takes soup twice, or wears ill-made coats, because those things annoy us; but, object to him because he is a liar, or a hypocrite, or a coward? Perfectly absurd! I say, therefore, I consented to the marriage, asked no unnecessary or ill-bred questions, and resigned myself to the force of circumstances; and for some years affairs appeared to go on very smoothly, when suddenly I am startled by a most alarming letter from my niece. She implores me to come to England. She is alone, without a friend, an adviser, and she is determined to reveal all.”
“To reveal all!” Raymond cannot repress a start. The sangfroid of the Marquis had entirely deceived him whose chief weapon was that very sangfroid.
“Yes. What then? You, being aware of this letter having been written—or, say, guessing that such a letter would be written—determine on your course. You will throw over your wife’s evidence by declaring her to be mad. Eh? This is what you determine upon, isn’t it?” It appears so good a joke to the Marquis, that he laughs and nods at Mark Antony, as if he would really like that respectable Roman to participate in the fun.
For the first time in his life Raymond Marolles has found his match. In the hands of this man he is utterly powerless.
“An excellent idea. Only, as I said before, too obvious—too transparently obvious. It is the only thing you can do. If I were looking for a man, and came to a part of the country where there was but one road, I should of course know that he must—if he went anywhere—go down that road. So with you, my dear Marolles, there was but one resource left you—to disprove the revelations of your wife by declaring them the hallucinations of a maniac. I take no credit to myself for seeing through you, I assure you. There is no talent whatever in finding out that two and two make four; the genius would be the man who made them into five. I do not think I have anything more to say. I have no wish to attack you, my dear nephew-in-law. I merely wanted to prove to you that I was not your dupe. I think you must be by this time sufficiently convinced of that fact. If you have any good Madeira in your cellars, I should like a glass or two, and the wing of a chicken, before I hear what my niece may have to say to me. I made a very poor breakfast some hours ago at the Lord Warden.” Having expressed himself thus, the Marquis throws himself back in his easy-chair, yawns once or twice, and polishes Mark Antony with the corner of his handkerchief; he has evidently entirely dismissed the subject on which he has been speaking, and is ready for pleasant conversation.
At this moment the door is thrown open, and Valerie enters the room.
It is the first time Raymond has seen Valerie since the night of Mosquetti’s story, and as his eyes meet hers he starts involuntarily.
What is it?—this change, this transformation, which has taken eight years off the age of this woman, and restored her as she was on that night when he first saw her at the Opera House in Paris. What is it? So great and marvellous an alteration, he might almost doubt if this indeed were she. And yet he can scarcely define the change. It seems a transformation, not of the face, but of the soul. A new soul looking out of the old beauty. A new soul? No, the old soul, which he thought dead. It is indeed a resurrection of the dead.
She advances to her uncle, who embraces her with a graceful and drawing-room species of tenderness, about as like real tenderness as ormolu is like rough Australian gold—as Lawrence Sterne’s sentiment is like Oliver Goldsmith’s pathos.
“My dear uncle! You received my letter, then?”
“Yes, dear child. And what, in Heaven’s name, can you have to tell me that would not admit of being delayed until the weather changed?—and I am such a bad sailor,” he repeats plaintively. “What can you have to tell me?”
“Nothing yet, my dear uncle”—the bright dark eyes look with a steady gaze at Raymond as she speaks—“nothing yet; the hour has not yet come.”
“For mercy’s sake, my dear girl,” says the Marquis, in a tone of horror, “don’t be melodramatic. If you’re going to act a Porte-St.-Martin drama, in thirteen acts and twenty-six tableaux, I’ll go back to Paris. If you’ve nothing to say to me, why, in the name of all that’s feminine, did you send for me?”
“When I wrote to you, I told you that I appealed to you because I had no other friend upon earth to whom, in the hour of my anguish, I could turn for help and advice.”
“You did, you did. If you had not been my only brother’s only child, I should have waited a change in the wind before I crossed the Channel—I am such a wretched sailor! But life, as the religious party asserts, is a long sacrifice—I came!”
“Suppose that, since writing that letter, I have found a friend, an adviser, a guiding hand and a supporting arm, and no longer need the help of any one on earth besides this new-found friend to revenge me upon my enemies?”
Raymond’s bewilderment increases every moment. Has she indeed gone mad, and is this new light in her eyes the fire of insanity?
“I am sure, my dear Valerie, if you have met with such a very delightful person, I am extremely glad to hear it, as it relieves me from the trouble. It is melodramatic certainly, but excessively convenient. I have remarked, that in melodrama circumstances generally are convenient. I never alarm myself when everything is hopelessly wrong, and villany deliciously triumphant; for I know that somebody who died in the first act will come in at the centre doors, and make it all right before the curtain falls.”
“Since Madame de Marolles will no doubt wish to be alone with her uncle, I may perhaps be permitted to go into the City till dinner, when I shall have the honour of meeting Monsieur le Marquis, I trust.”
“Certainly, my good De Marolles; your chef, I believe, understands his profession. I shall have great pleasure in dining with you. Au revoir, mon enfant; we shall go upon velvet, now we so thoroughly understand each other.” He waves his white left hand to Raymond, as a graceful dismissal, and turns towards his niece.
“Adieu, madame,” says the Count, as he passes his wife; then, in a lower tone, adds, “I do not ask you to be silent for my sake or your own; I merely recommend you to remember that you have a son, and that you will do well not to make me your enemy. When I strike, I strike home, and my policy has always been to strike in the weakest place. Do not forget poor little Cherubino!” He looks at her steadily with his cruel blue eyes, and then turns to leave the room.
As he opens the door, he almost knocks down an elderly gentleman dressed in a suit of clerical-looking black and a white neckcloth, and carrying an unpleasantly damp umbrella under his arm.
“Not yet, Mr. Jabez North,” says the gentleman, who is neither more nor less than that respectable preceptor and guide to the youthful mind, Dr. Tappenden, of Slopperton—“not yet, Mr. North; I think your clerks in Lombard Street will be compelled to do without you to-day. You are wanted elsewhere at present.”
Anything but this—anything but this, and he would have borne it, like—like himself! Thank Heaven there is no comparison for such as he. He was prepared for all but this. This early period of his life, which he thought blotted out and forgotten—this he is unprepared for; and he falls back with a ghastly face, and white lips that refuse to shape even one exclamation of horror or surprise.
“What is this?” murmurs the Marquis. “North—Jabez—Jabez North? Oh, I see, we have come upon the pre-Parisian formation, and that,” he glances towards Dr. Tappenden, “is one of the vestiges.”
At last Raymond’s tremulous lips consent to form the words he struggles to utter.
“You are under some mistake, sir, whoever you may be. My name is not North, and I have
