BOOK IX. 

CHAPTER I. 

 THE SECRET WHICH GUY DARRELL DID NOT CONFIDE TO ALBAN MORLEY. 

It was a serene noonday in that melancholy interlude of the seasons whenautumn has really ceased--winter not yet visibly begun. The same hiredvehicle which had borne Lionel to Fawley more than five years ago, stopped at the gate of the wild umbrageous grass-land that surroundedthe antique Manor-house. It had been engaged, from the nearest railway-station on the London road, by a lady, with a female companion who seemedher servant. The driver dismounted, opened the door of the vehicle, andthe lady bidding him wait there till her return, and saying a few wordsto her companion, descended, and, drawing her cloak round her, walked onalone towards the Manor-house. At first her step was firm, and her pacequick. She was still under the excitement of the resolve in which thejourney from her home had been suddenly conceived and promptlyaccomplished. But as the path wound on through the stillness ofvenerable groves, her courage began to fail her. Her feet loitered, hereyes wandered round vaguely, timidly. The scene was not new to her. Asshe gazed, rushingly gathered over her sorrowful shrinking mind memoriesof sportive happy summer days, spent in childhood amidst those turfs andshades-memories, more agitating, of the last visit (childhood thenripened into blooming youth) to the ancient dwelling which, yet concealedfrom view by the swells of the undulating ground and the yellow boughs ofthe giant trees, betrayed its site by the smoke rising thin and dimagainst the limpid atmosphere. She bent down her head, closing her eyesas if to shut out less the face of the landscape than the images thatrose ghost-like up to people it, and sighed heavily, heavily. Now, hardby, roused from its bed amongst the fern, the doe that Darrell had tainedinto companionship had watched with curiosity this strange intruder onits solitary range. But at the sound of that heavy sigh, the creature, emboldened, left its halting-place, and stole close to the saddenedwoman, touching her very dress. Doubtless, as Darrell's companion in hismost musing hours, the doe was familiarised to the sound of sighs, andassociated the sound with its gentlest notions of humanity. 

The lady, starting, raised her drooping lids, and met those soft darkeyes, dark and soft as her own. Round the animal's neck there was asimple collar, with a silver plate, fresh and new, evidently placed thererecently; and as the creature thrust forward its head, as if for thecaress of a wonted hand, the lady read the inscription. The words werein Italian, and may be construed thus: "Female, yet not faithless;fostered, yet not ungrateful. " As she read, her heart so swelled, andher resolve so deserted her, that she turned as if she had received asentence of dismissal, and went back some hasty paces. The doe followedher till she paused again, and then it went slowly down a narrow path tothe left, which led to the banks of the little lake. 

The lady had now recovered herself. "It is a duty, and it must be done, "she muttered, and letting clown the veil she had raised on entering thedemesne, she hurried on, not retracing her steps in the same path, buttaking that into which the doe had stricken, perhaps in the confusedmistake of a mind absorbed and absent-perhaps in revived recollection ofthe localities, for the way thus to the house was shorter than by theweed-grown carriage-road. The lake came in view, serene and glassy;half-leafless woodlands reflected far upon its quiet waters; the doehalted, lifted its head, and sniffed the air, and, somewhat quickeningits pace, vanished behind one of the hillocks clothed with brushwood, that gave so primitive and forest-like a character to the old ground. Advancing still, there now, --at her right hand, grew out of the landscapethe noble turrets of the unfinished pile; and, close at her left, under agnarled fantastic thorn-tree, the still lake at his feet reflecting hisstiller shadow, reclined Guy Darrell, the doe nestled at his side. 

So unexpected this sight--he, whom she came to seek yet feared to see, soclose upon her way--the lady uttered a faint but sharp cry, and Darrellsprang to his feet. She stood before him, veiled, mantled, bending as asuppliant. 

"Avaunt!" he faltered wildly. "Is this a spirit my own black solitudeconjures up--or is it a delusion, a dream?" It is I--I!--the Carolinedear to you once, if detested now! Forgive me! Not for myself I come. "She flung back her veil-her eyes pleadingly sought his. 

"So, " said Darrell, gathering his arms round his breast in the gesturepeculiar to him when seeking either to calm a more turbulent movement, orto confirm a sterner resolution of his heart--"so! Caroline, Marchionessof Montfort, we are then fated to meet face to face at last! Iunderstand--Lionel Haughton sent, or showed to you, my letter?"

"Oh! Mr. Darrell, how could you have the heart to write in such terms ofone who--"

"One who had taken the heart from my bosom and trampled it into the mire. True, fribbles will say, 'Fie! the vocabulary of fine gentlemen has noharsh terms for women. ' Gallants, to whom love is pastime, leave or areleft with elegant sorrow and courtly bows. Madam, I was never such airygallant. I am but a man unhappily in earnest--a man who placed in thosehands his life of life--who said to you, while yet in his prime, 'Thereis my future, take it, till it vanish out of earth!" You have made thatlife substanceless as a ghost--that future barren as the grave. And whenyou dare force yourself again upon my way, and would dictate laws to myvery hearth--if I speak as a man what plain men must feel--'Oh! Mr. Darrell, ' says your injured ladyship, 'how can you have the heart?'Woman! were you not false as the falsest? Falsehood has no dignity toawe rebuke--falsehood no privilege of sex. "

"Darrell--Darrell--Darrell--spare me, spare me! I have been so punished--I am so miserable!"

"You!--punished!--What! you sold yourself to youth, and sleek looks, andgrand titles, and the flattery of a world; and your rose-leaves werecrumpled in the gorgeous marriage-bed. Adequate punishment!--a crumpledrose-leaf! True, the man was a--but why should I speak ill of him? Itwas he who was punished, if, accepting his rank, you recognised inhimself a nothingness that you could neither love nor honour. False andungrateful alike to the man you chose--to the man you forsook! And nowyou have buried one, and you have schemed to degrade the other. "

"Degrade!--Oh! it is that charge which has stung me to the quick. Allthe others I deserve. But that charge! Listen--you shall listen. "

"I stand here resigned to do so. Say all you will now, for it is thelast time on earth I lend my ears to your voice. "

"Be it so--the last time. " She paused to recover speech, collectthoughts, gain strength; and strange though it may seem to those who havenever loved, amidst all her grief and humiliation there was a fearfuldelight in that presence from which she had been exiled since her youth--nay, delight unaccountable to herself, even in that rough, vehement, bitter tempest of reproach, for an instinct told her that there wouldhave been no hatred in the language had no love been lingering in thesoul. 

"Speak, " said Darrell gently, softened, despite himself, by her evidentstruggle to control emotion. 

Twice she began-twice voice failed her. At last her words came forthaudibly. She began with her plea for Lionel and Sophy, and gatheredboldness by her zeal on their behalf. She proceeded to vindicate her ownmotives-to acquit herself of his harsh charge. She scheme for hisdegradation! She had been too carried away by her desire to promote hishappiness--to guard him from the possibility of a self-reproach. Atfirst he listened to her with haughty calmness; merely saying, inreference to Sophy and Lionel, "I have nothing to add or to alter in theresolution I have communicated to Lionel. " But when she thus insensiblymingled their cause with her own, his impatience broke out. "Myhappiness? Oh! well have you proved the sincerity with which you schemedfor that! Save me from self-reproach--me! Has Lady Montfort so whollyforgotten that she was once Caroline Lyndsay that she can assume the partof a warning angel against the terrors of self-reproach?"

"Ah!" she murmured faintly, "can you suppose, however fickle andthankless I may seem to you--"

"Seem!" he repeated. 

