia. Under this stood Sybil, clad in a simple white dress, decorated by trimmings of rose-coloured satin ribbon, and having a dainty little lace collar round her slender neck; and Trevelyan watched her in silence and with admiration for half a minute ere he entered.
It was the freshness and girlish purity of Sybil that charmed him quite as much as the delicacy of her beauty. During his few years of military life, in London, at Bath, Brighton, and Canterbury, even at Calcutta, he had met many such girls as the Trecarrels—brilliant in flirtation and knowing in all manner of arts and graces; but none that resembled Sybil.
She had plucked a dwarf rose, and was about to place it in the breast of her dress. Suddenly she seemed to pause and change her intention; for a bright and fond smile spread over her soft little face, and while speaking to herself, leaf by leaf, she began to pluck the flower slowly to pieces.
She spoke aloud, but her voice was so low that it failed to reach the ears of Trevelyan, till after a time, when, as the leaves lessened in number, she began to raise her tones, and her occupation became plain to him. She was acting to herself—repeating the little part of Goethe's Marguerite in the garden, but in a fashion of her own.
"He loves me a little—tenderly—truly—he loves me not!"
With each pause in this floral formula, the old German mode of divination in love affairs, a pink leaf floated away or fell on her white dress; and when but seven remained round the calyx, she paused for a moment; her face brightened as the charm seemed to work satisfactorily; she resumed her plucking, and as the seventh or last leaf was twitched from the stem, she clasped her hands and exclaimed with joy—
"Truly—Audley loves me truly!"
Her colour deepened, and there was almost a divine expression about her eyes and lips; but she became covered with intense confusion when Trevelyan approached her suddenly, and said with a tender and pleasantly modulated voice—
"Your floral spell has worked to admiration, for Audley does love you truly and fondly, dearest Sybil!"
"Oh, Mr. Trevelyan—and you have overheard my folly!" was all she could falter out, as he captured her hands in his own, and she stooped her face aside.
"Mr. Trevelyan? Why, a moment ago you called me plain Audley, and it did sound so delightful! Pray do not let us go back in our relations. And you have quite recovered, I hope, from the effects of that frightful affair?" he added, while smiling with fondness into the clear bright eyes that drooped beneath his gaze.
"It seems as nothing, now—save when I dream; you make too much of it—indeed you do," blundered Sybil.
"Can I do so of aught in which you have a part?"
"Poor mamma is still in a weak and nervous state; so, I am sorry to say, she will be unable to see you."
As it was not "mamma" he had come exactly to visit, Audley could only murmur some well-bred expression of regret.
"How very remarkable that you should have been there to save me!" said Sybil, after a pause.
"The coldly treated stranger by the moorland tarn, eh?"
"You forget that we had not been introduced, or how came it all to pass?" she asked, with growing confusion.
"As all things in this life do, dearest Sybil."
"But how?"
"It was fate—destiny."
"What—are you a fatalist?"
"I hope not; and yet it were sweet to think that—that——"
"What?" murmured Sybil, her long lashes drooping beneath the ardour of his glance, while his clasp seemed to tighten on her slender fingers.
Much more passed that has been said, over and over again, under the same circumstances, by every pair of lovers since roses grew in Eden (and, unluckily, apples too); and there were long pauses, that were only pauses of the tongue, and which beatings of the heart filled up, with many a sigh "the deeper for suppression." There grew between these two a sudden sense of great trust which increased the tenderness of their sentiments, while deep gratitude was mingled now with Sybil's former budding love. It did seem to her, as if Fate had deliberately cast each in the path of the other; and doubtless it was so, for "out of these chance-affinities grow sometimes the passion of a life, and sometimes the disappointments that embitter existence."
"Oh, Audley, without mamma's consent, dare I accept so lovely a ring?" said Sybil, in a low voice, as she lingered at the conservatory door and contemplated a jewel which Trevelyan had just slipped upon her engaged finger.
"You will surely wear it for my sake, till—till—" he paused, and scarcely knew what to say, for he now began to reflect that he was only a subaltern, and had been "going the pace," in his love-making, with a vengeance! To fall in love and engage oneself were easy enough; but, as yet, he did not quite see the end of the affair. Sybil was, moreover, the daughter of an officer whose temper, perhaps, might not brook trifling.
"Oh, it is an exquisite diamond!" resumed the girl, the pause unnoticed, and its cause, to her, unknown.
"It formed one of the eyes of Vishnu, a Hindoo idol, in a temple near Agra. One of the Cornish Light Infantry—old Mike Treherne, the miner's son—poked out both with his bayonet. Jack Delamere bought one; I the other, and had it set thus in a ring by a Parsee jeweller in the Chandney Choke, at a time when I little thought of having in mine so dear a hand to place it on. Has not our acquaintance ripened with wonderful rapidity, darling??
"Under such terrible circumstances, I don't wonder at it," said she, smiling tenderly as she toyed with the ring, which was now enhanced in value—priceless in her eyes, for it was a love-token.
A love-token! and what might be its future history, and what their fate? "Customs alter, and fashions change," says a writer; "but love-gifts never grow old-fashioned or out of date,—they are always fresh from the golden age. Old people die, and desks and drawers are ransacked by their heirs. Oh, take up tenderly the withered petals, the lock of hair, the quaint ring hidden away in some secret recess; for hearts have once thrilled and eyes moistened at their touch. Precious gems and rare objects there may be in casket and cabinet; but none preserved with such jealous care as these, for they were the gifts of love."
