"Exactly,--I have not a doubt of it," said the little man; "and if so, I think you and I, my lord, know some one whose state of mind must be awful."
"Yes," said Lord Dollamore, rising from his chair; "I see what you mean, and you are doubtless right. Poor Percy Hammond's relatives must feel it acutely. Goodnight, Mr. Aldermaston;" and he bowed and moved off.
"I'm not going to let that little cad indulge in any speculations about the Mitfords," said he to his stick. "That woman's far too good to be discussed by such vermin as that;" by which we may judge that Lord Dollamore's opinion of Lady Mitford had altered as his acquaintance with her had progressed.
The deductions which Mr. Aldermaston had made from this last experiment in espionage were tolerably correct. Laura Hammond was in Baden under the name of Madame Poitevin, and accompanied by the never-failing Marcelline.
She had hurried away from London for two reasons. The first, and by far the most important, was to perfect the conquest of Tchernigow; to clinch home that iron band which for the last two months she had been fitting round the Russian's neck; to bring him to make the offer of his hand at once. The short time passed in London since her husband's death had been spent in looking her future boldly in the face, and calculating within herself how she should mould it for the best. Lord Dollamore was right in one of his conjectures about her: she had made up her mind that the course of her life must henceforth be entirely altered. She knew well enough that even the short time she had been away from London and its world was sufficient to render her name almost forgotten; and she determined that when it was next mentioned it should be in a very different tone from that formerly adopted towards it. Respectability--that state so often sneered at and ridiculed by her--she now held in the highest veneration, and determined to attain to. She had her work to do; to restore herself in the world's good opinion, and to make, as soon as decency would permit, a good marriage. The last position gained, the first would necessarily follow. All she had to do, she thought, was to keep herself in seclusion and choose her intended victim.
She thought of Sir Laurence Alsager at once. She had yet for him a remnant of what she imagined was love, but what was really thwarted passion. Her feelings were stronger for him than for any other man; and he had large wealth, and a good old family title, and the good opinion of the world. When, after his interview with her, she saw the utter futility of her plans so far as he was concerned, she was enraged, but by no means defeated. The cast must be made in another direction, and at once. Prince Tchernigow was in town; she knew it, for she had had more than one note from him during her seclusion in the country, and she knew that Tchernigow was hanging on in town on the chance of seeing her. This flashed across her the moment Laurence had quitted her, and her heart gave a great leap. That was the man! He was a prince; he was three times as rich as Alsager, and was known in the best society of every capital in Europe. Life with him as his wife would not be spent buried two-thirds of the year in a great gaunt country-place, where interest in the Sunday-schools and the old women and the clergyman's charities were the excitements; life with him would be one round of gaiety, in which she would not be a follower, but a leader. He had been madly in love with her two years before; and from what she knew of his nature, she believed the passion still remained there. That could be easily ascertained. She would write him a note, bidding him to come and see her.
Tchernigow came at once. He had not been with Laura ten minutes before her sharp eyes had looked into his heart and read its secrets so far as she was concerned. He was chafing under a latent passion, a thwarted wish. When, just at the close of their companionship at Baden two years ago, he had ventured to make open protestation of his devotion to her, and she had turned on him with great dignity and snubbed him mercilessly, he had bowed and left her, cool and collected indeed in his manner, but inwardly raging like a volcano. He had never met with similar treatment. With him it was a question of throwing the handkerchief, to the delight of Nourmahal or whoever might be the lucky one towards whom his highness tossed it. The ladies of the corps dramatique of the different Parisian theatres were wild with delight when they heard that Tchernigow had arrived in Paris, and the will of mon Cosaque, as he was called by more than one, was supreme and indisputable among them. This was quite a new thing. Not merely to have his proffered love rejected, but to be soundly rated for having dared to proffer it, was to him almost inexplicable. It lashed him to fury. For the next season he kept away from London, determined to avoid the siren who held him in her toils, yet despised his suit. Then, hearing of her widowhood and her absence from London, he came to England with a half-formed determination in regard to her. He saw her, and almost instantaneously the smouldering fires of his passion were revivified, and blazed up more fiercely than ever.
He had more encouragement now, but even now not very much. He was permitted to declare his devotion to her, to rave in his odd wild way about her beauty, to kiss her hand on his arrival and departure--nothing more. Trust Laura Hammond for knowing exactly how to treat a man of Tchernigow's temperament. He came daily; he sat feasting his eyes on her beauty, and listening--sometimes in wonder, but always in admiration--to her conversation, which was now sparkling with wit and fun, now brimming over with sentiment and pathos. Day by day he became more and more hopelessly entangled by her fascinations, but as yet he had breathed no word about marriage; and to that end, and that alone, was Laura Hammond leading him on. But when Parliament was dissolved, and town rapidly thinning; when Laura's solicitor had written urgently to her, stating that "the other side" was pressing for a final settlement of affairs--which meant her abdicating her state and taking up her lowered position on her lessened income--Tchernigow called upon her, and while telling her that he was going to Baden, seemed to do more than hint that her hopes would be fulfilled, if she would consent to meet him there so soon as her business was accomplished.
This was the principal motive which had induced her to start for the pretty little Inferno on the border of the Black Forest. But the other was scarcely less cogent. The fact was, that Laura was wearying rapidly of the attentions of Sir Charles Mitford. Her caprice for him was over. He had never had the power of amusing her; and since she knew that Laurence Alsager had left England, she saw that she could no longer wreak her vengeance on him by punishing Lady Mitford through the faithlessness of Sir Charles. Mitford saw that she was growing weary of him--marked it in a thousand different ways, and raged against it. Occasionally his manner to her would change from what she now called maudlin tenderness to savage ferocity; he would threaten her vaguely, he would watch her narrowly. It required all Laura's natural genius for intrigue, supplemented by Madlle. Marcelline's adroitness, to prevent his knowing of Tchernigow's visits. In his blind infatuation he was rapidly forgetting the decencies of life, the convenances of society; he was getting himself more and more talked about; what was worse, he was getting her talked about again, just at the time when she wanted to be forgotten by all men--save one. Mitford had followed her into the country, and only quitted her on her expressed determination never to speak to him again unless he returned to London at once, and saved her from the gossip of the neighbourhood. She knew he would insist on seeing her constantly when she returned to town. Hence her flight with only one hour's stoppage in London--and under a feigned name--to Baden.
"'I pray you come at once,'" said Dollamore, three days after his conversation with Mr. Aldermaston, reading to his stick the contents of a dainty little note which he had just received;--"'I pray you come at once.--Yours sincerely, Laura Hammond.' Very much yours sincerely, Laura Hammond, I should think. What the deuce does she want with me? Is she going to drive us three abreast, like the horses in the diligence? and does she think I should like to trot along between Mitford and Tchernigow? Not she! She knows me too well to think anything of that sort. But then what on earth does she want with me? 'I pray you come at once.' Egad, I must go, I suppose, and ask for Madame Poitevin, as she tells me."