“As, at length, one half of the room became filled with millinery, and the other glittered with jewels and bijouterie, my wife grew weary with her exertions, and we found ourselves alone.
“When I told her that my aunt had taken up her residence in Paris, it immediately occurred to her, how pleasant it would be to go there too; and, although I concurred in the opinion for very different reasons, it was at length decided we should do so; and the only difficulty now existed as to the means, for although the daily papers teem with ‘four ways to go from London to Paris;’ they all resolved themselves into one, and that one, unfortunately to me, the most difficult and impracticable—by money.
“There was, however, one last resource open—the sale of my commission. I will not dwell upon what it cost me to resolve upon this—the determination was a painful one, but it was soon come to, and before five-o’clock that day, Cox and Greenwood had got their instructions to sell out for me, and had advanced a thousand pounds of the purchase. Our bill settled—the waiters bowing to the ground (it is your ruined man that is always most liberal)—the post-horses harnessed, and impatient for the road, I took my place beside my wife, while my valet held a parasol over the soubrette in the rumble, all in the approved fashion of those who have an unlimited credit with Coutts and Drummond; the whips cracked, the leaders capered, and with a patronizing bow to the proprietor of the ‘Clarendon,’ away we rattled to Dover.
“After the usual routine of sea sickness, fatigue, and poisonous cookery, we reached Paris on the fifth day, and put up at the ‘Hotel de Londres,’ Place Vendome.
“To have an adequate idea of the state of my feelings as I trod the splendid apartments of this princely Hotel, surrounded by every luxury that wealth can procure, or taste suggest, you must imagine the condition of a man, who is regaled with a sumptuous banquet on the eve of his execution. The inevitable termination to all my present splendour, was never for a moment absent from my thoughts, and the secrecy with which I was obliged to conceal my feelings, formed one of the greatest sources of my misery. The coup, when it does come, will be sad enough, and poor Mary may as well have the comfort of the deception, as long as it lasts, without suffering as I do. Such was the reasoning by which I met every resolve to break to her the real state of our finances, and such the frame of mind in which I spent my days at Paris, the only really unhappy ones I can ever charge my memory with.
“We had scarcely got settled in the hotel, when my aunt, who inhabited the opposite side of the ‘Place,’ came over to see us and wish us joy. She had seen the paragraph in the Post, and like all other people with plenty of money, fully approved a match like mine.
“She was delighted with Mary, and despite the natural reserve of the old maiden lady, became actually cordial, and invited us to dine with her that day, and every succeeding one we might feel disposed to do so. So far so well, thought I, as I offered her my arm to see her home; but if she knew of what value even this small attention is to us, am I quite so sure she would offer it?—however, no time is to be lost; I cannot live in this state of hourly agitation; I must make some one the confidant of my sorrows, and none so fit as she who can relieve as well as advise upon them. Although such was my determination, yet somehow I could not pluck up courage for the effort. My aunt’s congratulations upon my good luck, made me shrink from the avowal; and while she ran on upon the beauty and grace of my wife, topics I fully concurred in, I also chimed in with her satisfaction at the prudential and proper motives which led to the match. Twenty times I was on the eve of interrupting her, and saying, ‘But, madam, I am a beggar—my wife has not a shilling—I have absolutely nothing—her father disowns us—my commission is sold, and in three weeks, the ‘Hotel de Londres’ and the ‘Palais Royale,’ will be some hundred pounds the richer, and I without the fare of a cab, to drive me to the Seine to drown myself.’
“Such were my thoughts; but whenever I endeavoured to speak them, some confounded fulness in my throat nearly choked me; my temples throbbed, my hands trembled, and whether it was shame, or the sickness of despair, I cannot say; but the words would not come, and all that I could get out was some flattery of my wife’s beauty, or some vapid eulogy upon my own cleverness in securing such a prize. To give you in one brief sentence an idea of my state, Harry—know, then, that though loving Mary with all my heart and soul, as I felt she deserved to be loved, fifty times a day I would have given my life itself that you had been the successful man, on the morning I carried her off, and that Jack Waller was once more a bachelor, to see the only woman he ever loved, the wife of another.
“But, this is growing tedious, Harry, I must get over the ground faster; two months passed over at Paris, during which we continued to live at the ‘Londres,’ giving dinners, soirees, dejeuners, with the prettiest equipage in the ‘Champs Elysees,’ we were quite the mode; my wife, which is rare enough for an Englishwoman, knew how to dress herself. Our evening parties were the most recherche things going, and if I were capable of partaking of any pleasure in the eclat, I had my share, having won all the pigeon matches in the Bois de Boulegard, and beat Lord Henry Seymour himself in a steeple chase. The continual round of occupation in which pleasure involves a man, is certainly its greatest attraction—reflection is impossible—the present is too full to admit any of the past, and very little of the future; and even I, with all my terrors awaiting me, began to feel a half indifference to the result in the manifold cares of my then existence. To this state of fatalism, for such it was becoming, had I arrived, when the vision was dispelled in a moment, by a visit from my aunt, who came to say, that some business requiring her immediate presence in London, she was to set out that evening, but hoped to find us in Paris on her return. I was thunderstruck at the news, for, although as yet I had obtained no manner of assistance from the old lady, yet, I felt that her very presence was a kind of security to us, and that in every sudden emergency, she was there to apply to. My money was nearly expended, the second and last instalment of my commission was all that remained, and much of even that I owed to trades-people. I now resolved to speak out—the worst must be known, thought I, in a few days—and now or never be it. So saying, I drew my aunt’s arm within my own, and telling her that I wished a few minutes conversation alone, led her to one of the less frequented walks in the Tuilleries gardens. When we had got sufficiently far to be removed from all listeners, I began then—‘my dearest aunt, what I have suffered in concealing from you so long, the subject of my present confession, will plead as my excuse in not making you sooner my confidante.’ When I had got thus far, the agitation of my aunt was such, that I could not venture to say more for a minute or two. At length, she said, in a kind of hurried whisper, ‘go on;’ and although then I would have given all I possessed in the world to have continued, I could not speak a word.
“‘Dear John, what is it, any thing about Mary—for heavens sake speak.’