Sybil was a thoughtful girl, and even in that happy hour a sadness stole through her heart, as some such ideas occurred to her; but the young officer thought only of the present time, of its joy and of her beauty.
He pressed her to name a day when she and her mamma, as by courtesy bound, would return the visit of the Trecarrels; but, ere that could be accomplished, there came to pass that "greater sorrow" which the heart of Constance had foreboded, and which must be duly recorded in its place; so the hoped-for visit was never paid.
On this evening, Audley lingered long with Sybil. Each had so much to say to the other, and so many questions to ask, and so many fond plans for the future, that parting was a difficult task, even with the knowledge that they were to meet again on the morrow.
It came; and noon saw him again at the villa, where he was received in the drawing-room by Constance alone; and to her he began to speak of Sybil after a time, and to express his admiration and regard for her.
This Constance had fully foreseen and expected; but she was outwardly, to all appearance, collected and calm, till the secret that oppressed her became too much for her nervous system. Thus, the tenor of her bearing, which before had been all kindness and gratitude, suddenly changed. She became cold and constrained, perplexed and even awkward; so that a chill fell upon the heart of Audley, whose nature, all unlike that of his father, was frank and generous to a fault. She curtly but gently told him, that until the return of her husband she could afford no permission for her daughter to receive addresses; and soon after, full of deep mortification, and dreading he knew not what, Audley Trevelyan took his leave; and Constance, as she watched his figure pass out of the avenue, burst into tears.
Sybil, as her youngest-born, she had ever looked upon as a species of child—called "the baby," when long past babyhood; and now Sybil had a lover! Awakened to the reality of this, the poor lonely mother regarded this new phase of her daughter's existence with a species of alarm that bordered on terror.
"Would that Richard were home!" was her first thought; "even Denzil's advice would be something to me now, poor boy!"
Audley had barely entered the Trecarrels' drawing-room, when Rose, who was reclining on a fauteuil, with her rich brown hair beautifully dressed by the hands of her Ayah, and who fancied herself immersed in a novel, tossed it aside, for her clear hazel eyes speedily detected the disturbed expression of his face, and proceeded forthwith to quiz him as usual about "the Devereaux girl," and his intentions in that quarter; while Mabel, who was seated at the piano, sang laughingly a verse of "Wanted, a Wife," then a popular song, altering certain words "to suit the occasion," as Rose said—
"As to fortune—of course, I have but my pay,
A sub with seven-and-sixpence a day,
And a pension beside—rather small, 'tis confest,
For a leg shot away in the action 'off Brest;'
For the loss of three fingers in fighting a chase,
And a terrible cut from a sword in my face.
But with all these defects, my nerves I must string,
To propose for Miss Devereaux—delicate thing!"
Audley felt almost inclined to quarrel with his fair friends.
"Don't tease a fellow so, Rose," said he, wearily; "I have no money—at least, little beyond my pay; and have as much idea of marrying as—as——"
"I have, perhaps."
"I cannot say that."
"You could ask this Sybil Devereaux?"
"Of course—it would be easy as cribbage."
"And what would she say, think you?"
"As a sensible girl such as she seems to be—'wait.'"
"Which means, that she would take you in time to come?"
"Perhaps."
"Unless something better turned up."
"Don't judge of her by yourself, Rose," he retorted, laughing, to conceal his annoyance, which was greatly increased when the General's butler, just as Audley was ascending to his own room to dress for dinner, handed him a letter on a silver salver.
It was from his father; written in his usual clear and precise hand. Audley for a time left it on the toilette table; then he tore it open, with an air of irritation, as these paternal missives were rarely pleasant ones, being always filled with advice, varied by reprehension.
"Fathers have flinty hearts—and, by Jove, here is one!" muttered Audley, while his brows contracted.
"I have seen in the public prints," ran the letter, "all about your adventure with the daughter of those strange people who live at Porthellick. The woman Devereaux is, as her name imports, too probably some designing French adventuress. Mabel Trecarrel has written to your sister Gartha, that you are quite smitten with the daughter; but I give you my distinct advice and notice to take heed of what you are about, and to join us in London without delay. You left the Hussars, even in India, because of the expense of the corps, neither tentage nor loot" (loot! the governor means batta) "being sufficient to maintain you. Disobey me in the matter of this girl Devereaux, and I shall cut off even the slender allowance I promised you, for the Cornish Light Infantry."
Audley crushed up the letter in his hand, for it came, at that particular moment, like a sentence of death.
And Downie Trevelyan could write thus of the loving and amiable little family circle at the villa, knowing all he did, and suspecting more!
To fear, or to find that his brother Richard, so long deemed an eccentric bachelor, had a family ready made and at hand to succeed him in the honours of Rhoscadzhel and Lamorna was bad enough. These interlopers who came between his own family and the line of Trevelyan might (perhaps) be set aside; but to find that his eldest son had become entangled with one of those so-called Devereaux, proved too much for the equanimity of the far-seeing lawyer.
CHAPTER XIX.
THE GREATER SORROW.
