ARE YOU MY WIFE?
BY THE AUTHOR OF “PARIS BEFORE THE WAR,” “NUMBER THIRTEEN,” “PIUS VI.,” ETC.
CHAPTER VIII.
A STARTLING DISCLOSURE.
And how had things fared at The Lilies all this time? Sir Simon had behaved in the strangest way. Immediately after Clide’s departure, he came, according to his promise, and explained it after a plausible fashion to M. de la Bourbonais, who, unsuspecting as an infant, accepted the story without surprise or question.
At the end of a week Sir Simon knew that the worst fears were confirmed; the identity of the supposed Isabel had been disproved, and the existence of the real one ascertained beyond the possibility of doubt. Clide was on her track, but when or how he should find her was yet the secret of the future.
The one thing clear in it was, that it was a miserable business and could end in nothing but shame and sorrow for every one connected with it. Sir Simon was helpless and bewildered. He was always slow at taking in bad news, and when he succeeded in doing it, his first idea was, not to take the bull by the horns and face the facts manfully, but to stave off the evil day, to gain time, to trust to something turning up that would avert the inevitable. He had never in the whole course of his life felt so helpless in the face of evil tidings as on the present occasion. He foresaw, all too plainly, what the effect was likely to be on the innocent young creature on whom he had brought so terrible a share in the catastrophe. It was no comfort to him that it was not his fault. He would willingly have taken the fault on his own shoulders, if thereby he could have lifted the pain from hers. He was too generously absorbed in the thought of Franceline’s trouble to split hairs on the difference between remorse and regret; he cursed his own meddling as bitterly as if he had acted like a deliberate villain towards her; he felt there was nothing for him to do but blow his brains out. He passed the day he received the admiral’s letter in this suicidal and despairing state of mind. The next day his indignation against himself found some solace in vituperating Clide’s ill-luck, and the villainy of the woman who had led him such a devil’s-dance. This diversion soothed him; he slept better that night, and next morning he awoke refreshed; cheered up according to his happy matutinal habit, and took a brighter view of everything. It remained no doubt a most unfortunate affair, look at it as one might, but Franceline would get over it by and by. Why not? All the nicest girls he knew when he was a young fellow had been crossed in love, and they had all got over it, and married somebody else and lived happily ever after. Why should not Franceline do the same? De Winton was a very nice fellow, but there were other nice fellows in the world. There was Roxham, for instance. If he, Sir Simon, was a pretty girl, he was not sure but he should like Roxham best of the two; he was deuced good-looking, and the eldest son of a peer to boot; that counts with every girl, why shouldn’t it with Franceline? “But is she like every girl? Is she a butterfly to be caught by any candle?” whispered somebody at Sir Simon’s ear; but he pooh-poohed the unwelcome busybody, as he would have brushed away a buzzing fly. She must get over it; Roxham should come in and cut out this unlucky Clide. The worst of it was that conversation Sir Simon had had with Raymond before Franceline’s visit to London. If he had but had the wit to hold his tongue a little longer! Well, biting it off now would not mend matters. Roxham must come to the rescue. He had evidently been smitten the night of the ball. Sir Simon had intentionally brought him into the field to rouse Clide’s jealousy, and bring him to the point; he had invoked every species of anathema on himself for it ever since, but it was going to turn out the luckiest inspiration after all. While the baronet was performing his toilet, he arranged matters thus satisfactorily to his own mind, and by the time he came down to breakfast he was fully convinced that everything was going to be for the best. He read his letters, wished a few unpleasant little eventualities to the writers of most of them, and crammed them into a drawer where they were not likely to be disturbed for some time to come. The others he answered; then he read the newspapers, and that done, ordered his horse round, and rode to Rydal, Lady Anwyll’s place.
The conversation naturally fell on the recent ball at the Court, and from that to the acknowledged belle of the evening, Mlle. de la Bourbonais. In answer to the plump little dowager’s enthusiastic praises of his young friend’s beauty the baronet remarked that it was a pity she did not live nearer The Lilies. “It is dull for the little thing, you see,” he said; “Bourbonais is up to his eyes in books and study, and she has no society to speak of within reach; she and the Langrove girls don’t seem to take to each other much; she is a peculiar child, Franceline; you see she has never mixed with children, she has been like a companion to her father, and the result is that she has fallen into a dreamy kind of world of her own, and that’s not good for a girl; she is apt to prey upon herself. I wish you were a nearer neighbor of ours.”
“I am near enough for all intents and purposes,” said Lady Anwyll, promptly; “what is it but an hour’s drive? There’s nothing I should like better than to take her about, pretty creature, with her great gazelle eyes; but I dare say she would bore herself with me; they don’t care for old women’s society, those young things—why should they? I hated an old woman like a sour apple when I was her age.”
“Oh! but Franceline is not a bit like most girls of her age; she would enjoy you very much, I assure you she would,” protested Sir Simon warmly. “There is nothing she likes better than talking to me now, and I might be your father,” he added, with more gallantry than truth; but Lady Anwyll laughed a contemptuous, little, good-humored laugh without contradicting him. “She has seen very little and read a great deal—too much in fact; you would be surprised to see how much she has read about all sorts of things that most girls only know by name; her father was for teaching her Greek and Latin, but I bullied him out of that nonsense; it would have been a downright crime to spoil such a creature by making her blue. I’ve saved her from that, at any rate.”