“On my honour!” she echoed in a curious, mechanical voice.
“Very well, then,” inwardly both relieved and delighted; “that is what I call a model daughter. You shall have a prize. I will get you some diamonds to-morrow that will open people’s eyes; no trumpery little half-set, but a necklet, tiara, and brooches. I saw a parure to-day, old family jewels. Hard up—selling off; one goes up, another comes down, like a see-saw. It’s our turn now! You shall wear stones that will make people blink—diamonds that will be the talk of London. If folks say they are too handsome for an unmarried girl, that is our affair, and a coronet will mend that. You have a head that will carry one well. Your mother’s blue blood shows. You shall pick and choose, too. Lord Anthony may think——”
“Lord Anthony Foster and Sir Felix Gibbs,” said a sonorous voice.
And what Lord Anthony might think was never divulged to Madeline; Mr. West, with great presence of mind, springing with one supreme mental leap from family matters to social courtesies.
The dinner was perfect, served at a round table. The floral decorations were exquisite; attendance, menu, wines were everything that could be desired. The gentlemen talked a good deal—talked of the turf, the prospect of the moors, of the latest failure in the city, and the latest play, and perhaps did not notice how very little the young hostess contributed to the conversation. She was absent in mind, if present in the body; but she smiled, and looked pretty, and that was sufficient. She was beholding with her mental eye a very different ménage, far beyond the silver centre-pieces, pines, maiden-hair ferns and orchids, far beyond the powdered footmen, with their dainty dishes and French entrées.
We know what she saw. A cosy farm parlour, with red-tiled floor, a round table spread with a clean coarse cloth, decorated by a blue mug, filled with mignonette and sweet pea, black-handled knives and forks, willow-pattern delf plates, a young man eating his frugal dinner alone, and opposite to him an empty chair—her chair. She saw in another room a curious old wooden cradle, with a pointed half-roof, which had rocked many a Holt in its day. Inside it lay a child that was not a Holt, a child of a different type, a child with black lashes, and a feeding-bottle in its vicinity. (Now, Mrs. Holt’s progeny had never been brought up by hand.) Her baby! Oh, if papa were only to know! she thought, and the idea pierced her heart like a knife, as she looked across at him, where he sat smiling, conversational, and unsuspicious. He would turn her out now this very instant into the square, were he to catch a glimpse of those two living pictures. He was unusually animated on the subject of some shooting he had heard of, and he had two attentive and, shall we confess it, personally interested listeners—listeners who had rosy visions of shooting the grouse on those very moors, as Mr. West’s guests.
So, for awhile, Madeline was left to her own thoughts, and they travelled back to her earliest married days, the pleasant little sitting-room on the first floor at No. 2, the bright fires, bright flowers, new music, and cosy dinners (the mutton-chop period), when all her world was bounded by Laurence. Was it not still the case? Alas, no! The bald-headed gentleman opposite, who was haranguing about “drives and bags,” held a bond on her happiness. He had to be studied, obeyed, and—deceived! Would she be able to play her part? Would she break down? When he looked at her, as he had done that evening, her heart failed her. She felt almost compelled to sink at his feet and tell him all. It was well she had restrained herself. She resolved to save for a rainy day some of the money he was to give her on the morrow. Yes, the clouds were beginning to gather, even now.
Oh, what a wicked wretch she felt at times! But why had cruel fate pushed her into such a corner? Why was her father so worldly and ambitious? Why had she failed to put forward Laurence’s plea, his own long absence and silence, and thus excuse herself once for all? Easy to say this now, when that desperate moment was over—it is always so easy to say these things afterwards! She had given her father a solemn promise (and oh, what a hollow promise it was!), and she was to receive her reward in diamonds of the first water—diamonds that would blind the ordinary and unaccustomed eye!
Presently she rose, and made her way slowly to her great state drawing-rooms, and as she sipped her coffee she thought of Laurence, and wondered what he was doing, and when she dared to see him, to write? Poor Laurence! how seedy his clothes were; and how much his long illness had altered his looks. With his hollow cheeks and cropped head (his head had been shaved), none of his former friends would recognize him. Then her thoughts wandered to her diamonds. She stood up and surveyed herself in the long mirror, and smiled back slightly at her own tall, graceful reflection. Diamonds always looked well in dark hair. She was but little more than nineteen, and had the natural feminine instinct for adornment. She smiled still more radiantly; and what do we hear her saying in a whisper, and with a rapid stealthy glance round the room? It is this: “I wonder how you will look in a diamond tiara, Mrs. Wynne?”
END OF VOL. I.