CHAPTER XXXVIII.
CELIA’S LOVERS.
The day after Mr. Clare’s visit brought Laura the expected letter from her husband, a long letter telling her his adventures at Auray.
‘So you see, dearest,’ he wrote, after he had related all that Father le Mescam had told him, ‘come what may, our position as regards my cousin Jasper’s estate is secure. Malice cannot touch us there. From the hour I knelt beside you before the altar in Hazlehurst Church, I have been your husband. That unhappy Frenchwoman was never legally my wife. Whether she wilfully deceived me, or whether she had reasons of her own for supposing Jean Kergariou to be dead, I know not. It is quite possible that she honestly believed herself to be a widow. She might have heard that Kergariou had been lost at sea. Shipwreck and death are too common among those Breton sailors who go to the North Seas. The little seaports in Brittany are populated with widows and orphans. I am quite willing to believe that poor Zaïre thought herself free to marry. This would account for her terrible agitation when she recognised her husband’s body in the Morgue. And now, dear love, I shall but stay in Paris long enough to procure all documents necessary to prove Jean Kergariou’s death; and then I shall hasten home to comfort my sweet wife, and to face any new trouble that may arise from Edward Clare’s enmity. I feel that it is he only whom we have to fear in the future; and it will go hard if I am not equal to the struggle with so despicable a foe. The omnibus is waiting to take us to the station. God bless you, love, and reward you for your generous devotion to your unworthy husband,—John Treverton.’
This letter brought unspeakable comfort to Laura’s mind. The knowledge that her first marriage was valid was much. It was still more to know that her husband was exempted from the charge of having possessed himself of his cousin’s estate by treachery and fraud. The moral wrong in his conduct was not lessened; but he had no longer to fear the disgrace which must have attached to his resignation of the estate.
‘Dear old house, dear old home, thank God we shall never be driven from you!’ said Laura, looking round the study in which so many eventful scenes of her life had been passed, the room where she and John Treverton had first met.
While Laura was sitting by the fire with her husband’s letter in her hand, musing upon its contents, the door was suddenly flung open, and Celia rushed into the room and dropped on her knees by her friend’s chair.
‘Laura, what has come between us?’ she exclaimed. ‘Why do you shut me out of your heart? I know there is something wrong. I can see it in papa’s manner. Have I been so false a friend that you are afraid to trust me?’
The brightly earnest face was so full of warm and truthful feeling that Laura had not the heart to resent this impetuous intrusion. She had told Trimmer that she would see no one, but Celia had set Trimmer at defiance, and had insisted on coming unannounced to the study.
‘You are not false, Celia,’ Laura answered gravely, ‘but I have good reason to know that your brother is my husband’s enemy.’