"Tell me," he cried, after a long pause, "tell me! do you know of any cause which that woman--that Suzette had to hate her mistress?"
"Personally I know of none," I answered; "but, if I mistake not, good old Jerome Laborde could assign sufficient reasons for all her malice."
"I will inquire!" he rejoined, "I will inquire!" and carefully locking the doors, he turned away from the apartments of his dead wife.
The agitation and exertion he had gone through, however, had been too much for him; and ere he reached his library, towards which his steps were directed in the first instance, he was obliged to turn to his own chamber, and lie down to rest for the remainder of the day. The next morning early, good old Jerome Laborde was summoned to his master's presence, and I fully believe, in his fright,--for he held Monsieur de Villardin in great awe--he would either have prevaricated so desperately as not to obtain credence for his tale, or he would have denied any knowledge of Suzette's behaviour altogether. I luckily, however, saw him before he went, and exhorted him to tell the whole truth exactly as it was; and I conclude he did so, though I was not present.
Whatever took place, the result was but just; for no sooner was his conference over with Monsieur de Villardin, than the good major-domo came forth, armed with authority to send forth Madame Suzette, with all her moveables, without allowing her to sleep another night in the house.
Some time was, indeed, consumed in her preparations; but as I had notice from Jerome of the order he had received, and I intended to spend the greater part of the day in my own apartments, I certainly did not expect to see Suzette more. I was astonished, however, by the door of my little saloon being thrown unceremoniously open about two hours after; and in walked the soubrette, with an air of determined effrontery which I have seldom seen surpassed in man or woman.
"I have come, Monsieur l'Anglais," she said, making me a mock courtesy, "to take my leave of you before I go, and to thank you for all your kindness. I am not unaware of all your good offices, and as I shall not in all probability be very far off, I shall take good care to repay them. I do not doubt that some opportunity will occur; in the meantime, farewell!" and without waiting any reply, she walked out of the room, leaving all the doors open behind her as she went.
[CHAPTER XX.]
As it is not so much the history of other people that I am writing as my own, I must now speak for a few minutes of myself, and of all that had been going on during some years in the little world of my own bosom. During the last six months, a greater change had taken place in my mind and my character than I ever remember to have felt at any other period of my life,--though I suppose that there is no epoch in man's existence, when his feelings and disposition may be considered as so irrevocably fixed as to be unsusceptible, during the rest of his days, of change or modification. The original fabric of the mind, of course, remains the same; but--as education shares with nature in the character of each human being, and as life is but a continual education,--I feel convinced that we go on altering from the cradle to the grave. The tree grows up and spreads, and certainly remains for ever the ash, the elm, or the oak that it first sprouted from the ground; but its form, and appearance, and size, and strength, and beauty are changed by winds, and storms, and circumstances, and accidents, and position, and time; and so, I am convinced, it is with the human heart. We are all change throughout our being; and were it not for a few remaining traits, a few slight traces, of early predilections and original character, it would be very difficult for the old man or the man of middle age to prove, even to himself, from the state of his own mind, his identity with the young man or the boy. The alterations which had taken place in my own mind and feelings, however, within the last six months, had been so great and rapid, that they were even remarkable to myself, and now form, in memory, an epoch from which I date a new and distinct course of being. My corporeal frame, it is true, was also undergoing a change, and rising rapidly, almost prematurely, towards manhood; but my mind was also affected, in a manner totally distinct and apart, by the scenes in which I mingled, by the persons with whom I conversed, and by the deep feelings, strong passions, and awful events, in all of which I took a part. Scarcely a year before, scenes of bloodshed and slaughter, energetic attempts and dangerous enterprises, had passed around me as a sort of pageant in which I acted my part, without any deep or lasting impression--without any great thought or excited passion. It had been all a sort of youthful sport to me, which--although I suffered some inconveniences, felt some sorrows, and encountered many dangers--was, upon the whole, more a matter of amusement than of pain. My first deep grief was occasioned by the death of my father. My first strongly-roused passion was the thirst for vengeance upon the man that had slain him. After that came my connexion with Lord Masterton, and certainly the love and affection that I felt towards him, and the interest I took in his fate and in that of the Lady Emily, prepared the way for what I was now feeling: but still it was all very, very different from my intense participation in the passions and the sorrows of Monsieur and Madame de Villardin, and equally so from the sensations of gloom and awe, which the sad events that were passing around me impressed upon my mind. The effect of my conversations with Father Ferdinand I have already related; and under the influence of the whole together, I found my heart losing rapidly its boyish lightness, and becoming, day by day, susceptible of more deep and powerful sympathies than I ever dreamed it was possible to feel. If I may use the expression, during the last six months I had been educated in the school of dark and vehement passions, and the lessons that I had received had been at least so far instructive as to teach me, whatever I felt, to feel deeply. The boldness and decision of my conduct in former times had proceeded both from the promptness of determination which my father had inculcated, and from the habit which I had acquired amidst scenes of turbulence and confusion, of valuing human life and all connected with it as a mere nothing; but now, although I had learned to estimate almost everything differently, yet, by having been taught to feel a deep and personal interest in all with whom I became connected, I had acquired a new and stronger motive for exercising the same promptitude in all circumstances, and employing even more vigorously than before all the best energies of my mind.
Such had become my feelings at the time when Monsieur de Villardin recovered; and, even in watching by his sick bed, I had experienced the greatest difference between the sensations which I then felt towards him, and those which I remembered having undergone in attending upon Lord Masterton under somewhat similar circumstances. For Lord Masterton, indeed, I had felt as much affection and more esteem; but towards Monsieur de Villardin pity and regret, and many other mingled sensations, rendered my feelings of interest far more deep and intense. There were memories and ties between us that could never be broken; there was the confidence of dark and secret acts that could never be forgotten--there was many a deed of kindness and of feeling, too, which no conduct towards others could cancel as regarded myself; and even my very suspicions in respect to the last terrible catastrophe were in themselves a source of mournful, painful, but profound interest.