"She is a liar; and you are a fool or a cheat. She paid you, I dare say! Can't you speak, woman? Has the person I left in your care, whom you were paid, and paid well, to take care of,––have you let her go? Answer me that."
"I have, sir," the woman faltered,––she was big and brawny, but there was that in Paul Marchmont's face that frightened her notwithstanding,––"seeing as it was your orders."
"That will do," cried Paul Marchmont, holding up his hand and looking at the woman with a ghastly smile; "that will do. You have ruined me; do you hear? You have undone a work that has cost me––O my God! why do I waste my breath in talking to such a creature as this? All my plots, my difficulties, my struggles and victories, my long sleepless nights, my bad dreams,––has it all come to this? Ruin, unutterable ruin, brought upon me by a madwoman!"
He sat down in the chair by the window, and leaned upon the table, scattering the Indian chessmen with his elbow. He did not weep. That relief––terrible relief though it be for a man's breast––was denied him. He sat there with his face covered, moaning aloud. That helpless moan was scarcely like the complaint of a man; it was rather like the hopeless, dreary utterance of a brute's anguish; it sounded like the miserable howling of a beaten cur.
[CHAPTER XI.
BELINDA'S WEDDING–DAY.]
The sun shone upon Belinda Lawford's wedding–day. The birds were singing in the garden under her window as she opened her lattice and looked out. The word lattice is not a poetical license in this case; for Miss Lawford's chamber was a roomy, old–fashioned apartment at the back of the house, with deep window–seats and diamond–paned casements.
The sun shone, and the roses bloomed in all their summer glory. "'Twas in the time of roses," as gentle–minded Thomas Hood so sweetly sang; surely the time of all others for a bridal morning. The girl looked out into the sunshine with her loose hair falling about her shoulders, and lingered a little looking at the familiar garden, with a half–pensive smile.
"Oh, how often, how often," she said, "I have walked up and down by those laburnums, Letty!" There were two pretty white–curtained bedsteads in the old–fashioned room, and Miss Arundel had shared her friend's apartment for the last week. "How often mamma and I have sat under the dear old cedar, making our poor children's frocks! People say monotonous lives are not happy: mine has been the same thing over and over again; and yet how happy, how happy! And to think that we"––she paused a moment, and the rosy colour in her cheeks deepened by just one shade; it was so sweet to use that simple monosyllable "we" when Edward Arundel was the other half of the pronoun,––"to think that we shall be in Paris to–morrow!"
"Driving in the Bois," exclaimed Miss Arundel; "and dining at the Maison Dorée, or the Café de Paris. Don't dine at Meurice's, Linda; it's dreadfully slow dining at one's hotel. And you'll be a young married woman, and can do anything, you know. If I were a young married woman, I'd ask my husband to take me to the Mabille, just for half an hour, with an old bonnet and a thick veil. I knew a girl whose first–cousin married a cornet in the Guards, and they went to the Mabille one night. Come, Belinda, if you mean to have your back–hair done at all, you'd better sit down at once and let me commence operations."
Miss Arundel had stipulated that, upon this particular morning, she was to dress her friend's hair; and she turned up the frilled sleeves of her white dressing–gown, and set to work in the orthodox manner, spreading a network of shining tresses about Miss Lawford's shoulders, prior to the weaving of elaborate plaits that were to make a crown for the fair young bride. Letitia's tongue went as fast as her fingers; but Belinda was very silent.