A Secret of the Sea: A Novel. Vol. 2 (of 3)

by T. W. Speight

The cold caught by Sir Thomas Dudgeon a few days after the ball at Stammars culminated in an attack of low fever, which confined him to the house for some weeks, and delayed the return of the family to Harley Street at the date first fixed upon.

While the baronet was thus shut up within doors, a certain estate was advertised for sale, of which he thought he should like to become the purchaser. Being unable to attend to the matter in person, he put it into the hands of Mr. Kelvin, who, in the course of the business, found himself, much against his will, under the necessity of going to Stammars, from which place he had kept himself carefully aloof for several months.

The day before going there, Kelvin mentioned his intended visit to his mother, mentioned it casually in conversation, and as a matter of no consequence, for the old lady knew of no disinclination on his part to go to Stammars, and had not the remotest suspicion that he had ever been in love with Miss Lloyd.

As soon as Matthew had left the room, Mrs. Kelvin sat down and penned a short note to Miss Deane, informing her that her cousin would be at Stammars on the morrow, and asking her to see him and write back her opinion as to how he seemed in health, whether better or worse than when Olive saw him at Easter.

The note reached Olive by the evening post while she was correcting her pupils' exercises. She read it through once and then put it quietly into her pocket: but she went up to her room earlier than usual, and it was long past midnight before she went to bed. She put out her candle--she always used to say that she could think better in the dark--and drew up her blinds, and paced her room for hours in the dim starlight. This visit of her cousin to Stammars might mean so much to her!

The main reason which, in the first instance, had induced her to come to Stammars no longer existed. Her scheme for bringing Pomeroy and Miss Lloyd together, that they might have an opportunity of falling in love with each other, had succeeded almost beyond her expectations. She had partly seen, and partly overheard, what had passed between them that evening in the back drawing-room. Her belief, as regarded Pomeroy, was that he was merely playing a part in order to win an heiress for his wife; but that Eleanor was really in love with Pomeroy, she felt equally sure. So sure, indeed, was she on this point, that all fear of Matthew Kelvin ever inducing Miss Lloyd to change her mind and look upon him with kindly eyes had vanished from Olive's mind for ever. Let her cousin marry whomsoever he might, there was one person in the world who would never become his wife, and that person was Eleanor Lloyd--on that point there could be no possible mistake. So far, she had cut her way clearly and boldly towards the end she had had in view from the first. But much remained for her still to do. In the first place, she must satisfy her cousin that all chance of his ever winning Miss Lloyd was utterly at an end. This there would not be much difficulty in effecting; but something much harder would remain to be achieved before she could hope to benefit in the least by all that had gone before. There was no hope of her ever being able to win her cousin's affections, no hope that he would ever ask her to become his wife, unless the opportunity were given her of seeing him and being with him daily--unless, in fact, he and she were living under the same roof. But how was such an end to be accomplished? True it was that she might, on some easily-invented pretext, throw up her position at Stammars, and go and live with her aunt for a week or two while looking out for another situation. But that was not what she wanted. Her next situation might take her a couple of hundred miles away, and so separate her from her cousin for years--for ever. It were better to remain at Stammars than run such a risk as that. True it was that she had lived under her cousin's roof for several weeks before coming to Stammars, without, to all appearance, advancing one single step towards the end she had in view. But she flattered herself that her failure at that time was altogether due to the fact that her cousin had not as yet, whatever he might say to the contrary, given up all expectation of one day inducing Miss Lloyd to change her mind in his favour. In any case, his recent disappointment sat too freshly upon him: his hurt was not yet healed, the image of Miss Lloyd was still too constantly in his mind's eye, for any real hope to exist that he might have his eyes and his thoughts diverted elsewhere. But that time was now gone by. Mr. Kelvin was no love-sick schoolboy, to go whimpering through the world because he could not have the particular toy on which he had set his mind. When once the first sharp pang was over, when once he knew for a fact that the heart he had one day hoped to call his was irrevocably given to another, pride would come to the aid of his natural strength of character, and he would school himself to forget, would school himself to obliterate from his memory all traces of so painful an episode.

Then, if ever, would come Olive's chance; then, if ever, would come the opportunity so intensely longed for. But, in order to avail herself of that opportunity, in order to put it to all the uses of which it was capable, it was imperatively necessary that she should be there--on the spot. Thus, to-night, the problem which Olive Deane had set herself to solve--the problem which kept her out of bed half the night and awake the remaining half, was, "How, and by what means, is it possible for me to make myself an inmate of my cousin's house, so that he may have an opportunity of learning to love me?"

Just as the first ghostly glimmer of daylight was beginning to creep across the sky, she sat up in bed, moved by a thought against which she had been fighting faintly all night long, but which had conquered her at last. "If only he were ill!" was the thought that at last clothed itself with definite words in her mind. "If only he were ill!" she said aloud, staring out with blank, sleepless eyes at the dawn. "Aye--if! Then I could claim to nurse him; then I could obtain a place by his side. He has no sister, his mother is old and infirm, and no one else is so near to him as I am. And why should he not be ill?"

She went down to breakfast with dark-rimmed eyes and sallow cheeks, and looking as if she had aged five years in a few short hours. Still the same question kept repeating itself like a refrain in her mind, "Why should he not be ill?" Over and over again, as though it were a question asked by some other than herself, it seemed to be whispered in her ear; and even when she was hearing her pupils their lessons, it seemed to write itself in blood-red letters across the book in her hand.

Matthew Kelvin reached Stammars about noon. Olive had asked one of the servants to let her know when he arrived. Then she wrote a little note and sent it to him in the library, where he was closeted with Sir Thomas. "Come and have luncheon with me in my room as soon as your business is over." Then she put on another dress, and laid out her bonnet, mantle, and gloves, so that they would be ready at a moment's notice. She had quite made up her mind that she should go back to Pembridge with her cousin.