"Mr. Marchmont may have believed in that paragraph."
Edward Arundel rose, with a gesture of impatience.
"I came to you for help, Mr. Paulette," he said; "but I see you don't mean to help me. Good day."
He left the office before the lawyer could remonstrate with him. He walked away, with passionate anger against all the world raging in his breast.
"Why, what a smooth–spoken, false–tongued world it is!" he thought. "Let a man succeed in the vilest scheme, and no living creature will care to ask by what foul means he may have won his success. What weapons can I use against this Paul Marchmont, who twists truth and honesty to his own ends, and masks his basest treachery under an appearance of candour?"
From Lincoln's Inn Fields Captain Arundel drove over Waterloo Bridge to Oakley Street. He went to Mrs. Pimpernel's establishment, without any hope of the glad surprise that had met him there a few months before. He believed implicitly that his wife was dead, and wherever he went in search of her he went in utter hopelessness, only prompted by the desire to leave no part of his duty undone.
The honest–hearted dealer in cast–off apparel wept bitterly when she heard how sadly the Captain's honeymoon had ended. She would have been content to detain the young soldier all day, while she bemoaned the misfortunes that had come upon him; and now, for the first time, Edward heard of dismal forebodings, and horrible dreams, and unaccountable presentiments of evil, with which this honest woman had been afflicted on and before his wedding–day, and of which she had made special mention at the time to divers friends and acquaintances.
"I never shall forget how shivery–like I felt as the cab drove off, with that pore dear a–lookin' and smilin' at me out of the winder. I says to Mrs. Polson, as her husband is in the shoemakin' line, two doors further down,––I says, 'I do hope Capting Harungdell's lady will get safe to the end of her journey.' I felt the cold shivers a–creepin' up my back just azackly like I did a fortnight before my pore Jane died, and I couldn't get it off my mind as somethink was goin' to happen."
From London Captain Arundel went to Winchester, much to the disgust of his valet, who was accustomed to a luxuriously idle life at Dangerfield Park, and who did not by any means relish this desultory wandering from place to place. Perhaps there was some faint ray of hope in the young man's mind, as he drew near to that little village–inn beneath whose shelter he had been so happy with his childish bride. If she had not committed suicide; if she had indeed wandered away, to try and bear her sorrows in gentle Christian resignation; if she had sought some retreat where she might be safe from her tormentors,––would not every instinct of her loving heart have led her here?––here, amid these low meadows and winding streams, guarded and surrounded by the pleasant shelter of grassy hill–tops, crowned by waving trees?––here, where she had been so happy with the husband of her choice?
But, alas! that newly–born hope, which had made the soldier's heart beat and his cheek flush, was as delusive as many other hopes that lure men and women onward in their weary wanderings upon this earth. The landlord of the White Hart Inn answered Edward Arundel's question with stolid indifference.