"Seem!" she said again, but meekly--"seem, and seem justly;--yet can yousuppose that when I became free to utter my remorse--to speak ofgratitude, of reverence--I was insincere? Darrell, Darrell, you cannotthink so! That letter which reached you abroad nearly a year ago, inwhich I laid my pride of woman at your feet, as I lay it now in cominghere--that letter, in which I asked if it were impossible for you topardon, too late for me to atone--was written on my knees. It was theoutburst of my very heart. Nay, nay, hear me out. Do not imagine that Iwould again obtrude a hope so contemptuously crushed!" (a deep blush cameover her cheek. ) "I blame you not, nor, let me say it, did your severitybring that shame which I might have justly felt had I so written to anyman on earth but you--you, so reverenced from my infancy, that--"

"Ay, " interrupted Darrell fiercely, "ay, do not fear that I shouldmisconceive you; you would not so have addressed the young, the fair, thehappy. No! you, proud beauty, with hosts, no doubt, of supplicatingwooers, would have thrust that hand into the flames before it wrote to ayoung man, loved as the young are loved, what without shame it wrote tothe old man, reverenced as the old are reverenced! But my heart is notold, and your boasted reverence was a mocking insult. Your letter, tornto pieces, was returned to you without a word--insult for insult! Youfelt no shame that I should so rudely reject your pity. Why should you?Rejected pity is not rejected love. The man was not less old because hewas not reconciled to age. "

This construction of her tender penitence--this explanation of his bitterscorn--took Caroline Montfort wholly by surprise. From what writhingagonies of lacerated self-love came that pride which was but self-depreciation? It was a glimpse into the deeper rents of his charred anddesolate being which increased at once her yearning affection and herpassionate despair. Vainly she tried to utter the feelings that crowdedupon her!--vainly, vainly! Woman can murmur, "I have injured you--forgive!" when she cannot exclaim, "You disdain me, but love!" Vainly, vainly her bosom heaved and her lips moved under the awe of his flashingeyes and the grandeur of his indignant frown. 

"Ah!" he resumed, pursuing his own thoughts with a sombre intensity ofpassion that rendered him almost unconscious of her presence--"Ah! I saidto myself, 'Oh, she believes that she has been so mourned and missed thatmy soul would spring back to her false smile; that I could be so base aslave to my senses as to pardon the traitress because her face was fairenough to haunt my dreams. She dupes herself; she is no necessity to myexistence--I have wrenched it from her power years, long years ago! Iwill show her, since again she deigns to remember me, that I am not soold as to be grateful for the leavings of a heart. 

"I will love another--I will be beloved. She shall not say with secrettriumph, 'The old man dotes in rejecting me'"

"Darrell, Darrel--unjus--cruel kill me rather than talk thus!"

He heeded not her cry. His words rolled on in that wonderful, varyingmusic which, whether in tenderness or in wrath, gave to his voice amagical power--fascinating, hushing, overmastering human souls. 

"But--you have the triumph; see, I am still alone! I sought the world ofthe young--the marriage mart of the Beautiful once more. Alas! if myeye was captured for a moment, it was by something that reminded me ofyou. I saw a faultless face, radiant with its virgin blush; moved to it, I drew near-sighing, turned away; it was not you! I heard the silverylaugh of a life fresh as an April morn. 'Hark!' I said, 'is not that thesweet mirth-note at which all my cares were dispelled? Listening, Iforgot my weight of years. Why? because listening, I remembered you. 'Heed not the treacherous blush and the beguiling laugh, ' whisperedPrudence. 'Seek in congenial mind a calm companion to thine own. ' Mind!O frigid pedantry! Mind!--had not yours been a volume open to my eyes;in every page, methought, some lovely poet-truth never revealed to humansense before! No; you had killed to me all womanhood! Woo another!--wedanother! 'Hush, ' I said, 'it shall be. Eighteen years since we parted--seeing her not, she remains eternally the same! Seeing her again, thevery change that time must have brought will cure. I saw you--all thepast rushed back in that stolen moment. I fled--never more to dream thatI can shake off the curse of memory--blent with each drop of my blood--woven with each tissue-throbbing in each nerve-bone of my bone, and fleshof my flesh--poison-root from which every thought buds to wither--thecurse to have loved and to have trusted you!"

"Merciful Heaven! can I bear this?" cried Caroline, clasping her handsto her bosom. " And is my sin so great--is it so unpardonable? Oh, if ina heart so noble, in a nature so great, mine was the unspeakable honourto inspire an affection thus enduring, must it be only--only--as a curse!Why can I not repair the past? You have not ceased to love me. Call ithate--it is love still! And now, no barrier between our lives, can Inever, never again--never, now that I know I am less unworthy of you bythe very anguish I feel to have so stung you--can I never again be theCaroline of old?"

"Ha, ha!" burst forth the unrelenting man, with a bitter laugh--"see thereal coarseness of a woman's nature under all its fine-spun frippery!Behold these delicate creatures, that we scarcely dare to woo! how littlethey even comprehend the idolatry they inspire! The Caroline of old!Lo, the virgin whose hand we touched with knightly homage, whose firstbashful kiss was hallowed as the gate of paradise, deserts us--sellsherself at the altar--sanctifies there her very infidelity to us; andwhen years have passed, and a death has restored her freedom, she comesto us as if she had never pillowed her head on another's bosom, and says'Can I not again be the Caroline of old?' We men are too rude to forgivethe faithless. Where is the Caroline I loved? YOU--are--my LadyMontfort! Look round. On these turfs, you, then a child, played besidemy children. They are dead, but less dead to me than you. Never dreamedI then that a creature so fair would be other than a child to my graveand matured existence. Then, if I glanced towards your future, I felt nopang to picture you grown to womanhood--another's bride. My hearth hadfor years been widowed, I had no thought of second nuptials. My sonwould live to enjoy my wealth, and realise my cherished dreams--my sonwas snatched from me! Who alone had the power to comfort?--who alone hadthe courage to steal into the darkened room where I sate mourning? surethat in her voice there would be consolation, and the sight of hersympathising tears would chide away the bitterness of mine?--who but theCaroline of old! Ah, you are weeping now. But Lady Montfort's tearshave no talisman to me! You were then still a child--as a child, mysoothing angel. A year or so more my daughter, to whom all my pride ofHouse--all my hope of race, had been consigned--she whose happiness Ivalued so much more than my ambition, that I had refused her hand to youryoung Lord of Montfort--puppet that, stripped of the millinery of titles, was not worthy to replace a doll!--my daughter, I folded her one night inmy arms, --I implored her to confide in me if ever she nursed a hope thatI could further--knew a grief that I could banish; and she promised--andshe bent her forehead to my blessing--and before daybreak she had fledwith a man whose very touch was dishonour and pollution, and was lost tome for ever. . . . Then, when I came hither to vent at my father'sgrave the indignant grief I suffered not the world to see, you and yourmother (she who professed for me such loyal friendship, such ineffaceablegratitude), you two came kindly to share my solitude--and then, then youwere a child no more!--and a sun that had never gilt my life brightenedout of the face of the Caroline of old!" He paused a moment, heeding nother bitter weeping; he was rapt from the present hour itself by theexcess of that anguish which is to woe what ecstasy is to joy--sweptalong by the flood of thoughts that had been pent within his breastthrough the solitary days and haunted nights, which had made the longtransition state from his manhood's noon to its gathering eve. And inthat pause there came from afar off a melodious, melancholy strain-softly, softly borne over the cold blue waters--softly, softly throughthe sere autumnal leaves--the music of the magic flute!

