He remained at the Château Mornier with his mother till in the autumn she left it for a more genial climate. And one day soon after receiving Colonel Archer’s letter, he read, in the newspaper, of the death of the well-known and distinguished Member for ——, Hartford Vere, and bestowed a moment’s passing pity on the scantily provided for orphan children of the great man!
The Severns did not winter at. Altes. That was spared him. He persuaded his mother to try Italy for a change. Yet more, he obtained from her a promise that should all be well, the following spring should see the family re-established at Medhurst. Once there, he felt he should be more free to leave them; and travel by himself where the fancy seized him, or rather, wherever he saw the most encouraging prospect for the furtherance of the special studies which he was now determined to resume in earnest, and in which he hoped to find sufficient interest to prevent his life from becoming altogether a blank. His mother was ready enough now-a-days to agree to his wishes, even, when possible, to forestall them. Since Sybil’s illness at Lusac, there had been a great change in Lady Severn. She had learned to cling much to her hitherto little valued son. And something had reached her, in some subtle, impalpable way, of the sorrow, of the bitterness of disappointment through which this summer had seen him pass. She knew no particulars, her private suspicions even, were wide of the mark; but she could see that he had aged strangely of late. Always grave, he had grown more so, and it was long since any of the bright, sudden flashes of humour had been heard, which of old relieved by their sparkle, his usual quiet seriousness.
Something of her anxiety about him, she one day endeavoured to express to him; but she never tried it again. With perfect gentleness, but irresistible firmness, he put her aside; and in her inmost heart she felt she deserved it.
He could forgive, even, in a sense, forget. But as to taking into his confidence, accepting the sympathy of the mother, whose previous indifference, narrow-minded prejudice, and love of power, had greatly been to blame for the great sorrow of his life—it was asking too much.
Still, though too late for confidence, there was perfect peace between mother and son; undisturbed even by the continued presence of through the winter of Florence Vyse, who had taken it into her head that the éclat of her marriage would be much increased by Medhurst being the scene of the interesting ceremony; in consequence of which the ardent Chepstow had to agree to its being deferred till the spring. Florence found it rather good fun being “engaged.” She kept her stout admirer trotting backwards and forwards between England and Italy all the winter; which was rather a profitable arrangement so far as she was concerned, as on each occasion of arrival and departure she was presented with a new and gorgeous “souvenir” of the about-to-be absent Chepstow, or token of his remembrance of her when in distant lands. His devotion was really “sweetly touching,” as ladies’ maids say; and paid well, too, for long before she became Mrs. Chepstow, the beauty had accumulated a very fair show of jewellery and such-like feminine treasures, not a few of which, in justice to her be it recorded, found their way to the humble little house standing in a “genteel” row, in one of the northern suburbs of London, where dwelt the mother and sisters on whom what she possessed of a heart was bestowed. She was more genuinely amiable and good-tempered this winter than she had yet shown herself. To Ralph in particular her manner had become gentle, almost humble. Prosperity suited her, and she could afford, now that the cause of her jealous irritation was removed, almost to pity the man, in every respect so immeasurably her superior, whose happiness she had yet, in a moment of pique and mean spitefulness, deliberately endeavoured to destroy. She too, before leaving Altes, had heard and believed Sophy Berwick’s romance; and had seized with delight the opportunity of delaying, till too late, all communication between Sir Ralph and the girl who, she fancied, had usurped her place with him.
Yet now, when she looked at him sometimes, and, despite all his proud self-control and impenetrable reserve, descried symptoms of a grief it was not in her self-absorbed nature to understand—now, when all was smiling on her, and she had begun to think herself decidedly better off with the manageable Mr. Chepstow, than she would have been as the wife of the incomprehensible Ralph, there were moments in which she wished she had not done that ugly thing, not said those two or three words, which even her easy conscience told her were neither more nor less than that which we prefer to call by any other name but its own—a cold-blooded, malicious lie.
[CHAPTER] X.
THE BEGINNING OF THE END.
“Un mensonge qui flatte ou blesse le cœur trouve plus facilement créarice qu’une vérité indéferent.”
OCTAVEFEUILET.