Though the dower-house of Walcot Park dated from the days of Dutch William, when taste was declining fast in England, internally it had all the comforts of modern life, and its large double drawing-room was replete with every elegance that art could furnish or luxury require--gilt china, and buhl cabinets, and console mirrors which reproduced again and again, in far and shadowy perspectives, the winged lions of St. Mark in verde antique; Laocoon and his sons writhing in the coils of the serpents; Majolica vases, where tritons, nymphs, and dolphins were entwined; Titian's cavaliers sallow and sombre in ruffs and half-armour, with pointed moustachios and imperious eyes; or red-haired Venetian dames with long stomachers, long fingers, and Bologna spaniels; or Rubens' blowsy belles, all flesh and bone, with sturdy limbs, and ruddy cheeks and elbows; but the mirrors reflected more about the very time that I was lingering at Whitchurch; to wit, a group, a trio composed of Lady Naseby, her daughter, and Mr. Guilfoyle; and within that room, so elegant and luxurious, was being fought by Estelle, silently and bitterly, one of those struggles of the heart, or battles of life, which, as poor Georgette Franklin said truly, were harder than those which were fought in the field by armed men. Guilfoyle was smiling, and looking very bland and pleased, indeed, to all appearance; Lady Naseby's usually calm and unimpressionable face, so handsome and noble in its contour, wore an expression of profound disdain and contempt; while that of Lady Estelle was as pale as marble. She seemed to be icy cold; her pink nostrils were dilated, her lips and eyelids were quivering; but with hands folded before her, lest she should clench them and betray herself, she listened to what passed between her mother and their visitor.
"It was, as you say, a strange scene, of course, Mr. Guilfoyle, the woman fainting--"
"Reclining."
"Well, yes, reclining in the arms of Mr. Hardinge in that lonely lane," said the Countess; "but we need refer to it no more. He must be a very reckless person, as Pompon saw him take leave of this creature with great tenderness, she says, at the door of that obscure inn at Whitchurch; so that explains all."
"Not quite," replied Guilfoyle.
"Perhaps not; but then it is no affair of ours, at all events, I must own that I always wondered what the Lloyds--Sir Madoc especially--saw in that young man, a mere subaltern of the line!"
"Precisely my view of the matter, Lady Naseby."
"Besides, your little baronet people are great sticklers for rank and dignity, and often affect a greater exclusiveness than those who rank above them."
"But as for this unfortunate woman," resumed Guilfoyle, who was loth to quit the subject.
"We have heard of her in our neighbourhood before," said Lady Naseby; "at least, Pompon has. She is good to all, especially the poor."
"Ah, doesn't care to hide her candle under a bushel, eh?"
"What do you mean, Mr. Guilfoyle?"
"Simply that vanity is often mistaken for generosity, profusion for benevolence."
"You are somewhat of a cynic, I know."
"Nay, pardon me, I hope not."
"She is too poorly clad in general, Pompon says, to be able to indulge in profusion," continued Lady Naseby, while Lady Estelle glanced at the speakers alternately, in silence and with apparent calmness.
But Guilfoyle, who read her eyes and heart, and knew her secret thoughts, gloated on the pain she was enduring.
"No doubt the unfortunate creature is much to be pitied," said he; "but when a woman has lost respect for herself, she cannot expect much of it from others. The poor little soiled love-bird has probably left some pretty semi-detached villa at Chertsey or St. John's Wood to follow its faithless redcoat to Hampshire, and hence the touching tableau in the lane," he added, with his mocking and strangely unreal laugh.
"Mr. Guilfoyle!" said the Countess, in a tone of expostulation, while her daughter darted a glance of inexpressible scorn at him. But he continued coolly, "Well, perhaps I should not speak so slightingly of her, after what she has given herself out to be."
"And what is that?" asked Lady Naseby.
"Only--his wife."
"His wife!" exclaimed Estelle, starting in spite of herself. "Yes, Lady Estelle; but it may not be, nay, I hope is not, the case."
"You should rather hope that it is so."
"But we all know what military men are--never particular to a shade; and though excuses must be made for the temptations that surround them, and also for youth, I approve of the continental system, which generally excludes subaltern officers from society."
"Wife!" repeated Estelle; "O, it cannot be!"
"What is it to you--to us?" asked mamma, with a slight asperity of tone.
"Well, wife or not, she certainly wears a wedding-ring, and he has been more than once to visit her in that inn at Whitchurch. Of one visit our mutual friend Mr. Sharpus is cognisant. If you doubt this, ask him, and he will not contradict me."