"Hark!" he said, "do you not remember? Look to that beech-tree yonder!Summer clothed it then! Do you not remember! as under that tree westood--that same, same note came, musical as now, undulating with riseand fall--came, as if to interpret, by a voice from fairyland, thebeating of my own mysterious heart. You had been pleading for pardon toone less ungrateful--less perfidious--than my comforter proved herself. I had listened to you, wondering why anger and wrong seemed banished fromthe world; and I murmured, in answer, without conscious thought ofmyself: 'Happy the man whose faults your bright charity will admonish--whose griefs your tenderness will chase away! But when, years hence, children are born to yourself, spare me the one who shall most resembleyou, to replace the daughter whom I can only sincerely pardon whensomething else can spring up to my desolate being--something that I cancherish without the memory of falsehood and the dread of shame. ' Yes, asI ceased, came that music; and as it thrilled through the summer air, Iturned and met your eyes--turned and saw you blush--turned and heard somefaint faltering words drowning the music with diviner sweetness; andsuddenly I knew, as by a revelation, that the Child I had fostered hadgrown the Woman I loved. My own soul was laid bare to me by the flash ofhope. Over the universe rushed light and colour! Oh, the Caroline ofold! What wonder that she became so fatally, so unspeakably beloved! Assome man in ancient story, banished from his native land, is told by anoracle to seek a happier isle in undiscovered seas--freights with his alla single bark--collects on his wandering altar the last embers of hisabandoned hearth-places beside it his exiled housebold gods; so all thatmy life had left to me, hallowing and hallowed, I stored in you. . . . I tore myself from the old native soil, the old hardy skies. Throughtime's wide ocean I saw but the promised golden isle. Fables, fables!--lying oracle!--sunken vessel!--visionary isle! And life to me had tillthen been so utterly without love!--had passed in such hard labours, without a holyday of romance--all the fountains of the unknown passionsealed till the spell struck the rock, and every wave, every dropsparkled fresh to a single star. Yet my boyhood, like other men's, haddreamed of its Ideal. There at last that Ideal, come to life, bloomedbefore me; there, under those beech-trees--the Caroline of old. Owretched woman, now weeping at my side, well may you weep! Never canearth give you back such love as you lost in mine. "

"I know it, I know it--fool that I was--miserable fool!"

"Ay, but comfort yourself--wilder and sadder folly in myself! Yourmother was right. 'The vain child, ' she said, 'knows not her own heart. She is new to the world--has seen none of her own years. For your sake, as for hers, I must insist on the experiment of absence. A year'sordeal--see if she is then of the same mind. ' I marvelled at hercoldness; proudly I submitted to her seasonings; fearlessly I confidedthe result to you. Ah! how radiant was your smile, when, in the partinghour, I said, 'Summer and you will return again!' In vain, on pretencethat the experiment should be complete, did your mother carry you abroad, and exact from us both the solemn promise that not even a letter shouldpass beween us--that our troth, made thus conditional, should be a secretto all--in vain, if meant to torture me with doubt. In my creed, a doubtis itself a treason. How lovely grew the stern face of Ambition!--howFame seemed as a messenger from me to you! In the sound of applause Isaid 'They cannot shut out the air that will carry that sound to herears! All that I can win from honour shall be my marriage gifts to myqueenly bride. ' See that arrested pile--begun at my son's birth, stoppedawhile at his death, recommenced on a statelier plan when I thought ofyour footstep on its floors--your shadow on its walls. Stopped nowforever! Architects can build a palace; can they build a home? But you--you--you, all the while--your smile on another's suit--your thoughts onanother's hearth!"

"Not so!--not so! Your image never forsook me. I was giddy, thoughtless, dazzled, entangled; and I told you in the letter youreturned to me--told you that I had been deceived!"

"Patience--patience! Deceived! Do you imagine that I do not see allthat passed as in a magician's glass? Caroline Montfort, you never lovedme; you never knew what love was. Thrown suddenly into the gay world, intoxicated by the effect of your own beauty, my sombre figure graduallyfaded dim--pale ghost indeed in the atmosphere of flowers and lustres, rank with the breath of flatterers. Then came my lord the Marquess--a cousin privileged to familiar intimacy to visit at will, to ride withyou, dance with you, sit side by side with you in quiet corners ofthronging ball-rooms, to call you 'Caroline. ' Tut, tut--they are onlycousins, and cousins are as brothers and sisters in the affectionateHouse of Vipont; and gossips talk, and young ladies envy--finest match inall England is the pretty-faced Lord of Montfort! And your mother, whohad said, 'Wait a year' to Guy Darrell, must have dreamed of the cousin, and schemed for his coronet, when she said it. And I was unseen, and Imust not write; and the absent are always in the wrong--when cousins arepresent! And I hear your mother speak of me--hear the soft sound of herdamaging praises. 'Another long speech from your clever admirer! Don'tfancy he frets; that kind of man thinks of nothing but blue-books andpolitics. ' And your cousin proposes, and you say with a sigh, 'No; I ambound to Guy Darrell'; and your mother says to my Lord, 'Wait, and stillcome--as a cousin!' And then, day by day, the sweet Mrs. Lyndsay dropsinto your ear the hints that shall poison your heart. Some fable isdressed to malign me; and you cry, "Tis not true; prove it true, or Istill keep my faith to Guy Darrell. ' Then comes the kind compact--'If thestory be false, my cousin must go. ' 'And if it be true, you will be myown duteous child. Alas! your poor cousin is breaking his heart. Alawyer of forty has a heart made of parchuient!' Aha! you wereentangled, and of course deceived! Your letter did not explain what wasthe tale told to you. I care not a rush what it was. It is enough forme to know that, if you had loved me, you would have loved me the morefor every tale that belied me. So the tale was credited, because arelief to credit it. So the compact was kept--so the whole bargainhurried over in elegant privacy-place of barter, an ambassador's chapel. Bauble for bauble--a jilt's faith for a mannikin's coronet. Four daysbefore the year of trial expired, 'Only four days more!' I exclaimed, drunk with rapture. The journals lie before me. Three columns to GuyDarrell's speech last night; a column more to its effect on a senate, onan empire; and two lines--two little lines--to the sentence that struckGuy Darrell out of the world of men! 'Marriage in high life. --Marquessof Montfort-Caroline Lyndsay. ' And the sun did not fall from heaven!Vulgarest of ends to the tritest of romances! In the gay world thesethings happen every day. Young ladies are privileged to give hopes toone man--their hands to another. 'Is the sin so unpardonable?' you ask, with ingenuous simplicity. Lady Montfort, that depends! Reflect! Whatwas my life before I put it into your keeping? Barren of happiness, Igrant--saddened, solitary--to myself a thing of small value. But whatwas that life to others?--a thing full of warm beneficence, of activeuses, of hardy powers fitted to noble ends! In paralysing that life asit was to others, there may be sin wider and darker than the mereinfidelity to love. And now do you dare to ask, 'Can I again be theCaroline of old'?"

"I ask nothing--not even pardon, " said the miserable woman. "I might saysomething to show where you misjudge me--something that might palliate;but no, let it be. " Her accents were so drearily hopeless that Darrellabruptly withdrew his eyes from her face, as if fearful that the sight ofher woe might weaken his resolve. She had turned mechanically back. They walked on in gloomy silence side by side, away now from the lake--back under the barbed thorn-tree-back by the moss-grown crag-back by thehollow trunks, and over the fallen leaves of trees, that had defied thestorms of centuries, to drop, perhaps, brittle and sapless, some quietday when every wind is lulled. 

The flute had ceased its music; the air had grown cold and piercing; thelittle park was soon traversed; the gate came in sight, and the humblevehicle without it. Then, involuntarily, both stopped; and on each therecame at once the consciousness that they were about to part--part, neverperhaps in this world to meet again; and, with all that had been said, somuch unspoken--their hearts so full of what, alas! their lips could notspeak. 

"Lady Montfort, " at length said Darrell. At the sound of her name sheshivered. 

"I have addressed you rudely--harshly--"

"No--no--"

"But that was the last exercise of a right which I now resign for ever. I spoke to her who had once been Caroline Lyndsay; some gentler words aredue to the widow of Lord Montfort. Whatever the wrongs you haveinflicted on me--wrongs inexpiable--I recognise no less in your generalnature qualities that would render you, to one whom you really loved, andhad never deceived, the blessing I had once hoped you would prove to me. "

She shook her head impatiently, piteously. 

"I know that in an ill-assorted union, and amidst all the temptations towhich flattered beauty is exposed, your conduct has been withoutreproach. Forget the old man whose thoughts should now be on his grave. "

"Hush, hush--have human mercy!"

"I withdraw and repent my injustice to your motives in the protection youhave given to the poor girl whom Lionel would wed; I thank you for thatprotection, --though I refuse consent to my kinsman's prayer. Whateverher birth, I must be glad to know that she whom Lionel so loves is safefrom a wretch like Losely. More--one word more--wait--it is hard for meto say it--be happy! I cannot pardon, but I can bless you. Farewell forever!" More overpoweringly crushed by his tenderness than his wrath, before Caroline could recover the vehemence of her sobs, he had ceased--he was gone--lost in the close gloom of a neighbouring thicket, hishurried headlong path betrayed by the rustle of mournful boughs swingingback with their withered leaves. 

