“Alas! you had already fled,” continued Mr. Hatfield; “and when Villiers returned to communicate this fact, an instantaneous pursuit was resolved upon. Clarence took one road—the Earl another—and I chose the road to Dover. I was mounted on a good horse, and must have inevitably overtaken you before you had proceeded many miles, when, on turning an angle of the road, I suddenly encountered a light chaise-cart that was turning the corner at a furious rate. The shock was violent; and I was hurled from my horse with such force that I was stunned by the fall. When I recovered my senses I was lying on a bed at a small road-side tavern; and a candle was burning in the room. It was night: hours had elapsed since the accident which had occurred; and during that long interval I had remained senseless—unconscious of all that was passing. A surgeon had been sent for from Greenwich, near which place the accident occurred; and he was an ignorant quack who had adopted no effective measures to recover me. But nature had at length asserted her empire in that where medical mismanagement had necessarily failed to produce any good result; and I recovered my powers of thought—only to experience the bitterest anguish at the delay that had taken place. Ill and suffering as I was, I endeavoured to rise, with the determination of pursuing my journey; but this was impossible. For in the first place I was too much exhausted to leave the couch on which I was thus helplessly stretched; and, secondly, I learnt, to my increased annoyance, that my horse was injured in a serious manner. To be brief, I resigned myself to the necessity of at least remaining a few hours longer in that place; and a deep sleep came over me. In the morning I awoke, much refreshed, though still suffering from the pain of the severe contusions that I had received. All hope of continuing my journey on horseback was destroyed; and I accordingly procured a post-chaise in which I hastened on to Dover. There I arrived in the afternoon; and by accident I put up at the same hotel where you and your female companions had stopped. On inquiring I heard that yourself and the young lady had departed for Calais in the morning, and that the old one had been arrested on her way to the port, in consequence of a communication received by electric telegraph from London. No steam vessel was to leave for France until the following day; and I was therefore compelled to wait patiently at the hotel. Patiently, indeed! No—that was impossible;—for all these delays were maddening, under the circumstances. But I will not dwell at unnecessary length on any portion of my narrative—much less upon the nature of the feelings which I experienced at that time. In the evening I dined in the coffee-room—if the mere mockery of sitting down to table and eating nothing can be called dining; and, while I was thus seated at a repast which I did not touch, I was suddenly interested in a conversation which was taking place between two officers who were discussing a bottle of wine at an adjacent table.”
“Oh! I ought to have perceived that there was something mysterious and wrong in that adventure upon the Marine Parade!” cried Charles, literally savage with himself at his blindness and folly. “But I was so completely infatuated by that artful, designing creature——”
“I must implore you to compose yourself,” interrupted Mr. Hatfield, in an earnest but kind tone: “for if I am now relating to you all that occurred to me, it is only that you may become acquainted with everything, and have nothing left behind as a cause for future excitement. Therefore I will be explicit with you respecting the substance of the conversation which was passing between those officers in the manner I have described. Indeed, you may conceive my astonishment when I overheard one of them mention the name of Perdita; for that is by no means a common one—and perhaps this woman is the only being on the face of the earth who bears it. I accordingly listened—and in a short time the whole adventure which had taken place on the Parade the evening before, became known to me. Then I addressed myself to the two officers, stating that I had overheard their remarks, apologising for my rudeness in listening, but excusing myself on the ground that the young gentleman whom they had seen with Perdita was nearly allied to me, and that I was, in fact, in pursuit of him. They assured me that no apology was necessary; and I joined them in conversation. Then was it that I learnt a dreadful tale of female depravity; for it appears that Perdita became indeed the ‘Lost One’ at a very early age, and that her favours were distributed in Sydney to any good-looking young man who might happen to please her fancy.”
“Vile—detested Perdita!” ejaculated Charles, almost gnashing his teeth with rage.
“Yes—you must know her character fully, my poor boy,” said Mr. Hatfield; “for fear that she should ever again endeavour to exercise her syren influence upon you.”
“Oh, such an attempt would be utter madness on her part!” cried Charles, now speaking with every symptom of the deepest indignation and even loathing. “But what more said the officers whom you thus singularly encountered?”
“It appears,” continued Mr. Hatfield, “that Perdita was not thoroughly depraved in the sense in which we allude to an unfortunate woman who plies her hideous trade for bread. No—she bartered not her charms for gold. Indeed, though very poor, she would scarcely ever receive any recompense from her favourites—unless delicately conveyed in the form of presents. But money she never took: her pride revolted at that,—and it was purely through the wantonness of her disposition and the burning ardour of her temperament that she plunged headlong into a career of licentiousness.”
“And I to have fallen the victim to such a polluted wretch!” exclaimed the young man.
“At Sydney,” continued Mr. Hatfield, “she was looked upon as a species of prodigy. Endowed with an intellect as powerful as her beauty was great, and possessing extraordinary natural abilities, she listened with eagerness to the conversation of those officers and other gentlemen who became her favourites, and treasured up all the information she could thus acquire. She was also fond of reading the newspapers sent from England, and all works treating of the mother-country and the principal nations of Europe; and thus she gleaned a vast amount of miscellaneous knowledge, fitting her to become a woman of the world. With singular facility, too, she studied and appropriated the gentility of gait, demeanour, and manners which she observed in her superiors; and the very bearing of the ladies in Sydney, as they walked abroad, was noted and adopted by her. Thus even in her poverty, to which she clung rather than surrender up her independence by becoming a wife or a kept mistress—for she might have been either—even in her poverty, I say, there was an air of lofty pride and calm hauteur about her, which would have led a stranger to fancy that she had sprung from an aristocratic stock, whose family fortunes had decayed. Moreover, her spirit was indomitable and fiery; and she knew full well how to avenge an insult. Did she receive overtures from any one who was displeasing to her, she would reject them with scorn; and, if possible, she would punish the adventurous suitor, in one way or another, for his insolence in addressing her. It was her delight at times to throw around herself—her deeds—her words—and even her entire character, a veil of mystery, and to affect an eccentricity of habits and a singularity of manner which made many ignorant and credulous people imagine that she was a being of no common order. Amongst those who might be properly styled her equals, she was reserved, cold, and distant; and even to those whom, in the same sense, we may denominate her superiors, she demeaned herself condescendingly, as if conferring a favour on them by her presence. In her amours, she maintained this singular pride, as if she were a Catherine of Russia, inviting her lovers to her arms, but never yielding to an invitation that might come from them. In a word, this Perdita was looked upon as the most remarkable, and at the same time the most unintelligible—the most incomprehensible character at Sydney; and even the most respectable persons were anxious to have her pointed out to them, when they walked abroad. Endowed with such a splendid intellect—possessed of such rare and almost superhuman loveliness—robing herself, as it were, in mystery—and evincing so proud a spirit, as well as such an aptitude for the self-appropriation of the refinements and the etiquette of genteel breeding,—it cannot be wondered at if Perdita should have been regarded in no common light by the inhabitants of the penal settlement. But from all I have now told you, Charles, it is easy for you to comprehend how dangerous is the character of such a woman—how completely she must be the mistress of every art in the school of hypocrisy, guile, and deceit; and if I have been thus elaborate in my details respecting her—if I have thus minutely recapitulated all that I learnt from the two officers at Dover—it is simply to place you more effectually upon your guard with reference to that syren——”