Miss Laury was sitting after breakfast in a small library. Her desk43 lay before her, and two large ruled quartos filled with items and figures which she seemed to be comparing. Behind her chair stood a tall, well-made, soldierly young man with light hair. His dress was plain and gentlemanly; the epaulette on one shoulder alone indicated an official capacity. He watched with a fixed look of attention the movements of the small finger which ascended in rapid calculation the long columns of accounts. It was strange to see the absorption of mind expressed in Miss Laury’s face, the gravity of her smooth white brow shaded with drooping curls, the scarcely perceptible and unsmiling movement of her lips – though those lips in their rosy sweetness seemed formed only for smiles. Edward Percy at his ledger could not have appeared more completely wrapt in the mysteries of practice44 and fractions. An hour or more lapsed in this employment, the room meantime continuing in profound silence, broken only by an occasional observation addressed by Miss Laury to the gentleman behind her, concerning the legitimacy of some item or the absence of some stray farthing wanted to complete the accuracy of the sum total. In this balancing of the books she displayed a most business-like sharpness and strictness. The slightest fault was detected and remarked on, in few words, but with a quick searching glance. However, the accountant had evidently been accustomed to her surveillance, for on the whole his books were a specimen of arithmetical correctness.
‘Very well,’ said Miss Laury as she closed the volumes. ‘Your accounts do you credit, Mr O’Neill. You may tell his Grace that all is quite right. Your memoranda tally with my own exactly.’
Mr O’Neill bowed. ‘Thank you, madam. This will bear me out against Lord Hartford. His Lordship lectured me severely last time he came to inspect Fort Adrian.’
‘What about?’ asked Miss Laury, turning aside her face to hide the deepening of colour which overspread it at the mention of Lord Hartford’s name.
‘I can hardly tell you, madam, but his Lordship was in a savage temper. Nothing could please him; he found fault with everything and everybody. I thought he scarcely appeared himself, and that has been the opinion of many lately.’
Miss Laury gently shook her head. ‘You should not say so, Ryan,’ she replied in a soft tone of reproof. ‘Lord Hartford has a great many things to think about, and he is naturally rather stern. You ought to bear with his tempers.’
‘Necessity has no law,45 madam,’ replied Mr O’Neill, with a smile, ‘and I must bear with them. But his Lordship is not a popular man in the army. He orders the lash so unsparingly. We like the Earl of Arundel ten times better.’
‘Ah!’ said Miss Laury, smiling. ‘You and I are westerns, Mr O’Neill – Irish – and we favour our countrymen. But Hartford is a gallant commander. His men can always trust him. Do not let us be partial.’
Mr O’Neill bowed in deference to her opinion, but smiled at the same time, as if he doubted its justice. Taking up his books, he seemed about to leave the room. Before he did so, however, he turned and said: ‘The Duke wished me to inform you, madam, that he would probably be here about four or five o’clock in the afternoon.’
‘To-day?’ asked Miss Laury in an accent of surprise.
‘Yes, madam.’
She paused a moment, then said quickly, ‘Very well, sir.’
Mr O’Neill now took his leave, with another low and respectful obeisance. Miss Laury returned it with a slight abstracted bow. Her thoughts were all caught up and hurried away by that last communication. For a long time after the door had closed she sat with her head on her hand, lost in a tumultuous flush of ideas, anticipations awakened by that simple sentence, ‘The Duke will be here to-day.’
The striking of a time-piece roused her. She remembered that twenty tasks awaited her direction. Always active, always employed, it was not her custom to waste many hours in dreaming. She rose, closed her desk, and left the quiet library for busier scenes.
Four o’clock came, and Miss Laury’s foot was heard on the staircase, descending from her chamber. She crossed the large, light passage – such an apparition of feminine elegance and beauty! She had dressed herself splendidly. The robe of black satin became at once her slender form, which it enveloped in full and shining folds, and her bright blooming complexion, which it set off by the contrast of colour. Glittering through her curls there was a band of fine diamonds, and drops of the same pure gem trembled from her small, delicate ears. These ornaments, so regal in their nature, had been the gift of royalty, and were worn now chiefly for the associations of soft and happy moments which their gleam might be supposed to convey.
