"Some people might go through life and never feel it; and even of those who do, I doubt if there is one who would voluntarily surrender the consequence or the power of exorbitant wealth for the speculative blessing of friends and lovers more sincere. I could quite fancy, notwithstanding, a lady, either wise or sensitive, choosing a life of celibacy in preference to marriage under conditions so suspicious. Miss Marlowe would be a happier woman with only four or five hundred pounds a-year."

"Well, maybe so," said the old lady, dubiously, for she knew something of the world as well as of the affections.

"She will not, most likely, give it away; but if it were taken, she would be happier. Few people have nerve for an operation, and yet many are the more comfortable when it is performed."

"Beatrix has only been out one season, and that but interruptedly. She has been very much admired, though, and I have no doubt will be very suitably married."

"There are disadvantages, however."

"I don't understand," said Lady Alice, a little stiffly.

"I mean the tragedy in which Sir Jekyl is implicated," said M.

Varbarriere, rising, and looking, without intending it, so sternly at Lady Alice, that she winced under it.

"Yes, to be sure, but you know the world does not mind that--the world does not choose to believe ill of fortune's minions--at least, to remember it. A few old-fashioned people view it as you and I do; but Jekyl stands very well. It is a wicked world, Monsieur Varbarriere."

"It is not for me to say. Every man has profited, more or less, at one time or another, by its leniency. Perhaps I feel in this particular case more strongly than others; but, notwithstanding the superior rank, wealth, and family of Sir Jekyl Marlowe, I should not, were I his equal, like to be tied to him by a close family connexion."

Lady Alice did not feel anger, nor was she pleased. She did not look down abashed at discovering that this stranger seemed to resent on so much higher ground than she the death of her son. She compressed her thin lips, looking a little beside the stern gentleman in black, at a distant point on the wall, and appeared to reflect.

CHAPTER x.x.xI.

Lady Jane puts on her Brilliants.

That evening, by the late post, had arrived a letter, in old General Lennox's hand, to his wife. It had come at dinner-time, and it was with a feeling of _ennui_ she read the address. It was one of those billets which, in Swift's phrase, would "have kept cool;" but, subsiding on the ottoman, she opened it--conjugal relations demanded this attention; and Lady Jane, thinking "what a hand he writes!" ran her eye lazily down those crabbed pages in search of a date to light her to the pa.s.sage where he announced his return; but there was none, so far as she saw.

"What's all this about? 'Masterson, the silkmercer at Marlowe--a very'--something--'fellow--_honest_.' Yes, that's the word. So he may be, but I shan't buy his horrid trash, if that's what you mean," said she, crumpling up the stupid old letter, and leaning back, not in the sweetest temper, and with a sidelong glance of lazy defiance through her half-closed lashes, at the unconscious Lady Alice.

And now arrived a sleek-voiced servant, who, bowing beside Lady Jane, informed her gently that Mr. Masterson had arrived with the parcel for her ladyship.

"The parcel! what parcel?"

"I'm not aware, my lady."

"Tell him to give it to my maid. Ridiculous rubbish!" murmured Lady Jane, serenely.

But the man returned.

"Mr. Masterson's direction from the General, please, my lady, was to give the parcel into your own hands."

"Where is he?" inquired Lady Jane, rising with a lofty fierceness.

"In the small breakfast-parlour, my lady."

"Show me the way, please."

When Lady Jane Lennox arrived she found Mr. Masterson cloaked and m.u.f.fled, as though off a journey, and he explained, that having met General Lennox yesterday accidentally in Oxford Street, in London, from whence he had only just returned, he had asked him to take charge of a parcel, to be delivered into her ladyship's own hands, where, accordingly, he now placed it.

Lady Jane did not thank him; she was rather conscious of herself conferring a favour by accepting anything at his hands; and when he was gone she called her maid, and having reached her room and lighted her candles, she found a very beautiful set of diamonds.

"Why, these are really superb, beautiful brilliants!" exclaimed the handsome young lady. The cloud had quite pa.s.sed away, and a beautiful light glowed on her features.