CHAPTER II. 

RETROSPECT. 

 THERE IS A PLACE AT WHICH THREE ROADS MEET, SACRED TO THAT MYSTERIOUS GODDESS CALLED DIANA ON EARTH, LUNA, OR THE MOON, IN HEAVEN, OR HECATE IN THE INFERNAL REGIONS. AT THIS PLACE PAUSE THE VIRGINS PERMITTED TO TAKE THEIR CHOICE OF THE THREE ROADS. FEW GIVE THEIR PREFERENCE TO THAT WHICH IS VOWED TO THE GODDESS IN HER NAME OF DIANA: THAT ROAD, COLD AND BARREN, IS CLOTHED BY NO ROSES AND MYRTLES. ROSES AND MYRTLES VEIL THE ENTRANCE TO BOTH THE OTHERS, AND IN BOTH THE OTHERS HYMEN HAS MUCH THE SAME GAY-LOOKING TEMPLES. BUT WHICH OF THOSE TWO LEADS TO THE CELESTIAL LUNA, OR WHICH OF THEM CONDUCTS TO THE INFERNAL HECATE, NOT ONE NYMPH IN FIFTY DIVINES. IF THY HEART SHOULD MISGIVE THEE, O NYMPH!--IF, THOUGH CLOUD VEIL THE PATH TO THE MOON, AND SUNSHINE GILD THAT TO PALE HECATETHINE INSTINCT RECOILS FROM THE SUNSHINE, WHILE THOU DAREST NOT ADVENTURE THE CLOUD--THOU HAST STILL A CHOICE LEFT--THOU HAST STILL THE SAFE ROAD OF DIANA. HECATE, O NYMPH, IS THE GODDESS OF GHOSTS. IF THOU TAKEST HER PATH, LOOK NOT BACK, FOR THE GHOSTS ARE BEHIND THEE. . . 

When we slowly recover from the tumult and passion of some violentdistress, a peculiar stillness falls upon the Mind, and the atmospherearound it becomes in that stillness appallingly clear. We knew not, while wrestling with our woe, the extent of its ravages. As a land theday after a flood, as a field the day after a battle, is the sight of ourown sorrow, when we no longer have to steer its raging, but to endure thedestruction it has made. Distinct before Caroline Montfort's visionstretched the waste of her misery--the Past, the Present, the Future, allseemed to blend in one single Desolation. A strange thing it is how alltime will converge itself, as it were, into the burning-glass of amoment! There runs a popular superstition that it is thus, in theinstant of death; that our whole existence crowds itself on the glazingeye--a panorama of all we have done on earth just as the soul restores tothe earth its garment. Certes, there are hours in our being, long beforethe last and dreaded one, when this phenomenon comes to warn us that, ifmemory were always active, time would be never gone. Rose before thiswoman--who, whatever the justice of Darrell's bitter reproaches, had anature lovely enough to justify his anguish at her loss--the image ofherself at that turning point of life, when the morning mists are dimmedon our way, yet when a path chosen is a fate decided. Yes; she hadexcuses, not urged to the judge who sentenced, nor estimated to theirfull extent by the stern equity with which, amidst suffering and wrath, he had desired to weigh her cause. 

Caroline's mother, Mrs. Lindsay, was one of those parents who acquire anextraordinary influence over their children by the union of caressingmanners with obstinate resolves. She never lost control of her tempernor hold on her object. A slight, delicate, languid creature too, whowould be sure to go into a consumption if unkindly crossed. With muchstrong common sense, much knowledge of human nature, egotistical, worldly, scheming, heartless, but withal so pleasing, so gentle, sobewitchingly despotic, that it was like living with an electrobiologist, who unnerves you by a look to knock you down with a feather. In onlyone great purpose of her life had Mrs. Lyndsay failed. When Darrell, rich by the rewards of his profession and the bequest of his namesake, had entered Parliament, and risen into that repute which confers solidand brilliant station, Mrs. Lyndsay conceived the idea of appropriatingto herself his honours and his wealth by a second Hymen. Having so longbeen domesticated in his house during the life of Mrs. Darrell, anintimacy as of near relations had been established between them. Hersoft manners attached to her his children; and after Mrs. Darrell's deathrendered it necessary that she should find a home of her own, she had anexcuse, in Matilda's affection for her and for Caroline, to be morefrequently before Darrell's eyes, and consulted by him yet morefrequently, than when actually a resident in his house. To her Darrellconfided the proposal which had been made to him by the old Marchionessof Montfort, for an alliance between her young grandson and his solesurviving child. Wealthy as was the House of Vipont, it was amongst itstraditional maxims that wealth wastes if not perpetually recruited. Every third generation, at farthest, it was the duty of that house tomarry an heiress. Darrell's daughter, just seventeen, not yet broughtout, would be an heiress, if he pleased to make her so, second to nonewhom the research of the Marchioness had detected within the drawing-rooms and nurseries of the three kingdoms. The proposal of the venerablepeeress was at first very naturally gratifying to Darrell. It was aneuthanasia for the old knightly race to die into a House that was aninstitution in the empire, and revive phoenix-like in a line of peers, who might perpetuate the name of the heiress whose quarterings they wouldannex to their own, and sign themselves "Darrell Montfort. " Said Darrellinly, "On the whole, such a marriage would have pleased my poor father. "It did not please Mrs. Lyndsay. The bulk of Darrell's fortune thussettled away, he himself would be a very different match for Mrs. Lyndsay; nor was it to her convenience that Matilda should be thushastily disposed of, and the strongest link of connection between Fulhamand Carlton Gardens severed. Mrs. Lyndsay had one golden rule, which Irespectfully point out to ladies who covet popularity and power: shenever spoke ill of any one whom she wished to injure. She did not, therefore, speak ill of the Marquess to Darrell, but she so praised himthat her praise alarmed. She ought to know the young peer well; she wasa good deal with the Marchioness, who liked her pretty manners. Tillthen, Darrell had only noticed this green Head of the Viponts as a neat-looking Head, too modest to open its lips. But he now examined the Headwith anxious deliberation, and finding it of the poorest possible kind ofwood, with a heart to match, Guy Darrell had the audacity to reject, though with great courtesy, the idea of grafting the last plant of hisline on a stem so pithless. Though, like men who are at once veryaffectionate and very busy, he saw few faults in his children, or indeedin any one he really loved, till the fault was forced on him, he couldnot but be aware that Matilda's sole chance of becoming a happy and safewife was in uniting herself with such a husband as would at once win herconfidence and command her respect. He trembled when he thought of heras the wife of a man whose rank would expose her to all fashionabletemptations, and whose character would leave her without a guide orprotector. 

The Marquess, who obeyed his grandmother from habit, and who hadlethargically sanctioned her proposals to Darrell, evinced the liveliestemotion he had ever yet betrayed when he learned that his hand wasrejected. And if it were possible for him to carry so small a sentimentaspique into so large a passion as hate, from that moment he aggrandisedhis nature into hatred. He would have given half his lands to havespited Guy Darrell. Mrs. Lyndsay took care to be at hand to console him, and the Marchioness was grateful to her for taking that trouble some taskupon herself. And in the course of their conversation Mrs. Lyndsaycontrived to drop into his mind the egg of a project which she took alater occasion to hatch under her plumes of down. "There is but one kindof wife, my dear Montfort, who could increase your importance: you shouldmarry a beauty; next to royalty ranks beauty. " The Head nodded, andseemed to ruminate for some moments, and then /apropos des bottes/, itlet fall this mysterious monosyllable, "Shoes. " By what process ofratiocination the Head had thus arrived at the feet, it is not for me toconjecture. All I know is that, from that moment, Mrs. Lyndsay bestowedas much thought upon Caroline's chaussure as if, like Cinderella, Caroline's whole destiny in this world hung upon her slipper. With thefeelings and the schemes that have been thus intimated, this sensiblelady's mortification may well be conceived when she was startled byDarrell's proposal, not to herself, but to her daughter. Her egotism wasprofoundly shocked, her worldliness cruelly thwarted. With Guy Darrellfor her own spouse, the Marquess of Montfort for her daughter's, Mrs. Lyndsay would have been indeed a considerable personage in the world. But to lose Darrell for herself, and the Marquess altogether--the ideawas intolerable! Yet, since to have refused at once for her portionlessdaughter a man in so high a position, and to whom her own obligationswere so great, was impossible, she adopted a policy, admirable for thecraft of its conception and the dexterity of its execution. In exactingthe condition of a year's delay, she made her motives appear so loftilydisinterested, so magnanimously friendly! She could never forgiveherself if he--he--the greatest, the best of men, was again renderedunhappy in marriage by her imprudence (hers, who owed to him her all!)--yes, imprudent indeed, to have thrown right in his way a prettycoquettish girl ("for Caroline is coquettish, Mr. Darrell; most girls sopretty are at that silly age"). In short, she carried her point againstall the eloquence Darrell could employ, and covered her designs by thesemblance of the most delicate scruples, and the sacrifice of worldlyadvantages to the prudence which belongs to high principle andaffectionate caution. 

