They all four moved into the third room, and the lady directed Mrs. Vyner's attention to the mysterious stranger.
It was Marmaduke Ashley.
Mrs. Meredith Vyner did not swoon, she did not even scream; though, I believe, both are expected of ladies under such circumstances, in novels. In real life, it is somewhat different. Mrs. Vyner only blushed deeply, and felt a throbbing at her temples—felt, as people say, as if the earth were about to sink under her—but had too much self-command to betray anything. One observing her would, of course, have noticed the change; but there happened to be no one looking at her just then, so she recovered her self-possession before her acquaintance had finished her panegyric on his beauty.
She had not seen Marmaduke since that night on which she parted from him, in a transport of grief, on the sands behind Mrs. Henley's house, when the thunder muttered in the distance, and the heavy, swelling sea threw up its sprawling lines of silvery foam,—the night when he had hacked off a lock of his raven hair for her to treasure.
She had not seen him since that night, when the wretchedness of parting from him seemed the climax of human suffering, from which death—and only death—could bring release.
She had not seen him since she had become the wife of Meredith Vyner; and as that wife she was to meet him now.
What her thoughts would have been at that moment, had she ever really loved him, the reader may imagine; but as her love had sprung from the head, and not the heart, she felt no greater pangs at seeing him, than were suggested by the sight of one she had deceived, and whom she would deceive again, were the past to be recalled. Not that she cared for her husband; she fully appreciated the difference between him and Marmaduke; at the same time she also appreciated the differences in their fortunes, and that reconciled her.
The appearance of Marmaduke at Dr. Whiston's rather flurried than pained her. She dreaded "a scene." She knew the awful vehemence of his temper; and although believing that in an interview she could tame the savage, and bring him submissive to her feet yet that could only be done by the ruse and fascination of a woman; and a soirée was by no means the theatre for it.
She began to move away, having seated Rose and Blanche, trusting that her tiny person would not be detected in the crowd. But Marmaduke's height gave him command of the room. His eye was first arrested by a head of golden hair, the drooping luxuriance of which was but too well known to him: another glance, and the slightly deformed figure confirmed his suspicion. His pulses throbbed violently, his eyes and nostrils dilated, and his breathing became hard; but he had sufficient self-command not to betray himself, although his feelings, at the sight of her whom he had loved so ardently, and who had jilted him so basely, were poignant and bitter. He also moved away; not to follow her, but to hide his emotion.
Little did the company suspect what elements of a tragedy were working amidst the dull prosiness of that soirée. Amidst all the science that was gabbled, all the statistics quoted, all the small talk of the scientific scandal-mongers (perhaps the very smallest of small talk!), all the profundities that escaped from the bald foreheads and the strong-minded women, all the listlessness and ennui of the majority, there were a few souls who, by the earnestness and the sincerity of their passions, vindicated the human race—souls belonging to human beings, and not to mere gubemouches and ologists. These have some interest to the novelist and his public; so while the gabble and the twaddle are in triumphant career, let us cast our eyes only in those corners of the rooms where we may find materials.