“Victoire de Vandaleur! Victoire! Victoire!”
It was her own name as well as that of her ancestress, and she blushed as her eyes met those of a strange young gentleman, with a sketch-book in his hand, and a French poodle at his heels.
“Place aux dames!” said the stranger. On which the white poodle sat up, and his master bowed till his head nearly touched the ground.
They had met once as children, which was introduction enough in the circumstances. Here, at last, for Victoire, was the embodiment of all her dreams of the de Vandaleur race. He was personally so like the miniature, that he might have been the old Duke. He was the young one, as even her mother allowed. For him, he found a companion whose birth did not jar on his aristocratic prejudices, and whose strong character was bone and marrow to his weak one. Before they reached the house Mrs. Janet’s precautions were vain.
She grew fond of the lad in spite of herself. The romantic side of her sympathized with his history. He was an orphan, and she had a mother’s heart. In the direct line he was a Duke, and she was a Scotchwoman. He freely consented to settle every penny he had upon his wife, and, as his mother-in-law justly remarked, “Many a cannier man wouldn’t just have done that.”
In fine, the young people were married with not more than the usual difficulties beforehand.
He was nineteen, and she was seventeen. They were my great-grandfather and great-grandmother.
They had only one child—a son. They were very poor, and yet they gave him a good education. I ought to say, she gave him, for everything that needed effort or energy was done by my great-grandmother. The more it became evident that her Bertrand de Vandaleur was less helpful and practical than any Bertrand de Vandaleur before him, the more there seems to have developed in her the purpose and capability inherited from Mrs. Janet. Like many another poor and ambitious mother, she studied Latin and Greek and algebra that she might teach her son. And at the same time she saved, even out of their small income. She began to “put by” from the boy’s birth for his education, and when the time came he was sent to school.
My grandfather did well. I have heard that he inherited his father’s beauty, and was not without his mother’s sense and energy. He had the de Vandaleur quality of pleasing, with the weakness of being utterly ruled by the woman he loved. At twenty he married an heiress. His parents had themselves married too early to have reasonable ground for complaint at this; but when he left his own Church for that of his wife, there came a terrible breach between them and their only son. His mother soon forgave him; but the father was as immovable in his displeasure as weak people can sometimes be. Happily, however, after the birth of a grandson peace was made, and the young husband brought his wife to visit his parents. The heiress had some property in the West Indies, which they proposed to visit, and they remained with the old people till just before they sailed. It was as a keepsake at parting that my grandfather had restored to his mother the watch which she gave to me. The child was left in England with his mother’s relations.
My grandfather and grandmother never returned. They were among the countless victims of the most cruel of all seas. The vessel they went out in was lost during a week of storms. On what day or night, and in what part of the Atlantic, no one survived to tell.