And what were Caroline's real sentiments for Guy Darrell? She understoodthem-now on looking back. She saw herself as she was then--as she hadstood under the beech-tree, when the heavenly pity that was at the coreof her nature--when the venerating, grateful affection that had grownwith her growth made her yearn to be a solace and a joy to that grand andsolitary life. Love him! Oh certainly she loved him, devotedly, fondly;but it was with the love of a child. She had not awakened then to thelove of woman. Removed from his presence, suddenly thrown into the greatworld--yes, Darrell had sketched the picture with a stern, but notaltogether an untruthful hand. He had not, however, fairly estimated theinevitable influence which a mother such as Mrs. Lyndsay would exerciseover a girl so wholly inexperienced--so guileless, so unsuspecting, andso filially devoted. He could not appreciate--no man can--the mightinessof female cunning. He could not see how mesh upon mesh the soft Mrs. Lyndsay (pretty woman with pretty manners) wove her web round the"cousins, " until Caroline, who at first had thought of the silent fair-haired young man only as the Head of her House, pleased with attentionsthat kept aloof admirers of whom she thought Guy Darrell might be morereasonably jealous, was appalled to hear her mother tell her that she waseither the most heartless of coquettes, or poor Montfort was the mostill-used of men. But at this time Jasper Losely, under his name ofHammond, brought his wife from the French town at which they had beenresiding, since their marriage, to see Mrs. Lyndsay and Caroline atParis, and implore their influence to obtain a reconciliation with herfather. Matilda soon learned from Mrs. Lyndsay, who affected the mostenchanting candour, the nature of the engagement between Caroline andDarrell. She communicated the information to Jasper, who viewed it withvery natural alarm. By reconciliation with Guy Darrell, Jasperunderstood something solid and practical--not a mere sentimental pardon, added to that paltry stipend of L700 a-year which he had just obtained--but the restoration to all her rights and expectancies of the heiress hehad supposed himself to marry. He had by no means relinquished thebelief that sooner or later Darrell would listen to the Voice of Nature, and settle all his fortune on his only child. But then for the Voice ofNature to have fair play, it was clear that there should be no otherchild to plead for. And if Darrell were to marry again and to have sons, what a dreadful dilemma it would be for the Voice of Nature! Jasper wasnot long in discovering that Caroline's engagement was not less unwelcometo Mrs. Lyndsay than to himself, and that she was disposed to connive atany means by which it might be annulled. Matilda was first employed toweaken the bond it was so desirable to sever. Matilda did not reproach, but she wept. She was sure now that she should he an outcast--herchildren beggars. Mrs. Lyndsay worked up this complaint with adroitestskill. Was Caroline sure that it was not most dishonourable--mosttreacherous--to rob her own earliest friend of the patrimony that wouldotherwise return to Matilda with Darrell's pardon? This idea becameexquisitely painful to the high-spirited Caroline, but it could notcounterpoise the conviction of the greater pain she should occasion tothe breast that so confided in her faith, if that faith were broken. Step by step the intrigue against the absent one proceeded. Mrs. Lyndsaythoroughly understood the art of insinuating doubts. Guy Darrell, a manof the world, a cold-blooded lawyer, a busy politician, he break hisheart for a girl! No, it was only the young, and especially the youngwhen not remarkably clever, who broke their hearts for such trifles. Montfort, indeed--there was a man whose heart could be broken!--whosehappiness could be blasted! Dear Guy Darrell had been only moved, in hisproposals, by generosity. "Something, my dear child, in your own artlesswords and manner, that made him fancy he had won your affections unknownto yourself!--an idea that he was bound as a gentleman to speak out!Just like him. He has that spirit of chivalry. But my belief is, thathe is quite aware by this time how foolish such a marriage would be, andwould thank you heartily if, at the year's end, he found himself free, and you happily disposed of elsewhere, " &c. , &c. The drama advanced. Mrs. Lyndsay evinced decided pulmonary symptoms. Her hectic coughreturned; she could not sleep; her days were numbered--a secret grief. Caroline implored frankness, and, clasped to her mother's bosom, andcompassionately bedewed with tears, those hints were dropped into her earwhich, though so worded as to show the most indulgent forbearance toDarrell, and rather as if in compassion for his weakness than inabhorrence of his perfidy, made Caroline start with the indignation ofrevolted purity and outraged pride. "Were this true, all would be indeedat an end between us! But it is not true. Let it be proved. "

"But, my dear, dear child, I could not stir in a matter so delicate. I could not aid in breaking off a marriage so much to your worldlyadvantage, unless you could promise that, in rejecting Mr. Darrell, youwould accept your cousin. In my wretched state of health, the anxiousthought of leaving you in the world literally penniless would kill me atonce. "

"Oh, if Guy Darrell be false (but that is impossible)! do with me all youwill; to obey and please you would be the only comfort left to me. "

Thus was all prepared for the final denouement. Mrs. Lyndsay had notgone so far without a reliance on the means to accomplish her object, andfor these means she had stooped to be indebted to the more practicalvillany of Matilda's husband. 

