CHAPTER I.

AT MADAME MIREBEAU'S, OXFORD STREET.

Half-past four of a delightful June afternoon, and two young ladies sit at two large, lace-draped windows, overlooking a fashionable Mayfair street, alternately glancing over the books they hold, and listlessly watching the pa.s.sers-by. The house was one of those big black West-End houses, whose outward darkness and dismalness is in direct ratio to their inward brilliance and splendor. This particular room is lofty and long, luxurious with softest carpet, satin upholstery, pictures, flowers, and lace draperies. The two young ladies are, with the exception of their bonnets, in elegant carriage costume.

_Young_ ladies, I have said; and being unmarried, they are young ladies, of course. One of them, however, is three-and-thirty, counting by actual years--the peerage gives it in cold blood. It is the Lady Gwendoline Drexel. Her companion is the Honorable Mary Howard, just nineteen, and just "out."

Lady Gwendoline yawns drearily over her book--Algernon Swineburne's latest--and pulls out her watch impatiently every few minutes.

"What can keep Portia?" she exclaims, with irritation. "We should have been gone the last half-hour."

The Honorable Mary looks up from her Parisian fashion-book, and glances from the window with a smile.

"Restrain your impatience, Gwendoline," she answers. "Here comes Lady Portia now."

A minute later the door is flung wide by a tall gentleman in plush, and Lady Portia Hampton sweeps in. She is a tall, slender lady, very like her sister: the same dully fair complexion, the same coiffure of copper-gold, the same light, inane blue eyes. The dull complexion wears at this moment an absolute flush; the light, lack-l.u.s.tre eyes an absolute sparkle. There is something in her look as she sails forward, that makes them both look up expectantly from their books.

"Well?" Lady Gwendoline says.

"Gwen!" her sister exclaims--absolutely exclaims--"_whom_ do you suppose I have met?"

"The Czarina of all the Russias, Pio Nino, Her Majesty back from Osborne, or the Man in the Moon, perhaps," retorts Lady Gwendoline.

"Neither," laughs Lady Portia. "Somebody a great deal more mysterious and interesting than any of them. You never will guess whom."

"Being five o'clock of a sultry summer day, I don't intend to try.

Tell us at once, Portia, and let us go."

"Then--prepare to be surprised! Sir Victor Catheron!"

"Portia!"

"Ah! I thought the name would interest you. Sir Victor Catheron, my dear, alive and in the flesh, though, upon my word, at first sight I almost took him to be his own ghost. Look at her, Mary," laughs her sister derisively. "I have managed to interest her after all, have I not?"

For Lady Gwendoline sat erect, her turquoise eyes open to their widest extent, a look akin to excitement in her apathetic face.

"But, Portia--Sir Victor! I thought it was an understood thing he did _not_ come to England?"

"He does, it appears. I certainly had the honor and happiness of shaking hands with him not fifteen minutes ago. I was driving up St.

James Street, and caught a glimpse of him on the steps of Fenton's Hotel. At first sight I could not credit my eyes. I had to look again to see whether it were a wraith or a mortal man. Such a pallid shadow of his former self. You used to think him rather handsome, Gwen--you should see him now! He has grown ten years older in as many months--his hair is absolutely streaked with gray, his eyes are sunken, his cheeks are hollow. He looks miserably, wretchedly out of health. If men ever do break their hearts," said Lady Portia, going over to a large mirror and surveying herself, "then that misguided young man broke his on his wedding-day."

"It serves him right," said Lady Gwendoline, her pale eyes kindling.

"I am almost glad to hear it."

Her faded face wore a strangely sombre and vindictive look. Lady Portia, with her head on one side, set her bonnet-strings geometrically straight, and smiled maliciously.

"Ah, no doubt--perfectly natural, all things considered. And yet, even you might pity the poor fellow to-day, Gwendoline, if you saw him.

Mary, dear, is all this Greek and Hebrew to you? You were in your Parisian pensionnat, I remember, when it all happened. _You_ don't know the romantic and mysterious story of Sir Victor Catheron, Bart."

"I never heard the name before, that I recall," answered Miss Howard.