At the very time when Mabel Trecarrel was singing to tease Audley, Sybil was beginning a song of a very different character and calibre to soothe or amuse her mamma. It was a grand old Hungarian ballad, with an accompaniment like a crash of trumpets at times; and was one she had picked up during their wanderings on the banks of the Danube; but she had only got the length of the first two verses, when her mother's tears arrested her.
"Was it the vine with clusters bright
That clung round Buda's stateliest tower?
No, 'twas a lady fair and white,
Who hung around an armed knight;
It was their sad, their parting hour.
"They had been wedded in their youth,
Together they had spent life's bloom;
That hearts so long entwined by truth
Asunder should be torn in ruth—
It was a cruel and boding doom!"
"Oh cease, Sybil," said Constance; "cease; it was your papa's favourite."
"Then why cease, mamma?"
"He is not here, and I feel I know not what—a foreboding—a superstition of the heart."
So Sybil closed her piano, and it was long, long ere she opened it again.
Three weeks had now elapsed since the Montreal steamer Admiral (his anticipated departure by which Richard Trevelyan fully notified to Constance) had been due at Blackwall, and yet there were no tidings of her, so insurances went up, and underwriters looked grave. No Atlantic cables had been laid as yet between Britain and America, though such things were talked of as being barely possible. The next steamer announced that the Admiral had duly sailed at her stated time; so, save the letter which contained the pleasant odds and ends concerning Montreal and their early lover days, poor Constance saw her husband's writing no more.
Her surmises were endless, and the worthy rector lent his inventive aid to add to them. Might not the ship have met with some accident to her engines, and put back slowly under canvas to Montreal, the Azores, or elsewhere?
Lost—was the word that hovered on her lips and trembled in her heart—LOST! Oh, that was not to be thought of. Yet if it were so, some must have survived to tell the terrible story; some might have been picked up, famished and weary, by a passing ship, and taken perhaps to a distant region, Heaven alone knew where. Such events happened every day on the mighty world of waters; so as week succeeded week, the familiarity with suspense, sorrow and horror seemed to become greater; till ideas began to confirm themselves, and probabilities to be steadily faced, that she would have shrunk from in utter woe but a month before!
Then came those cruel and shadowy rumours, by which the public are usually tantalised, and the relatives of the missing are tortured—stories of wrecks passed, steamers abandoned—the masts gone, funnel standing, and so forth, in this, that or the other latitude; but all vague and never verified. How many stately ships have perished at sea, of which such stories have been told! In those days, it was the President, the great, "the lost Atlantic steamer," on the fate of which at least one novel and several dramas and songs have been written; and but lately it was the turret ship Captain, with her five hundred picked British seamen, that went down into the deep, a few loose spars alone remaining to tell of their sorrowful fate.
Constance and her daughter were inspired by successive hope that he might have survived, and fear that he had perished—too surely perished; and these alternations were agony, for "the promises of Hope are sweeter than roses in the bud, and far more flattering to expectation; but the threatenings of Fear are a terror to the heart."
At last there came a fatal day, when a passage cut from a London newspaper was enclosed to Constance by Audley Trevelyan, who had been constrained to visit and remain in town with his family.
It contained distinct details of the total wreck of the Admiral, which had foundered in a gale. She had been heavily pooped by successive seas, and had gone down with all on board, save the watch on deck, who had effected their escape in one of the quarter-boats, and been picked up in a most exhausted state, by one of Her Majesty's ships. All the passengers had been drowned in their cabins, and to this account a list of their names was appended.
"It is very remarkable, my dear madam," wrote the unconscious Audley, "that I do not find the name of Captain Devereaux borne in this list; though we have all the sorrow to see that of my uncle Richard, Lord Lamorna, whose American trip has been to us all a source of mystery."
Constance read the printed list with staring stony eyes, and a heart that stood still!
Mr. Downie Trevelyan had perused it carefully too, with the aid of his gold double-eye-glass, and an unfathomable smile had spread over his sleek legal visage while he did so.
"Oh, my husband—my Richard—so innocent and true! Gone—gone, and your children and I are left—doomed to shame and sorrow—doomed—doomed!" wailed Constance in a piercing voice, as with her fingers interlaced across her face she cast herself upon a sofa in despair.
"Mamma," urged the terrified Sybil, "what do you mean? Does not dear Audley write that papa's name is not in the list; so he cannot have sailed in that unhappy ship."
"My poor child, you know not what you say," moaned Constance, without looking or altering her position, for dark and bitter was the desolation of the heart which fell on her.
In vain did poor Sybil caress and hang over her in utter bewilderment, and read and re-read Audley's letter without being able to comprehend the agitation of her mother, who answered nothing. For the time she was overwhelmed by the immensity of their calamity—by gloom and speechless sorrow.
But one thought was ever present—there was a face she should never more behold—a voice she never more should hear; the great ship going down in the dark; "the passengers drowned in their cabins," by the furious midnight sea; and he who loved her so well, who had crossed the Atlantic to bring back the full and legal proofs of their nuptials, was now in the shadowy land—the Promised Land—where there are neither marriages nor giving in marriage; and where there can be no graves either in the soil or in the sea.
With this calamity must many others come!
Richard's means died with him; the proofs of her marriage and of her children's position had perished with him too. Even the newspapers in their notices of the event, were careful to record that "as Lord Lamorna (who had so lately succeeded to that ancient title) died a bachelor, he would be heired by his brother, the eminent barrister, Mr. Downie Trevelyan, now twelfth Lord Lamorna of Rhoscadzhel, in the duchy of Cornwall."
