As children she and Jerry had been permitted to be playmates, and she had been somewhat of a pet with his father, the old Squire; but it was not until they had grown up, till he had been at college and then joined the Rifles, that Lady Julia felt that the intimacy was—well, unfortunate, and to be finally snubbed.
The shock given to the sensitive Bella by the perils encountered by Jerry—first the report of his death, and subsequently the account of the precarious condition in which he had embarked at Cape Coast, caused her many terrible nights and days, and nearly threw the poor girl into a fever, as she had none in whom to confide her sorrow, or her secret love; but sorrow rarely kills, and though at first fretful and resentful, with the memory of Lady Julia's want of proper affection, she was very gentle, quiet, and patient, and besought her father not to foreclose the mortgages yet a while; but he, out of all patience with non-payment of interest on one hand, Lady Julia's hauteur and insolence on the other, with the great doubt entertained of Jerry ever coming home to keep the fragment of Wilmothurst that yet accrued to him, had put the matter in the hands of his legal agents, who, curiously enough, were Messrs. Taype, Shawrpe, and Scrawly, of Gray's Inn; and things were at a serious crisis when Jerry returned home to find a deadlier enmity than ever in his mother's heart at 'that creature Chevenix and the forward minx his daughter.'
The latter knew of Jerry's arrival; her heart had beat responsive to the clangour of the village bells, the music of the volunteer band which preceded the carriage in which he came, and the cheers of the warm-hearted rustics, who unharnessed the horses and drew it along; and ere long she heard with pity and anxiety from Mademoiselle Florine, whom she chanced to meet, that he was confined to his room—even to his bed—by a return of the treacherous jungle-fever, which is apt to recur at times unexpectedly for months after recovery is thought certain; and while in this condition, helpless and incapable of action, he was galled and tormented, and his jealousy was roused by his mother and cousin Emily with the real information of how the matter of the mortgages stood; that Lord Twesildown had heard of them, and with an eye to possessing Wilmothurst and Langley Park intended to degrade himself by proposing for Bella Chevenix, now that she would be a Hampshire heiress, as his mother, Lady Ashcombe, had the very bad taste to inform them.
And Jerry writhed in his bed when he heard of these things, and times there were when he wished that after all he had found his grave, like many more, on the wooded banks of the Prah.
Twesildown had an estate, though a rather encumbered one; but he had also a title and undeniable good looks. Jerry was now well-nigh a landless man. Bella had suspected, he feared, the purity and disinterestedness of his love, and thus circumstances, he thought, were all against her viewing him with favour.
If the worst came to the worst, and he were sold up, he would effect an exchange for India, and think of her no more.
No more—how hard it was!
Just then, in his soreness of heart, Jerry was not sorry that a legitimate fit of illness detained him in the house at Wilmothurst, and separate from Bella; for he was hourly stung by tidings—exaggerated in some instances—that Lord Twesildown was daily giving her drives with his mother, and mounts of his best horses; and, as he was known to be rather impecunious, and quite au fait of the fact that Bella Chevenix was her father's heiress, Jerry felt jealous, mortified, and bitter. He even sorely regretted the 'gushing' farewell letter he had written to her before entering Coomassie; and could little conceive that even now, in a silken case, she wore that letter in her bosom!
It was quite evident how hotly jealous he was of Twesildown, and this sentiment Cousin Emily left nothing undone or unsaid to fan.
'How you chatter, cousin,' said he, impatiently.