“Inquire no further!” said the man of the world. “Respect Mrs. Avenel’s feelings and wishes, I entreat you; they are the right ones. Leave the rest to me. In my position—I mean as a resident of London—I can quietly and easily ascertain more than you could, and provoke no scandal! If I can right this—this—poor—[his voice trembled]—right the lost mother, or the living child, sooner or later you will hear from me; if not, bury this secret where it now rests, in a grave which slander has not reached. But the child—give me the address where it is to be found—in case I succeed in finding the father, and touching his heart.”
“Oh, Mr. Egerton, may I not say where you may find that father—who he is?”
“Sir!”
“Do not be angry; and, after all, I cannot ask you to betray any confidence which a friend may have placed in you. I know what you men of high honour are to each other, even in sin. No, no, I beg pardon; I leave all in your hands. I shall hear from you then?”
“Or if not, why, then, believe that all search is hopeless. My friend! if you mean Lord L’Estrange, he is innocent. I—I—I—[the voice faltered]—am convinced of it.”
The curate sighed, but made no answer. “Oh, ye men of the world!” thought he. He gave the address which the member for Lansmere had asked for, and went his way, and never heard again from Audley Egerton. He was convinced that the man who had showed such deep feeling had failed in his appeal to Harley’s conscience, or had judged it best to leave Nora’s name in peace, and her child to her own relations and the care of Heaven.
Harley L’Estrange, scarcely yet recovered, hastened to join our armies on the Continent, and seek the Death which, like its half-brother, rarely comes when we call it.
As soon as Harley was gone, Egerton went to the village to which Mr. Dale had directed him, to seek for Nora’s child. But here he was led into a mistake which materially affected the tenor of his own life, and Leonard’s future destinies. Mrs. Fairfield had been naturally ordered by her mother to take another name in the village to which she had gone with the two infants, so that her connection with the Avenel family might not be traced, to the provocation of inquiry and gossip. The grief and excitement through which she had gone dried the source of nutriment in her breast. She put Nora’s child out to nurse at the house of a small farmer, at a little distance from the village, and moved from her first lodging to be nearer to the infant. Her own child was so sickly and ailing, that she could not bear to intrust it to the care of an other. She tried to bring it up by hand; and the poor child soon pined away and died. She and Mark could not endure the sight of their baby’s grave; they hastened to return to Hazeldean, and took Leonard with them. From that time Leonard passed for the son they had lost.
When Egerton arrived at the village, and inquired for the person whose address had been given to him, he was referred to the cottage in which she had last lodged, and was told that she had been gone some days,—the day after her child was buried. Her child buried! Egerton stayed to inquire no more; thus he heard nothing of the infant that had been put out to nurse. He walked slowly into the churchyard, and stood for some minutes gazing on the small new mound; then, pressing his hand on the heart to which all emotion had been forbidden, he re-entered his chaise and returned to London. The sole reason for acknowledging his marriage seemed to him now removed. Nora’s name had escaped reproach. Even had his painful position with regard to Harley not constrained him to preserve his secret, there was every motive to the world’s wise and haughty son not to acknowledge a derogatory and foolish marriage, now that none lived whom concealment could wrong.
Audley mechanically resumed his former life,—sought to resettle his thoughts on the grand objects of ambitious men. His poverty still pressed on him; his pecuniary debt to Harley stung and galled his peculiar sense of honour. He saw no way to clear his estates, to repay his friend, but by some rich alliance. Dead to love, he faced this prospect first with repugnance, then with apathetic indifference. Levy, of whose treachery towards himself and Nora he was unaware, still held over him the power that the money-lender never loses over the man that has owed, owes, or may owe again. Levy was ever urging him to propose, to the rich Miss Leslie; Lady Lansmere, willing to atone, as she thought, for his domestic loss, urged the same; Harley, influenced by his mother, wrote from the Continent to the same effect.