There was the usual obituary notice in a popular illustrated paper, with a wood-cut of the late lord's arms, the demi-horse argent issuing from the sea, the coronet, the wild cat, and the motto Le jour viendra.
Even Derrick Braddon's name was recorded as among the list of the drowned; so the sole surviving witness of the hasty and secret marriage had perished with his master.
Sybil had answered Audley's letter—Constance was quite incapable of doing so—urging him piteously, for the love he bore her, to make what other inquiries he could at Lloyd's, the shipping offices and elsewhere, as her mamma seemed to be distracted; and promptly a reply came, but not in Audley's handwriting, though it bore the London post-mark. It was addressed to her mamma, who in a weak and breathless voice desired her to read it; and great were the terror and perplexity of the girl, when she perused the following sentence—for one contained the whole matter.
"CHAMBERS, TEMPLE.
"MADAM,
"A letter written by your daughter and bearing the Porthellick postmark, has just fallen into my hands; so I hereby beg to intimate to you that my eldest son and heir, the Hon. Mr. Audley Trevelyan, can hold no such intercourse as that document would seem to import, or be on such terms of intimacy with a young woman who is destitute of position, who has not a shilling in the world, and whose parentage, family, and so forth—you cannot fail to understand me—are matters of such extreme uncertainty, not to say worse; thus you must endeavour to control her actions, as I shall those of my son, who goes at once to join his regiment in India.
"I am yours, &c.
"LAMORNA.
"A copy kept."
"How dare this Lord Lamorna write to you thus, mamma?" asked Sybil, her dark eyes flashing with unusual light; but the pale mother answered only with her tears, and recalling now certain broken sentences which had escaped her—sentences that seemed somewhat to correspond painfully with the insulting tenor of the letter. Sybil, after the first hours of excessive grief were past, said in a composed voice, yet with tremulous lips,
"What does Lord Lamorna mean? Who are we, mamma? and what are we?"
Constance was silent, though each pulsation of her heart was a veritable pang.
"Are we not Devereaux?"
"No."
"Who then?" urged Sybil, her pallor increasing while the silence or pause that ensued was painful to both; to none more than the innocent mother, the guarded secret of whose blameless life was now about to be laid bare before her own child—a secret that seemed now to assume the magnitude of a crime! All the care, doubt, anxiety, and mystery of the past years had gone for nothing, and the sacrifice she had made of herself, was now likely to recoil fearfully upon her, and more than all upon her children.
In broken accents, with her aching head reclined on Sybil's breast, she told all that the reader already knows; the insane pride of birth and family which inspired the old lord, his suspicions and threats, the long necessity for consequent secrecy; and Sybil heard all this strange story with intense bewilderment.
Could she realise it—take it all into her comprehension? Her mother was a lady of title—her brother Denzil was the real Lord Lamorna, she herself was not a Devereaux, but a Trevelyan like Audley—and he, Audley, who loved her so, was her own cousin!
This revelation then explained all to Sybil; all of their wanderings in strange places, and sudden departures from them, when unwelcome tourists who might have recognised Richard Trevelyan came, their secluded life at Porthellick, their marked avoidance of the Trecarrels and others, and on the whole poor Sybil felt cut to the heart, and inspired by not an atom of pride; yet she tenderly and fondly embraced her mother with greater fervour than ever, for more than ever did she feel that she must love her now.
"My poor papa drowned—drowned, unburied in the sea—passing away from us without even the name by which we have known and loved him!" exclaimed Sybil. "Oh why is God so cruel to us?"
"Alas, Sybil, we can but adore the decrees of Heaven, without seeking to know more of them. This stroke is hard to bear, child—all the harder that I have reason to fear—to dread, oh, my God, that more than your papa's life has perished with him."
"More mamma; what can be more?"
"That which was dearer to him than life; the succession of Denzil—the honour of us all!"
After a long pause, with a vague expression in her eyes, as if her thoughts were travelling back into the years of the past, Sybil said,
"I had begun to suspect there was some unpleasant mystery about us."
"But affection and delicacy——"
"Both, dearest mamma sealed my lips and I was silent; but oh, to what good end or purpose has it all been? By this, too surely is Audley also lost to me."
"My poor child, he was your lover, and through me you think you lose him. Oh pardon me, Sybil, darling, for I, your hapless mother, am the cause of all this! Had your papa never seen, or known, or loved me——"
"Do not say so, mamma dear," whispered Sybil as her mother's tremulous lips were pressed on her throbbing brow.
"It was a plan your papa formed to save his inheritance for you and Denzil, and already his brother claims all."
"It was a false plan, and see how it may fail us—nay already, to all appearance has failed us."
"He is in his grave—if indeed the ocean can be called a grave."
"True, my darling papa—and I must not upbraid him, even in thought."
"If it is the will of God that I should suffer, His will be done! But my children—my children!" cried the widow wildly, and she raised her hands and her dark and beautiful but bloodshot eyes to Heaven; "my brave and handsome Denzil, and my soft sweet Sybil, of what have they been guilty, that shame and ruin, should fall on them?"
