Then the life that seems to have died from her face flames back. Without speaking to him, without looking at him, she turns to leave the room. On the threshold she pauses and looks back.
"A wife and a son," she says, slowly and distinctly. "Sir Victor
Catheron, fetch them home; I shall be glad to see them."
CHAPTER II.
WIFE AND HEIR.
In a very genteel lodging-house, in the very genteel neighborhood of
Russell Square, early in the afternoon of a September day, a young
girl stands impatiently awaiting the return of Sir Victor Catheron.
This girl is his wife.
It is a bright, sunny day—as sunny, at least, as a London day ever can make up its mind to be—and as the yellow, slanting rays pour in through the muslin curtains full on face and figure, you may search and find no flaw in either. It is a very lovely face, a very graceful, though petite figure. She is a blonde of the blondest type: her hair is like spun gold, and, wonderful to relate, no Yellow Wash: no Golden Fluid, has ever touched its shining abundance. Her eyes are bluer than the September sky over the Russell Square chimney-pots; her nose is neither aquiline nor Grecian, but it is very nice; her forehead is low, her mouth and chin "morsels for the gods." The little figure is deliciously rounded and ripe; in twenty years from now she may be a heavy British matron, with a yard and a half wide waist—at eighteen years old she is, in one word, perfection.
Her dress is perfection also. She wears a white India muslin, a marvel of delicate embroidery and exquisite texture, and a great deal of Valenciennes trimming. She has a pearl and turquoise star fastening her lace collar, pearl and turquoise drops in her ears, and a half dozen diamond rings on her plump, boneless fingers. A blue ribbon knots up the loose yellow hair, and you may search the big city from end to end, and find nothing fairer, fresher, sweeter than Ethel, Lady Catheron.
If ever a gentleman and a baronet had a fair and sufficient excuse for the folly of a low marriage, surely Sir Victor Catheron has it in this fairy wife—for it is a "low marriage" of the most heinous type. Just seventeen months ago, sauntering idly along the summer sands, looking listlessly at the summer sea, thinking drearily that this time next year his freedom would be over, and his Cousin Inez his lawful owner and possessor, his eyes had fallen on that lovely blonde face—that wealth of shining hair, and for all time—aye, for eternity—his fate was fixed. The dark image of Inez as his wife faded out of his mind, never to return more.
The earthly name of this dazzling divinity in yellow ringlets and pink muslin was Ethel Margaretta—Dobb!
Dobb! It might have disenchanted a less rapturous adorer—it fell powerless on Sir Victor Catheron's infatuated ear.