Jasper, in this visit to Paris, had first formed the connection whichcompleted the wickedness of his perverted nature, with that darkadventuress who has flitted shadow-like through part of this varyingnarrative. Gabrielle Desmarets was then in her youth, notorious only forthe ruin she had inflicted on admiring victims, and the superb luxurywith which she rioted on their plunder. Captivated by the personaladvantages for which Jasper then was preeminently conspicuous, shewillingly associated her fortunes with his own. Gabrielle was one ofthose incarnations of evil which no city but Paris can accomplish withthe same epicurean refinement, and vitiate into the same cynicalcorruption. She was exceedingly witty, sharply astute, capable of actingany part, carrying out any plot; and when it pleased her to simulate thedecorous and immaculate gentlewoman, she might have deceived the mostexperienced roue. Jasper presented this Artiste to his unsuspecting wifeas a widow of rank, who was about to visit London, and who might beenabled to see Mr. Darrell, and intercede on their behalf. Matilda fellreadily into the snare; the Frenchwoman went to London, with assumed nameand title, and with servants completely in her confidence. And such (asthe reader knows already) was that eloquent baroness who had pleaded toDarrell the cause of his penitent daughter! No doubt the wily Parisiennehad calculated on the effect of her arts and her charms, to decoy himinto at least a passing forgetfulness of his faith to another. But ifshe could not succeed there, it might equally achieve the object in viewto obtain the credit of that success. Accordingly, she wrote to one ofher friends at Paris letters stating that she had found a very richadmirer in a celebrated English statesman, to whom she was indebted forher establishment, &c. ; and alluding, in very witty and satirical terms, to his matrimonial engagement with the young English beauty at Paris, whowas then creating such a sensation--an engagement of which sherepresented her admirer to be heartily sick, and extremely repentant. Without mentioning names, her descriptions were unmistakable. Jasper, ofcourse, presented to Mrs. Lyndsay those letters (which, he said, theperson to whom they were addressed had communicated to one of her own gayfriends), and suggested that their evidence against Darrell would becomplete in Miss Lyndsay's eyes if some one, whose veracity Carolinecould not dispute, could corroborate the assertions of the letters; itwould be quite enough to do so if Mr. Darrell were even seen entering orleaving the house of a person whose mode of life was so notorious. Mrs. Lyndsay, who, with her consummate craft, saved her dignity by affectedblindness to the artifices at which she connived, declared that, in amatter of inquiry which involved the private character of a man soeminent, and to whom she owed so much, she would not trust his name tothe gossip of others. She herself would go to London. She knew thatodious, but too fascinating, Gabrielle by sight (as every one did whowent to the opera or drove in the Bois de Boulogne). Jasper undertookthat the Parisienne should show herself at her balcony at a certain dayat a certain hour, and that at that hour Darrell should call and beadmitted; and Mrs. Lyndsay allowed that that evidence would suffice. Sensible of the power over Caroline that she would derive if, with herhabits of languor and her delicate health, she could say that she hadundertaken such a journey to be convinced with her own eyes of a chargewhich, if true, would influence her daughter's conduct and destiny--Mrs. Lyndsay did go to London--did see Gabrielle Desmarets at her balcony--didsee Darrell enter the house; and on her return to Paris did, armed withthis testimony, and with the letters that led to it, so work upon herdaughter's mind, that the next day the Marquess of Montfort was accepted. But the year of Darrell's probation was nearly expired; all delay wouldbe dangerous--all explanations would be fatal, and must be forestalled. Nor could a long courtship be kept secret; Darrell might hear of it, andcome over at once; and the Marquess's ambitious kinsfolk would not failto interfere if the news of his intended marriage with a portionlesscousin reached their ears. Lord Montfort, who was awed by Carr, andextremely afraid of his grandmother, was not less anxious for secrecyand expedition than Mrs. Lyndsay herself. 

Thus, then, Mrs. Lyndsay triumphed, and while her daughter was stillunder the influence of an excitement which clouded her judgment, andstung her into rashness of action as an escape from the torment ofreflection--thus were solemnised Caroline's unhappy and splendidnuptials. The Marquess hired a villa in the delightful precincts ofFontainebleau for his honeymoon; that moon was still young when theMarquess said to himself, "I don't find that it produces honey. " When hehad first been attracted towards Caroline, she was all life and joy--toomuch of a child to pine for Darrell's absence, while credulouslyconfident of their future union--her spirits naturally wild and lively, and the world, opening at her feet, so novel and so brilliant. Thisfresh gaiety had amused the Marquess--he felt cheated when he found itgone. Caroline might be gentle, docile, submissive; but those virtues, though of higher quality than glad animal spirits, are not soentertaining. His own exceeding sterility of mind and feeling was notapparent till in the /tetes-a-tetes/ of conjugal life. A good-lookingyoung man, with a thoroughbred air, who rides well, dances well, andholds his tongue, may, in all mixed societies, pass for a shy youth ofsensitive genius! But when he is your companion for life, and all toyourself, and you find that, when he does talk, he has neither an ideanor a sentiment--alas! alas for you, young bride, if you have ever knownthe charm of intellect, or the sweetness of sympathy. But it was not forCaroline to complain; struggling against her own weight of sorrow, shehad no immediate perception of her companion's vapidity. It was he, poorman, who complained. He just detected enough of her superiority ofintelligence to suspect that he was humiliated, while sure that he wasbored. An incident converted his growing indifference into permanentdislike not many days after their marriage. 

Lord Montfort, sauntering into Caroline's room, found her insensibleon the floor--an open letter by her side. Summoning her maid to herassistance, he took the marital privilege of reading the letter which hadapparently caused her swoon. It was from Matilda, and written in a stateof maddened excitement. Matilda had little enough of what is calledheart; but she had an intense selfishness, which, in point of suffering, supplies the place of a heart. It was not because she could not feel forthe wrongs of another that she could not feel anguish for her own. Arabella was avenged. The cold-blooded snake that had stung her metthe fang of the cobra-capella. Matilda had learned from some anonymouscorrespondent (probably a rival of Gabrielle's) of Jasper's liaison withthat adventuress. But half recovered from her confinement, she had risenfrom her bed--hurried to Paris (for the pleasures of which her husbandhad left her)--seen this wretched Gabrielle--recognised in her the falsebaroness to whom Jasper had presented her--to whom, by Jasper'sdictation, she had written such affectionate letters--whom she hademployed to plead her cause to her father;--seen Gabrielle--seen her ather own luxurious apartment, Jasper at home there--burst into vehementwrath-roused up the cobra-capella; and on declaring she would separatefrom her husband, go back to her father, tell her wrongs, appeal to hismercy, Gabrielle caimly replied: "Do so, and I will take care that yourfather shall know that your plea for his pardon through Madame la Baronnewas a scheme to blacken his name, and to frustrate his marriage. Do notthink that he will suppose you did not connive at a project so sly; hemust know you too well, pretty innocent. " No match for GabrielleDesmarets, Matilda flung from the house, leaving Jasper whistling an airfrom Figaro; returned alone to the French town from which she now wroteto Caroline, pouring out her wrongs, and, without seeming sensible thatCaroline had been wronged too, expressing her fear that her father mightbelieve her an accomplice in Jasper's plot, and refuse her the means tolive apart from the wretch; upon whom she heaped every epithet that justindignation could suggest to a feeble mind. The latter part of theletter, blurred and blotted, was incoherent, almost raving. In factMatilda was then seized by the mortal illness which hurried her to hergrave. To the Marquess much of this letter was extremely uninteresting--much of it quite incomprehensible. He could not see why it should sooverpoweringly affect his wife. Only those passages which denounced ascheme to frustrate some marriage meditated by Mr. Darrell made himsomewhat uneasy, and appeared to him to demand an explanation. ButCaroline, in the anguish to which she awakened, forestalled hisinquiries. To her but two thoughts were present--how she had wrongedDarrell--how ungrateful and faithless she must seem to him; and in theimpulse of her remorse, and in the childlike candour of her soul, artlessly, ingenuously, she poured out her feelings to the husband shehad taken as counsellor and guide, as if seeking to guard all her sorrowfor the past from a sentiment that might render her less loyal to theresponsibilities which linked her future to another's. A man of sensewould have hailed in so noble a confidence (however it might have painedhim for the time) a guarantee for the happiness and security of his wholeexistence. He would have seen how distinct from that ardent love whichin Caroline's new relation of life would have bordered upon guilt andbeen cautious as guilt against disclosing its secrets, was the infantine, venerating affection she had felt for a man so far removed from her byyears and the development of intellect--an affection which a younghusband, trusted with every thought, every feeling, might reasonably hopeto eclipse. A little forbearance, a little of delicate and generoustenderness, at that moment, would have secured to Lord Montfort the warmdevotion of a grateful heart, in which the grief that overflowed was notfor the irreplaceable loss of an earlier lover, but the repentant shamefor wrong and treachery to a confiding friend. 

