“Oh! dear mamma, don’t say so—let me go home with you—I’ll speak to my uncle!”
“Nonsense, child! Come along, Mr. Beaufort;” and the affectionate parents went out arm in arm. They did not perceive that Vaudemont had been standing close behind them; but Camilla, now looking up with tears in her eyes, again caught his gaze: he had heard all.
“And they ill-treat her,” he muttered: “that divides her from them!—she will be left here—I shall see her again.” As he turned to depart, Lilburne beckoned to him.
“You do not mean to desert our table?”
“No: but I am not very well to-night—to-morrow, if you will allow me.”
“Ay, to-morrow; and if you can spare an hour in the morning it will be a charity. You see,” he added in a whisper, “I have a nurse, though I have no children. D’ye think that’s love? Bah! sir—a legacy! Good night.”
“No—no—no!” said Vaudemont to himself, as he walked through the moonlit streets. “No! though my heart burns,—poor murdered felon!—to avenge thy wrongs and thy crimes, revenge cannot come from me—he is Fanny’s grandfather and—Camilla’s uncle!”
And Camilla, when that uncle had dismissed her for the night, sat down thoughtfully in her own room. The dark eyes of Vaudemont seemed still to shine on her; his voice yet rung in her ear; the wild tales of daring and danger with which Liancourt had associated his name yet haunted her bewildered fancy—she started, frightened at her own thoughts. She took from her bosom some lines that Sidney had addressed to her, and, as she read and re-read, her spirit became calmed to its wonted and faithful melancholy. Vaudemont was forgotten, and the name of Sidney yet murmured on her lips, when sleep came to renew the image of the absent one, and paint in dreams the fairy land of a happy Future!