She had not been twenty-four hours in his company before she detected that he had determined upon becoming a suitor for her hand, having fortified himself with a belief that her father would give with her a dower, which would for ever set at rest his pecuniary anxieties for the future. But she revolted at the thought of being sought for what she should bring, rather than for her beauty—her heart, so brimful of passion and tenderness—for her very self. Especially did she recoil from the supposition that she was a “tassel gentle” to be lured by such a falconer’s voice, for the purpose of his own aggrandisement, and her whole soul rose in rebellion against being made the puppet in such a scheme.
The Honorable Lester Vane was well-formed and handsome. There were certain points in his figure and in his lineaments of a character to attract and to win the admiration of many women—those, at least, who, with the failing of their sex, are led by appearances. He had a musically-toned voice, and a tongue, gifted with the soft cunning of oily phrases, in so eminent a degree, that it could be scarcely surpassed by that which our mother Eve found herself unequal to resist. There were few women, who, if heart-free, would have been likely to resist his advances, or to have remained proof against them were he to address himself to them as a lover. Hitherto, he had not found female conquest difficult; there was a peculiarity in his manner and appearance which interested a woman in his favour immediately she beheld him; and thus, having mastered the approaches, he, where he listed, found the citadel not difficult to carry by a coup de main.
Helen was conscious of all this. She had read his character intuitively, and had formed a just estimate of him. Perhaps her predominant feeling towards him was contempt; but with that was mingled a strange dread of some power he possessed to injure her, and which, at a future period, he would exercise with a merciless malignity. She knew this impression had no foundation, in fact—was, in truth, a mere in defined sense of impending evil, of which he was to be the perpetrator, she the sufferer. Yet, true to the nature of her sex, her conclusion, arrived at by no process of reasoning, was as clear and determined as though it had been based upon a train of facts which admitted neither of doubt nor dispute.
“At least,” she murmured, “Hugh can have nothing to fear from him, even though he will, I am fully convinced, omit no stratagem to gain my love, as the means of securing my hand and portion—the portion being rather a considerable item in the object he proposes to accomplish. His eye looks down searchingly into my heart, as though he would read and interpret its most delicate mysteries and fathom its secrets, that he may hold me in duress. Never! I defy him! He cannot, shall not, detect or decipher anything I may purpose to conceal. He has destined me for his prey, a golden fly, to be enmeshed in the entanglements of a web, every filament of which is too palpable in my eyes. Ha! there are two words to a bargain. It would be a delicious revenge to bring this schemer down upon his knees before me, actually and absolutely an abject wooer: so that when, with burning words and scorching tears, he pleaded his love, I might spurn him with my foot. I will do it! Already has he commenced, with consummate art, to make me think about him: he must exercise a wily skill indeed to make me love him! I will meet him upon his own battle-field; I will not appear to employ either art or skill, yet will I stake my happiness that I will compel him to love me with a passionate ardour, of which now he does not believe his soul capable. Ay, and when, with a whirlwind of pleadings, urgings, and fervid prayers, he implores me to bestow my heart upon him, then, in my moment of triumph, I will open up to his terrible discomfiture my full knowledge of the speculation which embraced my purse with my person, and laugh with derisive scorn, at so shallow an attempt to win and wear me—me!”
While that reference to herself yet trembled upon her lips, a thought rushed through her brain, and a flush of crimson spread itself over her fair neck and face, and then it subsided, and left her deadly pale.
At this moment, the postman’s well-known ring at the gate-bell, given with skilful force, resounded suddenly through the house. The noise made her start, and utter a faint scream. Her heart began to beat violently, while a strange presentiment seized her that the epistle which had arrived by this channel was for her. An emotion of dread oppressed her, for which she was at a loss to account, for she had but few correspondents, and among them there was not one whose communication ought to contain any matter to occasion her feelings of dread.
She had forgotten one.
She listened breathlessly for the light foot-fall of Chayter. She was not disappointed. The door opened, and her quiet, neatly-dressed, sleek maid entered, bearing a note upon a small silver salver.
Helen assumed an air of indifference she did not feel. She glanced, from beneath her long dark eyelashes, rapidly at the letter, but she played with the pendants of a bracelet, and yawned in Chayter’s face.
“A letter for you, if you please, miss,” said the girl, and handed it to her.