Sir Marmaduke seated himself on a sofa, and his friend sat close beside him. The room was quite deserted. It was four o'clock in the afternoon, and the club was full of men. There were men in the morning-room, and men in the drawing-room, and men in the card-room, and men in the billiard-room; but no better choice of a chamber for a conference intended to be silent and secret could have been made in all London than that which had induced Sir Marmaduke to take his friend into the library of "The Acrobats." And yet a great deal of money had been spent in providing this library for "The Acrobats."

Sir Marmaduke sat for awhile silent, and had he sat silent for an hour, Colonel Osborne would not have interrupted him. Then, at last, he began, with a voice that was intended to be serious, but which struck upon the ear of his companion as being affected and unlike the owner of it. "This is a very sad thing about my poor girl," said Sir Marmaduke.

"Indeed it is. There is only one thing to be said about it, Rowley."

"And what's that?"

"The man must be mad."

"He is not so mad as to give us any relief by his madness,--poor as such comfort would be. He has got Emily's child away from her, and I think it will about kill her. And what is to become of her? As to taking her back to the islands without her child, it is out of the question. I never knew anything so cruel in my life."

"And so absurd, you know."

"Ah,--that's just the question. If anybody had asked me, I should have said that you were the man of all men whom I could have best trusted."

"Do you doubt it now?"

"I don't know what to think."

"Do you mean to say that you suspect me,--and your daughter too?"

"No;--by heavens! Poor dear. If I suspected her, there would be an end of all things with me. I could never get over that. No; I don't suspect her!" Sir Marmaduke had now dropped his affected tone, and was speaking with natural energy.

"But you do me?"

"No;--if I did, I don't suppose I should be sitting with you here; but they tell me--"

"They tell you what?"

"They tell me that,--that you did not behave wisely about it. Why could you not let her alone when you found out how matters were going?"

"Who has been telling you this, Rowley?"

Sir Marmaduke considered for awhile, and then remembering that Colonel Osborne could hardly quarrel with a clergyman, told him the truth. "Outhouse says that you have done her an irretrievable injury by going down to Devonshire to her, and by writing to her."

"Outhouse is an a.s.s."

"That is easily said;--but why did you go?"

"And why should I not go? What the deuce! Because a man like that chooses to take vagaries into his head I am not to see my own G.o.dchild!" Sir Marmaduke tried to remember whether the Colonel was in fact the G.o.dfather of his eldest daughter, but he found that his mind was quite a blank about his children's G.o.dfathers and G.o.dmothers.

"And as for the letters;--I wish you could see them. The only letters which had in them a word of importance were those about your coming home. I was anxious to get that arranged, not only for your sake, but because she was so eager about it."

"G.o.d bless her, poor child," said Sir Marmaduke, rubbing the tears away from his eyes with his red silk pocket-handkerchief.

"I will acknowledge that those letters,--there may have been one or two,--were the beginning of the trouble. It was these that made this man show himself to be a lunatic. I do admit that. I was bound not to talk about your coming, and I told her to keep the secret. He went spying about, and found her letters, I suppose,--and then he took fire because there was to be a secret from him. Dirty, mean dog! And now I'm to be told by such a fellow as Outhouse that it's my fault, that I have caused all the trouble, because, when I happened to be in Devonshire, I went to see your daughter!" We must do the Colonel the justice of supposing that he had by this time quite taught himself to believe that the church porch at c.o.c.kchaffington had been the motive cause of his journey into Devonshire. "Upon my word it is too hard,"

continued he indignantly. "As for Outhouse,--only for the gown upon his back, I'd pull his nose. And I wish that you would tell him that I say so."

"There is trouble enough without that," said Sir Marmaduke.

"But it is hard. By G----, it is hard. There is this comfort;--if it hadn't been me, it would have been some one else. Such a man as that couldn't have gone two or three years, without being jealous of some one. And as for poor Emily, she is better off perhaps with an accusation so absurd as this, than she might have been had her name been joined with a younger man, or with one whom you would have less reason for trusting."

There was so much that seemed to be sensible in this, and it was spoken with so well a.s.sumed a tone of injured innocence, that Sir Marmaduke felt that he had nothing more to say. He muttered something further about the cruelty of the case, and then slunk away out of the club, and made his way home to the dull gloomy house in Manchester Street. There was no comfort for him there;--but neither was there any comfort for him at the club. And why did that vexatious Secretary of State send him messages about blue books? As he went, he expressed sundry wishes that he was back at the Mandarins, and told himself that it would be well that he should remain there till he died.

CHAPTER LXV.

