CHAPTER XVIII.
Mrs. Forbes and her daughter had been in London two weeks. The engagement had been announced by the Duke a week previously, and was the sensation of the hour. The American newspapers were agog, but, as Mr. Forbes refused to be interviewed, were obliged to content themselves with daily bulletins from London. Mr. Forbes’ opposition was suspected, but could not be verified. When congratulated, he replied diplomatically that he was not a warm advocate of international marriages. He hedged with a sense of bitter abasement, but he could not fling his dignity into the public maw.
Mrs. Van Rhuys informed people that, personally, her brother liked the Duke of Bosworth, but had hoped that Augusta would marry an American. She could not name the exact amount of the dowry; several millions, probably. The Duke seemed singularly indifferent. He wished the marriage to take place at once and in England, that his mother, who idolized him, might be present. Wherefore the sudden move, as the trousseau was of far more importance than the breaking of a dozen social engagements. Mr. Forbes would go over for the wedding, of course—unless this dreadful financial muddle prevented. She and her brother-in-law, Schuyler Van Rhuys, who was nursing the wound inflicted by that unintelligible Californian, Helena Belmont, should go, in any case. No; the Duke had not jilted Mabel Creighton. On the contrary, Mabel might be said to have made the match. She and the Duke had known each other for a long while, and were the best of friends, nothing more.
All the folk in London of the Duke’s set had called on Mrs. Forbes and the impending Duchess. As Parliament was sitting, there was a goodly number of them. The United States Ambassador gave a banquet in honour of the engagement, and it was the first of many attentions.
But the Duke was a man in whom few beyond his intimate circle took personal interest: he was cold, repellent, unpicturesque. The heiress had neither beauty nor the thistle-down attraction of the average American girl. It was Virginia Forbes who introduced a singular variation into this important but hackneyed transaction, and atoned for the paucities of the principal figures: she absorbed something more than two-thirds of the public attention. Her beauty, her distinction, her lively wit, her exquisite taste in dress, her jewels, above all her girlish appearance, commanded the reluctant admiration or the subtle envy of the women, the enthusiasm of the men, and the unflagging attentions of the weekly press. Her ancestry was suddenly discovered, and was a mine of glittering and illimited strata. Her photograph was printed in every paper which aimed to amuse a great and weary people, and was on sale in the shops. In short, she was the “news” of the hour; and the twentieth of his line and the lady who would save the entail were the mere mechanism selected by Circumstance to steer a charming woman to her regalities.
“You certainly ought to be in a state of unleavened bliss,” remarked her daughter with some sarcasm one evening as they sat together after tea, alone for the hour. “You simply laid your plans, sailed over, and down went London. I never knew anything quite so neat in my life. But it is in some people’s lines to get everything they want, and I suppose you will to the end of the chapter.”
Mrs. Forbes was gazing into the fire through the sticks of a fan. Her face was without its usual colour and her lips were contracted.
“Not a line from your father, and it is three weeks,” she said abruptly.
“You did not expect him—father!—to come round in a whirl, I suppose. But why do you worry so? You know that it can end in one way only. We are all he has, and he adores us, and cannot live without us. It isn’t as if he were fast, like so many New York men. I have not worried—not for a moment.”
“How can you be so cold-blooded? I wish you knew the wretch I feel. If he does adore us, cannot you comprehend what we are making him suffer? Sometimes I think I can never make it up to him, not with all the devotion I am capable of, after this miserable business is over.”