'Mr Daly expressed due sympathy and commiseration, hoping, however, that the change to Hilton Lodge might be of great benefit to the poor old lady, whose age, Mrs Danton stated, was considerably over seventy.
'Soon afterwards, the new tenants, whose references had proved unexceptionable, arrived, and in a short time they were fairly settled in their new abode. The establishment consisted of a cook, a very old woman; a housemaid, equally elderly, who was supposed, as it afterwards turned out, to wait at table, and also to attend personally on Mrs Petre; and a rather more juvenile coachman, whose duty it was to drive out Mrs Petre daily in a small brougham with one horse, the lady being invariably accompanied by the other member of her household—last, but certainly not least in her own opinion, Mrs Danton, her cousin, confidante, companion, or custodian—whatever she was, no one seemed quite to know which. Some clever person at last discovered who Mrs Petre was. She was the widow of a General Petre of the Indian army; and after this had been found out, a few of her nearer neighbours left cards upon her. But for a long time nothing was seen of her beyond occasional glimpses of a pale aged face in a close black bonnet, seated side by side in the brougham with the yellow cadaverous countenance of Mrs Danton.
'She certainly had a terrible countenance,' observed Mr Langley; 'it was what you could have imagined belonging to the evil-eye. Yet it seemed she was very attentive to the old lady; they were sometimes seen walking about arm in arm, and Mrs Danton gave up her whole time—so it seemed—to the care and amusement of her melancholy charge. Yet the strange part of it was, that although the relationship between them was said to be that of cousins, Mrs Petre, old, invalid, shabbily dressed, and wretched-looking as she was, looked a thorough lady; whilst Mrs Danton bore upon her the unmistakable stamp of vulgarity and want of breeding. She tried hard to be a lady, and no doubt was fully persuaded that she succeeded in her attempts. By degrees, however, she made her way into the good graces of one or two of the families round about; and into their ears—often in Mrs Petre's presence, who would sit silently drinking in the oft repeated story of her wrongs—she would pour out the history of the nephew's delinquencies. Such a villain as Aubrey Stanmore, Mrs Danton alleged, did not exist; nothing was too bad to be said of him; he had endeavoured to ruin his aunt, had deprived her of every shilling that he could lay hold of, and instead of deploring his conduct, rather gloried in it.
'This Aubrey Stanmore, to make my story clear,' said Mr Langley, 'was a nephew of Mrs Petre's, for whom she had always had a great affection; and by the joint advice of his father and his aunt, he had been induced to exchange his military for a mercantile career, for which he had neither the necessary capacity nor capital. This latter disadvantage was in the first instance smoothed over by an arrangement between Mrs Petre and the elder Mr Stanmore to become security for a certain sum, which, thanks to Aubrey's ignorance of business matters, was quickly swallowed up, necessitating either further securitiships or immediate failure—a crisis not to be contemplated when a little prompt aid might insure future wealth to the family through Aubrey's successes. So again, and yet again, did Mrs Petre extend a helping hand, until the crash could no longer be averted, and the failure was announced. Dearly as she loved her money, and violent as her wrath in the first instance was, she was too fond of her favourite Aubrey to withhold a free forgiveness, which would never have been cancelled but for the appearance on the scene of this Mrs Danton, a needy widow, who fanned the flame against Mr Stanmore so successfully that not only was he sternly forbidden his aunt's house, but volumes of abuse, in her once kindly, familiar handwriting, were circulated against him, damaging to both his character and future prospects.
'He was a young man, barely thirty; and surely he might hope to retrieve the past. One would have imagined so; but when he set about trying to interest some of his aunt's old friends on his behalf, they turned very coldly away. Mrs Petre's letters and denunciations bore terrible weight against Aubrey; and when he appealed again and again to her, the rebuffs he met with were studied in their insolence and severity.
'Of course, Mr Stanmore attributed her violent behaviour to its real cause—Mrs Danton, who had succeeded in persuading Mrs Petre to discharge all her old servants, upon the plea that her poverty was so great she could not afford to keep them. One in particular Mrs Danton knew it would be necessary to dismiss, and that was Janet Heath, a very superior sort of maid-housekeeper, who had been in her service for over ten years. Janet was filled with indignation when Mrs Danton first took up her residence with Mrs Petre, as she well knew the inferiority of her position, which had hitherto only been acknowledged by the latter so far as the gift of an occasional sovereign or a bundle of cast-off garments went; and to have her suddenly set at the head of affairs, and to have to listen silently to her scurrilous abuse of Mr Aubrey, was more than Janet could calmly submit to. However, when Mrs Petre herself told her that she did not wish her to remain, she had no choice but to depart; and shortly afterwards she married a man to whom she had been engaged for some years.
'But though she had left her service, Janet was too fond and faithful quite to desert Mrs Petre. She resolved to go to see her as often as she possibly could, and above everything to put in a good word as frequently as occasion permitted for Mr Stanmore, whom Janet knew to be, with all his other faults, a good-hearted and well-meaning young man.
'This plan of visiting Mrs Petre in no way suited Mrs Danton's views. She endeavoured, by covert insinuations against Janet, to poison Mrs Petre's mind; but failing in that, she resolved to remove her from Janet's vicinity, and to take a house of her own choosing, with an establishment also selected by herself. She had been in power for about two years when they came to Hilton Lodge, and in that time Mrs Danton had wormed her way pretty successfully into the confidence of Mrs Petre's old friends, and poisoned their minds most thoroughly against her nephew, who after, to his great joy, having been sent for and fully forgiven by Mrs Petre, had suddenly been told his visits to her house were not desired, and that, although she had forgiven, she had no intention of holding any further intercourse with him!
'This was a sad blow to Mr Stanmore; but from what he had seen of Mrs Danton, he conceived it to be his duty to write out to his cousin in India, Major Arthur Dumaresque, and tell him, as the only other relative of Mrs Petre, that he did not consider she was in safe or proper hands; and urged upon him the necessity for some action in the matter.
'But in this too he had been forestalled, for Major Dumaresque had already been communicated with by Mrs Danton, who, under cover of Mrs Petre's name, wrote out such slanderous accounts of Mr Stanmore that he was quite under the impression that Mrs Danton was only acting as Mrs Petre's guardian angel, and was benevolently protecting her from the spider, namely, Aubrey Stanmore. Mrs Danton represented in glowing, though somewhat illiterate and misspelt, terms her entire devotion to her dear cousin, her desire to act altogether so as to insure the interests of Major Dumaresque, to whom Mrs Petre had resolved to leave whatever fortune she might die possessed of. As for herself, she wanted—nothing—but the heart and confidence of her charge.