"Ah! I thought the name would interest you. Sir Victor Catheron, my dear, alive and in the flesh, though, upon my word, at first sight I almost took him to be his own ghost. Look at her, Mary," laughs her sister derisively. "I have managed to interest her after all, have I not?"
For Lady Gwendoline sat erect, her turquoise eyes open to their widest extent, a look akin to excitement in her apathetic face.
"But, Portia—Sir Victor! I thought it was an understood thing he did not come to England?"
"He does, it appears. I certainly had the honor and happiness of shaking hands with him not fifteen minutes ago. I was driving up St. James Street, and caught a glimpse of him on the steps of Fenton's Hotel. At first sight I could not credit my eyes. I had to look again to see whether it were a wraith or a mortal man. Such a pallid shadow of his former self. You used to think him rather handsome, Gwen—you should see him now! He has grown ten years older in as many months—his hair is absolutely streaked with gray, his eyes are sunken, his cheeks are hollow. He looks miserably, wretchedly out of health. If men ever do break their hearts," said Lady Portia, going over to a large mirror and surveying herself, "then that misguided young man broke his on his wedding-day."
"It serves him right," said Lady Gwendoline, her pale eyes kindling.
"I am almost glad to hear it."
Her faded face wore a strangely sombre and vindictive look. Lady Portia, with her head on one side, set her bonnet-strings geometrically straight, and smiled maliciously.
"Ah, no doubt—perfectly natural, all things considered. And yet, even you might pity the poor fellow to-day, Gwendoline, if you saw him. Mary, dear, is all this Greek and Hebrew to you? You were in your Parisian pensionnat, I remember, when it all happened. You don't know the romantic and mysterious story of Sir Victor Catheron, Bart."
"I never heard the name before, that I recall," answered Miss Howard.
"Then pine in ignorance no longer. This young hero, Sir Victor Catheron of Catheron Royals, Cheshire, is our next-door neighbor, down at home, and one year ago the handsome, happy, honored representative of one of the oldest families in the county. His income was large, his estates unincumbered, his manners charming, his morals unexceptionable, and half the young ladies in Cheshire"—with another malicious glance at her sister—"at daggers-drawn for him. There was the slight drawback of insanity in the family—his father died insane, and in his infancy his mother was murdered. But these were only trifling spots on the sun, not worth a second thought. Our young sultan had but to throw the handkerchief, and his obedient Circassians would have flown on the wings of love and joy to pick it up. I grow quite eloquent, don't I? In an evil hour, however, poor young Sir Victor—he was but twenty-three—went over to America. There, in New York, he fell in with a family named Stuart, common rich people, of course, as they all are over there. In the Stuart family there was a young person, a sort of cousin, a Miss Edith Darrell, very poor, kept by them out of charity; and, lamentable to relate, with this young person poor Sir Victor fell in love. Fell in love, my dear, in the most approved old-fashioned style—absurdly and insanely in love—brought the whole family over to Cheshire, proposed to little missy, and, as a matter of course, was eagerly accepted. She was an extremely pretty girl, that I will say for her"—with a third sidelong glance of malice at her passee sister—"and her manners, considering her station, or, rather, her entire lack of station, her poverty, and her nationality, were something quite extraordinary. I declare to you, she positively held her own with the best of us—except for a certain brusquerie and outspoken way about her, you might have thought her an English girl of our own class. He would marry her, and the wedding-day was fixed, and Gwendoline named as chief of the bridemaids."
"It is fifteen minutes past five, Portia," the cold voice of
Gwendoline broke in. "If we are to drive at all today—"