La Belle Alliance.
“It’s enough to drive a man to do anything,” exclaimed Melton, as he dashed down the fashionable newspaper he had been reading, where in a short paragraph he had found that which he told himself would make him wretched for life. The paragraph was as follows—
“We understand that an alliance is on the tapis between Sir Grantley Wilters, of Morley Hall, Shropshire, and Eaton Place, and Lady Maude Diphoos, daughter of the Earl of Barmouth.”
“I seem to be crushed,” exclaimed the young man, rising and walking hastily up and down the room. “Everything goes wrong with me, and I believe I am going mad. Perhaps it is fate,” he said, gloomily, “and how to save that poor girl from wretchedness! Heigho! Joby, old fellow, I wish I could forget the unpleasant things, and then perhaps there would be some comfort in life.
“Now, what’s to be done?” he cried, as his eyes fell again upon the newspaper. “I cannot bear this. Here’s a whole month since I have heard from or seen poor little Maude, for I haven’t the heart to try any more of those clandestine tricks.”
He sat down and thought over the past month and its incidents, taking out and re-reading a note with Lady Barmouth’s crest upon it, in which her ladyship very curtly requested that Mr Melton would refrain from calling in Portland Place, for after what had occurred she could only look upon his visits as an insult. She wrote this at the request of Lord Barmouth.
“That is a monstrous fib,” said Charley Melton, angrily, “for the amiable little old man was always most friendly. But what shall I do? I must see her; I must hear from her. They are forcing this on with the poor girl, and it is like blasting her young life.
“Tom!” he ejaculated, after a pause. “No; he has not answered either of my last letters. There is something wrong there.”
He sat thinking again.
“Confound it all! It is so contemptible. I hate it, but what can I do? I must send a note through that Frenchman. Pah! how I loathe this backstairs work, but what can I do? I am debarred the front stairs, which are open to that confounded roué Wilters.”