"Mamma," whispered Sybil, embracing her closely, "we must learn to bear with resignation the woes we cannot help. But oh," added the girl in her heart, "how am I to write to Denzil of all this sorrow, and probably worse than sorrow and poverty?"
CHAPTER XX.
A FAMILY GROUP.
And so he was gone—this tender husband, who had loved her so dearly, and whose secret she had shared so unavailingly for years; and apart from the horror of the doubt that hung over the future of her children, whose means and honour, like her own, had too probably perished with him, a despair grew in the heart of Constance when she surveyed the familiar objects, the little household gods of their once happy home, and thought upon the days that could never, never come again.
There were times when she could not believe that she had lost him; that her sorrow was a painful dream from which she must awake. She perpetually found herself softly whispering his name, especially in the waking hours of the night. Thus too, from overtension of the nervous system, she would start at the fancied sound of her own name, uttered as if by his voice at a vast distance.
In the delicacy and tenderness of Constance, there was an amount of keenness and intensity possessed by few, and thus her heart bled for her daughter, rather than for her own dubious position, the fact of which had been so coarsely thrust upon her by the insolent letter of Downie Trevelyan, who was now formally spoken of and everywhere announced and received as "Lord Lamorna."
That Sybil had given all the wealth of her young heart to this man's son, was but too evident to her anxious mother's observation; but how would matters tend now, and could that misplaced love have a successful termination?
Days were passing in sorrow now; no letters from Audley came to either. Sybil looked delicate and grew pale and thin, for a double grief was consuming her, and Constance began to marvel in her heart, was she meant to live in suffering and penury, perhaps to die early, this child—her dead father's idol, so loved and petted by him.
Sybil felt secretly pleased with the idea that there existed between her and Audley a tie—the tie of blood—which even the antagonism of his crafty father could not break. "The idea of cousinly intimacy to girls is undoubtedly pleasant," says Anthony Trollope; "and I do not know whether it is not the fact, that the better and the purer the girl, the sweeter and the pleasanter is the idea."
How often had Constance asked of herself—but never of him who was gone—"How long is this deception to be carried on? How long am I to wait before I take my place in the world as the wife of Richard Trevelyan, and cease to figure as a sham Devereaux, and how long are our children to be thus under a cloud?" All obstacles were removed now, but the sham was becoming a reality, and the cloud was growing darker than ever.
And was her poor Denzil, then so far away from her, to be tamely robbed of his noble inheritance after all?
The necessity for action in some way, even before acquainting him with his father's death and real rank, compelled Constance to bestir herself. She knew no one whom she felt tempted to consult with confidence, and was totally ignorant of the line of action to adopt, but on hearing, before a week had passed, that the whole family of the Trevelyans had come from town and taken up their residence at Rhoscadzhel, she resolved to lose no time in confronting the usurper personalty, attended only by her daughter. She could—she feared not—fully prove the identity of "Captain Devereaux" with Captain Trevelyan the late lord, and her husband's miniature, which she wore, and his letters, especially the last from Montreal, would prove still further the fact of her marriage, and his intentions as regarded his will, though they were all addressed to her as Mrs. Devereaux, and simply bore his signature as "Richard," save one already mentioned, to which he appended his title.
So she thought and flattered herself while, clad in the deepest mourning, she and Sybil traversed, by the Cornwall Railway, the forty odd miles that lay between Porthellick and Rhoscadzhel, followed by the prayers and blessings of old Winny Braddon.
"That which we fancy must break our hearts, we can bear patiently, and what is more, so learn to conform to, that after a few years of life, we can wonder that we thought them hardships," says a writer with much truth. So did Constance think her heart would break, when all the reality of her desolate condition was brought home to her, by her mirror reflecting her face—the face that Richard loved so well—encircled by a widow's cap—that odious ruche of tulle; but she already felt the conviction strongly, that whatever happened now, she would not have many years of life before her.
Mother and daughter sat silent and sad while the train swept on, Lostwithiel with its antique octagon spire and the ruins of Restormal, with their moat full of sweet-briars; St. Blazey, to whose shrine the woolcombers made their pilgrimages in the days of old (the saint having been tortured or curried to death with wool-combs, by the Cornish men who declined to be converted from Druidism), with many a spacious lawn and bare autumnal wood and many a purple moor, were speedily left behind; and now it was past Grampound with its market-house and ancient granite cross, the train went screaming and clanking. Redruth next, in a dreary and barren district whose wealth lies far below the soil, which is literally honeycombed by the shafts and levels of mines; and then came Hayle, the houses of which are all built of scoria or slag, the debris of ancient mines; and then the travellers hired at the "White Hart," a carriage for Rhoscadzhel.
To Constance, the scenery there had its chief interest in the circumstance that in youth and manhood her husband must have been familiar with every feature of it, and must have shot and hunted over it all. Noon was past now; but the sun shed a rich golden light upon a calm sea, of which they had lovely glimpses at times between the grey granite carns and clumps of oak and elm. Sometimes the carriage rolled past wildernesses of rock and morass, where wild tarns reflected in their glassy depths the blue sky above, and where valleys opened westward to the Bristol Channel, whose waves were buttressed out by precipices of bold and striking outline, and the heart of Constance began to beat painfully as each revolution of the wheels drew her nearer and nearer to the house, that long ere this should have been her home.
