CHAPTER V.
PORTHELLICK VILLA.
More than forty miles distant from Rhoscadzhel, on that part of the Cornish coast which is washed by the waves of the Bristol Channel, at a place named Porthellick, or the Cove of Willows, was a beautiful white-walled villa, built in the Greek style of architecture, with an Ionic portico of six carved and painted wooden pillars. Its windows opened in the French fashion, and descended to the floor; luxuriant creepers, jasmines, and sweet brier, were trained on green trellis-work around it, and rare plants of gorgeous colours grew in stone vases, which were placed in a double row along the smooth gravelled terrace, from which the basement of the cottage rose—for the villa was a cottage in character, being but a one storeyed dwelling, though spacious and handsome, and having a noble conservatory and coach-house and stabling, and an approach of half a mile in length, bordered by a double line of those magnificent willows from which the place took its name, and affording, from the principal windows in front, an ample view of the sea, with ever and anon, a white sail lingering in the dim blue distance, or a passing steamer, with its pennant of smoke, streaming astern, as it sped towards Ireland or the Isle of Man.
On the evening of that day when Lord Lamorna died so suddenly, a lady was standing under the portico of this house, looking anxiously, not seaward, but inland, towards the willow avenue, by which her residence was approached from the road that leads by Stratton, among the hills, towards Camelford and Wadebridge, near the rocky valley of Hanter-Gantick.
The lady looked repeatedly at her watch, consulted a railway time-table, and entered the house, only to return to her post, and bend her eyes in anxious gaze along the avenue.
Mrs. Devereaux, for it was she, was young-looking—marvellously so for her years; she seemed to be quite a girl still; yet she was fully four-and-thirty, and the mother of two children. This youthful appearance doubtless arose from her very petite and slender figure; her strictly fashionable style of dress, and the piquante beauty that shone in the minute features of her charming little face. Her eyes were dark, yet full of light and sparkle, though their long lashes imparted a great softness of expression. Her eyebrows were very dark and well-defined—some might have deemed them too much so; but they imparted great character to her face. Her mouth and chin were perfect; her teeth like those of a child; and over all, her face, figure, and bearing, even to every motion of her hands and feet, Mrs. Devereaux was exquisitely lady-like.
"At last—at last they come!" she exclaimed; "and yonder is my dear, dear Denzil, whom I have not seen for so many, many months," she added, as her eyes filled with tears, and her soft cheek flushed with all a mother's joy.
As she uttered her thoughts aloud, a little basket-phaeton, drawn by two lovely cream-coloured Shetland ponies, was seen bowling down the avenue of pale green willows; a young lady was handling the ribbons of these Lilliputian steeds in a very masterly style; and beside her sat a young man, attired in fashionable travelling costume, who was alternately waving his cap and a newspaper, which he flourished so vigorously, that the sleek, brindled cattle grazing in the clover meadows close by, lifted their great brown eyes as if inquiringly, while the little drag, with its varnished wheels flashing, dashed along towards the villa, the walls of which shone white as snow in the evening sunlight.
The phaeton was reined up before the portico, when a handsome lad of eighteen, with fine regular features, dark blue—almost black—eyes, and short fair curly hair, sprang out, and was instantly clasped to his mother's breast.
"Oh, mamma—we have such news for you!" exclaimed the young lady, who seemed an exact reproduction of Mrs. Devereaux in height and face, though barely seventeen, with dark eyes and hair; "oh, such news!" she added, in high, girlish excitement, as she tossed her whip and reins to a groom who came promptly from the stable-yard, Derrick Braddon, once a soldier in Richard's regiment—