Denounced: A Romance

by John Bloundelle-Burton

The staid manservant gave him a swift glance--it was not to be doubted that many a gossip had been held below stairs as to the reason why Lady Fordingbridge had quitted and caused to be shut up her own house, only to come and dwell at his mistress's--then he invited his lordship to follow him into the morning room on the right of the door.

"I will tell her ladyship," he said, and so left him.

When he was alone, Lord Fordingbridge, after a hasty glance round the room, and a sneer at the portraits of a vast number of simpering young men which hung on the walls--her admirers, he considered, no doubt--took a seat upon the couch and pondered over the coming interview with his wife.

"It is time," he thought, "that things should draw to a conclusion. For," he said, as though addressing Kate herself, "I have had enough of you, my lady. You have long ceased to be a wife to me--never were one, indeed, but for a month, and then but a very indifferent spouse, a cold-hearted, cold-blooded jade; now it is time you should cease to be so much in even name. So, so. You shall be stripped of your borrowed plumage; we will see then how you like the position of affairs. I myself am heartily sick of them."

He had no premonition of what Kate might be about to say to him when she should enter the room in which he now sat; yet he had a very strong suspicion that her remarks would consist of accusations against him of having betrayed the Sholtos and Elphinston.

"Well, well," he said,-"let her accuse. I have the last card. It is a strong one. It should win the trick."

Yet at the same time, strong as any card might be which he held in his hand, he would have given a good deal to have known where at the present moment those three men might be harbouring whom he had endeavoured so strongly to give to the hangman's hands. And once, as a sudden thought came to his mind--a thought that almost made the perspiration burst out upon him--a thought that they might all be in this very house and appear suddenly to take vengeance on him for his treachery!--he nearly rose from his seat as though to fly while there was yet time. But, coward though he was, both physically and morally, he had strength to master his impulse, and, in spite of his fears that at any moment Elphinston, whom he had wronged the worst of all, might enter the room, to remain seated where he was.

Still his eyes sought ever the hands of the clock as moment after moment went by and his wife failed to come, until at last he was wrought to so high a pitch of nervousness that he started at any sound inside and outside of the house. A man bawling the news in the street or blowing the horn, which at that time the newsboys carried to proclaim their approach, set his nerves and fibres tingling; the laughter of some of the domestics in the kitchens below him had an equally jarring effect, and when aloud knock came at the street door he quivered as though the avenging Elphinston was indeed there. Then, at last, the door opened suddenly, and his wife stood before him.

He saw in one swift glance that she was very pale--she, whose complexion had once been as the rose-blush--and this he could understand. It was not strange she should be so. What he could not understand was the habit in which she appeared, the manner in which she was attired. Ever since she had become his wife he had caused her to be arrayed in the richest, most costly dresses he could afford; had desired, nay, had commanded, that in all outward things she should carry out the character of Lady Fordingbridge; that her gowns, her laces, her wigs, should all be suitable to his position.

Yet now she appeared shorn of all those adornments which his common, pitiful mind regarded as part and parcel of his dignity. The dress she wore was a simple black one, made of a material which the humblest lady in the land might have had on, without lace or trimmings or any adornment whatsoever. Also on her head there was no towering wig, nor powder, nor false curls; instead, her own sweet golden hair was neatly brushed back into a great knot behind. Nor on her hands, nor on her neck, was any jewellery, save only the one ring which, from the day he had put it on her finger, she had ever regarded as a badge of slavery.