She felt, or thought, that now she was about to face, confront, and grapple with her fate, and to know the best or worst! The secret burden so long intolerable, would now be cast aside, and the adoption of any line of action, in lieu of the existence she had led since her loss was confirmed—the dumb mechanical life of one too paralysed even to think—was a relief. Yet moments there were when she half repented of her journey.
Her husband, her sole protector, was gone, and the proofs of their marriage, and of his intentions by will, too, were gone also! If her arguments were repelled, her assertions denied, what must be her fate, and how terribly should she and those he loved so well be exposed to the sneers and heartlessness of a world that knew nothing of their good qualities, or of the cause for that concealment which might now prove the cause of their destruction.
What if even now, at the eleventh hour, as it were, she turned prudently back, and concealed the fact that she was the true Lady Lamorna—that her son was a peer of the realm—and let him and Sybil pass through life as humble Devereaux, content to earn their bread as best they could? But to see Downie Trevelyan, the author of that harsh and most insulting letter, occupying the place of her Denzil—no—no! a thousand times no!
Some such fears had been occurring to Sybil, who now said, in a low voice, as they drew near the stately gate of Rhoscadzhel,
"I doubt, dearest mamma, whether this is a wise proceeding on our part; if we have the legal right to call ourselves Trevelyans, that right should be placed for proof in legal hands."
"If we have—" began Constance, impetuously, and then became silent, for she felt that the views of her daughter were, perhaps, the most correct.
The elaborate iron gate, and its tall granite pillars, each supporting a grotesque Koithgath, surmounted by a coronet, were left behind, and they proceeded along the stately avenue by which we have so lately seen Richard passing as chief mourner at the funeral of the old lord; and now, as the porte-cochère (which bore a double hatchment) was approached, came a new perplexity to the mind of Constance. How was she to announce herself?
As "Lady Lamorna," where there was already one who called herself so; simply as "Mrs. Devereaux," or as "a lady wishing an interview with Lord Lamorna"? But from the utterance of his name in this instance she shrunk.
The pampered servants, on seeing that the approaching vehicle was only a carriage hired from the neighbouring inn, and not an equipage having coats of arms and showy liveries, were somewhat slow in answering the summons at the bell; but as the hall door stood open, and, luckily for the perplexed Constance, Mr. Jasper Funnel, the solemn, portly, and intensely respectable-looking butler, was lingering there, she asked if she could "see his master."
Now this was a mode to which Mr. Jasper Funnel was all unused, and he might have been disposed to summon "Jeames" or "Chawles" to attend to her; but there was now a hauteur in the bearing of Constance that thoroughly bewildered, if it failed to awe him.
"Master, mum?" he stammered; "his lordship is at home, but engaged with General Trecarrel—I can take in your card, however."
"I have not my card-case with me."
"What name, then?"
"It matters not—just say——"
"Perhaps, mum, relations of the family?" suggested Funnel, perceiving the depth of mourning worn by the two ladies.
"Yes—near relations, indeed," replied Constance, restraining her tears with difficulty.
The man of bins and vintages, who thought he knew the branches of the Trevelyan family through all their ramifications, looked still more perplexed; however, he said, with a still lower bow,
"This way, mum—please to follow me," and desiring their driver to await them, Constance and Sybil entered the mansion of Rhoscadzhel.
As if to tantalise them by a display of all they were perhaps to lose, or had already lost for ever, a valet, to whose care Mr. Funnel now consigned them, conducted them by a somewhat circuitous route, as all the suites of rooms were not in order, the family having arrived unexpectedly from town.
Passing through the marble vestibule, an arch on one side of which opened to a gay aviary, and one on the other to the beautiful conservatory, they entered a long and lofty corridor, where the soft carpet muffled every foot-fall, and where were the objects of vertu, accumulated by several generations of Trevelyans; a veritable museum it seemed, of glass cases filled with quaintly illuminated vellum MSS., in fine old Roman bindings, red-edged and clasped; old laces of Malines and Bruges; Chinese ivory carvings, delicate as gossamer webs; Burmese idols; Japanese cabinets, covered with flaming dragons; Majolica vases, where rosy cupids, grotesque tritons, nude nymphs, and shining dolphins, were all grouped together; Delft hardware of odd designs; Etruscan cups, cream-coloured or crimson, with slender black demoniac figures thereon; mediæval suits of armour; family portraits of dames in ruffs and farthingales, and of past Trevelyans, all well-wigged, cuirassed, and armed: some with Bardolph noses and paunches of comely curve, suggestive of sack and venison; the chiefs of these being Lord Henry, who was Governor of Rougemont Castle for Queen Elizabeth, and Launcelot, the cavalier-lord, who sought shelter in Trewoofe from the victorious Roundheads.
The refined and cultivated taste of Constance could well appreciate all these objects; but now, as one in a dream, her eyes wandered over those walls where many a gem of art was hanging; the soft-eyed and white-skinned girls of Greuze; the bearded and doubleted nobles of Vandyke; cattle, fat and lazy-looking, by Cuyp; hazy sea-pieces by Turner, and more than one lovely Raphael; but then her every thought was turned inward; and as if to support herself, she retained Sybil's tremulous little hand, on which her clasp tightened, as the servant, who was clad in mourning livery, with a black cord aiguilette on each shoulder, opened noiselessly the half of a folding-door, and ushered them into that splendid library where her husband had found his proud old uncle dead at the writing-table, and Downie (with the unsigned deed) hanging over him, with confusion and disappointment on his usually stolid visage.