She entered her drawing-room, and stood by the window. From thence appeared one glimpse of the high road visible through the thickening shades of Rivaulx. Even that was now almost concealed by the frozen mist in which the approach of twilight was wrapt. All was very quiet, both in the house and in the wood. A carriage drew near. She heard the sound; she saw it shoot through the fog. But it was not Zamorna. No, the driving was neither the driving of Jehu the son of Nimshi,46 nor that of Jehu’s postillions. She had not gazed a minute before her experienced eye discerned that there was something wrong with the horses. The harness had got entangled, or they were frightened. The coachman had lost command over them; they were plunging violently.
She rang the bell. A servant entered. She ordered immediate assistance to be despatched to that carriage on the road. Two grooms presently47 hurried down the drive to execute her commands, but before they could reach the spot, one of the horses in its gambols had slipped on the icy road and fallen. The others grew more unmanageable, and presently the carriage lay overturned on the road-side. One of Miss Laury’s messengers came back. She threw up the window, that she might communicate with him more readily.
‘Any accident?’ she asked. ‘Anybody hurt?’
‘I hope not much, madam.’
‘Who is in the carriage?’
‘Only one lady, and she seems to have fainted. She looked very white when I opened the door. What is to be done, madam?’
Miss Laury, with Irish frankness, answered directly, ‘Bring them all into the house. Let the horses be taken into the stables and the servants – how many are there?’
‘Three, madam. Two postillions and a footman – it seems quite a gentleman’s turn-out, very plain but quite slap up. Beautiful horses.’
‘Do you know the liveries?’
‘Can’t say, madam. Postillions grey and white, footmen in plain clothes. Horses frightened at a drove of Sydenham oxen, they say. Very spirited nags.’
‘Well, you have my orders. Bring the lady in directly, and make the others comfortable.’
‘Yes, madam.’
The groom touched his hat and departed. Miss [Laury] shut her window. It was very cold. Not many minutes elapsed before the lady, in the arms of her own servants, was slowly brought up the lawn and ushered into the drawing-room.
‘Lay her on the sofa,’ said Miss Laury.
She was obeyed. The lady’s travelling cloak was carefully removed, and a thin figure became apparent, in a dark silk dress. The cushions of down scarcely sunk under the pressure, it was so light.
Her swoon was now passing off. The genial warmth of the fire, which shone full on her, revived her. Opening her eyes, she looked up at Miss Laury’s face, who was bending close over her and wetting her lips with some cordial. Recognizing a stranger, she shyly turned her glance aside, and asked for her servants.
‘They are in the house, madam, and perfectly safe. But you cannot pursue your journey at present. The carriage is much broken.’
The lady lay silent. She looked keenly round the room, and seeing the perfect elegance of its arrangement, the cheerful and tranquil glow of its hearthlight, she appeared to grow more composed. Turning a little on the cushions which supported her, and by no means looking at Miss Laury but straight the other way, she said, ‘To whom am I indebted for this kindness? Where am I?’
‘In a hospitable country, madam. The Angrians never turn their backs on strangers.’
‘I know I am in Angria,’ she said quietly. ‘But where? What is the name of the house, and who are you?’
Miss Laury coloured slightly. It seemed as if there was some undefined reluctance to give her real name. That, she knew, was widely celebrated – too widely. Most likely, the lady would turn from her in contempt if she heard it, and Miss Laury felt she could not bear that.
‘I am only the housekeeper,’ she said. ‘This is a shooting lodge belonging to a great Angrian proprietor.’
‘Who?’ asked the lady, who was not to be put off by indirect answers.
Again Miss Laury hesitated. For her life she could not have said, ‘His Grace the Duke of Zamorna.’ She replied hastily, ‘A gentleman of western extraction, a distant branch of the great Pakenhams; so, at least, the family records say, but they have been long naturalized in the east.’
‘I never heard of them,’ replied the lady. ‘Pakenham; that is not an Angrian name.’
‘Perhaps, madam, you are not particularly acquainted with this part of the country?’
‘I know Hawkscliffe,’ said the lady, ‘and your house is on the very borders, within the royal liberties,48 is it not?’
‘Yes, madam. It stood there before the great Duke bought up the forest manor, and His Majesty allowed my master to retain this lodge and the privilege of sporting in the chase.’
