old Ned’s in some scrape, I think,” he said.
“Where is he?” the lady asked, languidly.
“Paris.”
“Paris? How very odd! And out of the season, in this hot weather. It’s enough to lead me to dream that he has gone over—one cannot realize why.”
“Upon my honour!” Algernon thumped on his knee; “by jingo!” he adopted a less compromising interjection; “Ned’s fool enough. My idea is, he’s gone and got married.”
Mrs. Lovell was lying back with the neglectful grace of incontestable beauty; not a line to wrinkle her smooth soft features. For one sharp instant her face was all edged and puckered, like the face of a fair witch. She sat upright.
“Married! But how can that be when we none of us have heard a word of it?”
“I daresay you haven’t,” said Algernon; “and not likely to. Ned’s the closest fellow of my acquaintance. He hasn’t taken me into his confidence, you maybe sure; he knows I’m too leaky. There’s no bore like a secret! I’ve come to my conclusion in this affair by putting together a lot of little incidents and adding them up. First, I believe he was at the Bank when that fair girl was seen there. Secondly, from the description the fellows give of her, I should take her to be the original of the portrait. Next, I know that Rhoda has a fair sister who has run for it. And last, Rhoda has had a letter from her sister, to say she’s away to the Continent and is married. Ned’s in Paris. Those are my facts, and I give you my reckoning of them.”
Mrs. Lovell gazed at Algernon for one long meditative moment.
“Impossible,” she exclaimed. “Edward has more brains than heart.” And now the lady’s face was scarlet. “How did this Rhoda, with her absurd name, think of meeting you to tell you such stuff? Indeed, there’s a simplicity in some of these young women—” She said the remainder to herself.
“She’s really very innocent and good,” Algernon defended Rhoda, “she is. There isn’t a particle of nonsense in her. I first met her in town, as I stated, at the Bank; just on the steps, and we remembered I had called a cab for her a little before; and I met her again by accident yesterday.”
“You are only a boy in their hands, my cousin Algy!” said Mrs. Lovell.
Algernon nodded with a self-defensive knowingness. “I fancy there’s no doubt her sister has written to her that she’s married. It’s certain she has. She’s a blunt sort of girl; not one to lie, not even for a sister or a lover, unless she had previously made up her mind to it. In that case, she wouldn’t stick at much.”
“But, do you know,” said Mrs. Lovell—“do you know that Edward’s father would be worse than yours over such an act of folly? He would call it an offence against common sense, and have no mercy for it. He would be vindictive on principle. This story of yours cannot be true. Nothing reconciles it.”
“Oh, Sir Billy will be rusty; that stands to reason,” Algernon assented. “It mayn’t be true. I hope it isn’t. But Ned has a madness for fair women. He’d do anything on earth for them. He loses his head entirely.”
“That he may have been imprudent—” Mrs. Lovell thus blushingly hinted at the lesser sin of his deceiving and ruining the girl.
“Oh, it needn’t be true,” said Algernon; and with meaning, “Who’s to blame if it is?”
Mrs. Lovell again reddened. She touched Algernon’s fingers.
“His friends mustn’t forsake him, in any case.”
“By Jove! you are the right sort of woman,” cried Algernon.
It was beyond his faculties to divine that her not forsaking of Edward might haply come to mean something disastrous to him. The touch of Mrs. Lovell’s hand made him forget Rhoda in a twinkling. He detained it, audaciously, even until she frowned with petulance and stamped her foot.
There was over her bosom a large cameo-brooch, representing a tomb under a palm-tree, and the figure of a veiled woman with her head bowed upon the tomb. This brooch was falling, when Algernon caught it. The pin tore his finger, and in the energy of pain he dashed the brooch to her feet, with immediate outcries of violent disgust at himself and exclamations for pardon. He picked up the brooch. It was open. A strange, discoloured, folded substance lay on the floor of the carriage. Mrs. Lovell gazed down at it, and then at him, ghastly pale. He lifted it by one corner, and the diminutive folded squares came out, revealing a strip of red-stained handkerchief.
Mrs. Lovell grasped it, and thrust it out of sight.
She spoke as they approached the church-door: “Mention nothing of this to a soul, or you forfeit my friendship for ever.”
When they alighted, she was smiling in her old affable manner.
CHAPTER IX
Some consideration for Robert, after all, as being the man who loved her, sufficed to give him rank as a more elevated kind of criminal in Rhoda’s sight, and exquisite torture of the highest form was administered to him. Her faith in her sister was so sure that she could half pardon him for the momentary harm he had done to Dahlia with her father; but, judging him by the lofty standard of one who craved to be her husband, she could not pardon his unmanly hesitation and manner of speech. The old and deep grievance in her heart as to what men thought of women, and as to the harshness of men, was stirred constantly by the remembrance of his irresolute looks, and his not having dared to speak nobly for Dahlia, even though he might have had, the knavery to think evil. As the case stood, there was still mischief to counteract. Her father had willingly swallowed a drug, but his suspicions only slumbered, and she could not instil her own vivid hopefulness and trust into him. Letters from Dahlia came regularly. The first, from Lausanne, favoured Rhoda’s conception of her as of a happy spirit resting at celestial stages of her ascent upward through spheres of ecstacy. Dahlia could see the snow-mountains in a flying glimpse; and again, peacefully seated, she could see the snow-mountains reflected in clear blue waters from her window, which, Rhoda thought, must be like heaven. On these inspired occasions, Robert presented the form of a malignant serpent in her ideas. Then Dahlia made excursions upon glaciers with her beloved, her helpmate, and had slippings and tumblings—little earthly casualties which gave a charming sense of reality to her otherwise miraculous flight. The Alps were crossed: Italy was beheld. A profusion of “Oh’s!” described Dahlia’s impressions of Italy; and “Oh! the heat!” showed her to be mortal, notwithstanding the sublime exclamations. Como received the blissful couple. Dahlia wrote from Como:—
“Tell father that gentlemen in my Edward’s position cannot always immediately proclaim their marriage to the world. There are reasons. I hope he has been very angry with me: then it will be soon over, and we shall be—but I cannot look back. I shall not look back till we reach Venice. At Venice, I know I shall see you all as clear as day; but I cannot even remember the features of my darling here.”
Her Christian name was still her only signature.
The thin blue-and-pink paper, and the foreign postmarks—testifications to Dahlia’s journey not being a fictitious event, had a singular deliciousness for the solitary girl at the Farm. At times, as she turned them over, she was startled by the intoxication of her sentiments, for the wild thought would come, that many, many whose passionate hearts she could feel as her own, were ready to abandon principle and the bondage to the hereafter, for such a long delicious gulp of divine life. Rhoda found herself more than once brooding on the possible case that Dahlia had done this thing.
The
