How terrible is the first dread of the instability of the love on which one has fixed all one’s earthly hopes! Had her lover been within reach, Nell would have rushed to him with the story of her trouble, and received a consolatory reassurance of his affection at once. But she was alone. She could confide in no one, and Mr Portland’s proposal, having made her see in what light men of the world regarded her tie to Lord Ilfracombe, had made her heart question if they could be correct, and he looked on it as they did. Her passionate nature, which was not formed for patience or long-suffering or humility, cried out against the suspense to which it was subjected, and raised such violent emotions in her breast that by the time they were exhausted she was quite ill. When at last she raised herself from her downcast position on the sofa, and tried, with swollen eyes and throbbing brain, to collect her thoughts, she found to her dismay that it was past five o’clock, and she had promised to call for Hetty and her husband at six. Her first thought was to remove the traces of her tears. She could not bear that the servants should see that she had been crying. She would never let them perceive that her position in the house cost her any anxiety or remorse, but bore herself bravely in their presence as their mistress, who had not a thought of ever being otherwise. As soon as she had bathed her eyes and arranged her hair, Miss Llewellyn sat down at a davenport that stood by her sofa and scribbled a note to Hetty, enclosing her the seats for the Alhambra for that evening, and excusing herself from accompanying them on the score of a violent attack of neuralgia. Then she rung the bell for her maid, and desired her to send the letter at once to Oxford Street by hand.
‘One of the grooms can go on horseback,’ she said, ‘or James can take a hansom; but it must be delivered as soon as possible. And then you can bring me a cup of coffee, Susan, for I have such a headache that I can hardly open my eyes.’
‘Lor’! yes, ma’am, you do look bad!’ returned the servant. ‘Your eyes are quite red-like, as if they was inflamed. You must have caught cold last night. I thought you would, staying out so late, and without the carriage.’
‘Well, never mind, go and do as I tell you,’ replied Miss Llewellyn, who felt as if she could not endure her chatter one moment longer.
It was characteristic of this woman that what had occurred had planted far less dread of the insecurity of the position she held in her mind than a deep sense of the insult that had been offered to her love and Lord Ilfracombe’s. She felt it on his account, more than on her own—that anyone should have dared so to question his honour, and suspect his constancy. Hers was so ardent and generous a temperament, that where she gave, she gave all, and without a question if she should gain or lose by the transaction. She loved the man whom she regarded as her husband with the very deepest feelings she possessed; it is not too much to say that she adored him, for he was so much above her, in rank and birth and station, that she looked up to him as a god—the only god, indeed, that poor Nell had learned to acknowledge. He was her world—her all! That they should ever be separated never entered into her calculations. He had been struck with her unusual beauty, three years before, and taken her from a very lowly position as nursemaid to be his housekeeper—then, by degrees, the rest had followed. All Lord Ilfracombe’s friends knew and admired her, and considered him a deuced lucky fellow to have secured such a goddess to preside over his bachelor establishment. Naturally, the elder ones said it was a pity, and it was to be hoped that Lord Ilfracombe’s eyes would be opened before long to the necessity of marriage and an heir to the fine old estate and title. Especially did his father’s old friend and adviser, Mr Sterndale, lament over the connection, and try by every means in his power to persuade Ilfracombe to dissolve it. But the earl was of a careless and frivolous nature—easily led in some things, and very blind as yet to the necessity of marriage. Besides, he loved Nell—not as she loved him by any manner of means, but in an indolent, indulgent fashion, which granted her all her desires, and gave her as much money as she knew what to do with. But had he been asked if he would marry her, he would have answered decidedly, ‘No.’
CHAPTER IV.