‘Well, and you are Mr Pakenham’s housekeeper?’
‘Yes, madam.’
The lady surveyed Miss Laury with another furtive side-glance of her large, majestic eyes. Those eyes lingered upon the diamond ear-rings, the bandeau of brilliants that flashed from between the clusters of raven curls, then passed over the sweet face, the exquisite figure of the young housekeeper, and finally were reverted to the wall with an expression that spoke volumes. Miss Laury could have torn the dazzling pendants from her ears. She was bitterly stung. ‘Every body knows me,’ she said to herself. ‘ “Mistress”, I suppose, is branded on my brow.’
In her turn she gazed on her guest. The lady was but a young creature, though so high and commanding in her demeanour. She had very small and feminine features, handsome eyes, a neck of delicate curve and hue, fair, long, graceful little snowy aristocratic hands and sandalled feet to match. It would have been difficult to tell her rank by her dress. None of those dazzling witnesses appeared which had betrayed Miss Laury. Any gentleman’s wife might have worn the gown of dark blue silk, the tinted gloves of Parisian kid and the fairy sandals of black satin in which she was attired.
‘May I have a room to myself?’ she asked, again turning her eyes with something like a smile toward Miss Laury.
‘Certainly, madam. I wish to make you comfortable. Can you walk up-stairs?’
‘Oh yes!’
She rose from the couch, and, leaning upon Miss Laury’s offered arm in a way that shewed she had been used to that sort of support, they both glided from the room. Having seen her fair but somewhat haughty guest carefully laid on a stately crimson bed in a quiet and spacious chamber, having seen her head sink with all its curls onto the pillow of down, her large shy eyes close under their smooth eye-lids, and her little slender hands fold on her breast in an attitude of perfect repose, Miss Laury prepared to leave her. She stirred.
‘Come back a moment,’ she said. She was obeyed: there was something in the tone of her voice which exacted obedience. ‘I don’t know who you are,’ she said, ‘but I am very much obliged to you for your kindness. If my manners are displeasing, forgive me. I mean no incivility. I suppose you will wish to know my name. It is Mrs Irving; my husband is a minister in the northern kirk; I come from Sneachiesland.49 Now you may go.’
Miss Laury did go. Mrs Irving had testified incredulity respecting her story, and now she reciprocated that incredulity. Both ladies were lost in their own mystification.
Five o’clock now struck. It was nearly dark. A servant with a taper was lighting up the chandeliers in the large dining-room, where a table spread for dinner received the kindling lamplight upon a starry service of silver. It was likewise magnificently flashed back from a splendid side-board, all arranged in readiness to receive the great, the expected guest.
Tolerably punctual in keeping an appointment when he means to keep it at all, Zamorna entered the house as the fairy-like voice of a musical clock in the passage struck out its symphony to the pendulum. The opening of the front door, a bitter rush of the night wind, and then the sudden close and the step advancing forwards were the signals of his arrival. Miss Laury was in the dining-room looking round and giving the last touch to all things. She just met her master as he entered. His cold lip pressed to her forehead and his colder hand clasping hers brought the sensation which it was her custom of weeks and months to wait for, and to consider, when attained, as the ample recompense for all delay, all toil, all suffering.
‘I am frozen, Mina,’ said he. ‘I came on horseback for the last four miles, and the night is like Canada.’
Chafing his icy hand to animation between her own warm supple palms, she answered by the speechless but expressive look of joy, satisfaction, idolatry, which filled and overflowed her eyes.
‘What can I do for you, my lord?’ were her first words, as he stood by the fire rubbing his hands cheerily over the blaze. He laughed.
‘Put your arms round my neck, Mina, and kiss my cheek as warm and blooming as your own.’
If Mina Laury had been Mina Wellesley she would have done so, and it gave her a pang to resist the impulse that urged her to take him at his word. But she put it by, and only diffidently drew near the arm-chair into which he had now thrown himself and began to smooth and separate the curls which were matted on his temples. She noticed, as the first smile of salutation subsided, a gloom succeeded on her master’s brow, which, however he spoke or laughed afterwards, remained a settled characteristic of his countenance.
‘What visitors are in the house?’ he asked. ‘I saw the groom rubbing down four black horses before the stables as I came in. They are not of the Hawkscliffe stud, I think?’
