A Mad Love

by Charlotte M. Brame

In her eyes it did not—certainly not. The whole thing was a most unfortunate mistake; but that he should consider himself bound by such a piece of boyish folly was madness.

So that the second stage of his progress toward falsehood was that, besides looking on himself as a kind of victim, he began to think that he was not bound by his promise. If it had been an error at first it was an error now; and the countess repeated for him very often the story of the Marquis of Atherton, who married the daughter of a lodge-keeper in his nineteenth year. His parents interfered; the marriage was set aside. What was the consequence? Two years after the girl married the butler, and they bought the Atherton Arms. The marquis, in his twenty-fifth year, married a peeress in her own right, and was now one of the first men in England. My lady often repeated that anecdote; it had made a great impression on her, and it certainly produced an effect on Lord Chandos.

My lady had certainly other influences to bring to bear. The uncle of Lady Erskine, the Duke of Lester, was one of the most powerful nobles in England—the head of the Cabinet, the most influential peer in the House of Lords, the grandest orator and the most respected of men. My lady enjoyed talking about him—she brought forward his name continually, and was often heard to say that whoever had the good fortune to marry Lady Erskine was almost sure to succeed the duke in his numerous honors. Lord Chandos, hearing her one day, said:

"I will win honors, mother—win them for myself—and that will be better than succeeding another man."

She looked at him with a half-sad, half-mocking smile.

"I have no ambition, no hope for you, Lance. You have taken your wife from a dairy—the most I can hope is that you may learn to be a good judge of milk."

He turned from her with a hot flush of anger on his face. Yet the sharp, satirical shaft found its way to his heart. He thought of the words and brooded over them—they made more impression on him than any others had done. In his mother's mind he had evidently lost his place in the world's race, never to regain it.

The duke—who knew nothing of the conspiracy, and knew nothing of the young lord's story, except that he had involved himself in some tiresome dilemma from which his parents had rescued him—the Duke of Lester, who heard Lord Chandos spoken of as one likely to marry his niece, took a great fancy to him; he had no children of his own; he was warmly attached to his beautiful niece; it seemed very probable that if Lord Chandos married Lady Erskine, he would have before him one of the most brilliant futures that could fall to any man's lot. Many people hinted at it, and constant dropping wears away a stone.

The last and perhaps the greatest hold that the countess had over her son was the evident liking of Lady Marion for him. In this, as in everything else, she was most diplomatic; she never expressed any wish that he should marry her; but she had a most sympathetic manner of speaking about her.

"I doubt, Lance," she said one day, "whether we have done wisely—at least whether I have done wisely—in allowing Lady Marion to see so much of you; she is so sweet and so gentle—I am quite distressed about it."