‘And I didn’t ask you how many women you had proposed to, but how many you had thought you loved. The list can’t be so long that you have forgotten them all? Let’s begin at the end. That will make it easier. Who was the last woman before me?’
‘That is a very silly question, Nora, and I consider that I have already answered it. Besides, I am not a young lady, and that makes all the difference.’
‘In your idea, Ilfracombe, perhaps, but not mine. We women see no difference in the two things at all. And if you cannot produce a clean bill of health in the matter of having loved before, you have no right to expect it of me. Besides, my dear boy,’ she continued in a more soothing voice, ‘do you mean to tell me, in this nineteenth century, that you have reached your present age—what is your present age, Ilfracombe, nine-and-twenty, is it not?—without having made love to heaps of women? Not that I care one jot! I am not such a zany! I think it’s all for the best since “pot will not be able to call kettle black,” eh?’
And she glanced up into his face from under her long eyelashes in so fascinating a manner, that the earl caught her in his arms before she had time to remonstrate, and forgot all about the former lover. So the time wore away, each day more delightful than the last, spent under the orange and myrtle trees, or in sailing round the bay, until the longed-for wedding morning broke, and they were married in the English church at Malta. Their plans were to go to an hotel higher up in the island, for a fortnight’s honeymoon, after which they were to start in the Débutante for the Grecian Isles, before returning to England. A few days after his marriage, Lord Ilfracombe received a letter by the English mail that seemed greatly to disturb him. He was most anxious to conceal it, and his own feelings regarding it, from the observation of his wife, and this he had no difficulty in doing, as she did not appear even to have noticed that he was unlike himself. The letter was from a woman, long and diffusive, and he read it many times. Then he entered the sitting-room and addressed Lady Ilfracombe.
‘Have you torn up the paper that contained the description of our marriage, darling?’ he inquired.
‘What, that local thing? No, I never looked at it a second time. It is somewhere about. What can you possibly want with it, Ilfracombe?’
‘Only to send to one of my English friends, Nora. It is so funnily worded, it will amuse them.’
And then he found it, and put it in a wrapper and directed it to Miss Llewellyn, 999 Grosvenor Square, London.
CHAPTER V.
Miss Llewellyn had almost forgotten that she was to expect a visit from Lord Ilfracombe’s solicitor, Mr Sterndale, when one day, as she was sitting alone, his card was brought in to her. Hetty and William had returned to Usk by this time. Their modest resources could not stand out against more than a week in London, though their sister had helped them as much as they would allow her. So they were gone, taking the fresh smell of the country with them, and leaving Miss Llewellyn more melancholy and depressed than they had found her. For she had not heard again from Lord Ilfracombe since the few lines she had received on the day of their arrival, and she was beginning to dread all sorts of unlikely things, just because the unusual silence frightened her, like a child left alone in the dark. Hetty and Will had been most urgent that she should accompany them back to Usk, and for a moment Nell thought the temptation too great to be resisted. What would she not give for a sight of her dear mother’s face, she thought—for her father’s grave smile; for a night or two spent in the old farmhouse where she had been so careless and so happy; to lie down to sleep with the scent of the climbing roses and honeysuckle in her nostrils, and the lowing of the cattle and twittering of the wild birds in her ears. And Ilfracombe had urged her to take change of air, too. He would be pleased to hear she had left London for awhile! But here came the idea that he might return home any day, perhaps unexpectedly and sooner than he imagined, and then if she were absent what would he think?—what would she suffer? She would not cease to reproach herself. Oh, no, it was useless for Hetty to plead with her. She would come back some day, when she could have a holiday without inconvenience, but just now with the master of the house absent, her mother would understand it was impossible; it would not be right for her, in her position as housekeeper, to leave the servants to look after themselves. So Hetty, having been brought up very strictly with regard to duty, was fain to acquiesce in her sister’s decision, and comfort herself with the hope that she would fulfil her promise some day. But when they had left London, Nell felt as if she had escaped a great danger, and was only just able to breathe freely again. And had she accompanied them to Usk, and gone to stay at Panty-cuckoo Farm, she would have felt almost as bad. To live under the eyes of her parents day after day; to have to submit to their eager questioning; to evade their sharpness—for country people are sometimes very sharp in matters that affect their domestic happiness and very eager for revenge when their family honour is compromised; all this Nell felt she dared not, under present circumstances, undergo. So she was sorry and glad to part with her sister at the same time; but her advent had so put other matters out of her head, that she was quite startled at receiving Mr Sterndale’s card. It revived all the old curiosity, which the first notice of his coming had evoked in her mind. What on earth could he possibly have to say to her? However, that question would soon be put to rest, and she was bound, for Ilfracombe’s sake, to receive him. She happened to be in her boudoir at the time, and told the servant to desire her visitor to walk up there. Nell knew that the lawyer did not like her, and the feeling was reciprocal. Mr Sterndale was a little, old man of sixty, with silver hair. A very cute lawyer, and a firm friend, but uncompromising to a degree—a man from whom a fallen woman might expect no mercy. Miss Llewellyn had said in her letter to her lover, that she knew Mr Sterndale regarded her as a harpy who cared for nothing but his money, and this estimate of his opinion was strictly true. With him, women were divided into only two classes—moral and immoral. The class to which poor Nell belonged was generally mercenary and grasping, and deserted a poor man to join a richer one, and he had no idea that she was any different. She was beautiful, he saw, so much the more dangerous; and all his fear of late years had been lest the earl should have taken it in his head to marry her, as indeed, except for Mr Sterndale’s constant warnings and entreaties, he would have done. Now he rejoiced to think that his client was about to be wedded to a woman in his own sphere of life, for the news of the marriage had not yet reached England, and he had come to Grosvenor Square to fulfil Lord Ilfracombe’s request that he would break the intelligence to Miss Llewellyn, as calmly and deliberately as if he were the bearer of the best of news. She did not rise as he entered, but, bowing rather curtly, begged he would be seated and disclose his business with her. She had been accustomed for so long to be treated by this man as the mistress of the establishment, that she had come to regard him much as Lord Ilfracombe did, in the light of a servant. Mr Sterndale noted the easy familiarity with which she motioned him to take a chair, and chuckled inwardly, to think how soon their relative positions would be reversed.