"Patience, Gwen! patience one moment longer! Mary most hear the whole story now. In the Stuart family, I forgot to mention, there was a young man, a cousin of the bride-elect, with whom—it was patent to the dullest apprehension—this young person was in love. She accepted Sir Victor, you understand, while this Mr. Stuart was her lover; a common case enough, and not worthy of mention except for what came after. His manners were rarely perfect too. He was, I think, without exception, the very handsomest and most fascinating man I ever met. You would never dream—never!—that he was an American. Gwendoline will tell you the same. The sister was thoroughly trans-Atlantic, talked slang, said 'I guess,' spoke with an accent, and looked you through and through with an American girl's broad stare. The father and mother were common, to a degree; but the son—well, Gwen and I both came very near losing our hearts to him—didn't we, dear?"
"Speak for yourself," was Gwen's ungracious answer. "And, oh! for pity's sake, Portia, cut it short!"
"Pray go on, Lady Portia!" said Miss Howard, looking interested.
"I am going on," said Lady Portia. "The nice part is to come. The Stuart family, a month or more before the wedding, left Cheshire and came up to London—why, we can only surmise—to keep the lovers apart. Immediately after their departure, the bride-elect was taken ill, and had to be carried off to Torquay for change of air and all that. The wedding-day was postponed until some time in October; but at last it came. She looked very beautiful, I must say, that morning, and perfectly self-possessed; but poor Sir Victor! He was ghastly. Whether even then he suspected something I do not know; he looked a picture of abject misery at the altar and the breakfast. Something was wrong; we all saw that; but no explanation took place there. The happy pair started on their wedding-journey down into Wales, and that was the last we ever saw of them. What followed, we know; but until to-day I have never set eyes on the bridegroom. The bride, I suppose, none of us will ever set eyes on more."
"Why?" the Honorable Mary asked.
"This, my dear: An hour after their arrival in Carnarvon, Sir Victor deserted his bride forever! What passed between them, what scene ensued, nobody knows, only this—he positively left her forever. That the handsome and fascinating American cousin had something to do with it, there can be no doubt. Sir Victor took the next train from Wales to London; she remained overnight. Next day she had the audacity to return to Powyss Place and present herself to his aunt, Lady Helena Powyss. She remained there one day and two nights. On the first night, muffled and disguised, Sir Victor came down from town, had an interview with his aunt, no doubt told her all, and departed again without seeing the girl he had married. The bride next day had an interview with Lady Helena—her last—and next morning, before any one was stirring, stole out of the house like the guilty creature she was, and never was heard of more. The story, though they tried to hush it up, got in all the papers—'Romance in High Life,' they called it. Everybody talked of it—it was the nine-days' wonder of town and country. The actors in it, one by one, disappeared. Lady Helena shut up Powyss Place and went abroad; Sir Victor vanished from the world's ken; the heroine of the piece no doubt went back to her native land. That, in brief, is the story, my dear, of the interesting spectre I met to-day on the steps of Fenton's. Now, young ladies, put on your bonnets and come. I wish to call at Madame Mirebeau's, Oxford Street, before going to the park, and personally inspect my dress for the duchess' ball to-night."
Ten minutes later and the elegant barouche of Lady Portia Hampton was bowling along to Oxford Street.
"What did you say to Sir Victor, Portia?" her sister deigned to ask.
"What did he say to you?"
"He said very little to me—the answers he gave were the most vague. I naturally inquired concerning his health first, he really looked so wretchedly broken down; and he said there was nothing the matter that he had been a little out of sorts lately, that was all. My conviction is," said Lady Portia, who, like the rest of her sex, and the world, put the worst possible construction on everything, "that he has become dissipated. Purple circles and hollow eyes always tell of late hours and hard drinking. I asked him next where he had been all those ages, and he answered briefly and gloomily, in one word, 'Abroad.' I asked him thirdly, where, and how was Lady Helena; he replied that Lady Helena was tolerably well, and at present in London. 'In London!' I exclaimed, in a shocked tone, 'my dear Sir Victor, and I not know it!' He explained that his aunt was living in the closest retirement, at the house of a friend in the neighborhood of St. John's Wood, and went nowhere. Then he lifted his hat, smiled horribly a ghastly smile, turned his back upon me, and walked away. Never asked for you, Gwendoline, or Colonel Hampton, or my health, or anything."
Lady Gwendoline did not reply. They had just entered Oxford Street, and amid the moving throng of well-dressed people on the pavement, her eye had singled out one figure—the figure of a tall, slender, fair-haired man.