"I have not said that I doubt you, Mr. Guilfoyle," said Estelle, with intense hauteur, while for a moment--but a moment only--her eyes flashed, her breast heaved, her hands were clenched, a burning colour suffused her face, and her feet were firmly planted on the carpet; yet she asked quietly, "Why do we hear this scandalous story at all? What is it to mamma--what to me?"
"More, perhaps, than you care to admit," said he, in a low voice, as the Countess rose to place Tiny in his mother-of-pearl basket.
Guilfoyle at Craigaderyn had acted as eavesdropper, and on more than one occasion had watched and followed, overseen and overheard us, and knew perfectly all about our secret engagement, her mother's views and opposition to any alliance save a noble or at least a moneyed one; and of all the stories he had the unblushing effrontery to tell, the present was perhaps the most daring. He had contrived, during the short visit he had paid to Walcot Park, under the wing of Mr. Sharpus, to let Estelle know by covert hints and remarks all he knew, and all he might yet disclose to her mother, to the young Earl of Naseby, to Lord Pottersleigh, Sir Madoc, and others; and feeling herself in his power, with all her lofty spirit the poor girl cowered before him, and he felt this instinctively, as he turned his green eyes exultingly upon her. But for a delicate, proud, and sensitive girl to have the secrets of her heart laid bare, and at the mercy of a man like this, was beyond all measure exasperating. And this strange narrative of his, coming after what she had seen, and all that Pompon with French exaggeration had related, crushed her completely for the time.
"I have another little item to add to our Hardinge romance," said he, with his strange, hard, dry, crackling laugh, and a smile of positive delight in his shifty green eyes, while he toyed with the long ears of Tiny the shock, which had resumed its place in Lady Naseby's lap. "You remember the locket with the initials 'H. H. G.' and the date 1st September which Miss Dora Lloyd mentioned when we were at Craigaderyn?"
"I have some recollection of it," replied Lady Naseby, languidly.
"Curiously enough, as I rode past the spot where you saw that touching and interesting interview--the lane, I mean--I perceived something glittering among the grass. Dismounting, I picked up that identical locket, which doubtless the lady had dropped, thus losing it within a few days of its bestowal, if we are to judge by the date."
"And you have it?"
"Here."
Opening his leather portemonnaie, he drew from it a gold locket, to which a black-velvet ribbon was attached, and said with the utmost deliberation, "The initials represent those of Henry Hardinge and his inamorata, and behold!"
Pressing a spring, the secret of which he knew very well, the locket flew open, and within it were seen the photograph of the pale woman whom they saw in Craigaderyn church, and opposite to it one of me, inserted by himself, pilfered from the album of Winifred Lloyd, as we afterwards ascertained.
"Aha! the moral Mr. Henry Hardinge with his petite femme entretenue, as the French so happily term it."
Lady Estelle was quite calm now in her demeanour, and she surveyed the locket with a contemptuous smile; but her face was as white as marble. She felt conscious that it was so, and hence sat with her back to the nearest window, lest her mother should perceive that she was affected.
Guilfoyle, smilingly, stood by her, stroking his dyed moustache.
"This must be restored to its owner," said he.
"Permit me to do so," said Lady Estelle.
"You, Estelle--you!" exclaimed her usually placid mother, becoming almost excited now; "why should you touch the wretched creature's ornament?"
"As an act of charity it should be restored to her, or to him," she added, through her clenched teeth; and taking the locket, she left the room for her own, ere her mother could reply; and there she gave way to a paroxysm of tears, that sprang from sorrow, rage, and shame that she had for a moment permitted herself to have been deluded by me, and thus be placed in the power of Guilfoyle. Her lips, usually of a rosy tint, were colourless now; her upper one quivered from time to time, as she shuddered with emotions she strove in vain to repress; and her proud hot blood flowed furiously under her transparent skin, as she threw open her desk, and sought to apply herself to the task of writing me that which was to be her first, her last, and only letter. For her heart swelled with thoughts of love and disappointment, pride, reproach, disdain, and hate, as she spoiled and tore up sheet after sheet of note-paper in her confusion and perplexity, and at last relinquished the idea of writing at all.
Thus, while I was scheming how to expose Mr. Hawkesby Guilfoyle, and have him cast forth from that circle in which he was an intruder, he turned the tables with a vengeance, and provided me with a wife to boot. But finding, or suspecting, that he was beginning to be viewed with doubt, that very day, after having done all possible mischief, he quitted Walcot Park with Lady Naseby's solicitor, who, strange to say, seemed to be his most particular friend. He had made no impression favourable to himself on the heart of Estelle; but he hoped that he had succeeded in ruining me, as I could neither write nor clear myself of an allegation of which I was then, of course, ignorant. She was unjust to me; but she certainly--whatever came to pass in the gloomy and stormy future--loved me then.
