Roland Yorke / A Sequel to "The Channings"

by Mrs. Henry Wood

As he stood there, with his face of pain, speaking not in an angry tone, but one mournfully subdued, certain items connected with the past rose up to fill the mind of Mrs. Bede Greatorex. She was aware then that he knew all; she had some little shame left in her, and her very brow grew crimson.

"I cannot imagine what you may have heard, or be suspecting," she said, falteringly. "The past is past. I did nothing very wrong. Nothing but what plenty of other girls do."

"May God forgive you, Louisa Greatorex; as I know He has forgiven him."

It was surging up in her mind like angry waves, that far gone-by time, one event replacing another. During her prolonged visit to this very house as Louisa Joliffe, she had suffered Bede to become passionately attached to her. Suffered?--it was she who drew him and drew him on. She engaged herself to him privately; a solemn engagement; and Bede acceded to her request that it should be kept secret for a time. She did not like Bede; she was playing an utterly false part; she coveted the good income and position that would be hers as his wife, but she rather disliked him. Her motive in demanding that their engagement should be concealed, was a hope that some offer more desirable might turn up. Oh that Bede had suspected it! He looked for her to be his wife as surely as he looked for Heaven. After her return home from her visit, and John Ollivera, was sojourning at Helstonleigh, she played exactly the same game over with him. Drawing him on to love her, and engaging herself to him in private. She liked him, but she did not like to have to wait an indefinite number of years, until the young barrister should find himself in a position to marry. Which of the two she would eventually have chosen, was a matter that must remain in uncertainty for ever; most likely (she acknowledged so to herself) Bede and his wealth. Things went on smoothly enough, she corresponding ardently with both of them in secret, until the time of the March assizes--so often told of--and the fatal night when Bede Greatorex came down to Helstonleigh on a mission to his cousin. The contretemps, the almost certainty of discovery, the very probable fear that she should lose both her lovers, nearly drove Louisa out of her senses. That something in connection with it had passed between Bede and his cousin, she knew from Bede's manner that evening at her mother's; how much, she did not dare to ask. The following morning, when the news was brought to her that Mr. Ollivera had destroyed himself, she felt like a guilty woman. Whatever might have been the mystery of the death: whether he had really committed suicide, or whether Bede had shot him in the passion of his hot Spanish blood--and it was impossible but that she should have her latent doubts--she was the primary cause; and she knew it, and felt it. Had she gone out and killed him herself, she could not have felt it more. She became aware of another thing--that Bede Greatorex, searching amidst the effects of the dead on the following day, must have found her love-letters: more impassioned letters than she was wont to write to him. Bede did not visit her again during his stay at Helstonleigh, and she would not have dared to seek him. Some months later they met by accident in London: were thrown together three or four times. Bede renewed his offer of marriage, and she accepted him at once; the doubt in her mind, as to the part he might have taken in John Ollivera's death, never having been solved. She conveniently ignored it, for the glowing prospect of an establishment was all in all. But what sort of a wife did she make him?--how much did Bede, in his chivalric devotion, have to bear? She alone knew; she knew it now as she stood there; and her attempt to carry it off with a high hand to Mr. Greatorex failed signally. If ever the true sense of her sin should be brought home by Heaven to Louisa Greatorex, its weight, as connected with the treatment of her husband, would be well-nigh greater than she could bear. A curse to him before marriage; a curse to him after: Mr. Greatorex had well said it.

"Am I to starve in future, that you won't give me a home?" she burst forth, driving other thoughts away from her. "What's two hundred a year? How am I to live?"

"My recommendation to you was, that you should live in Boulogne; with or near your mother," Mr. Greatorex answered calmly. "The two hundred pounds will be amply sufficient for that."

"Two hundred pounds!" she retorted, rudely. "I shall spend that on my dress."

"As you please, of course. It is the sum that will be paid you in quarterly instalments of fifty pounds, as long as I live. At my death, the half of it only would be secured to you. Should you marry again, the payments would altogether cease. All this I stated to you in my letter: I repeat it now. Not another shilling will you receive from me--in life, or after death."

She saw her future; saw it all laid out before her as on a map; and her face took a blank look, betraying mortification and despair. No more ravishing toilettes or French waiting maids; no more costly dinner-givings, or magnificent kettle-drums. Mrs. Bede Greatorex and society must henceforth live tolerably far apart. The home she had so despised, this that she was now being turned from, would be a very palace compared with the lodgings in Boulogne.

"To prolong this interview will not be productive of further result," spoke Mr. Greatorex, taking a step towards the door. "I must beg to remind you that friends are waiting for me."