"HARRY DUTTON.
"P.S.—My wife is a governess in the family of Mr. Markham, Heatherbrae, Wimbledon."
It was sealed, directed, and the patient had sunk into a heavy stupor; but Cecil felt her heart stirred as she had never expected to do again.
Here, if she had required it, was complete exoneration of any subsequent intercourse having taken place between Du Meresq and Bluebell. The latter evidently had been far otherwise engaged, and, for the first time, she felt her long-cherished resentment melting away.
She gazed with some curiosity at the man who could so soon supplant Bertie, and smiled with irrepressible bitterness at the singular coincidence that she should be striving to preserve a husband to Bluebell, who had deprived her of her own early love.
But where could she have met this man, whom she had married almost immediately on landing in England? Cecil looked again at the address—"Right Honourable Lord Bromley." She had heard that name somewhere, but could not recall any connecting associations.
Harry lingered some time, his life frequently despaired of; and he would probably have succumbed had it not been for the untiring energy and care of the hospital nurse. Her anxiety could not have been exceeded by Bluebell herself, for Cecil's disposition was generous, and she never more truly forgave her ci-devant enemy than when thus labouring to return good for evil.
At last the turning-point was reached and Dutton lifted from the very gates of the grave. A wound in his leg was now the chief retarding circumstance; and as it seemed incapable of healing at Scutari, he was ordered on sick leave to England.
In the mean time, a lively friendship had arisen between him and Cecil. Directly she admitted her name and former intimacy with Bluebell, Harry took her entirely into his confidence, and, encouraged by the evident interest with which she listened, related how he had first met and fallen in love with Bluebell on the steamer, and subsequently persuaded her to elope with him.
He did not deny the interested motives which had afterwards induced him to conceal the marriage; but Cecil's upright mind recoiled at the unworthy deception, and the strong view she took of it made short work of the extenuating circumstances advanced by Harry.