“But, Rex, you said we should lose all our money—”
“Oh, bother!” cried the boy. “Who’s to say anything? Should I make a trial and expose everything to take her money from Amy? (It isn’t so very much you have, any of you, that I should mind.) I suppose even, if I insisted, they might take a villa for her here or somewhere. And then one could say she lived abroad for her health. That is what people do every day. I know lots of fellows whose father, or their mother, or some one, lives abroad for their health. It would be more respectable. It would be a thing you could talk about when it was necessary,” Rex said.
Sophy’s mind was scarcely yet open to this view of the question. “I wish you had told me,” she said peevishly, “that one could get out of it like that; for I should have liked to speak to mamma—”
“I don’t know that we can get out of it like that. The law is very funny; it may be impossible, perhaps. But, at all events,” said Reginald, recovering his oars, and giving one great impulse forward with all his strength, which made the boat shoot along the lake like a living thing, “I know that I won’t let it be muddled any longer if I can help it, and that I am going to interfere.”
CHAPTER LVIII.
Roland Hamerton did not find any trace of her. He had pledged himself easily, in utter ignorance of all ways and means, to find her, knowing nothing, neither how to set about such a search, or where he was likely to meet with success in it. It is easy for a young man, in his fervor, to declare that he is able to do anything for the girl he loves, and to feel that in that inspiration he is sure to carry all before him. But love will not trace the lost even when it is the agony of love for the lost, and that passion of awful longing, anxiety, and fear which is, perhaps, the most profound of all human emotions. The fact that he loved Rosalind did not convert him into that sublimated and heroic version of a detective officer which is to be found more often in fiction than reality. He, too, went to all the hotels, as John Trevanion had done; he walked about incessantly, looking at everybody he met, and trying hard, in his bad French, to push cunning inquiries everywhere—inquiries which he thought cunning, but which were in reality only very innocently anxious, betraying his object in the plainest way. “A tall lady, English, with remains of great beauty.” “Oui, monsieur, nous la connaissons;” a dozen such lively responses were made to him, and he was sent in consequence to wander about as many villas, to prowl in the gardens of various hotels, rewarded by the sight of some fine Englishwomen and some scarecrows, but never with the most distant glimpse of the woman he sought. He did, however, meet and recognize almost at every turn the young fellow whose appearances at Bonport had been few since Rosalind’s repulse, but whom he had seen several times in attendance upon Mrs. Lennox, and of whom he knew that he was understood to have been seen in the village at Highcourt, presumably on account of Rosalind, and was therefore a suitor too, and a rival. Something indefinable in his air, though Roland did not know him sufficiently to be a just judge, had increased at first the natural sensation of angry scorn with which a young lover looks upon another man who has presumed to lift his eyes to the same objet adoré; but presently there arose in his mind something of that same sensation of fellowship which had drawn him, on the first night of his arrival, towards Rivers. They were in “the same box.” No doubt she was too good for any of them, and Everard had not the sign and seal of the English gentleman about him—the one thing indispensable; but yet there was a certain brotherhood even in the rivalry. Roland addressed him at last when he met him coming round one of the corners, where he himself was posted, gazing blankly at an English lady pointed out to him by an officious boatman from the lake. His gaze over a wall, his furtive aspect when discovered, all required, he felt, explanation. “I think we almost know each other,” he said, in a not unfriendly tone. Everard took off his hat with the instinct of a man who has acquired such breeding as he has in foreign countries, an action for which, as was natural, the Englishman mildly despised him. “I have seen you, at least, often,” he replied. And then Roland plunged into his subject.
“Look here! You know the Trevanions, don’t you? Oh yes, I heard all about it—the children and all that. I am a very old friend;” Roland dwelt upon these words by way of showing that a stranger was altogether out of competition with him in this respect at least. “There is a lady in whom they are all—very much interested, to say the least, living somewhere about here; but I don’t know where, and nobody seems to know. You seem to be very well up to all the ways of the place; perhaps you could help me. Ros— I mean,” said Roland, with a cough to obliterate the syllable—“they would all be very grateful to any one who would find—”
“What,” said Everard, slowly, looking in Roland’s face, “is the lady’s name?”
It was the most natural question; and yet the one man put it with a depth of significance which to a keener observer than Roland would have proved his previous knowledge; while the other stood entirely disconcerted, and not knowing how to reply. It was perfectly natural; but somehow he had not thought of it as a probable question. And he was not prepared with an answer.
“Oh—ah—her name. Well, she is a kind of a relation, you know—and her name would be—Trevanion.”