But it is in vain to ask from any man that which is not in him! LordMontfort listened with sullen, stolid displeasure. That Caroline shouldfeel the slightest pain at any cause which had cancelled her engagementto that odious Darrell, and had raised her to the rank of hisMarchioness, was a crime in his eyes never to be expiated. Heconsidered, not without reason, that Mrs. Lyndsay had shamefully deceivedhim; and fully believed that she had been an accomplice with Jasper inthat artifice which he was quite gentleman enough to consider placedthose who had planned it out of the pale of his acquaintance. And whenCaroline, who had been weeping too vehemently to read her lord'scountenance, came to a close, Lord Montfort took up his hat and said:"I beg never to hear again of this lawyer and his very disreputablefamily connections. As you say, you and your mother have behaved veryill to him; but you don't seem to understand that you have behaved muchworse to me. As to condescending to write to him, and enter intoexplanations how you came to be Lady Montfort, it would be so lowering tome that I would never forgive it--never. I would just as soon that yourun away at once;--sooner. As for Mrs. Lyndsay, I shall forbid herentering my house. When you have done crying, order your things to bepacked up. I shall return to England to-morrow. "

That was perhaps the longest speech Lord Montfort ever addressed to hiswife; perhaps it was also the rudest. From that time he regarded her assome Spaniard of ancient days might regard a guest on whom he wascompelled to bestow the rights of hospitality--to whom he gave a seat athis board, a chair at his hearth, but for whom he entertained a profoundaversion, and kept at invincible distance, with all the ceremony ofdignified dislike. Once only during her wedded life Caroline again sawDarrell. It was immediately on her return to England, and little morethan a month after her marriage. It was the day on which Parliament hadbeen prorogued preparatory to its dissolution--the last Parliament ofwhich Guy Darrell was a member. Lady Montfort's carriage was detained inthe throng with which the ceremonial had filled the streets, and Darrellpassed it on horseback. It was but one look in that one moment; and thelook never ceased to haunt her--a look of such stern disdain, but also ofsuch deep despair. No language can exaggerate the eloquence which thereis in a human countenance, when a great and tortured spirit speaks outfrom it accusingly to a soul that comprehends. The crushed heart, theravaged existence, were bared before her in that glance, as clearly as toa wanderer through the night are the rents of the precipice in the flashof the lightning. So they encountered--so, without a word, they parted. To him that moment decided the flight from active life to which hishopeless thoughts had of late been wooing the jaded, weary man. Insafety to his very conscience, he would not risk the certainty thus toencounter one whom it convulsed his whole being to remember was another'swife. In that highest and narrowest sphere of the great London world towhich Guy Darrell's political distinction condemned his social life, itwas impossible but that he should be brought frequently into collisionwith Lord Montfort, the Head of a House with which Darrell himself wasconnected--the most powerful patrician of the party of which Darrell wasso conspicuous a chief. Could he escape Lady Montfort's presence, hername at least would be continually in his ears. From that fatal beautyhe could no more hide than from the sun. 

This thought, and the terror it occasioned him, completed his resolve onthe instant. The next day he was in the groves of Fawley, and amazed theworld by dating from that retreat a farewell address to his constituents. A few days after, the news of his daughter's death reached him; and asthat event became known it accounted to many for his retirement for awhile from public life. 

But to Caroline Montfort, and to her alone, the secret of a careerblasted, a fame renounced, was unmistakably revealed. For a time she wastortured, in every society she entered, by speculation and gossip whichbrought before her the memory of his genius, the accusing sound of hisname. But him who withdraws from the world, the world soon forgets; andby degrees Darrell became as little spoken of as the dead. 

Mrs. Lyndsay had never, during her schemes on Lord Montfort, abandonedher own original design on Darrell. And when, to her infinite amaze andmortification, Lord Montfort, before the first month of his marriageexpired, took care, in the fewest possible words, to dispel her dream ofgoverning the House, and residing in the houses of Vipont, as the lawfulagent during the life-long minority to which she had condemned both thesubmissive Caroline and the lethargic Marquess, she hastened by letter toexculpate herself to Darrell--laid, of course, all the blame on Caroline. Alas! had not she always warned him that Caroline was not worthy of him?--him, the greatest, the best of men, &c. , &c. Darrell replied by asingle cut of his trenchant sarcasm--sarcasm which shore through hercushion of down and her veil of gauze like the sword of Saladin. The oldMarchioness turned her back upon Mrs. Lyndsay. Lady Selina wascrushingly civil. The pretty woman with pretty manners, no better offfor all the misery she had occasioned, went to Rome, caught cold, andhaving no one to nurse her as Caroline had done, fell at last into a realconsumption, and faded out of the world elegantly and spitefully, asfades a rose that still leaves its thorns behind it. 

Caroline's nature grew developed and exalted by the responsibilities shehad accepted, and by the purity of her grief. She submitted, as a justretribution, to the solitude and humiliation of her wedded lot; sheearnestly, virtuously strove to banish from her heart every sentimentthat could recall to her more of Darrell than the remorse of havingdarkened a life that had been to her childhood so benignant, and to heryouth so confiding. As we have seen her, at the mention of Darrell'sname--at the allusion to his griefs--fly to the side of her ungeniallord, though he was to her but as the owner of the name she bore, --so itwas the saving impulse of a delicate, watchful conscience that kept heras honest in thought as she was irreproachable in conduct. But vainly, in summoning her intellect to the relief of her heart--vainly had shesought to find in the world friendships, companionships, that mighteclipse the memory of the mind so lofty in its antique mould--so tenderin its depths of unsuspected sweetness--which had been withdrawn from herexistence before she could fully comprehend its rarity, or appreciate itsworth. 

At last she became free once more; and then she had dared thoroughly toexamine into her own heart, and into the nature of that hold which theimage of Darrell still retained on its remembrances. And preciselybecause she was convinced that she had succeeded in preserving her oldchildish affection for him free from the growth into that warm love whichwould have been guilt if so encouraged, she felt the more free tovolunteer the atonement which might permit her to dedicate herself to hisremaining years. Thus, one day, after a conversation with Alban Morley, in which Alban had spoken of Darrell as the friend, almost the virtualguardian, of her infancy; and, alluding to a few lines just received fromhim, brought vividly before Caroline the picture of Darrell's melancholywanderings and blighted life, --thus had she, on the impulse of themoment, written the letter which had reached Darrell at Malta. In it shereferred but indirectly to the deceit that had been practised on herself--far too delicate to retail a scandal which she felt to be an insult tohis dignity, in which, too, the deceiving parties were his daughter'shusband and her own mother. No doubt every true woman can understand whyshe thus wrote to Darrell, and every true man can equally comprehend whythat letter failed in its object, and was returned to her in scorn. Herswas the yearning of meek, passionless affection, and his the rebuke ofsensitive, embittered indignant love. 

But now, as all her past, with its interior life, glided before her, by agrief the most intolerable she had yet known, the woman became aware thatit was no longer penitence for the injured friend--it was despair for thelover she had lost. In that stormy interview, out of all the confusedand struggling elements of her life--long self-reproach, LOVE--the loveof woman--had flashed suddenly, luminously, as the love of youth at firstsight. Strange--but the very disparity of years seemed gone! She, thematured, sorrowful woman, was so much nearer to the man, still young inheart and little changed in person, than the gay girl of seventeen hadbeen to the grave friend of forty! Strange, but those vehementreproaches had wakened emotions deeper in the core of the wild mortalbreast than all that early chivalrous homage which had exalted her intothe ideal of dreaming poets. Strange, strange, strange! But where thereis nothing strange, THERE--is there ever love?

And with this revelation of her own altered heart, came the clearer andfresher insight into the nature and character of the man she loved. Hitherto she had recognised but his virtues--now she beheld his failings!beholding them as if virtues, loved him more; and, loving him, moredespaired. She recognised that all-pervading indomitable pride, which, interwoven with his sense of honour, became relentless as it wasunrevengeful. She comprehended now that, the more he loved her, theless he would forgive; and, recalling the unexpected gentleness of hisfarewell words, she felt that in his promised blessing lay the sentencethat annihilated every hope. 

CHAPTER III. 

 WHATEVER THE NUMBER OF A MAN'S FRIENDS, THERE WILL BE TIMES IN HIS LIFE WHEN HE HAS ONE TOO FEW; BUT IF HE HAS ONLY ONE ENEMY, HE IS LUCKY INDEED IF HE HAS NOT ONE TOO MANY. 

A cold night; sharp frost; winter set in. The shutters are closed, thecurtains drawn, the fire burns clear, and the lights are softly shaded inAlban Morley's drawing-room. 

The old bachelor is at home again. He had returned that day; sent toLionel to come to him; and Lionel had already told him what hadtranspired in his absence--from the identification of Waife with WilliamLosely, to Lady Montfort's visit to Fawley, which had taken place twodays before, and of which she had informed Lionel by a few hasty lines, stating her inability to soften Mr. Darrell's objections to the alliancebetween Lionel and Sophy; severely blaming herself that those objectionshad not more forcibly presented themselves to her own mind, andconcluding with expressions of sympathy, and appeals to fortitude, inwhich, however brief, the exquisite kindness of her nature so diffusedits charm, that the soft words soothed insensibly, like those soundswhich in Nature itself do soothe us we know not why. 

