A Terrible Secret: A Novel

by May Agnes Fleming

I.—Miss Darrell
II.—A Night in the Snow
III.—Trixy's Party
IV.—"Under the Gaslight"
V.—Old Copies of the "Courier"
VI.—One Moonlight Night
VII.—Short and Sentimental
VIII.—In Two Boats
IX.—Alas for Trix
X.—How Trix took it
XI.—How Lady Helena took it
XII.—On St. Partridge Day
XIII.—How Charley took it
XIV.—To-morrow
XV.—Lady Helena's Ball
XVI.—"O My Cousin Shallow-hearted!"
XVII.—"Forever and Ever"
XVIII.—The Summons
XIX.—At Poplar Lodge
XX.—How the Wedding-day Began
XXI.—How the Wedding-day Ended
XXII.—The Day After
XXIII.—The Second Ending of the Tragedy

PART III.

I.—At Madame Mirebeau's, Oxford Street
II.—Edith
III.—How they Met
IV.—How they Parted
V.—The Telling of the Secret
VI.—The last Ending of the Tragedy
VII.—Two Years After
VIII.—Forgiven or—Forgotten?
IX.—Saying Good-by
X.—The Second Bridal
XI.—The Night
XII.—The Morning

CHAPTER I.

BRIDE AND BRIDEGROOM ELECT.

Firelight falling on soft velvet carpet, where white lily buds trail along azure ground, on chairs of white-polished wood that glitters like ivory, with puffy of seats of blue satin; on blue and gilt panelled walls; on a wonderfully carved oaken ceiling; on sweeping draperies of blue satin and white lace; on half a dozen lovely pictures; on an open piano; and last of all, on the handsome, angry face of a girl who stands before it—Inez Catheron.

The month is August—the day the 29th—Miss Catheron has good reason to remember it to the last day of her life. But, whether the August sun blazes, or the January winds howl, the great rooms of Catheron Royals are ever chilly. So on the white-tiled hearth of the blue drawing-room this summer evening a coal fire flickers and falls, and the mistress of Catheron Royals stands before it, an angry flush burning deep red on either dusk cheek, an angry frown contracting her straight black brows.

The mistress of Catheron Royals,—the biggest, oldest, queerest, grandest place in all sunny Cheshire,—this slim, dark girl of nineteen, for three years past the bride-elect of Sir Victor Catheron, baronet, the last of his Saxon race and name, the lord of all these sunny acres, this noble Norman pile, the smiling village of Catheron below. The master of a stately park in Devon, a moor and "bothy" in the highlands, a villa on the Arno, a gem of a cottage in the Isle of Wight. "A darling of the gods," young, handsome, healthy; and best of all, with twenty thousand a year.

She is his bride-elect. In her dark way she is very handsome. She is to be married to Sir Victor early in the next month, and she is as much in love with him as it is at all possible to be. A fair fate surely. And yet while the August night shuts down, while the wind whistles in the trees, while the long fingers of the elm, just outside the window, tap in a ghostly way on the pane, she stands here, flushed, angry, impatient, and sullen, her handsome lips set in a tight, rigid line.

She is very dark at all times. Her cousin Victor tells her, laughingly, she is an absolute nigger when in one of her silent rages. She has jet-black hair, and big, brilliant, Spanish eyes. She is Spanish. Her dead mother was a Castilian, and that mother has left her her Spanish name, her beautiful, passionate Spanish eyes, her hot, passionate Spanish heart. In Old Castile Inez was born; and when in her tenth year her English father followed his wife to the grave, Inez came home to Catheron Royals, to reign there, a little, imperious, hot-tempered Morisco princess ever since.