But how was all this to be proved?
Père Latour was dead; the records of his chapel had been burned in one of the many conflagrations incident to the city; the certified extract from them had perished in the sea with her husband. Dick Braddon too had been drowned, and the acolyte, the other witness in the little French chapel, had been long since laid under a wooden cross in the little burial-ground that adjoined it. A few letters alone were not sufficient proof to upset in England—whatever they might have done in Scotland—the title and succession of a wealthy peer already in possession; yet nevertheless Mr. Sharkley talked about the instant institution of legal proceedings, having the matter brought before a select committee of privileges in the House of Lords, and so forth, quite as confidently and as pompously as if he was a Q.C. and high-class parliamentary lawyer; and poor Constance felt a glow of hope for her children's future rising in her heart, while he compiled a narrative, took away the letters of her husband, and, receiving in advance a handsome sum for certain imaginary fees and expenses, departed with nearly all the ready money she possessed.
He really attempted, however, to get up a case against "Lord Lamorna," and hence the bulky and presumptuous document which exasperated Downie; but from the weakness of her cause and the character of her legal adviser it speedily fell to the ground, only to fix a deeper stigma on the hapless and innocent Constance.
Rumours of misfortune and mystery brought all their creditors, now pretty numerous (for during her husband's lifetime they had lived in good style at the villa), down upon her in a pitiless horde.
Denzil, she knew, would now lose the liberal allowance his father had promised him after leaving Sandhurst on appointment; but with tentage, batta, and other allowance, a subaltern can live on his pay in India, when he might starve elsewhere. In her misery Constance gathered some comfort from this knowledge, though ruin and penury—or work for which they were both unfitted—were all that remained to her and Sybil now.
CHAPTER XXIV.
THE DOCTRINE OF CHANCES.
And what of Audley, the lover, all this time?
He had written from Rhoscadzhel to Constance, imploring her permission in moving terms to see Sybil once again, and have some farewell explanation with her, ere he departed to India, too probably for years; for, with the usual inconsistency of the human heart, no sooner did he find himself repelled, than he felt the attraction towards her redoubled. This letter had been addressed to Constance as "Mrs. Devereaux;" and, without reflecting that he could not bestow upon her a title already borne by his own mother, she felt fresh anger at the circumstance. Without showing the missive to Sybil, who conceived it might be on some legal business, she cast it in the fire, and replied by an emphatic refusal, adding that if he came near the villa, which they were soon about to leave, her servant, Winny Braddon (she had but one domestic now) had received orders not to admit him.
Undeterred, he next wrote to Sybil, but this effort proved equally unavailing. Resolved not to add to her mother's distress by any disobedience or duplicity on her part, she showed her the letter unopened; and it was at once re-addressed to Rhoscadzhel, with the envelope unbroken, and Audley flushed to the temples when it was placed in his hand.