‘No, my lord. A carriage was overturned at the lawn gates about an hour since, and as the lady who was in it was taken out insensible, I ordered her to be brought up here and her servants accommodated for the night.’
‘And do you know who the lady is?’ continued his Grace. ‘The horses are good – first-rate.’
‘She says her name is Mrs Irving, and that she is the wife of a Presbyterian minister in the North, but –’
‘You hardly believe her?’ interrupted the Duke.
‘No,’ returned Miss Laury. ‘I must say I took her for a lady of rank. She has something highly aristocratic about her manners and aspect, and she appeared to know a good deal about Angria.’
‘What is she like?’ asked Zamorna. ‘Young or old, handsome or ugly?’
‘She is young, slender, not so tall as I am, and I should say rather elegant than handsome. Very pale, cold in her demeanour. She has a small mouth and chin, and a very fair neck.’
‘Humph! a trifle like Lady Stuartville,’ replied His Majesty. ‘I should not wonder if it is the Countess. But I’ll know. Perhaps you did not say to whom the house belonged, Mina?’
‘I said,’ replied Mina, smiling, ‘the owner of the house was a great Angrian proprietor, a lineal descendant of the western Pakenhams, and that I was his housekeeper.’
‘Very good! She would not believe you. You look like an Angrian country gentleman’s dolly. Give me your hand, my girl. Are you not as old as I am?’
‘Yes, my lord Duke. I was born on the same day, an hour after your Grace.’
‘So I have heard, but it must be a mistake. You don’t look twenty, and I am twenty-five. My beautiful Western – what eyes! Look at me, Mina, straight, and don’t blush.’
Mina tried to look, but she could not do it without blushing. She coloured to the temples.
‘Pshaw!’ said his Grace, pushing her away. ‘Pretending to be modest! My acquaintance of ten years cannot meet my eye unshrinkingly. Have you lost that ring I once gave you, Mina?’
‘What ring, my lord? You have given me many.’
‘That which I said had the essence of your whole heart and mind engraven in the stone as a motto.’
‘FIDELITY?’ asked Miss Laury, and she held out her hand with a graven emerald on the forefinger.
‘Right!’ was the reply. ‘Is it your motto still?’ And with one of his hungry, jealous glances he seemed trying to read her conscience. Miss Laury at once saw that late transactions were not a secret confined between herself and Lord Hartford. She saw his Grace was unhinged and strongly inclined to be savage. She stood and watched him with a sad, fearful gaze.
‘Well,’ she said, turning away after a long pause, ‘if your Grace is angry with me I’ve very little to care about in this world.’
The entrance of servants with the dinner prevented Zamorna’s answer. As he took his place at the head of the table, he said to the man who stood behind him: ‘Give Mr Pakenham’s compliments to Mrs Irving, and say that he will be happy to see her at his table, if she will honour him so far as to be present there.’
The footman vanished. He returned in five minutes.
‘Mrs Irving is too much tired to avail herself of Mr Pakenham’s kind invitation at present, but she will be happy to join him at tea.’
‘Very well,’ said Zamorna; then, looking round, ‘Where is Miss Laury?’
Mina was in the act of gliding from the room, but she stopped mechanically at his call.
‘Am I to dine alone?’ he asked.
‘Does your Grace wish me to attend you?’
He answered by rising and leading her to her seat. He then resumed his own, and dinner commenced. It was not till after the cloth was withdrawn and the servants had retired that the Duke, whilst he sipped his single glass of champagne, recommenced the conversation he had before so unpleasantly entered upon.
‘Come here, my girl,’ he said, drawing a chair close to his side. Mina never delayed, never hesitated, through bashfulness or any other feeling, to comply with his orders.
‘Now,’ he continued, leaning his head towards hers and placing his hand on her shoulder, ‘are you happy, Mina? Do you want anything?’
‘Nothing, my lord.’
She spoke truly. All that was capable of yielding her happiness on this side of eternity was at that moment within her reach. The room was full of calm. The lamps burnt as if they were listening. The fire sent up no flickering flame, but diffused a broad, still, glowing light over all the spacious saloon. Zamorna touched her; his form and features filled her eye, his voice her ear, his presence her whole heart. She was soothed to perfect happiness.
