Chaste as Ice, Pure as Snow: A Novel

by C. Despard

There were many who took a very close interest in the affairs of young Arthur Forrest, for he was, or would be in a few weeks—that was all the period that divided him from his majority—a young man of property. Then he was an orphan. What more natural than that tender, sympathetic young ladies and pious, well-conducted matrons should watch his proceedings with affectionate interest, and strive to do what lay within their power to save him from the evil influences which were popularly supposed to be immediately surrounding him?

Unfortunately for the pious matrons and sympathetic young ladies, Arthur was well taken care of.

Mrs. Churchill was his aunt. She had tended him in his infancy, as she often said pathetically to a circle of admirers; she had the first claim on his love and gratitude. The gratitude Mrs. Churchill was anxious to keep as her inalienable right in Arthur: the love she had already passed on to her daughter and representative, pretty Adèle.

And hitherto Arthur had shown himself dutifully content with the arrangement. He did not think much of girls as a class, and certainly Adèle was as good a specimen of them as he had ever met. Then he was accustomed to her; she generally knew how to keep him amused; she was pretty, lively and well dressed. Till Arthur met Margaret he had never admired a shabby person. In fact, he was languidly grateful to Aunt Ellen and the Fates for having arranged matters so comfortably, because matters were actually arranged.

Mrs. Churchill knew the world she lived in too well to allow such a thing as a tacit understanding between the cousins, which a young man's whim could break through in a moment. She did not intend that her daughter's first youth and beauty should be spent in a devotion which was destined to meet with no adequate return. Adèle was rich and pretty—she would have no difficulty in meeting with a suitable partner; only to keep Arthur and his money in the family was desirable. Besides, he was young; he would make an amenable son-in-law; then he was already accustomed to the yoke—no small point this, in Mrs. Churchill's estimation.

When, therefore, Adèle had reached the age of eighteen and Arthur that of twenty—events which had happened almost simultaneously shortly before my story opens—Mrs. Churchill, as she fondly hoped and believed, put the finishing stroke to the edifice she had been forming. It had been her aim, during the few years that had passed since Arthur had emerged into young manhood, to make her house the most agreeable place in the world to him, and in this she had been eminently successful. Adèle had ably assisted her, for she, poor child! had always cherished affection for her handsome cousin—an affection which the dawn of womanhood and her mother's fostering influence ripened without much difficulty into a tenderer feeling.

She found it not easy, then, when wise eighteen had arrived, to understand her mother's tactics, for Arthur the welcome guest began from that date to be less warmly received, and obstacles were thrown in the way of their meetings, which had been so delightfully frequent and unembarrassed. They came notably from Mrs. Churchill, and yet her personal affection for her nephew seemed only to have increased; there was a tinge of gentle regret in her manner even while she appeared to be sending him from them.

It was almost more inexplicable to Arthur than to Adèle and at last he could bear it no longer.

With the love of universal popularity so common to his age, he hated the idea of being in his relative's bad graces; besides, the charms of his cousin's society increased tenfold in his imagination as difficulties cropped up to interfere with his quiet enjoyment of them.

"By Jove!" he said to himself in the course of a cigar-fed meditation, "I must have it out with Aunt Ellen at once."