Many difficulties attended the course of this secret matrimonial life! Even in their continental travels, when seeking the most secluded places, stray English tourists would come suddenly upon them if they ventured near a table d'hôte; once or twice an old brother officer, or other people who knew or recognised in the so-called Captain Devereaux, Richard Trevelyan; and then mysterious nods or knowing smiles were exchanged, and odd whispers went abroad in the clubs of London and elsewhere—innuendoes that would have withered up the heart of Constance had she heard them.
She knew all that might be suspected, and felt that the positions of herself and her children, were alike false and liable to misconstruction; that malignant scandal might be busy with the names of them all. But the die was cast now, and she had but to suffer and endure; to pray and to wait the death of the poor old man who was so kind to her husband, and who loved him so well—yet not well enough to forgive—had he ever discovered it—the deception which had been practised upon him and upon society.
Repining in secret, sorrowing for the falsehood of her position, knowing that her husband, the father of her children, passed in the world as an eligible bachelor, the object of many a designing mother, open to the attentions, the coquetries and captivations of their daughters, aware that he resided with her only by stealth and under another name than his own, Constance had indeed much to endure, though rewarded in some degree therefor, to see her children growing up in health and beauty, each a reproduction of their parents, for Denzil had all the personal attributes of his father, with much higher mental qualities, while the soft-eyed Sybil possessed all the dark beauty, the petite figure and lady-like grace of Constance herself.
The latter, we have said, was but the daughter of a Canadian trader; yet amid all the ease and luxury with which her husband's ample means and tender love supplied her, there were times, when she could not but murmur in her heart at the anomaly of her situation, so different from the honest security of her father's humble home, and her native pride revolted against it; and with this pride there grew a species of shame, which she felt to be totally unmerited, and then she felt an utter loathing for the very name of Lord Lamorna, (though it should one day be borne by her own husband) as being the cause of all her secret suffering, her dread of the present and doubt of the future.
On the education of their children, Richard, who doted on them, had spared nothing. Both were highly accomplished, and wherever they had wandered they had the most talented masters that wealth could procure. Now Denzil had taken the highest prizes at Sandhurst and was gazetted to a Regiment of the Line, and was going forth into the world under the false name of Devereaux!
How was this to be altered—how explained and rectified?
A necessity for being much about Rhoscadzhel, as being the heir to the estates and as his uncle's years increased, had compelled Richard Trevelyan to be more often present in his native county than he had hitherto been; hence, he had settled his secret ties in the pretty little villa of Porthellick, at what he conceived to be a safe distance of some forty miles or so from the residence of Lord Lamorna.
In and about that villa he was simply known as "Captain Devereaux," and as he had almost entirely relinquished hunting and field sports—save an occasional shot at a bird—and when there lived a retired and secluded life; and as his wife and children seemed to live for themselves and him only, making friends with few save the poor and ailing, time glided by, and the mystery of Richard's career was never fully laid bare.
For those there are in this world (and his uncle was one) who would have pardoned Richard making Constance Devereaux his mistress, and yet would mockingly have resented his making her a wedded wife!
Lamorna's friend General Trecarrel—the representative of one of the oldest families in Cornwall—who lived near Porthellick, had met Richard on horseback more than once in the vicinity of that place, when he was supposed to be in London, Paris, or elsewhere, and the mention of these circumstances caused Mr. Downie Trevelyan, who, as we have shown, had a keen personal interest in the matter, to prosecute certain inquiries in that part of the duchy, and the result led him to believe that the Captain Devereaux who occasionally resided at the Grecian Villa in the Willow Cove, and his irreproachable brother Richard, were one and the same person!