"'That time!--'tis now "long, long ago!"
Its hopes and joys all passed away!
On life's calm tide three bubbles glow;
And pleasure, youth, and love are they,
Hope paints them bright as bright can be,
Or did, when he and I were we!'
As a finishing stroke to his cruelty and perfidy, he suddenly quitted Madeira, after some gambling transaction which brought the alcalde of Funchal and other authorities upon him. He effected his escape disguised as a vendor of sombreros and canary birds, and got clear off, leaving a note by the tenor of which he bequeathed me to his friend, with whom he left me at a solitary quinta among the mountains."
Though dissipated and "fast" by nature and habit, the latter was at heart an English gentleman; and pitying the forlorn girl abandoned in a foreign colony under circumstances so terrible, he sent her home; and one day, some six months after her flight, saw her once more standing irresolutely at the closed gate of the old manor-house of Stoke Franklin.
The latter was empty now; the windows were closed, the bird-cages hung there no more; the golden and purple crocuses she had planted were peeping up from the fragrant earth, untended now; the pathways were already covered with grass and mosses; untrimmed ivy nearly hid the now unopened door; the old vanes creaked mournfully in the wind; and save the drowsy hum of the bees, all spoke to her hopeless, despairing, and remorseful heart of the silence and desolation that follow death. The odour of last year's dead leaves was heavy on the air. After a time she learned how rapidly her father had changed in aspect, and how he had sunk after her disappearance--her desertion of him; and how there came a time when the fine old gentleman, whose thin figure half stooping, with his head bent forward musingly, his scant white hair floating over the collar of his somewhat faded coat, his kindly but wrinkled face, his tasselled cane trailing behind him from his folded hands, whilom so familiar in the green lanes about Stoke Franklin, and who was always welcomed by the children that gambolled on the village green or around the old stone cross, and the decayed wooden stocks that stood thereby, appeared no more. A sudden illness carried him off, or he passed away in his sleep, none knew precisely which; and then another mound under the old yew-tree was all that remained to mark where the last of the Franklins, the last of an old, old Saxon line, was laid.
I promised to assist her if I could, though without the advice of a legal friend I knew not very clearly what to do; besides, knowing what lawyers usually are, I had never included one in the circle even of my acquaintances. Estelle's long silence, and the late episode in the lane, chiefly occupied my thoughts while riding back to the barracks, where somewhat of a shock awaited me.
[CHAPTER XXIII.--TURNING THE TABLES.]
Though the dower-house of Walcot Park dated from the days of Dutch William, when taste was declining fast in England, internally it had all the comforts of modern life, and its large double drawing-room was replete with every elegance that art could furnish or luxury require--gilt china, and buhl cabinets, and console mirrors which reproduced again and again, in far and shadowy perspectives, the winged lions of St. Mark in verde antique; Laocoon and his sons writhing in the coils of the serpents; Majolica vases, where tritons, nymphs, and dolphins were entwined; Titian's cavaliers sallow and sombre in ruffs and half-armour, with pointed moustachios and imperious eyes; or red-haired Venetian dames with long stomachers, long fingers, and Bologna spaniels; or Rubens' blowsy belles, all flesh and bone, with sturdy limbs, and ruddy cheeks and elbows; but the mirrors reflected more about the very time that I was lingering at Whitchurch; to wit, a group, a trio composed of Lady Naseby, her daughter, and Mr. Guilfoyle; and within that room, so elegant and luxurious, was being fought by Estelle, silently and bitterly, one of those struggles of the heart, or battles of life, which, as poor Georgette Franklin said truly, were harder than those which were fought in the field by armed men. Guilfoyle was smiling, and looking very bland and pleased, indeed, to all appearance; Lady Naseby's usually calm and unimpressionable face, so handsome and noble in its contour, wore an expression of profound disdain and contempt; while that of Lady Estelle was as pale as marble. She seemed to be icy cold; her pink nostrils were dilated, her lips and eyelids were quivering; but with hands folded before her, lest she should clench them and betray herself, she listened to what passed between her mother and their visitor.
"It was, as you say, a strange scene, of course, Mr. Guilfoyle, the woman fainting--"