“Leave that for your libertine sister. Be sure she will finish a loose life by a conspicuous piety. She will turn saint like Madame de Longueville. Sinners are the stuff of which modern saints are made. And women love extremes—to pass from silk and luxury to four-o’clock matins, and the Carmelite’s woollen habit. No, Angela, there must be no Convent for you, while I live. Your penance must be to suffer the company of a petulant, disappointed old man.”
“No penance, sir, but peace and contentment; so I am but forgiven.”
“Oh, you are forgiven. There is that about you with which one cannot long be angry—a creature so gentle and submissive, a reed that bends under a blow. Let us not think of the past. You were a fool—but not a wanton. No, I will never believe that! A generous, headstrong fool, ready with thine own perjured lips to blacken thy character in order to save the villain who did his best to ruin thee. But thou art pure,” looking down at her with a severe scrutiny. “There is no memory of guilt in those eyes. We will go away together, and live peacefully together, and you shall still be the staff of my failing steps, the light of my fading eyes, the comfort of my ebbing life. Were I but easy in my mind about those poor forsaken grandchildren, I could leave England cheerfully enough; but to know them motherless—with such a father!”
“Indeed, sir, I believe, however greatly Lord Fareham may have erred, he will not prove a neglectful father,” Angela said, her voice growing low and tremulous as she pronounced that fatal name.
“You will vouch for him, no doubt. A licentious villain, but an admirable father! No, child, Nature does not deal in such anomalies. The children are alone at Chilton with their English gouvernante, and the prim Frenchwoman, who takes infinite pains to perfect Henriette’s unlikeness to a human child. They are alone, and their father is hanging about the Court.”
“At Court! Lord Fareham! Indeed, sir, I think you must be mistaken.”
“Indeed, madam, I have the fact on good authority.”
“Oh, sir, if you have reason to think those dear children neglected, is it not your duty to protect and care for them? Their poor, mistaken mother has abandoned them.”
“Yes, to play the great lady in Paris, where, when I went in quest of her last July—while thou wert lying sick here—hoping to bring back a penitent, I was received with a triumphant insolence, finding her the centre of a circle of flatterers, a Princess in little, with all the airs and graces and ceremonies and hauteur of the French Blood-royal. When I charged her with being Malfort’s mistress, and bade her pack her traps and come home with me, she deafened me with her angry volubility. I to slander her—I, her father, when there was no one in Paris, from the Place Royale to the Louvre, more looked up to! But when I questioned my old friends they answered with enigmatical smiles, and assured me that they knew nothing against my daughter’s character worse than all the world was saying about some of the highest ladies in France—Madame, to wit; and with this cold comfort I must needs be content, and leave her in her splendid infamy.”
“Father, be sure she will come back to us. She has been led into wrong-doing by the artfullest of villains. She will discover the emptiness of her life, and come back to seek the solace of her children’s love. Let us care for them meanwhile. They have no other kindred. Think of our sweet Henriette—so rich, so beautiful, so over-intelligent—growing from child to woman in the care of servants, who may spoil and pervert her even by their very fondness.”