The poor Colonel found himself in the midst of painful subjects. Thoughhe had no very keen sympathy for the sorrows of lovers, and no credulousfaith in everlasting attachments, Lionel's portraiture of the young girl, who formed so mysterious a link between the two men who, in varying ways, had touched the finest springs in his own heart, compelled acompassionate and chivalrous interest, and he was deeply impressed by thequiet of Lionel's dejection. The young man uttered no complaints of theinflexibility with which Darrell had destroyed his elysium. He bowed tothe will with which it was in vain to argue, and which it would have beena criminal ingratitude to defy. But his youth seemed withered up; down-eyed and listless, he sank into that stupor of despondency which sodrearily simulates the calm of resignation. 

"I have but one wish now, " said he, "and that is to change at once intosome regiment on active service. I do not talk of courting danger andseeking death. That would be either a senseless commonplace, or athreat, as it were, to Heaven! But I need some vehemence of action--somepositive and irresistible call upon honour or duty that may force me tocontend against this strange heaviness that settles down on my wholelife. Therefore, I entreat you so to arrange for me, and break it to Mr. Darrell in such terms as may not needlessly pain him by the obtrusion ofmy sufferings. For, while I know him well enough to be convinced thatnothing could move him from resolves in which he had entrenched, as in acitadel, his pride or his creed of honour, I am sure that he would takeinto his own heart all the grief which those resolves occasioned toanother's. "

"You do him justice there, " cried Alban; "you are a noble fellow tounderstand him so well! Sir, you have in you the stuff that makesEnglish gentlemen such generous soldiers. "

"Action, action, action, " exclaimed Lionel. "Strife, strife! No otherchance of cure. Rest is so crushing, solitude so dismal. "

Lo! how contrasted the effect of a similar cause of grief at differentstages of life! Chase the first day-dreams of our youth, and we cry, "Action--Strife!" In that cry, unconsciously to ourselves, HOPE speaksand proffers worlds of emotion not yet exhausted. Disperse the lastgolden illusion in which the image of happiness cheats our experiencedmanhood, and HOPE is silent; she has no more worlds to offer--unless, indeed, she drop her earthly attributes, change her less solemn name, andfloat far out of sight as "FAITH!"

Alban made no immediate reply to Lionel; but, seating himself morecomfortably in his chair--planting his feet still more at ease upon hisfender--the kindly Man of the World silently revolved all the possiblemeans by which Darrell might yet be softened and Lionel rendered happy. His reflections dismayed him. "Was there ever such untoward luck, " hesaid at last, and peevishly, "that out of the whole world you should fallin love with the very girl against whom Darrell's feelings (prejudices ifyou please) must be mailed in adamant! Convinced, and apparently withevery reason, that she is not his daughter's child, but, howeverinnocently, an impostor, how can he receive her as his young kinsman'sbride? How can we expect it?"

"But, " said Lionel, "if, on farther investigation, she prove to be hisdaughter's child--the sole surviving representative of his line andname?"

"His name! No! Of the name of Losely--the name of that turbulentsharper, who may yet die on the gibbet--of that poor, dear, lovablerascal Willy, who was goose enough to get himself transported forrobbery!--a felon's grandchild the representative of Darrell's line!But how on earth came Lady Montfort to favour so wild a project, andencourage you to share in it?--she who ought to have known Darrellbetter?"

"Alas! she saw but Sophy's exquisite, simple virtues, and inborn grace;and, believing her claim to Darrell's lineage, Lady Montfort thought butof the joy and blessing one so good and so loving might bring to hisjoyless hearth. She was not thinking of morbid pride and moulderingancestors, but of soothing charities and loving ties. And Lady Montfort, I now suspect, in her scheme for our happiness--for Darrell's--had aninterest which involved her own!"

"Her own!"

"Yes; I see it all now. "

"See what? you puzzle me. "

"I told you that Darrell, in his letter to me, wrote with greatbitterness of Lady Montfort. "

"Very natural that he should. Who would not resent such interference?"

"Listen. I told you that, at his own command, I sent to her that letter;that she, on receiving it, went herself to Fawley, to plead our cause. Iwas sanguine of the result. "

"Why?"

"Because he who is in love has a wondrous intuition into all themysteries of love in others; and when I read Darrell's letter I felt surethat he had once loved--loved still, perhaps--the woman he so vehementlyreproached. "

"Ha!" said the Man of the World, intimate with Guy Darrell from hisschool-days--"Ha! is it possible! And they say that I know everything!You were sanguine, --I understand. Yes, if your belief were true--ifthere were some old attachment that could be revived--some oldmisunderstanding explained away--stop; let me think. True, true--it wasjust after her marriage that he fled from the world. Ah, my dear Lionel;light, light! light dawns on me! Not without reason were you sanguine. Your hand, my dear boy; I see hope for you at last. For if the solereason that prevented Darrell contracting a second marriage was theunconquered memory of a woman like Lady Montfort (where, indeed, herequal in beauty, in disposition so akin to his own ideal of womanlyexcellence?)--and if she too has some correspondent sentiment for him, why then, indeed, you might lose all chance of being Darrell's sole heir;your Sophy might forfeit the hateful claim to be the sole scion on hisancient tree; but it is precisely by those losses that Lionel Haughtonmight gain the bride he covets; and if this girl prove to be what theseLoselys affirm, that very marriage, which is now so repugnant to Darrell, ought to insure his blessing. Were he himself to marry again--had herightful representatives and heirs in his own sons--he should rejoice inthe nuptials that secured to his daughter's child so honourable a nameand so tender a protector. And as for inheritance, you have not beenreared to expect it; you have never counted on it. You would receive afortune sufficiently ample to restore your ancestral station; your careerwill add honours to fortune. Yes, yes; that is the sole way out of allthese difficulties. Darrell must marry again; Lady Montfort must be hiswife. Lionel shall be free to choose her whom Lady Montfort approves--befriends--no matter what her birth; and I--I--Alban Morley-shall have anarm-chair by two smiling hearths. "

At this moment there was heard a violent ring at the bell, a loud knockat the street door; and presently, following close on the servant, andpushing him aside as he asked what name to announce, a woman, severelydressed in irongrey, with a strongly-marked and haggard countenance, hurried into the room, and, striding right up to Alban Morley, as he rosefrom his seat, grasped his arm, and whispered into his ear, "Lose not aminute--come with me instantly--as you value the safety, perhaps the lifeof Guy Darrell!"

"Guy Darrell!" exclaimed Lionel, overhearing her, despite the undertonesof her voice. 

"Who are you?" she said, turning fiercely; "are you one of his family?"

"His kinsman--almost his adopted son--Mr. Lionel Haughton, " said theColonel. "But pardon me, madam--who are you?"

"Do you not remember me? Yet you were so often in Darrell's house thatyou must have seen my face, as you have learned from your friend howlittle cause I have to care for him or his. Look again; I am thatArabella Fossett who--"

"Ah, I remember now; but--"

"But I tell you that Darrell is in danger, and this night. Take money;to be in time you must hire a special train. Take arms, though to beused only in self-defence. Take your servant if he is brave. This youngkinsman--let him come too. There is only one man to resist; but thatman, " she said, with a wild kind of pride, "would have the strength andcourage of ten were his cause not that which may make the strong manweak, and the bold man craven. It is not a matter for the officers ofjustice, for law, for scandal; the service is to be done in secret, byfriends, by kinsmen; for the danger that threatens Darrell--stoop--stoop, Colonel Morley--close in your ear"; and into his ear she hissed, "for thedanger that threatens Darrell in his house this night is from the manwhose name his daughter bore. That is why I come to you. To you I neednot say, 'Spare his life--Jasper Losely's life. ' Jasper Losely's deathas a midnight robber would be Darrell's intolerable shame. Quick, quick, quick!--come, come!"