‘My Fidelity!’ pursued that musical voice. ‘If thou hast any favour to ask, now is the time. I’m all concession, as sweet as honey, as yielding as a lady’s glove. Come, Esther, what is thy petition and thy request? Even to the half of my kingdom it shall be granted.’50
‘Nothing,’ again murmured Miss Laury. ‘Oh, my lord, nothing. What can I want?’
‘Nothing!’ he repeated. ‘What, no reward for ten years’ faith and love and devotion; no reward for the companionship in six months’ exile; no recompense to the little hand that has so often smoothed my pillow in sickness, to the sweet lips that have many a time in cool and dewy health been pressed to a brow of fever; none to the dark Milesian51 eyes that once grew dim with watching through endless nights by my couch of delirium? Need I speak of the sweetness and fortitude that cheered sufferings known only to thee and me, Mina; of the devotion that gave me bread, when thou wast dying with hunger, and that scarcely more than a year since? For all this, and much more, must there be no reward?’
‘I have had it,’ said Miss Laury. ‘I have it now.’
‘But,’ continued the Duke, ‘what if I have devised something worthy of your acceptance? Look up now and listen to me.’
She did look up, but she speedily looked down again. Her master’s eye was insupportable. It burnt absolutely with infernal fire. ‘What is he going to say?’ murmured Miss Laury to herself, and she trembled.
‘I say, love,’ pursued the individual drawing her a little closer to him. ‘I will give you as a reward a husband – don’t start now! – and that husband shall be a nobleman, and that nobleman is called Lord Hartford! Now, madam, stand up and let me look at you.’
He opened his arms, and Miss Laury sprang erect like a loosened bow.
‘Your Grace is anticipated!’ she said. ‘That offer has been made me before. Lord Hartford did it himself three days ago.’
‘And what did you say, madam? Speak the truth, now. Subterfuge won’t avail you.’
‘What did I say? Zamorna, I don’t know. It little signifies. You have rewarded me, my lord Duke! But I cannot bear this – I feel sick.’
With a deep, short sob she turned white, and fell close by the Duke, her head against his foot. This was the first time in her life that Mina Laury had fainted, but strong health availed nothing against the deadly struggle which convulsed every feeling of her nature when she heard her master’s announcement. She believed him to be perfectly sincere. She thought he was tired of her, and she could not stand it.
I suppose Zamorna’s first feeling when she fell was horror, and his next, I am tolerably certain, was intense gratification. People say I am not in earnest when I abuse him, or else I would here insert half a page of deserved vituperation, deserved and heart-felt. As it is, I will merely relate his conduct without note or comment. He took a wax taper from the table and held it over Miss Laury. Here could be no dissimulation. She was white as marble and still as stone. In truth, then, she did intensely love him, with a devotion that left no room in her thoughts for one shadow of an alien image.
Do not think, reader, that Zamorna meant to be so generous as to bestow Miss Laury on Lord Hartford. No, trust him: he was but testing in his usual way the attachment which a thousand proofs, daily given, ought long ago to have convinced him was undying. While he yet gazed, she began to recover. Her eye-lids stirred, and then slowly dawned from beneath the large black orbs that scarcely met his before they filled to overflowing with sorrow. Not a gleam of anger, not a whisper of reproach. Her lips and eyes spoke together no other language than the simple words, ‘I cannot leave you.’
She rose feebly and with effort. The Duke stretched out his hand to assist her. He held to her lips the scarcely tasted wine-glass.
‘Mina,’ he said, ‘are you collected enough to hear me?’
‘Yes, my lord.’
‘Then listen. I would much sooner give half – aye, the whole – of my estates to Lord Hartford than yourself. What I said just now was only to try you.’
Miss Laury raised her eyes and sighed, like one awaking from some hideous dream, but she could not speak.
‘Would I,’ continued the Duke, ‘would I resign the possession of my first love to any hands but my own? I would far rather see her in her coffin. And I would lay you there as still, as white and much more lifeless than you were stretched just now at my feet, before I would, for threat, for entreaty, for purchase, give to another a glance of your eye or a smile from your lip. I know you adore me now, Mina, for you could not feign that agitation, and therefore I will tell you what proof I gave yesterday of my regard for you. Hartford mentioned your name in my presence, and I revenged the profanation by a shot which sent him to his bed little better than a corpse.’