Meantime the golden hours were slipping away in a very agreeable manner for Lord Ilfracombe at Malta. He had been accustomed to spend several weeks of each summer yachting with a few chosen companions, and as soon as his little yacht, Débutante, had anchored in view of Valetta, a score of husbands, fathers and brothers had scrambled aboard, carrying a score of invitations for the newcomer from their womankind. A young, good-looking and unmarried earl was not so common a visitor to Malta as to be allowed to consider himself neglected, and before Lord Ilfracombe and his friends had been located a week in Valetta, they were the lions of the place, each family vying with the other to do them honour. Naturally, the earl was pretty well used to that sort of thing, especially as he had enjoyed his title for the last ten years. There is such an ingrained snobbishness in the English nature, that it is only necessary to have a handle to one’s name to get off scot-free, whatever one may do. There was a divorce case, not so very long ago, which was as flagrant as such a case could well be; but where the titled wife came off triumphant, simply because the titled husband had been as immoral as herself. The lady had money and the lady had good looks—how far they went to salve over the little errors of which she had been accused it is impossible to say, but the bulk of the public forgave her, and the parsons prayed over her, and she is to be met everywhere, and usually surrounded by a clique of adoring tuft hunters. Sometimes I have wondered, had she been plain Mrs Brown, instead of Lady Marcus Marengo, if the satellites would have continued to revolve so faithfully. But in sweet, simple Christian England, a title, even a borrowed one, covers a multitude of sins. The Earl of Ilfracombe had naturally not been left to find out this truth for herself, but to give him his due, it had never affected him in the least. He despised servility, though, like most of his sex, he was open to flattery—the flattery of deeds, not words. Amongst the many families who threw wide their doors to him in Malta was that of Admiral Sir Richard Abinger, who had been stationed there for many years. Sir Richard was a regular family man. He had married sons and daughters; a bevy of girls on their promotion; and a nursery of little ones. The Abinger girls, as they were called, were an institution in Valetta. On account of their father’s professional duties, and their mother’s constant occupation with her younger children, they were allowed to go about a great deal alone, and had become frank and fearless, and very well able to take care of themselves in consequence. They personally conducted Lord Ilfracombe and his friends to see everything worth seeing in Malta, and a considerable intimacy was the result. There were three sisters of the respective ages of eighteen, twenty and twenty-two, and it was the middle one of these three, Leonora, or Nora, as she was generally called, who attracted Lord Ilfracombe most. She was not exactly pretty, but graceful and piquant. Her complexion was pale. Her eyes brown and not very large; her nose sharp and inclined to be long; her mouth of an ordinary size, but her teeth ravishingly white and regular. A connoisseur, summing up her perfections, would have totalled them by pronouncing her to have long eyelashes, well-marked eyebrows, good teeth and red lips. But Nora Abinger’s chief charm did not lie in physical attractions. To many it would not have counted as a charm at all. They would have set it down as a decided disqualification. This was her freedom of speech; her quickness of repartee; her sense of the ridiculous; and her power of sustaining a conversation. Young men of the present day, who find their greatest pleasure in associating with women whom they would not dare introduce to their mothers and sisters, are apt to become rather dumb when they find themselves in respectable society. This had been much the case hitherto with the Earl of Ilfracombe. He had assiduously neglected his duties to society (if indeed we do owe any duty to such a mass of corruption and deceit) and had found his pleasure amongst his own sex, and in pursuing the delights of sport, not excepting that of the racing field, on which he had lost, at times, a considerable amount of money. To find that his ignorance of society squibs and fashions, his slowness of speech and ideas, his inability to make jokes, and sometimes even to see them, was no drawback in Nora’s eyes, and that she chatted no less glibly because he was silent, raised him in his own estimation. In fact, Nora was a girl who made conversation for her companions. She rubbed up their wits by friction with her own; and people who had been half an hour in her company felt all the brightness with which she had infused them, and were better pleased with themselves in consequence. Lord Ilfracombe experienced this to the fullest extent. For the first time perhaps in his life he walked and talked with a young lady without feeling himself ill at ease, or with nothing to say. Nora talked with him about Malta and its inhabitants, many of whom she took off to the life for his amusement. She drew him out on the subject of England (which she had not visited since she was a child), and his particular bit of England before all the rest; made him tell her of his favourite pursuits, and found, strange to say, that they all agreed with her own tastes; and lamented often and openly that there was no chance of her father leaving that abominable, stupid island of which she was so sick. Miss Nora Abinger had indeed determined from the very first to secure the earl if possible for herself. Her two sisters, Mabel and Susan, entertained the same aspiration, but they stood no chance against keen-witted Nora, who was as knowing a young lady as the present century can produce. She was tired to death, as she frankly said, of their family life. The admiral would have been well off if he had not had such a large family; but thirteen children are enough to try the resources of any profession. Five of the brothers and sisters were married, and should have been independent, but the many expenses contingent on matrimony, and the numerous grandchildren with which they annually endowed him, often brought them back in forma pauperis on their father’s hands. His nursery offspring, too, would soon be needing education and a return to England, so that Sir Richard had to think twice before he acceded to the requests of his marriageable maidens for ball dresses and pocket-money. All these drawbacks in her domestic life Nora confided, little by little, to her new friend, the earl, until the young man yearned to carry the girl away to England with him and give her all that she desired. He could not help thinking, as he listened to her gay, rattling talk, how splendidly she would do the honours of Thistlemere and Cotswood for him; what a graceful, elegant, witty countess she would make; what an attraction for his bachelor friends; what a hostess to receive the ladies of his family. The upshot was just what might have been expected. Lounging one day on a bench under the shade of the orange-trees which overhang the water’s edge, whilst their companions had wandered along the quay, Lord Ilfracombe asked her if she would go back to England with him. Nora was secretly delighted with the offer, but not at all taken aback.
‘What do you think?’ she inquired, looking up at him archly with her bright eyes. ‘You know I’ve liked you ever since you came here, and if you can manage to pull along with me, I’m sure I can with you.’
‘Pull along with you, my darling!’ cried the young man. ‘Why, I adore you beyond anything. I don’t know how I should get on now without your bright talk and fascinating ways to cheer my life.’
‘Well, you’ll have to talk to papa about it, you know,’ resumed Nora. ‘I don’t suppose he’ll make any objection (he’ll be a great fool if he does), still there’s just the chance of it, so I can’t say anything for certain till you’ve seen him. He’s awfully particular, very religious, you know, and always says he’d rather marry us to parsons without a halfpenny, than dukes who were not all they ought to be. But that may be all talkee-talkee! Though I hope you’re a good boy, all the same, for my own sake!’