Forthwith to the gla.s.s she went, in a charming excitement.

"Light all the candles you can find!" she exclaimed.

"Well, my eyes, but them is beautiful, my lady!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed the maid, staring with a smirk, and feeling that at such a moment she might talk a little, without risk, which, indeed, was true.

So with bed-room and dressing-table candles, and a pair purloined even from old Lady Alice's room, a tolerably satisfactory illumination was got up, and the jewels did certainly look dazzling.

The pendants flashed in her ears--the exquisite collar round her beautiful throat--the tiara streamed livid fire over her low Venus-like forehead, and her eager eyes and parted lips expressed her almost childlike delight.

There are silver bullets against charmed lives. There are women from whose snowy b.r.e.a.s.t.s the fire-tipped shafts of Cupid fall quenched and broken; and yet a handful of these brilliant pellets will find their way through that wintry whiteness, and lie lodged in her bleeding heart.

After I know not how long a time spent before the gla.s.s, it suddenly struck Lady Jane to inquire of the crumpled letter, in which the name of Masterson figured, and of whose contents she knew, in fact, nothing, but that they named no day for the General's return. She had grown curious as to who the donor might be. Were those jewels a gift from the General's rich old sister, who had a splendid suit, she had heard, which she would never put on again? Had they come as a bequest? How was it, and whose were they?

And now with these flashing gems still dangling so prettily in her ears, and spanning her white throat, as she still stood before the gla.s.s, she applied herself to spell out her General's meaning in better temper than for a long time she had read one of that gallant foozle's kindly and honest rigmaroles. At first the process was often interrupted by those glances at the mirror which it is impossible under ordinary circ.u.mstances to withhold; but as her interest deepened she drew the candle nearer, and read very diligently the stiffly written lines before her.

They showed her that the magnificent present was from himself alone. I should be afraid to guess how many thousand pounds had been lavished upon those jewels. An uxorious fogey--a wicked old fool--perhaps we, outside the domestic circle, may p.r.o.nounce him. Lady Jane within that magic ring saw differently.

The brief, blunt, soldier-like affection that accompanied this magnificent present, and the mention of a little settlement of the jewels, which made them absolutely hers in case her "old man" should die, and the little conjecture "I wonder whether you would sometimes miss him?" smote her heart strangely.

"What a gentleman--what an old darling!"--and she--how heinously had she requited his manly but foolish adoration.

"I'll write to him this moment," she said, quite pale.

And she took the casket in her hands and laid it on her bed, and sat down on the side of it, and trembled very much, and suddenly burst into tears, insomuch that her maid was startled, and yielding forthwith to her sympathy, largely leavened with curiosity, she came and stood by her and administered such consolation as people will who know nothing of your particular grief, and like, perhaps, to discover its causes.

But after a while her mistress asked her impatiently what she meant, and, to her indignation and surprise, ordered her out of the room.

"I wish he had not been so good to me. I wish he had ever been unkind to me. I wish he would beat me, Good Heaven! is it all a dream?"

So, quite alone, with one flashing pendant in her ear, with the necklace still on--incoherently, wildly, and affrighted--raved Lady Jane, with a face hectic and wet with tears.

Things appeared to her all on a sudden, quite in a new character, as persons suddenly called on to leave life, see their own doings as they never beheld them before; so with a shock, and an awakening, tumbled about her the whole structure of her illusions, and a dreadful void with a black perspective for the first time opened round her.

She did not return to the drawing-room. When Beatrix, fearing she might be ill, knocked at the door of the green chamber, and heard from the far extremity Lady Jane's clear voice call "Come in," she entered. She found her lying in her clothes, with the counterpane thrown partially over her, upon the funereal-looking old bed, whose dark green curtains depended nearly from the ceiling.

"Well!" exclaimed Lady Jane, almost fiercely, rising to her elbow, and staring at Beatrix.

"I--you told me to come in. I'm afraid I mistook."

"Did I? I dare say. I thought it was my maid. I've got such a bad headache."