As Mr. Dacre walked home that evening, he thought long and anxiously about the two young girls, his kins-women. What was the mystery? he asked himself—what skeleton was locked away in the gay mansion? Where was Lord Earle's wife—the lady who ought to have been at the head of his table—the mother of his children? Where was she? Why was her place empty? Why was her husband's face shadowed and lined with care?
"Lillian Earle is the fairest and sweetest girl I have ever met," he said to himself. "I know there is danger for me in those sweet, true eyes, but if there be anything wrong—if the mother is blameworthy—I will fly from the danger. I believe in hereditary virtue and in hereditary vice. Before I fall in love with Lillian, I must know her mother's story."
So he said, and he meant it. There was no means of arriving at the knowledge. The girls spoke at times of their mother, and it was always with deep love and respect. Lady Helena mentioned her, but her name never passed the lips of Lord Earle. Lionel Dacre saw no way of obtaining information in the matter.
There was no concealment as to Dora's abode. Once, by special privilege, he was invited into the pretty room where the ladies sat in the morning—a cozy, cheerful room, into which visitors never penetrated. There, upon the wall, he saw a picture framed a beautiful landscape, a quiet homestead in the midst of rich, green meadows; and Lillian told him, with a smile, that was the Elms, at Knutsford, "where mamma lived."
Lionel was too true a gentleman to ask why she lived there; he praised the painting, and then turned the subject.
As Lady Earle foresaw, the time had arrived when Dora's children partly understood there was a division in the family, a breach never to be healed. "Mamma was quite different from papa," they said to each other; and Lady Helena told them their mother did not like fashion and gayety, that she had been simply brought up, used always to quietness and solitude, so that in all probability she would never come to Earlescourt.
But as time went on, and Beatrice began to understand more of the great world, she had an instinctive idea of the truth. It came to her by slow degrees. Her father had married beneath him, and her mother had no home in the stately hall of Earlescourt. At first violent indignation seized her; then calmer reflection told her she could not judge correctly. She did not know whether Lord Earle had left his wife, or whether her mother had refused to live with him.
It was the first cloud that shadowed the life of Lord Earle's beautiful daughter. The discovery did not diminish her love for the quiet, sad mother, whose youth and beauty had faded so soon. If possible, she loved her more; there was a pitying tenderness in her affection.
"Poor mamma!" thought the young girl—"poor, gentle mamma! I must be doubly kind to her, and love her better than ever."