But he could neither have dreamt nor wished that Mrs. Barlowe’s unhappy marriage and its suppression should prove the very accidents which would put her in his power, and bestow her on him, for their mutual ruin and misery, and all without much trouble or sacrifice on his part.
He was shocked, incensed, and incredulous when he first heard his sister’s story. What! that lovely, artless, refined young woman a wife without the name!—in all probability deluded into some clandestine connection with a miscreant who had abandoned her! At least she was living apart from her husband, and had so far disowned her marriage in taking service with strangers. He demanded that he should hear the story from Miss Barlowe’s own lips; he would not believe it otherwise.
It was a trial for Master Charles even to hint at such a slander to Miss Barlowe, but he brought himself to do it.
He followed Lady Bell as she carried out the crumbs from the breakfast-table to feed the birds in the orchard. “You will forgive me for evening you to such a thing,” he said, agitated and constrained on his own account, and ready to explode with resentment on hers, should the story prove false, as how could it be true?
Yet he was troubled and disturbed in spite of himself by her changing colour, and though she did not refuse to meet his searching glances, by the wistful sorrowful look with which she bespoke his forbearance and charity.
“It must be a mistake, Miss Barlowe,” he urged. “Can it be that you are—a wedded woman, wedded to some wretch who disowns or abuses his vows?”
“Yes, sir, I was wed six months ago,” answered Lady Bell faintly, hanging her head as she spoke. “I was wed against my will, yet I consented at last, and I must abide by my consent. Do you condemn me, Master Charles?”
“I, madam? I have no right either to question or condemn,” pronounced the young man a little stiffly, and very gravely. “I pity you from my soul, and, as I am a gentleman, you may depend upon your sorrows being sacred to me.”
He spoke the truth. More than that, the pang inflicted by the communication acted as a process of disillusion on him. The deception of which Lady Bell stood convicted upon her own showing, the new character in which she appeared, robbed him of his faith in her, nipped in the bud the love which was born of single-hearted homage, and cured him by a sharp cure of his brief passion.
The spell of Lady Bell’s attractions was broken for Master Charles. She could no longer shine in his eyes as a bright particular star. For a time after her confession he avoided her, and was restless, cross, and unhappy in his mind, pining more than ever for his colours and his marching day.