The earl did not tear the periodical, and scatter its fragments on the wind, he knew that it was spreading at that hour through the halls and even cottages of the land; that it was lying on the tradesman’s counter, in the servant’s hall; that schoolboys were laughing over the peer’s adventure during the intervals of more active sport! Dashleigh laid down the magazine quietly, but with something resembling a groan! Bardon had said that he would wince,—he did more, he actually writhed under the torture inflicted by the hand of his wife!
The servants, wondering at the delay of the accustomed ring, came at length unsummoned, and bore away the untasted breakfast. Dashleigh felt annoyed at the jingling sound, but scarcely comprehended its cause, and only experienced a sense of relief when the room became silent again. His reflections were bitter indeed; he was almost too wretched to be angry. Was he not a disgraced, an insulted man?—did not his very rank make him only a more prominent mark for ridicule? Could he ever show his face again in circles which he had once deemed honoured by his presence? The time-darkened portraits of deceased Earls of Dashleigh seemed to scowl down from their heavy gilt frames on the first of the name who had ever been branded with the imputation of fear!
A servant brought a letter on a salver; the earl mechanically broke open the seal. It was from the vicar, Lawrence Aumerle, and had been written in the first impulse of his indignant surprise on the appearance of the obnoxious article which he could not doubt had been written by his niece.
The clergyman, with instinctive delicacy, avoided all direct reference to the piece so indiscreetly composed by Annabella; but he expressed the extreme distress felt by both his family and himself at the position in which she had placed herself. He entreated her husband to believe that if he gave the lady the protection of his home, it was not because he sanctioned or even palliated her more than imprudent conduct, but that he feared that harshness might drive her from a place where unceasing efforts were made to bring her to a sense of her duty.
“Lawrence Aumerle is a good man,” said the earl, passing his hand across his brow, and leaning thoughtfully back in his chair. “Since all connexion between me and her is broken now for ever—for ever, better that the wretched girl should remain under the protection of her mother’s relations. It were worse, far worse that her pride and folly should be pampered by intercourse with the world,—that world to which she has sacrificed her husband!”
Dashleigh arose and paced slowly the length of the room, but returned with a more rapid step. The name of Aumerle had suddenly suggested to him a course by which he could fling from himself the opprobrium which attaches to the name of a coward. He grasped at the new idea with the energy of a drowning wretch. The world should have no cause to laugh at the man whose nerves had failed him on the heights of a mountain; he would do that which should from henceforth effectually silence such reproach. Taking up writing materials, Dashleigh with rapid hand traced the following note to Augustine:—
“Dear Aumerle,—You mentioned to me that a balloon is to ascend from your grounds on the 12th. I should feel greatly obliged by your reserving a place for me in the car, as it is my particular wish to make one in the excursion.—Ever yours,
“Dashleigh.”
The brief note written and despatched to Aspendale, the nobleman breathed more freely. He could meet the eye of his fellow-men. Pride rendered the effort needful; pride roused his spirit to make it, and Dashleigh would not now pause to consider how great that effort might be to one of his nervous frame. He felt that his honour was at stake. The earl was somewhat in the position of the knight of old, whose lady flung her glove into the arena where a fierce lion and tiger were contending, and before a circle of noble spectators, bade him bring it back to her hand. The knight dreaded the laugh of the audience more than the yells of the furious beasts, and Dashleigh shrank from the sneer of the world more than the untried perils of the air. Annabella had put her husband on his mettle; she had incited him to wrestle down nature; but it remained to be seen whether she had cause to triumph in the effect produced by her satirical pen.