Miss Laury shuddered. But so dark and profound are the mysteries of human nature, ever allying vice with virtue, that I fear this bloody proof of her master’s love brought to her heart more rapture than horror. She said not a word, for now Zamorna’s arms were again folded round her, and again he was soothing her to tranquillity by endearments and caresses that far away removed all thought of the world, all past pangs of shame, all cold doubts, all weariness, all heart-sickness resulting from hope long deferred. [He] had told her that she was his first love, and now she felt tempted to believe that she was likewise his only love. Strong-minded beyond her sex, active, energetic and accomplished in all other points of view, here she was as weak as a child. She lost her identity. Her very life was swallowed up in that of another.
There came a knock to the door. Zamorna rose and opened it. His valet stood without.
‘Might I speak with your Grace in the ante-room?’ asked Monsieur Rosier, in somewhat of a hurried tone. The Duke followed him out.
‘What do you want with me, sir? Anything the matter?’
‘Ahem!’ began Eugene, whose countenance expressed much more embarrassment than is the usual characteristic of his dark sharp physiognomy. ‘Ahem! My lord Duke, rather a curious spot of work! A complete conjuror’s trick, if your Grace will allow me to say so.’
‘What do you mean, sir?’
‘Sacré! I hardly know. I must confess I felt a trifle stupefied when I saw it.’
‘Saw what? Speak plainly, Rosier.’
‘How your Grace is to act I can’t imagine,’ replied the valet, ‘though indeed I have seen your Majesty double wonderfully well when the case appeared to me extremely embarrassing. But this I really thought extra – I could not have dreamt –’
‘Speak to the point, Rosier or –’ Zamorna lifted his hand.
‘Mort de ma vie!’ exclaimed Eugene. ‘I will tell your Grace all I know. I was walking carelessly through the passage about ten minutes since when I heard a step on the stairs, a light step, as if of a very small foot. I turned, and there was a lady coming down. My lord, she was a lady!’
‘Well, did you know her?’
‘I think, if my eyes were not bewitched, I did. I stood in the shade, screened by a pillar, and she passed very near without observing me. I saw her distinctly, and may I be d—d this very moment if it was not –’
‘Who, sir?’
‘The Duchess!!’
There was a pause, which was closed by [a] clear and remarkably prolonged whistle from the Duke. He put both his hands into his pockets and took a leisurely turn through the room.
‘You’re sure, Eugene?’ he said. ‘I know you dare not tell me a lie in such matters, because you have a laudable and natural regard to your proper carcass. Aye, it’s true enough, I’ll be sworn. Mrs Irving, wife of a minister in the North – a satirical hit at my royal self, by G—d! Pale, fair neck, little mouth and chin! Very good! I wish that same little mouth and chin were about a hundred miles off. What can have brought her? Anxiety about her invaluable husband – could not bear any longer without him – obliged to set off to see what he was doing. It’s as well that turnspit Rosier told me, however. If she had entered the room unexpectedly about five minutes since – God! I should have had no resource but to tie her hand and foot. It would have killed her. What the D—l shall I do? Must not be angry; she can’t do with that sort of thing just now. Talk softly, reprove her gently, swear black and white to my having no connection with Mr Pakenham’s housekeeper.’
Ceasing his soliloquy, the Duke turned again to his valet.
‘What room did her Grace go into?’
‘The drawing-room, my lord. She’s there now.’
‘Well, say nothing about it, Rosier, on pain of sudden death. Do you hear, sir?’
Rosier laid his hand on his heart, and Zamorna left the room to commence operations.
Softly unclosing the drawing-room door, he perceived a lady by the hearth. Her back was towards him, but there could be no mistake. The whole turn of form, the style of dress, the curled auburn head, all were attributes but of one person – of his own unique, haughty, jealous little Duchess. He closed the door as noiselessly as he had opened it, and stole forwards. Her attention was absorbed in something, a book she had picked up. As he stood unobserved behind her he could see that her eye rested on the fly leaf, where was written in his own hand:
Holy St Cyprian! thy waters stray
With still and solemn tone;
And fast my bright hours pass away,
And somewhat throws a shadow grey,
Even as twilight closes day
Upon thy waters lone.