"Visitors, my lord," said the servant.
And to add to the perplexity of Constance, she found herself face to face with the whole family group—the whole, at least, save one, her nephew Audley.
CHAPTER XXI.
HUMILIATION.
The statements made to Audley Trevelyan by his father as to the dubious position of the two ladies at Porthellick—artful statements which seemed, without collusion, to corroborate so much that Mabel and Rose Trecarrel hinted or openly advanced—had seriously grieved and perplexed him. Thus, while loving Sybil and longing for her society on one hand, with the selfishness or vacillation peculiar to many young men, on the other, he began to wish that he had not gone quite so far—that he had been less precipitate in his love-making; but his perplexity increased to utter bewilderment, not unmixed with indignation, when his usually languid mother, with considerable scorn and irritation of manner, informed him that "the person calling herself Mrs. Devereaux" was but an intriguante, who had sought to lure his foolish uncle Richard into marriage; and his father admitted that he and others had long suspected his brother of having some low and illicit entanglement.
Now Audley knew that this "intriguante" had a son, whose existence might endanger his own succession to a title.
Was this fair, slender and delicate girl, whose gentle image had wound itself about the heart of Audley, and on whose "engagement finger" he had so recently slipped a ring, actually a cousin; but one whom he could not acknowledge—a person whom he dared not marry, in dread of that trumpet-tongued bugbear called "Society"?
He had ceased for some days to write to her. In this he accused himself of gross selfishness; but his father's open threats of withdrawing every shilling of his allowance, of turning his back upon him for ever, and so forth, if he dared to countenance the Devereaux in any way; and his total inability to live anywhere on his subaltern's pay alone, together with the dread of compromising his cold, proud, and intensely aristocratic mother and sister—in fact, it would seem, his whole family too—made him strive to crush in his heart the young love it was so sweet to brood upon; but Audley strove in vain, and began to think that the sooner he was back to India the better for all.
He had been nervous, irritable, and "out of sorts" since he had returned to Rhoscadzhel, and obtaining a passing glimpse of the little white villa as the train passed it, en route, had made him worse. He had procured Champagne and various other vintages too freely from Jasper Funnel; he had broken the knees of a favourite horse; ripped up the green cloth of the new billiard table when practising alone, and more than once had angrily laid his whip across the back of unoffending Rajah.
On the afternoon of the visit which closes the preceding chapter, his mother who was seated languidly in a deep easy chair near the library fire, playing with a feather fan, while her daintily slippered little feet rested on a velvet tabourette, said in her soft and monotonous voice,—
"I do wish, Audley, that odious dog of yours was dead—shot or lost."
"Why, mother, it was poor Jack Delamere's dying legacy."
"It is such a shaggy, self-willed, huge and savage animal—always about one's skirts or in one's way."
"You are unusually energetic in your adjectives this evening, my lady mother," replied Audley; "poor Rajah is as gentle as a lamb, and I might have found a kind owner for him ere this, however," he added, as he thought sadly of the winning Sybil on whose skirts his splendid pet had been permitted to nestle unrebuked.
"Visitors, mamma!" exclaimed Gartha Trevelyan, a fair-haired and languid edition of her mother, and already, in her sixteenth year, the imitator of all her tones and ways; "who can they be—in a hired carriage, too?"
"Ladies in deep mourning," said General Trecarrel, glancing uneasily at Audley.
"By Jove!" muttered the latter, growing quite pale, as he recognised them from a bay window, and at once quitting the library, descended by a private staircase to where his horse and groom happened to be awaiting him.
"My cousin—he is my own cousin; this was the secret sympathy—the tie of blood that drew us to each other," Sybil was thinking softly, in her timid heart, to keep her courage up, at the very time when he who, without flinching, would have faced a Sikh gun-battery, or a horde of Afghans, was avoiding her, and galloping ingloriously away from what he deemed "a scene—a deuced family row," with a blush on his cheek, shame, pity, and anger mingling in his soul, with the half-formed wish that he had never met and never known her!
Advancing into the room, the mother and daughter bowed, and then stood irresolute. The former had expected to have seen Downie alone; but finding him thus, amid his family, and the General present too, all her pre-arranged and carefully considered explanations and remarks completely fled her memory, and her mind became blank as a sheet of unwritten paper, as Downie, after a rapid whisper to his wife, over whose colourless face there flashed a look of angry scorn, took the initiative.
His wife, with her everlasting smelling-bottle or vinaigrette and lace handkerchief; her newly-cut novel close by; her pale, dull eyes and unmeaning smile; her "company manners;" her soft white hands, smooth and unwrinkled as her forehead, yet cold and puerile as her heart, was always a kind of bore; but now her tout-ensemble had all the impress of insipidity, animated by insolence; for weak though the lawyer's wife was in character, she felt that she was mistress of the situation; and at least pro tem., if not for life, Lady Lamorna.
She regarded the widow with a cold and supercilious stare, to which the former replied by a steady gaze, and each seemed to draw her conclusions of the other in an instant, for "to women alone pertains that marvellous freemasonry, which sees the character at a glance, and investigates the sincerity of a disposition or the value of a lace flounce with the same practised facility."
