don't perceive the point of your witty, heartless anecdote," said Lady Lansmere, obstinately. "Settle that, however, with Miss Digby. But, to leave the very day after your friend's daughter comes as a guest! – what will she think of it?"
Lord L'Estrange looked steadfastly at his mother. "Does it matter much what she thinks of me? – of a man engaged to another; and old enough to be – "
"I wish to Heaven you would not talk of your age, Harley; it is a reflection upon mine; and I never saw you look so well nor so handsome." With that, she drew him on towards the young ladies; and, taking Helen's arm, asked her, aside, "if she knew that Lord L'Estrange had engaged rooms at the Clarendon; and if she understood why?" As, while she said this she moved on, Harley was left by Violante's side.
"You will be very dull here, I fear, my poor child," said he.
"Dull! But why will you call me child? Am I so very – very childlike?"
"Certainly, you are to me – a mere infant. Have I not seen you one; have I not held you in my arms?"
Violante. – "But that was a long time ago!"
Harley. – "True. But if years have not stood still for you, they have not been stationary for me. There is the same difference between us now that there was then. And, therefore, permit me still to call you child, and as child to treat you!"
Violante. – "I will do no such thing. Do you know that I always thought I was good-tempered till this morning."
Harley. – "And what undeceived you? Did you break your doll?"
Violante, (with an indignant flash from her dark eyes). – "There! – again! – you delight in provoking me!"
Harley. – "It was the doll, then. Don't cry; I will get you another."
Violante plucked her arm from him, and walked away towards the Countess in speechless scorn. Harley's brow contracted, in thought and in gloom. He stood still for a moment or so, and then joined the ladies.
"I am trespassing sadly on your morning; but I wait for a visiter whom I sent to before you were up. He is to be here at twelve. With your permission, I will dine with you to-morrow, and you will invite him to meet me."
"Certainly. And who is your friend? I guess – the young author?"
"Leonard Fairfield," cried Violante, who had conquered, or felt ashamed, of her short-lived anger.
"Fairfield!" repeated Lady Lansmere. "I thought, Harley, you said the name was Oran."
"He has assumed the latter name. He is the son of Mark Fairfield, who married an Avenel. Did you recognise no family likeness? – none in those eyes, – mother?" said Harley, sinking his voice into a whisper.
"No," answered the Countess, falteringly.
Harley, observing that Violante was now speaking to Helen about Leonard, and that neither was listening to him, resumed in the same low tone, "And his mother – Nora's sister – shrank from seeing me! That is the reason why I wished you not to call. She has not told the young man why she shrank from seeing me; nor have I explained it to him, as yet. Perhaps I never shall."
"Indeed, dearest Harley," said the Countess, with great gentleness, "I wish you too much to forget the folly – well, I will not say that word – the sorrows, of your boyhood, not to hope that you will rather strive against such painful memories than renew them by unnecessary confidence to any one; least of all to the relation of – "
"Enough! – don't name her; the very name pains me. And as to confidence, there are but two persons in the world to whom I ever bare the old wounds – yourself and Egerton. Let this pass. Ha! – a ring at the bell – that is he!"
Leonard entered on the scene, and joined the party in the garden. The Countess, perhaps to please her son, was more than civil – she was markedly kind to him. She noticed him more attentively than she had hitherto done; and, with all her prejudices of birth, was struck to find the son of Mark Fairfield the carpenter so thoroughly the gentleman. He might not have the exact tone and phrase by which Convention stereotypes those born and schooled in a certain world; but the aristocrats of Nature can dispense with such trite minutiæ. And Leonard had lived, of late at least, in the best society that exists, for the polish of language and the refinement of manners, – the society in which the most graceful ideas are clothed in the most graceful forms – the society which really, though indirectly, gives the law to courts – the society of the most classic authors, in the various ages in which literature has flowered forth from civilisation. And if there was something in the exquisite sweetness of Leonard's voice, look, and manner, which the Countess acknowledged to attain that perfection in high breeding, which, under the name of "suavity," steals its way into the heart, so her interest in him was aroused by a certain subdued melancholy which is rarely without distinction, and never without charm. He and Helen exchanged but few words. There was but one occasion in which they could have spoken apart, and Helen herself contrived to elude it. His face brightened at Lady Lansmere's cordial invitation, and he glanced at Helen as he accepted it; but her eye did not meet his own.
"And now," said Harley, whistling to Nero, whom his ward was silently caressing, "I must take Leonard away. Adieu! all of you, till to-morrow at dinner. Miss Violante, is the doll to have blue eyes or black?"
Violante turned her own black eyes in mute appeal to Lady Lansmere, and nestled to that lady's side as if in refuge from unworthy insult.
"Let the carriage go to the Clarendon," said Harley to his servant; "I and Mr Oran will walk to town. Leonard, I think you would rejoice at an occasion to serve your old friends, Dr Riccabocca and his daughter?"
"Serve them! O yes." And there instantly returned to Leonard the recollection of Violante's words when, on leaving his quiet village he had sighed to part from all those he loved; and the little dark-eyed girl had said proudly, yet consolingly, "But to SERVE those you love!" He turned to L'Estrange with beaming inquisitive eyes.
"I said to our friend," resumed Harley, "that I would vouch for your honour as my own. I am about to prove my words, and to confide the secrets which your penetration has indeed divined; – our friend is not what he seems." Harley then briefly related to Leonard the particulars of the exile's history, the rank he had held in his native land, the manner in which, partly through the misrepresentations of a kinsman he had trusted, partly through the influence of a wife he had loved, he had been driven into schemes which he believed bounded to the emancipation of Italy from a foreign yoke by the united exertions of her best and bravest sons.
"A noble ambition," interrupted Leonard, manfully, "And pardon me, my lord, I should not have thought that you would speak of it in a tone that implies blame."
"The ambition in itself was noble," answered Harley. "But the cause to which it was devoted became defiled in its dark channel through Secret Societies. It is the misfortune of all miscellaneous political combinations, that with the purest motives of their more generous members are ever mixed the most sordid interests, and the fiercest passions of mean confederates. When those combinations act openly, and in daylight, under the eye of Public Opinion, the healthier elements usually prevail; where they are shrouded in mystery – where they are subjected to no censor in the discussion of the impartial and dispassionate – where chiefs working in the dark exact blind obedience, and every man who is at war with law is at once admitted as a friend of freedom – the history of the world tells us that patriotism soon passes away. Where all is in public, public virtue, by the natural sympathies of the common mind, and by the wholesome control of shame, is likely to obtain ascendancy;