"Then pine in ignorance no longer. This young hero, Sir Victor Catheron of Catheron Royals, Cheshire, is our next-door neighbor, down at home, and one year ago the handsome, happy, honored representative of one of the oldest families in the county. His income was large, his estates uninc.u.mbered, his manners charming, his morals unexceptionable, and half the young ladies in Cheshire"--with another malicious glance at her sister--"at daggers-drawn for him. There was the slight drawback of insanity in the family--his father died insane, and in his infancy his mother was murdered. But these were only trifling spots on the sun, not worth a second thought. Our young sultan had but to throw the handkerchief, and his obedient Circa.s.sians would have flown on the wings of love and joy to pick it up. I grow quite eloquent, don't I?

In an evil hour, however, poor young Sir Victor--he was but twenty-three--went over to America. There, in New York, he fell in with a family named Stuart, common rich people, of course, as they all are over there. In the Stuart family there was a young person, a sort of cousin, a Miss Edith Darrell, very poor, kept by them out of charity; and, lamentable to relate, with this young person poor Sir Victor fell in love. Fell in love, my dear, in the most approved old-fashioned style--absurdly and insanely in love--brought the whole family over to Cheshire, proposed to little missy, and, as a matter of course, was eagerly accepted. She was an extremely pretty girl, that I will say for her"--with a third sidelong glance of malice at her _pa.s.see_ sister--"and her manners, considering her station, or, rather, her entire lack of station, her poverty, and her nationality, were something quite extraordinary. I declare to you, she positively held her own with the best of us--except for a certain _brusquerie_ and outspoken way about her, you might have thought her an English girl of our own cla.s.s. He _would_ marry her, and the wedding-day was fixed, and Gwendoline named as chief of the bridemaids."

"It is fifteen minutes past five, Portia," the cold voice of Gwendoline broke in. "If we are to drive at all today--"

"Patience, Gwen! patience one moment longer! Mary most hear the whole story now. In the Stuart family, I forgot to mention, there was a young man, a cousin of the bride-elect, with whom--it was patent to the dullest apprehension--this young person was in love. She accepted Sir Victor, you understand, while this Mr. Stuart was her lover; a common case enough, and not worthy of mention except for what came after. His manners were rarely perfect too. He was, I think, without exception, the very handsomest and most fascinating man I ever met.

You would never dream--never!--that he was an American. Gwendoline will tell you the same. The sister was thoroughly trans-Atlantic, talked slang, said 'I guess,' spoke with an accent, and looked you through and through with an American girl's broad stare. The father and mother were common, to a degree; but the son--well, Gwen and I both came very near losing our hearts to him--didn't we, dear?"

"Speak for yourself," was Gwen's ungracious answer. "And, oh! for pity's sake, Portia, cut it short!"

"Pray go on, Lady Portia!" said Miss Howard, looking interested.

"I am going on," said Lady Portia. "The nice part is to come. The Stuart family, a month or more before the wedding, left Cheshire and came up to London--why, we can only surmise--to keep the lovers apart.

Immediately after their departure, the bride-elect was taken ill, and had to be carried off to Torquay for change of air and all that. The wedding-day was postponed until some time in October; but at last it came. She looked very beautiful, I must say, that morning, and perfectly self-possessed; but poor Sir Victor! He was ghastly. Whether even then he suspected something I do not know; he looked a picture of abject misery at the altar and the breakfast. Something was wrong; we all saw that; but no explanation took place there. The happy pair started on their wedding-journey down into Wales, and that was the last we ever saw of them. What followed, we know; but until to-day I have never set eyes on the bridegroom. The bride, I suppose, none of us will ever set eyes on more."

"Why?" the Honorable Mary asked.

"This, my dear: An hour after their arrival in Carnarvon, Sir Victor deserted his bride forever! What pa.s.sed between them, what scene ensued, n.o.body knows, only this--he positively left her forever. That the handsome and fascinating American cousin had something to do with it, there can be no doubt. Sir Victor took the next train from Wales to London; she remained overnight. Next day she had the audacity to return to Powyss Place and present herself to his aunt, Lady Helena Powyss. She remained there one day and two nights. On the first night, m.u.f.fled and disguised, Sir Victor came down from town, had an interview with his aunt, no doubt told her all, and departed again without seeing the girl he had married. The bride next day had an interview with Lady Helena--her last--and next morning, before any one was stirring, stole out of the house like the guilty creature she was, and never was heard of more. The story, though they tried to hush it up, got in all the papers--'Romance in High Life,' they called it.

