LIZZIE had guessed correctly when she said that Maraquita’s infidelity would prove its own punishment. The honeymoon at Santa Lucia was not a very satisfactory one, at least for the bride. So long as the day endured, and Quita’s frivolous soul could be gorged on flattery, and the servile congratulations paid her by her husband’s guests, she was contented with her lot, and disposed to believe it would turn out all she had prognosticated for herself. To feel she was the woman of most importance in the island, and that she had horses and carriages, and servants at her command, and that a military guard accompanied her wherever she went, and everybody turned to gaze after her, and said to one another, ‘There goes the Governor’s bride,’ was quite sufficient to inflate her foolish little heart with pride, and make her forget, for the time being, the penalty attached to it all. But one cannot pass one’s entire life in public, and when the hours of domestic happiness arrived, they were very trying. Then, if she had had a handsome young husband suited to herself in age and disposition waiting on her every look and smile while he whispered words of love in her ear, how delighted would Maraquita have been to fly to the sacred recesses of her own apartments, and shut the world and its hollow compliments outside. But now such moments became torture. Sir Russell had been sufficiently trying as a lover, but as a husband he became simply unendurable. His middle-aged ecstasies over his new possession, his fussy attentions, his twaddling conversation about things and people of which she had never heard, soon bored his young wife to extinction. And he was not slow to find out that he did not interest her. He noted the vacant look, the wandering attention, the deep sighs that occasionally interrupted their intercourse, and commenced to feel the first twinges of jealousy, and to wonder if there had been any other admirer in the background whom Lady Johnstone had not entirely forgotten.
If he could only have read her thoughts as she sat by his side when they were alone together, or lay for hours during the silent watches of the night gazing open-eyed at the dark blue heaven with its myriad clusters of stars, how unpleasantly satisfied he would have been. It was at those times that the newly-made Lady Johnstone’s thoughts returned to the past which she had so pertinaciously thrust from her, and that she longed (with the contradiction of human nature) to be able to take back again to her heart the fate which she had held in her hand, without the moral courage to grasp it. It was then that the glorious dark eyes of Henri de Courcelles seemed to gaze into her own like twin stars, just as they used to look at those heavenly moments when they sat together on the bench in the Oleander Thicket, and her lover’s arms were folded closely round her, as though to shield her from all harm.
Henri de Courcelles had innumerable faults, but he had loved this girl with all his heart, and, now that it was too late, Maraquita seemed to realise it for the first time. There was another regret, too, that intruded itself into her married life, a regret that seemed to grow with the days, and assume such inconceivable proportions that she was tempted to cry out that she could bear it no longer, but must at all risks rush back to San Diego and see her child. Sometimes the unhappy young mother would dream that the infant was dying, and wake up with the tears upon her cheek; sometimes that it really belonged to Lizzie, and she had lost the right to call it hers; and sometimes that she held it to her heart, and was proud and fond of it like other mothers, until she discovered it was a poisonous asp, stinging the bosom on which it lay. Such thoughts and dreams were not good for the young bride to indulge in, and she grew paler and thinner every day. Sir Russell called in a doctor, who declared Lady Johnstone’s condition to be due to weakness, consequent on her late attack of fever, and advised her immediate return to San Diego, as possessing a higher and more bracing air than Santa Lucia. Sir Russell sought his wife’s rooms, all fuss and anxiety on account of her low spirits, and communicated the medical man’s opinion to her. They had been married now for three weeks, and the Governor had already come to the conclusion that a domestic life was not all roses. He found his beautiful Maraquita rather petulant at times, and disposed to have her own way. She was not very affectionate either, and flouted his attempts at love-making in a manner sufficient to cure the most ardent lover. He was disappointed certainly; he had imagined women were more open to their husbands’ advances; but, after all, he knew very little about the sex, and was quite ready, as yet, to lay the failure at his own door. He was not fit, he told himself, to be the companion of such an innocent, guileless creature; she felt the difference between his society and that she had left behind her. The position was new and strange to her. She would be her own sweet self again when they returned to San Diego and she was restored to her parents’ arms. The alacrity with which Maraquita assented to his proposal to go home, confirmed his sentiments upon the subject. It would have been somewhat of a shock to him could he have read her thoughts on the occasion; but how few of us could afford to read the mind of our dearest friend, without fear. Maraquita’s face glowed, and her heart beat faster, as she pictured herself settled at Government House. She would have a chance then of seeing Lizzie again—perhaps of seeing Henri de Courcelles. Whilst it lay in his power to deprive her of her promised dignity, she had dreaded his presence, and hoped he was far away from San Diego; but now that her position as Lady Johnstone was secure, and no one could dethrone her, she began to crave for the excitement of seeing her lover again. Weak and vacillating as she had been as Maraquita Courtney, she was even worse as Lady Johnstone, for now her weakness threatened to become a crime. Her depression of spirits and her feverish anxiety were so patent, that the first time Mrs Courtney was alone with her daughter, she taxed her with the change.
‘Whatever is the matter with you, my dear child?’ she exclaimed; ‘you don’t seem half so happy as I expected to see you. Here you are, the Governor’s wife, and the lady of highest rank in San Diego, and yet you seem quite melancholy. You don’t mean to tell me that you are disappointed, or that your marriage has not proved all you expected it to be?’
‘Oh, no, mamma! I suppose it’s all right! I’ve got the position and the money, and no one can have been such a fool as to think I married a bald-headed stupid old man like Sir Russell for anything else.’
Mrs Courtney lifted her hands and eyebrows in surprise.
‘My dear! my dear! remember he’s the Governor!’
‘How can I forget it? Isn’t it dinned into my ears from sunrise to sunset! Of course he’s the Governor! I am sure he need be, for he’s very little else! But I’m afraid that fact is not sufficient for one’s happiness.’
‘My darling, what more can you possibly want? A splendid house, and number of servants, equipages, and horses, jewels, dresses, ornaments, and the whole island at your feet! Why, I think you are the luckiest girl I ever heard of.’
But her eloquence was interrupted by Maraquita flinging herself headlong on a couch, and sobbing out,—