hair,’ on the cover)— was I caught at last by a pair of hazel eyes and a Raffaellesque profile? Were the wings that had fluttered in so many flames burnt and maimed by the first breath of this new fire? I was ashamed of my silly fancy in one moment, and proud of my love in the next. I was ten years younger all of a sudden, and my heart was all a-glow with chivalrous devotion for this beautiful stranger. I reasoned with myself, and ridiculed my madness, and yet yielded like the veriest craven to the sweet intoxication. I gave the driver of the Hansom five shillings. Had I not a right to pay him a trifle extra for driving me through fairy-land?
“What had we for dinner that day? I have a vague idea that I ate cherry tart and roast veal, fried soles, boiled custard, and anchovy sauce, all mixed together. I know that the meal seemed to endure for the abnormal period of half-a-dozen hours or so; and yet it was only seven o’clock when we adjourned to the drawing-room, and Miss Wentworth was not due until half-past seven. My niece was all in a flutter of expectation, and ran out of the drawing-room window every now and then to see if the new governess was coming. She need not have had that trouble, poor child, had I been inclined to give her information; since, from the chair in which I had seated myself to read the evening papers, I could see the road along which Miss Wentworth must come. My eyes wandered very often from the page before me, and fixed themselves upon this dusty suburban road; and presently I saw a parasol, rather a shabby one, and then a slender figure coming quickly towards our gate, and then the face, which I am weak enough to think the most beautiful face in Christendom.
“Since then Miss Wentworth has come three times a week; and somehow or other I have never found myself in any way bored by ‘Non più mesta,’ or even the major and minor scales, which, as interpreted by a juvenile performer, are not especially enthralling to the ear of the ordinary listener. I read my books or papers, or stroll upon the lawn, while the lesson is going on, and every now and then I hear Margaret’s — I really must write of her as Margaret; it is such a nuisance to write Miss Wentworth — pretty voice explaining the importance of a steady position of the wrist, or the dexterous turning over or under of a thumb, or something equally interesting. And then, when the lesson is concluded, my mother rouses herself from her after-dinner nap, and asks Margaret to take a cup of tea, and even insists on her accepting that feminine hospitality. And then we sit talking in the tender summer dusk, or in the subdued light of a shaded lamp on the piano. We talk of books; and it is wonderful to me to find how Margaret’s tastes and opinions coincide with mine. Miss Carpenter was stupid about books, and used to call Carlyle nonsensical; and never really enjoyed Dickens half as much as she pretended. I have lent Margaret some of my books; and a little shower of withered rose-leaves dropped from the pages of ‘Wilhelm Meister,’ after she had returned me the volume. I have put them in an envelope, and sealed it. I may as well burn Miss Carpenter’s hair, by the way.
“Though it is only a month since the evening on which I saw the card in the window at Wandsworth, Margaret and I seem to be old friends. After a year Miss Carpenter and I were as far as ever — farther than ever, perhaps — from understanding each other; but with Margaret I need no words to tell me that I am understood. A look, a smile, a movement of the graceful head, is a more eloquent answer than the most elaborate of Miss Carpenter’s rhapsodies. She was one of those girls whom her friends call ‘gushing;’ and she called Byron a ‘love,’ and Shelley an ‘angel:’ but if you tried her with a stanza that hasn’t been done to death in ‘Gems of Verse,’ or ‘Strings of Poetic Pearls,’ or ‘Drawing-room Table Lyrics,’ she couldn’t tell whether you were quoting Byron or Ben Jonson. But with Margaret — Margaret — sweet name! If it were not that I live in perpetual terror of the day when the dilettante New Zealander will edit this manuscript, I think I should write that lovely name over and over again for a page or so. If the New Zealander should exercise his editorial discretion, and delete my raptures, it wouldn’t matter; but I might furnish him with the text for an elaborate disquisition on the manners and customs of English lovers. Let me be reasonable about my dear love, if I can. My dear love — do I dare to call her that already, when, for anything I know to the contrary, there may be another evangelical curate in the background?
“We seem to be old friends; and yet I know so little of her. She shuns all allusion to her home or her past history. Now and then she has spoken of her father; always tenderly, but always with a sigh; and I fancy that a deepening shadow steals over her face when she mentions that name.
“Friendly as we are, I can never induce her to let me see her home, though my mother has suggested that I should do so. She is accustomed to go about by herself, she says, after dark, as well as in the daytime. She seems as fearless as a modern Una; and that would indeed be a savage beast which could molest such a pure and lovely creature.”
Chapter 7
After Five-And-Thirty Years.
Joseph Wilmot waited patiently enough, in all outward seeming, for the arrival of the steamer. Everybody was respectful to him now, paying deference to his altered guise, and he went where he liked without question or hindrance.
There were several people waiting for passengers who were expected to arrive by the Electra, and the coming of the steamer was hailed by a feeble cheer from the bystanders grouped about the landing-place.
The passengers began to come on shore at about eleven o’clock. There were a good many children and English nursemaids; three or four military-looking men, dressed in loose garments of grey and nankeen colour; several ladies, all more or less sunburnt; a couple of ayahs; three men-servants; and an aristocratic-looking man of about fifty-five, dressed, unlike the rest of the travellers, in fine broadcloth, with a black-satin cravat, a gold pin, a carefully brushed hat, and varnished boots.
His clothes, in fact, were very much of the same fashion as those which Joseph Wilmot had chosen for himself.
This man was Henry Dunbar; tall and broad-chested, with grey hair and moustache, and with a haughty smile upon his handsome face.
Joseph Wilmot stood among the little crowd, motionless as a statue, watching his old betrayer.
“Not much changed,” he murmured; “very little changed! Proud, and selfish, and cruel then — proud, and selfish, and cruel now. He has grown older, and stouter, and greyer; but he is the same man he was five-and-thirty years ago. I can see it all in his face.”
He advanced as Henry Dunbar landed, and approached the Anglo–Indian.
“Mr. Dunbar, I believe?” he said, removing his hat.
“Yes, I am Mr. Dunbar.”
“I have been sent from the office in St. Gundolph Lane, sir,” returned Joseph; “I have a letter for you from Mr. Balderby. I came to meet you, and to be of service to you.”
Henry Dunbar looked at him doubtfully.
“You are not one of the clerks in St. Gundolph Lane?” he said.
“No, Mr. Dunbar.”
“I thought as much; you don’t look like a clerk; but who are you, then?”
“I will tell you presently, sir. I am a substitute for another person, who was taken ill upon the road. But there is no time to speak of that now. I came to be of use to you. Shall I see after your luggage?”
“Yes, I shall be glad if you will do so.”
“You have a servant with you, Mr. Dunbar?”
“No,