MYSTERIOUS AGENCIES.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

When the thirty-first of March arrived, Exeter had not as yet been made gay with the marriage festivities of Mr. Gibson and Camilla French. And this delay had not been the fault of Camilla. Camilla had been ready, and when, about the middle of the month, it was hinted to her that some postponement was necessary, she spoke her mind out plainly, and declared that she was not going to stand that kind of thing. The communication had not been made to her by Mr. Gibson in person. For some days previously he had not been seen at Heavitree, and Camilla had from day to day become more black, gloomy, and harsh in her manners both to her mother and her sister. Little notes had come and little notes had gone, but no one in the house, except Camilla herself, knew what those notes contained. She would not condescend to complain to Arabella; nor did she say much in condemnation of her lover to Mrs. French, till the blow came. With unremitting attention she pursued the great business of her wedding garments, and exacted from the unfortunate Arabella an amount of work equal to her own,--of thankless work, as is the custom of embryo brides with their unmarried sisters. And she drew with great audacity on the somewhat slender means of the family for the amount of feminine gear necessary to enable her to go into Mr. Gibson's house with something of the eclat of a well-provided bride. When Mrs.

French hesitated, and then expostulated, Camilla replied that she did not expect to be married above once, and that in no cheaper or more productive way than this could her mother allow her to consume her share of the family resources. "What matter, mamma, if you do have to borrow a little money? Mr. Burgess will let you have it when he knows why. And as I shan't be eating and drinking at home any more, nor yet getting my things here, I have a right to expect it." And she ended by expressing an opinion, in Arabella's hearing, that any daughter of a house who proves herself to be capable of getting a husband for herself, is ent.i.tled to expect that those left at home shall pinch themselves for a time, in order that she may go forth to the world in a respectable way, and be a credit to the family.

Then came the blow. Mr. Gibson had not been at the house for some days, but the notes had been going and coming. At last Mr. Gibson came himself; but, as it happened, when he came, Camilla was out shopping. In these days she often did go out shopping between eleven and one, carrying her sister with her. It must have been but a poor pleasure for Arabella, this witnessing the purchases made, seeing the pleasant draperies, and handling the real linens and admiring the fine cambrics spread out before them on the shop counters by obsequious attendants. And the questions asked of her by her sister, whether this was good enough for so august an occasion, or that sufficiently handsome, must have been hara.s.sing. She could not have failed to remember that it ought all to have been done for her,--that had she not been treated with monstrous injustice, with most unsisterly cruelty, all these good things would have been spread on her behoof. But she went on and endured it, and worked diligently with her needle, and folded and unfolded as she was desired, and became as it were quite a younger sister in the house,--creeping out by herself now and again into the purlieus of the city, to find such consolation as she might receive from her solitary thoughts.

But Arabella and Camilla were both away when Mr. Gibson called to tell Mrs. French of his altered plans. And as he asked, not for his lady-love, but for Mrs. French herself, it is probable that he watched his opportunity and that he knew to what cares his Camilla was then devoting herself. "Perhaps it is quite as well that I should find you alone," he said, after sundry preludes, to his future mother-in-law, "because you can make Camilla understand this better than I can. I must put off the day for about three weeks."

"Three weeks, Mr. Gibson?"

"Or a month. Perhaps we had better say the 29th of April." Mr. Gibson had by this time thrown off every fear that he might have entertained of the mother, and could speak to her of such an unwarrantable change of plans with tolerable equanimity.

"But I don't know that that will suit Camilla at all."

"She can name any other day she pleases, of course;--that is, in May."

"But why is this to be?"

"There are things about money, Mrs. French, which I cannot arrange sooner. And I find that unfortunately I must go up to London." Though many other questions were asked, nothing further was got out of Mr. Gibson on that occasion; and he left the house with a perfect understanding on his own part,--and on that of Mrs. French,--that the marriage was postponed till some day still to be fixed, but which could not and should not be before the 29th of April. Mrs. French asked him why he did not come up and see Camilla. He replied,--false man that he was,--that he had hoped to have seen her this morning, and that he would come again before the week was over.

Then it was that Camilla spoke her mind out plainly. "I shall go to his house at once," she said, "and find out all about it. I don't understand it. I don't understand it at all; and I won't put up with it. He shall know who he has to deal with, if he plays tricks upon me. Mamma, I wonder you let him out of the house, till you had made him come back to his old day."

"What could I do, my dear?"

"What could you do? Shake him out of it,--as I would have done. But he didn't dare to tell me,--because he is a coward."

Camilla in all this showed her spirit; but she allowed her anger to hurry her away into an indiscretion. Arabella was present, and Camilla should have repressed her rage.

"I don't think he's at all a coward," said Arabella.

"That's my business. I suppose I'm ent.i.tled to know what he is better than you."

"All the same I don't think Mr. Gibson is at all a coward," said Arabella, again pleading the cause of the man who had misused her.

"Now, Arabella, I won't take any interference from you; mind that.

I say it was cowardly, and he should have come to me. It's my concern, and I shall go to him. I'm not going to be stopped by any shilly-shally nonsense, when my future respectability, perhaps, is at stake. All Exeter knows that the marriage is to take place on the 31st of this month."