Everybody talked of it--it was the nine-days' wonder of town and country. The actors in it, one by one, disappeared. Lady Helena shut up Powyss Place and went abroad; Sir Victor vanished from the world's ken; the heroine of the piece no doubt went back to her native land.

That, in brief, is the story, my dear, of the interesting spectre I met to-day on the steps of Fenton's. Now, young ladies, put on your bonnets and come. I wish to call at Madame Mirebeau's, Oxford Street, before going to the park, and personally inspect my dress for the d.u.c.h.ess' ball to-night."

Ten minutes later and the elegant barouche of Lady Portia Hampton was bowling along to Oxford Street.

"What did you say to Sir Victor, Portia?" her sister deigned to ask.

"What did he say to you?"

"He said very little to me--the answers he gave were the most vague.

I naturally inquired concerning his health first, he really looked so wretchedly broken down; and he said there was nothing the matter that he had been a little out of sorts lately, that was all. My conviction is," said Lady Portia, who, like the rest of her s.e.x, and the world, put the worst possible construction on everything, "that he has become dissipated. Purple circles and hollow eyes always tell of late hours and hard drinking. I asked him next where he had been all those ages, and he answered briefly and gloomily, in one word, 'Abroad.' I asked him thirdly, where, and how was Lady Helena; he replied that Lady Helena was tolerably well, and at present in London. 'In London!' I exclaimed, in a shocked tone, 'my dear Sir Victor, and _I_ not know it!' He explained that his aunt was living in the closest retirement, at the house of a friend in the neighborhood of St. John's Wood, and went nowhere. Then he lifted his hat, smiled horribly a ghastly smile, turned his back upon me, and walked away. Never asked for you, Gwendoline, or Colonel Hampton, or my health, or anything."

Lady Gwendoline did not reply. They had just entered Oxford Street, and amid the moving throng of well-dressed people on the pavement, her eye had singled out one figure--the figure of a tall, slender, fair-haired man.

"Portia!" she exclaimed, in a suppressed voice, "look there! Is not that Sir Victor Catheron now?"

"Where? Oh, I see. Positively it is, and--yes--he sees us. Tell John to draw up, Gwendoline. Now, Mary, you shall see a live hero of romance for once in your life. He shall take a seat, whether he likes it or not--My _dear_ Sir Victor, what a happy second rencontre, and Gwendoline dying to see you. Pray let us take you up--oh, we will have no refusal. We have an unoccupied seat here, you see, and we all insist upon your occupying it. Miss Howard, let me present our nearest neighbor at home, and particular friend everywhere, Sir Victor Catheron. The Honorable Miss Howard, Sir Victor."

They had drawn up close to the curbstone. The gentleman had doffed his hat, and would have pa.s.sed on, had he not been taken possession of in this summary manner. Lady Gwendoline's primrose-kidded hand was extended to him, Lady Gwendoline's smiling face beamed upon him from the most exquisite of Parisian bonnets. Miss Howard bowed and scanned him curiously. Lady Portia was not to be refused--he knew that of old.

Of two bores, it was the lesser bore to yield than resist. Another instant, and the barouche was rolling away to Madame Mirebeau's, and Sir Victor Catheron was within it. He sat by Lady Gwendoline's side, and under the shadow of her rose-silk and point-lace parasol she could see for herself how shockingly he was changed. Her sister had not exaggerated. He was worn to a shadow; his fair hair was streaked with gray; his lips were set in a tense expression of suffering--either physical or mental--perhaps both. His blue eyes looked sunken and l.u.s.treless. It was scarcely to be believed that ten short months could have wrought such wreck. He talked little--his responses to their questions were monosyllabic. His eyes constantly wandered away from their faces to the pa.s.sers-by. He had the look of a man ever on the alert, ever on the watch--waiting and watching for some one he could not see. Miss Howard had never seen him before, but from the depths of her heart she pitied him. Sorrow, such as rarely falls to the lot of man, had fallen to this man, she knew.

He was discouragingly absent and _distrait_. It came out by chance that the chief part of the past ten months had been spent by him in America.

In America! The sisters exchanged glances. _She_ was there, no doubt.

Had they met? was the thought of both. They reached the fashionable modiste's.

"You will come in with us, Sir Victor," Lady Portia commanded gayly.

"We all have business here, but we will only detain you a moment."