As if to tantalise them by a display of all they were perhaps to lose, or had already lost for ever, a valet, to whose care Mr. Funnel now consigned them, conducted them by a somewhat circuitous route, as all the suites of rooms were not in order, the family having arrived unexpectedly from town.
Passing through the marble vestibule, an arch on one side of which opened to a gay aviary, and one on the other to the beautiful conservatory, they entered a long and lofty corridor, where the soft carpet muffled every foot-fall, and where were the objects of vertu, accumulated by several generations of Trevelyans; a veritable museum it seemed, of glass cases filled with quaintly illuminated vellum MSS., in fine old Roman bindings, red-edged and clasped; old laces of Malines and Bruges; Chinese ivory carvings, delicate as gossamer webs; Burmese idols; Japanese cabinets, covered with flaming dragons; Majolica vases, where rosy cupids, grotesque tritons, nude nymphs, and shining dolphins, were all grouped together; Delft hardware of odd designs; Etruscan cups, cream-coloured or crimson, with slender black demoniac figures thereon; mediæval suits of armour; family portraits of dames in ruffs and farthingales, and of past Trevelyans, all well-wigged, cuirassed, and armed: some with Bardolph noses and paunches of comely curve, suggestive of sack and venison; the chiefs of these being Lord Henry, who was Governor of Rougemont Castle for Queen Elizabeth, and Launcelot, the cavalier-lord, who sought shelter in Trewoofe from the victorious Roundheads.
The refined and cultivated taste of Constance could well appreciate all these objects; but now, as one in a dream, her eyes wandered over those walls where many a gem of art was hanging; the soft-eyed and white-skinned girls of Greuze; the bearded and doubleted nobles of Vandyke; cattle, fat and lazy-looking, by Cuyp; hazy sea-pieces by Turner, and more than one lovely Raphael; but then her every thought was turned inward; and as if to support herself, she retained Sybil's tremulous little hand, on which her clasp tightened, as the servant, who was clad in mourning livery, with a black cord aiguilette on each shoulder, opened noiselessly the half of a folding-door, and ushered them into that splendid library where her husband had found his proud old uncle dead at the writing-table, and Downie (with the unsigned deed) hanging over him, with confusion and disappointment on his usually stolid visage.
"Visitors, my lord," said the servant.
And to add to the perplexity of Constance, she found herself face to face with the whole family group—the whole, at least, save one, her nephew Audley.
CHAPTER XXI.
HUMILIATION.
The statements made to Audley Trevelyan by his father as to the dubious position of the two ladies at Porthellick—artful statements which seemed, without collusion, to corroborate so much that Mabel and Rose Trecarrel hinted or openly advanced—had seriously grieved and perplexed him. Thus, while loving Sybil and longing for her society on one hand, with the selfishness or vacillation peculiar to many young men, on the other, he began to wish that he had not gone quite so far—that he had been less precipitate in his love-making; but his perplexity increased to utter bewilderment, not unmixed with indignation, when his usually languid mother, with considerable scorn and irritation of manner, informed him that "the person calling herself Mrs. Devereaux" was but an intriguante, who had sought to lure his foolish uncle Richard into marriage; and his father admitted that he and others had long suspected his brother of having some low and illicit entanglement.
Now Audley knew that this "intriguante" had a son, whose existence might endanger his own succession to a title.
Was this fair, slender and delicate girl, whose gentle image had wound itself about the heart of Audley, and on whose "engagement finger" he had so recently slipped a ring, actually a cousin; but one whom he could not acknowledge—a person whom he dared not marry, in dread of that trumpet-tongued bugbear called "Society"?