"Ah yes," said Hammond a little vaguely. "Here we are."
CHAPTER XXXII.
LOTTIE WINS.
Percival had not been wrong about Lottie: she had at any rate only partially understood what she was doing. The poor child had been bitterly humiliated by the discovery that he did not love her, and felt that she was disgraced for life by her ill-judged advance. The feeling was high-flown and exaggerated no doubt, but one hardly expects to find all the cool wisdom of Ecclesiastes in a brain of seventeen. Lottie, flying from Percival's scorn as she supposed, was ready for any desperate leap. What wonder that she took one into Horace's open arms! How could she find a better salve for wounded pride than by captivating the man who had passed her by as nothing but a child, and who had been, as she would have said, "much too great a swell to take any notice of her"? He had dangled in a half-hearted fashion after Addie, and had given himself airs. Wounded vanity had attracted him to Lottie, but, smitten by sudden passion, he wooed her hotly, with an eagerness which startled even himself. How could she be unconscious of the difference and of her triumph? Percival Thorne, who had slighted her, should see her reigning at Brackenhill!
Proud, pleased, grateful, excited, dizzy with success, Lottie was swept away by the torrent of mingled feelings. Her sorrow for her father's death was violent, but not lasting. She could not feel his loss for any length of time, she had always been so much more her mother's child. Even during her mourning there was something of romance in Horace's letters of comfort, for Horace, who had always been the laziest correspondent in the world, wrote ardent letters to Lottie, and used all the hackneyed yet ever fresh expedients for transmitting them which have been bequeathed to us by generations of bygone lovers. There were meetings too, more romantic still. No one is so sentimental as the man who is startled out of a languid scorn of sentiment. He does not know where to stop. Horace would have been capable of serenading Lottie if Mrs. Blake would only have slept on the other side of the house.
Addie was unconscious of the fiery romance which went on close at hand. She felt that the languid attentions which she had prized were fading away and would never ripen to anything more. Her sorrow for her father's death was deeper than Lottie's, and while it was fresh she hardly thought of Horace Thorne's coldness, except as a part of the general dreariness of life, and did not attempt to seek out its cause. Even Mrs. Blake never for a moment expected the revelation which was made to her near the beginning of October.
It was Lottie who told her, coming to her one night with a white face of agony and resolution.
Horace was dangerously ill. He had been ill before, but this was something altogether different. The cold which led to such alarming results had been caught in one of his secret expeditions to see Lottie. She had been forced to keep him waiting, and a chilly September rain had drenched him to the skin. He had gone away in his wet clothes, had tried to pretend that there was nothing amiss with him, and had gone out the next day in order to be able to attribute his cold to a ride in the north-east wind. Since that time Lottie had had three letters—the first a gallant little attempt at gayety and hopefulness; the second, after a considerable interval, depressed and anxious. They had ordered him abroad. "I am sure they think badly of me," he wrote, "though I'll cheat the grave yet—if I can. But how am I to live through the winter in some horrible hole of a place without my darling? Suppose I get worse instead of better, and die out there, and never see you again—never once?" And so on for a page of forebodings. Lottie's fondness for him, fanned by pity and remorse—was it not for her that he had risked his life?—flamed up to passion. They say that a woman always puts the real meaning of her letter into the postscript. I don't know how that may be, but I do not think she would ever fail to give full weight to any postscript she might receive. Horace's postscript was, "After all, I've a great mind to stay in England and chance it."
Lottie was terrified. She replied, wildly entreating him to go, and vowing that they should meet again and not be parted. She did not yet know what she would do, but—Then followed a few notes of music roughly dashed in.
He was puzzled. He tried the notes furtively on the piano, but they told him nothing. That day, however, there came to his mother's house a girl with whom he had had one of his numerous flirtations in bygone days. He asked her to play to him, and then to sing, hanging over the piano meanwhile, and thrilling her with his apparent devotion and with the melancholy which reminded her of the fate which threatened him. When she had finished her song he said, "But you'll sing me one more, won't you? I sha'n't have the chance again, you know." He looked down as he spoke and struck the notes which haunted him. "Do you know what that is?" he asked. "It has been going in my head all day, and I can't put a name to it."