London Pride, Or, When the World Was Younger

by M. E. Braddon

The old Knight confessed that he had ridden out of his way on several occasions when he was visiting Warner’s sick-bed, in the hope of meeting Henrietta and George on their ponies, and had more than once been so lucky as to see them.

“The girl grows handsomer, and is as insolent as ever; but she has a sorrowful look which assures me she misses her mother; though it was indeed of that wretch, her father, she talked most. She said he had told her he was likely to go on a foreign embassy. If it is to France he goes, there is an end of Montpelier. The same country shall not hold him and my daughter while I live to protect you.”

Angela began to understand that it was his fear, or his hatred of Fareham, which was taking him out of his native country. No word had been said of her betrothal since that fatal night. It seemed tacitly understood that all was at an end between her and Denzil Warner. She herself had been prostrate with a low, nervous fever during a considerable part of that long period of apprehension and distress in which Denzil lay almost at the point of death, nursed by his grief-stricken mother, to whom the very name of his so lately betrothed wife was hateful. Verily the papistical bride had brought a greater trouble to that house than even Lady Warner’s prejudiced mind had anticipated. Kneeling by her son’s bed, exhausted with the passion of long prayers for his recovery, the mother’s thoughts went back to the day when Angela crossed the threshold of that house for the first time, so fair, so modest, with a countenance so innocent in its pensive beauty.

“And yet she was guilty at heart even then,” Lady Warner told herself, in the long night-watches, after the trial at Westminster Hall, when Angela’s public confession of an unlawful love had been reported to her by her favourite Nonconformist Divine, who had been in court throughout the trial, with Lady Warner’s lawyer, watching the proceedings in the interest of Sit Denzil. Lady Warner received the news of the verdict and sentence with unspeakable indignation.

“And my murdered son!” she gasped, “for I know not yet that God will hear my prayers and raise him up to me again. Is his blood to count for nothing—or his sufferings—his patient sufferings on that bed? A fine—a paltry fine—a trifle for a rich man. I would pay thrice as much, though it beggared me, to see him sent to the Plantations. O Judge and Avenger of Israel! Thou hast scourged us with pestilence, and punished us with fire; but Thou hast not convinced us of sin. The world is so sunk in wickedness that murder scarce counts for crime.”

The day of terror was past. Denzil’s convalescence was proceeding slowly, but without retrograde stages. His youth and temperate habits had helped his recovery from a wound which in the earlier stages looked fatal. He was now able to sit up in an armchair, and talk to his visitor, when Sir John rode twenty miles to see him; but only once did his lips shape the name that had been so dear, and that occasion was at the end of a visit which Sir John announced as the last.

“Our goods are packed and ready for shipping,” he said. “My daughter and I will begin our journey to Montpelier early next week.”

It was the first time Sir John had spoken of his daughter in that sick-room.

“If she should ever talk of me, in the time to come,” Denzil said—speaking very slowly, in a low voice, as if the effort, mental and physical, were almost beyond his strength, and holding the hand which Sir John had given him in saying good-bye—“tell her that I shall ever remember her with a compassionate affection—ever hold her the dearest and loveliest of women—yes, even if I should marry, and see the children of some fair and chaste wife growing up around me. She will ever be the first. And tell her that I know she forswore herself in the court; and that she was the innocent dupe of that villain—never his consenting companion. And tell her that I pity her even for that so misplaced affection which tempted her to swear to a lie. I knew, sir, always, that she loved him and not me. Yes, from the first. Indeed, sir, it was but too easy to read that unconscious beginning of unholy love, which grew and strengthened like some fatal disease. I knew, but nursed the fond hope that I could win her heart—in spite of him. I fancied that right must prevail over wrong; but it does not, you see, sir, not always—not——” A faintness came over him; whereupon his mother, re-entering the room at this moment, ran to him and restored him with the strong essence that stood handy among the medicine bottles on the table by his chair.

“You have suffered him to talk too much,” she said, glancing angrily at Sir John. “And I’ll warrant he has been talking of your daughter—whose name must be poison to him. God knows ’tis worse than poison to me!”