Downie, too, had his own peculiar acuteness and instincts, sharp and keen, wherever he went; he saw everything in a moment; whoever he met, he read their faces like a book, he marked all their features, deduced their personal characters, just as if he had been intimate with them for a life-time; and a very useful power this had proved to him, in the course of his legal career; and now, in his mourning suit, he looked like "one of those great crows that are to be seen, apparently asleep, in a meadow in autumn; but which, nevertheless, see everything that is going on around them." The gentle aspect, the forlorn bearing, and uncommon beauty of Constance and her daughter, would have softened any other heart than Downie's; but his was like Cornish granite—the oldest and stoniest of all stones.
General Trecarrel—somewhat nervously it must be owned—shook hands with the intruders, for as such they felt themselves viewed; but the dog, Rajah, alone gave them a welcome by fawning round Sybil, who trembled excessively, and could scarcely restrain her tears, while the dog's recognition of her did not escape the wife of Downie, who drew certain conclusions therefrom.
"Mrs. Devereaux, I believe?" said Downie Trevelyan, calmly, and with his professional smile, as he looked up from the table, which was literally heaped up with letters, many of them being unopened; "to what do I owe the pleasure of this visit?"
"You owe it to my sorrow, sir," replied Constance, gathering courage, as her eye caught a portrait of Richard Trevelyan, in his uniform, painted years ago, ere he went to America, and looking just as she had seen him in the early days of their happy loverhood; and now the pictured face seemed to smile upon her out of the past; "to the death of my husband—your brother, as you know, by drowning," she added.
He gave her a stare of cold enquiry, over, and finally, through his double gold eye-glass, which he specially wiped for the occasion, and then turning to his wife, said,—
"Gartha, my dear, take your namesake and the boys with you—retire, please, for we may have much to say that must not be said before you."
"Perhaps I—I too, am de trop?" said General Trecarrel, a little nervously, assuming his hat and malacca cane.
"Not at all—pray be seated," replied Downie.
"If—Mrs.—Mrs.——"
"Oh, yes; Mrs. Devereaux will excuse you, General, I am sure," answered Downie, as his wife, with her four younger children, sailed haughtily from the room, drawing in her skirts as she passed Constance, whose pretty lip only quivered a little with disdain.
To do him justice, the barrister looked on the widow with something of interest, mingling, momentarily, with his fear and anger—but momentarily only. She was slenderly and so beautifully formed, small featured, and dark haired, with much that was intense and unfathomable in her pleading eyes—pleading for her children's honour and her own: and there was Sybil, too, clad in the deepest mourning, her high black dress, with its pretty cuffs, and a small white collar round her delicate neck, made her fair skin seem fairer still, and appeared to become the darkness of her hair and eyes better than any other style of dress would have done; but, then, Sybil looked charming in everything!
The little interest died, and Downie regarded them with intense hostility, for he had all "that sublime philosophy which teaches us to bear with tranquillity the woes of others."
"Oh—ah—yes," he said, after a most harassing pause; "you are the lady who lives—in fact, who has lived for some time past, in a villa near Porthellick?"
"The same, sir."
Downie knit his brows, for she accorded him no title, and he was somewhat jealous on the point.
"It was a bold act of my brother to bring you here to Cornwall—a secluded place—almost under the eyes of his own family too!"
"Circumstanced as we were by the eccentricity of his late uncle, it was, perhaps, unwise," she replied, gently.
"I am glad that you admit so much: a little villa near St. John's Wood, or some such place, had been more appropriate for persons so situated."
The eyes of Constance began to flash dangerously.
"My son is Lord Lamorna!" she exclaimed; "and even on his cold-blooded uncle may punish this cruel insult to his mother!"
The General, to whom all this revelation was new and startling, began to feel uncomfortable, and to look quite perplexed; but Downie only smiled a crafty smile, as he said—
"Pooh, my good woman, you are out of your senses; what can be the object of this visit? I am busy—does your carriage wait?"
"Before scandals go forth in our name, I beseech you to consider well, and to read this letter, which will show you who I am and what I am, and why for years we have all borne the name of Devereaux," said Constance, making a prodigious effort to control her great grief and just indignation, as she held the document before Downie; "it is the last my dear, dear husband wrote me."
"Husband—absurd! This is the wildest of wild assertions," said Downie Trevelyan, as he took the letter from her hand, nevertheless; and as he did so, the words of her dead husband came back to her memory, when he said "that proofs of their marriage, beyond mere assertion, must be forthcoming;" and now those proofs were buried in the sea.
"You must recognise the handwriting," said Constance, in a tremulous tone; "and oh, sir," she added, as she eyed him doubtfully and wistfully, "you will restore it to me, and not destroy it?"
"Destroy!" said he, sternly; "what are you talking about? I hope I am too much of a lawyer to destroy any document."
"Before witnesses, at least," was the awkward addendum of the General.
Downie's legal eye quickly took in the situation, as detailed by his brother Richard in that letter, which stated that the little chapel of St. Mary, at Montreal, had been burned down three years after the regiment had left the city; that the Père Latour and the acolyte were both dead; that though the Registers had all perished in the flames, the signed copy of the marriage certificate was preserved by Latour's successor, and "is now in my possession," added the letter, the signature to which, "Lamorna," made the reader's eyes to gleam with secret rage; but he merely said,