Farewell! if I might come again,
Young, as I was, and free,
And feel once more in every vein
The fire of that first passion reign
Which sorrow could not quench, nor pain,
I’d soon return to thee;
But while thy billows seek the main
That never more may be!
This was dated ‘Mornington, 1829’.52 The Duchess felt a hand press her shoulder, and she looked up. The force of attraction had its usual results and she clung to what she saw.
‘Adrian! Adrian!’ was all her lips would utter.
‘Mary! Mary!’ replied the Duke, allowing her to hang about him. ‘Pretty doings! What brought you here? Are you running away, eloping, in my absence?’
‘Adrian, why did you leave me? You said you would come back in a week, and it’s eight days since. I could not bear any longer. I have never slept nor rested since you left me. Do come home!’
‘So you actually have set off in search of a husband,’ said Zamorna, laughing heartily, ‘and been overturned and obliged to take shelter in Pakenham’s shooting-box!’
‘Why are you here, Adrian?’ inquired the Duchess, who was far too much in earnest to join in his laugh. ‘Who is Pakenham? And who is that person who calls herself his housekeeper? And why do you let anybody live so near Hawkscliffe without ever telling me?’
‘I forgot to tell you,’ said his Grace. ‘I’ve other things to think about when those bright hazel eyes are looking up to me. As for Pakenham, to tell you the truth, he’s a sort of left-hand cousin53 of your own, being natural son to the old Admiral, my uncle, in the south, and his housekeeper is his sister. Voilà tout. Kiss me now.’
The Duchess did kiss him, but it was with a heavy sigh. The cloud of jealous anxiety hung on her brow undissipated.
‘Adrian, my heart aches still. Why have you been staying so long in Angria? Oh, you don’t care for me! You have never thought how miserably I have been longing for your return. Adrian –’
She stopped and cried.
‘Mary, recollect yourself,’ said his Grace. ‘I cannot be always at your feet. You were not so weak when we were first married. You let me leave you often then, without any jealous remonstrance.’
‘I did not know you so well at that time,’ said Mary, ‘and if my mind is weakened, all its strength has gone away in tears and terrors for you. I am neither so handsome nor so cheerful as I once was, but you ought to forgive my decay because you have caused it.’
‘Low spirits!’ returned Zamorna. ‘Looking on the dark side of matters! God bless me, the wicked is caught in his own net. I wish I could add, “yet shall I withal escape”.54 Mary, never again reproach yourself with loss of beauty till I give the hint first. Believe me now, in that and every other respect you are just what I wish you to be. You cannot fade any more than marble can – at least not to my eyes. And as for your devotion and tenderness, though I chide its excess sometimes, because it wastes and bleaches you almost to a shadow, yet it forms the very firmest chain that binds me to you. Now cheer up! Tonight you shall go to Hawkscliffe; it is only five miles off. I cannot accompany you, because I have some important business to transact with Pakenham which must not be deferred. Tomorrow, I will be at the castle before dawn. The carriage shall be ready. I will put you in, myself beside you; off we go, straight to Verdopolis, and there for the next three months I will tire you of my company morning, noon and night. Now, what can I promise more? If you choose to be jealous of Henri Fernando, Baron of Etrei, or John, Duke of Fidena, or the fair Earl of Richton – who, as God is my witness, has been the only companion of my present peregrination – why, I can’t help it. I must then take to soda-water and despair, or have myself petrified and carved into an Apollo55 for your dressing-room. Lord, I get not credit with my virtue!’
By dint of lies and laughter, the individual at last succeeded in getting all things settled to his mind. The Duchess went to Hawkscliffe that night; and, keeping his promise for once, he accompanied her to Verdopolis next morning.
Lord Hartford lies still between life and death. His passion is neither weakened by pain, piqued by rejection, nor cooled by absence. On the iron nerves of the man are graven an impression which nothing can efface. Warner curses him, Richton deplores.
For a long space of time, good-bye, reader.56 I have done my best to please you, and though I know that through feebleness, dullness and iteration, my work terminates rather in failure [than] triumph, yet you are bound to forgive, for I have done my best.
C Brontë Jany 7th
Haworth 1838