He dropped down into a chair all weak and worn, and held his head in his hands: his nerves now more shattered than her own. It was all he could do to keep himself from bursting like a woman into tears.
“You surely do not imagine that I could doubt what you say? I am glad, very glad, that it was so——” she said, her voice melting. He was her father still, and she was not guiltless towards him. “I wish that I had waited till you came,” she said.
“Yes;” he seized eagerly upon this little advantage. “I wish that you had waited till I came: but it was not to be expected. I do not say that it was to be expected.” Then he hoisted himself by his hands pressing upon the table, and looked at her. “Bless me,” he said, “how thin you are, and how pale!—is this—is this my doing? Gracious! shut up so long, poor girl!—I suppose you must hate me, Jane?”
Lady Jane went up to him holding out her hands. “Father, I have sinned against you too. Forgive me!” she cried, too generous not to take upon herself the blame; and so the father and daughter kissed each other, he crying like a child, she like a mother supporting him. Such a moment had never been in the Duke’s long life before.
And we are bound to allow that neither the Duchess, who was his faithful wife, nor Winton, always ready to appreciate the noble sentiments of Lady Jane, could ever understand the fulness of this reconciliation. It is to be hoped that the reader will comprehend better. They were too resentful and indignant to resume their old relations in a moment as if nothing had happened, which Lady Jane did with perhaps more tenderness than before. But into this question there is no time to enter. When Lady Jane went in softly, as if she had left her mother half an hour before, into the morning-room, the Duchess flung away her papers with a great cry, and rushed upon her daughter, clasping her almost fiercely, looking over her shoulder with all the ferocity of a lioness in defence of her offspring. She would have ordered the carriage at once to take Lady Jane away, or even have gone with her on the spot, on foot or in a cab, to a place of safety: but Lady Jane would not hear of any such proceeding. She calmed her mother, as she had soothed her father, and in an hour’s time Winton was in that little room, which suddenly was turned into Paradise. He had been carrying about with him all this time a special licence ready for use, and as everything can be done at a moment’s notice in town, even in February, Lady Jane Altamont, attended by a small but quite sufficient train, and before a whole crowd of excited witnesses, was married next morning at St George’s, Hanover Square, like everybody else of her degree. Needless to say that there was in the ‘Morning Post’ next morning, as well as in most of the other papers, an account of the ceremony, with a delicate hint of difficulties, unnecessary to enter into, which had gone before. This was read by many who understood, and by a great many more who did not understand; but nowhere with greater excitement than in the rectory-house of St Alban’s, E.C., where Mrs Marston took the fashionable paper, poor lady, because in that wilderness she was so out of the way of everything. She rushed in upon her husband in his study (who had just seen it in the ‘Standard’ with feelings which are indescribable) with the broadsheet in her hand. “Listen to this, William,” she cried solemnly; “didn’t I tell you it was none of our business to meddle! and your fine Duke, whom you were so anxious to be serviceable to, and that never said thank you—— But I told you what you had to expect,” Mrs Marston cried.
THE FUGITIVES.
CHAPTER I.
Helen Goulburn was sitting alone in the great drawing-room of her father’s country-house on an evening in October. It had been very sultry during the day, and the great heat had ended in a thunderstorm and torrents of rain. Now all the tumult and commotion of the elements were over. The night was cool and fresh. The great windows were open to the unseen garden, from which a sweetness of honeysuckle and mignonnette and late roses came in upon every breath of the fitful night air. The room was an immense room, far too large for a solitary occupant. She and her lamp and her white dress made a lightness in one corner; the rest of the huge drawing-room was faintly lighted with candles, of which there were regiments about on the walls, reflected vaguely from mirrors here and there, on tables and consoles and cabinets,—but yet not enough to give anything like light to the vast shadowy room, which was full of everything that is rich and rare—of everything at least that the highest price could buy or the best workmen produce. The windows, a long line of them, all draped in that shadowy whiteness, stood open, as has been said. Most girls of Helen’s age would have been afraid to sit all alone, with so many windows opening on to a lawn, which in its turn swept downwards into the park, at so late an hour. Sometimes the lace curtains swayed in the night wind as if put aside by a shadowy hand. It was difficult to keep the imagination from developing some stealthy figure half hidden in the drapery, some one coming in, out of the darkness outside. The house was full of wealth, and the temptations to a sudden raid might have been many. When the branches swayed in the night air, bringing down a shower of raindrops, or some twig cracked, or one of the mysterious noises of which darkness is always full, broke the absolute quiet—any one of those sounds, which yet were scarcely definite sounds at all, might have conveyed a tremor to the lonely occupant of all this mystic space and solitude. But Helen sat unmoved. She was used to the vacant bigness of the great house, often inhabited by only herself and her little sister, and a crowd of servants. She had been in the hands of a governess till very lately, and in the routine of lessons and the certainty that a schoolgirl was not likely to be interrupted by visitors, had escaped all consciousness of the isolation of the great house. It was the most splendid in the county, surrounded by a beautiful park, embosomed in great trees. When Mr Goulburn bought it from the decaying proud family to whom its glories belonged, Fareham was already a noble place; and he had added greatly to it, had built out a room here and a room there, and enlarged it with every extravagance of convenience that lavish wealth could think of. He had built and decorated in the most costly way the splendid room in which his daughter was sitting; he had fitted out for her a suite of rooms worthy of a princess; the very servants were lodged as half the well-to-do people in England would have been glad to be lodged. Outside, in the darkness of the summer night, full of dew and rain and soft fragrance, were acres of flower-beds and conservatories, tended by a regiment of gardeners.