“Oh, I see you remember him; he was such a flirt, he was always making himself agreeable to women. It did not matter who they were,” said Augusta, fixing her eyes on her victim’s face, “or what class of people, so long as they were at all nice-looking, or could sing, or draw, or anything. I remember I sent him out to try whether he could not hear you sing the very day I was married. He was another of the people who believed in you, Lottie. He did not hear you then, so he made mamma ask you, you remember. He had something to do with a new opera company, and he was always on the look-out for a new voice.”
Once more Lottie turned her eyes upon Mrs. Temple, eyes full of anguish and wonder. Who else could she turn to?—not to the cruel executioner who sat opposite to her, with a lurking smile about her heartless mouth. How cruel a woman can be with a fair face, and no signs of the savage in her! Augusta saw that her arrow had struck home, and was encouraged to do more.
“Oh, yes; he was in a great state about your voice. He said it would make his fortune and yours too. He was always ridiculously sanguine. You know how he used to flatter you, Lottie, and go to all your lessons. Oh, you must not tell me that you don’t remember, for I could see you liked it. Well,” said Augusta, who did not lose a single change of colour, no quiver of her victim’s lips, or flutter of her bosom, “that sort of thing is all over now. Oh, I daresay he will continue to take a great interest as an amateur; but his position is now entirely changed. My poor cousin Ridsdale, Rollo’s eldest brother, was killed in the hunting-field about a fortnight ago. Such a shock for us all! but it has made a great change for Rollo. He is Lord Ridsdale now, and my uncle Courtland’s heir. His servant came last Friday week to fetch some things he had left at the Deanery—for he had gone away for the day only, not knowing what had happened. Poor fellow; and yet, of course, though he was truly grieved and all that, it is great good fortune for him. We are not likely now” Augusta added, with a faint smile, “to see much of him here.”
Lottie did not say a word. She sat, no longer changing colour, perfectly pale, with the great blue eyes that had so expanded and dilated during her illness, fixed upon the vacant air. To hear him named was still something, and filled her with a sick excitement, an anguish of interest and agitation. After the long silence, after the cutting of all ties, after his cruel desertion of her, after the blow which had all but killed her, to hear of him had been something. Pain—yet a pain she was more eager to undergo than to meet any pleasure. But Lottie had not calculated upon the cruel, treacherous, yet careless, blow which fell upon her now, upon her quivering wounds. To hear her voice, was that what it was? not to see her because he loved her, but to hear her singing. Till now she had at least had her past. He was false, and had forsaken her, she knew, but once he had loved her; the Rollo who gazed up in the moonlight at her window had still been hers, though another Rollo had betrayed her trust and broken her heart. But now! the blood ebbed away from her face, and seemed to fail from her heart; the beating of it grew confused and muffled in her ears. She gazed with her great eyes, all strained and pained with gazing, at nothing. To hear her sing, not seeking her, but only running after a new voice! She sat with her hands clasped upon her lap in a kind of piteous appeal, and sometimes would look at the one and then the other, asking them—was it true, could it be true?
“I must go,” said Augusta, having fired her shot, “and I am glad to have such a good account of you. Only a bad cold and a hoarseness, such as are quite common. Mamma will be pleased to hear, and so will the Signor. I can’t tell him anything about your voice, because you have not let me hear it, Lottie. Oh, quite prudent—much the best thing not to use it at all; though with an old friend, to be sure—you look rather ill, I am bound to say.”
Lottie sat still in the same attitude after this cruel visitor was gone, all her thoughts going back upon that time, which after all was only a few months, yet which seemed her life. She had given him up, or rather she had accepted his abandonment of her, without a struggle, without a hope; it had been to her as a doom out of Heaven. She had not even blamed him. It had killed her, she thought. She had not resisted, but it had killed her. Now, however, she could not submit. In her heart she fought wildly against this last, most cruel blow. He was not hers, he was cut off from her, by his own murderous hand; but to give up the lover who had loved her before he knew her, who had watched under her window and wiled her heart away, that she could not do. She fought against it passionately in her soul. The afternoon went on without a sound, nothing but the ashes softly falling from the fire, the soft movement of Mrs. Temple’s arm as she worked; but the silence tingled all the time with the echo of Augusta’s words, and with the hot conflict of recollections in her own heart, opposing and denying them. Mrs. Temple worked quietly by and watched, divining something of the struggle, though she did not know what it was. At last, all at once in the stillness, the girl broke forth passionately: “Oh, no, no,” she cried, “not that! I will not believe it. Not that; it is not true.”
“What is not true, dear? tell me,” her companion said, laying down her work, and coming forward with tender hands outstretched, and pity in her eyes.
“You heard her,” Lottie said, “you heard her. That it was to hear me singing—that it was all for my voice. No, no, not that! It could not be—that was not true. You could not believe that was true.”
And Lottie looked at her piteously, clasping her hands, entreating her with those pathetic eyes for a little comfort. “Not that, not that,” she said. “My singing, was it likely? Oh you cannot think that!” she cried.
Mrs. Temple did all she could to soothe her. “My poor child, it is all over—over and ended—what does it matter now?”