“Mrs. Travers’ carriage stops the way,” cries a voice outside.
The name is taken up, and re-echoed again and again, till it is given as “Travers’ carriage,” “Travers’ Brougham,” “Towers’ coming out.”
Evelyn, hastily cloaking, has sprung into her Clarence, but not before a tender glance and a bewitching smile, accompanied by a hurried “you will dine with me to-morrow, my last evening,” has quite restored the young guardsman to equanimity.
Let us leave our heroine to the society of her own thoughts, and look once more through memory’s glass into the long vista of the past. Many characters who have once figured in these pages, are now no longer living. Mrs. Dale has died, a heart-broken woman, most ungratefully treated by the husband for whom she had sacrificed her child, and her own, and much of her daughter’s fortune. The by no means disconsolate widower shortly after married one of the most devoted of his many female worshippers—and his present wife rivals, it is said, even that great saint in sanctity. The good old Squire has gone to his final account. Peace be with his ashes!—for his vices were born of circumstance, his virtues were his own.
Evelyn is now a widow. Let us drop a veil over the closing scenes of the life of one whose deathbed was invaded by the baleful spectres of delirium tremens. Let us hope that, though disliking her husband, the wife shrank not from her duty when the poor sufferer’s moans resounded through the chamber of sickness. I have reason to know Evelyn was dissatisfied with herself, when the end came—at last unexpectedly, almost suddenly: but I will fain hope she judged too harshly her involuntary shortcomings. I know, also, that if she in any way failed in her duty, her sin has not remained unpunished.
Old Mrs. Travers still lives, or rather vegetates, like some elderly animal of the feline species, who passes her time in spitting at any more juvenile pussy who ventures across her august path. She has gone to live—I know not where, and care still less. Sweet Woodlands, no longer the abode of a Travers, has passed to a very distant connexion of the family. Evelyn consequently is still condemned to be without kith and kin in the world. When, therefore, under the advice of the family physician, she decided on a prolonged sojourn in Italy, a letter was at once despatched to secure myself as a travelling companion. I was then, and am still—shall I confess it?—AN OLD MAID—for I was past thirty, and unmarried.
I gladly accepted Evelyn’s proposal to accompany her, but made it a condition that little Ella, her only child, should be my especial charge, thus relieving her mother of some little care and responsibility.
The evening preceding our departure, we dined at our hotel, in company with Colonel Reginald Melville; and, as he had politely brought us a box for Covent Garden, we left instantly after dinner, in order not to lose the commencement of the opera.
Whilst my ears were drinking in the magnificent harmonies of the “Benediction des Poignards,” in the Huguenots, and my breath was suspended as the delicious tones of the matchless Mario rang through the house, in the exquisite final duo, I naturally turned to Evelyn, whom I knew to be passionately fond of music as myself, and to be even a better judge of it scientifically than I am, I met her entranced look: but I saw that Colonel Melville had eyes and ears only for her.
“She was his sight;