"Yes; very true, Sir William; very true. But if it should go in that way it might not perhaps be amiss for our client."

"G.o.d forbid that he should prosper by his cousin's death, Mr. Flick.

But the Countess would be the heir."

"The Countess is devoted to the Earl. We ought to do something, Sir William. I don't think that we could claim above eight or ten thousand pounds at most as real property. He put his money everywhere, did that old man. There are shares in iron mines in the Alleghanies, worth ever so much."

"They are no good to us," said the Solicitor-General, alluding to his client's interests.

"Not worth a halfpenny to us, though they are paying twenty per cent.

on the paid-up capital. He seems to have determined that the real heir should get nothing, even if there were no will. A wicked old man!"

"Very wicked, Mr. Flick."

"A horrible old man! But we really ought to do something, Mr.

Solicitor. If the girl won't marry him there should be some compromise, after all that we have done."

"How can the girl marry any one, Mr. Flick,--if she's going to die?"

A few days after this, Sir William called in Keppel Street and saw the Countess, not with any idea of promoting a compromise,--for the doing which this would not have been the time, nor would he have been the fitting medium,--but in order that he might ask after Lady Anna's health. The whole matter was in truth now going very much against the Earl. Money had been allowed to the Countess and her daughter; and in truth all the money was now their own, to do with it as they listed, though there might be some delay before each was put into absolute possession of her own proportion; but no money had been allowed, or could be allowed, to the Earl. And, that the fact was so, was now becoming known to all men. Hitherto credit had at any rate been easy with the young lord. When the old Earl died, and when the will was set aside, it was thought that he would be the heir. When the lawsuit first came up, it was believed everywhere that some generous compromise would be the worst that could befall him. After that the marriage had been almost a certainty, and then it was known that he had something of his own, so that tradesmen need not fear that their bills would be paid. It can hardly be said that he had been extravagant; but a lord must live, and an earl can hardly live and maintain a house in the country on a thousand a year, even though he has an uncle to keep his hunters for him. Some prudent men in London were already beginning to ask for their money, and the young Earl was in trouble. As Mr. Flick had said, it was quite time that something should be done. Sir William still depended on the panacea of a marriage, if only the girl would live. The marriage might be delayed; but, if the cards were played prudently, might still make everything comfortable. Such girls do not marry tailors, and will always prefer lords to tradesmen!

"I hope that you do not think that my calling is intrusive," he said.

The Countess, dressed all in black, with that funereal frown upon her brow which she always now wore, with deep-sunk eyes, and care legible in every feature of her handsome face, received him with a courtesy that was as full of woe as it was graceful. She was very glad to make his acquaintance. There was no intrusion. He would forgive her, she thought, if he perceived that circ.u.mstances had almost overwhelmed her with sorrow. "I have come to ask after your daughter," said he.

"She has been very ill, Sir William."

"Is she better now?"

"I hardly know; I cannot say. They seemed to think this morning that the fever was less violent."

"Then she will recover, Lady Lovel."

"They do not say so. But indeed I did not ask them. It is all in G.o.d's hands. I sometimes think that it would be better that she should die, and there be an end of it."

This was the first time that these two had been in each other's company, and the lawyer could not altogether repress the feeling of horror with which he heard the mother speak in such a way of her only child. "Oh, Lady Lovel, do not say that!"

"But I do say it. Why should I not say it to you, who know all? Of what good will her life be to herself, or to any one else, if she pollute herself and her family by this marriage? It would be better that she should be dead,--much better that she should be dead. She is all that I have, Sir William. It is for her sake that I have been struggling from the first moment in which I knew that I was to be a mother. The whole care of my life has been to prove her to be her father's daughter in the eye of the law. I doubt whether you can know what it is to pursue one object, and only one, through your whole life, with never-ending solicitude,--and to do it all on behalf of another. If you did, you would understand my feeling now. It would be better for her that she should die than become the wife of such a one as Daniel Thwaite."

"Lady Lovel, not only as a mother, but as a Christian, you should get the better of that feeling."

"Of course I should. No doubt every clergyman in England would tell me the same thing. It is easy to say all that, sir. Wait till you are tried. Wait till all your ambition is to be betrayed, every hope rolled in the dust, till all the honours you have won are to be soiled and degraded, till you are made a mark for general scorn and public pity,--and then tell me how you love the child by whom such evils are brought upon you!"

"I trust that I may never be so tried, Lady Lovel."

"I hope not; but think of all that before you preach to me. But I do love her; and it is because I love her that I would fain see her removed from the reproaches which her own madness will bring upon her. Let her die;--if it be G.o.d's will. I can follow her without one wish for a prolonged life. Then will a n.o.ble family be again established, and her sorrowful tale will be told among the Lovels with a tear and without a curse."

CHAPTER x.x.xVIII.

LADY ANNA'S BEDSIDE.

All December went by, and the neighbours in the houses round spent each his merry Christmas; and the snow and frost of January pa.s.sed over them, and February had come and nearly gone, before the doctors dared to say that Lady Anna Lovel's life was not still in danger. During this long period the world had known all about her illness,--as it did know, or pretended to know, the whole history of her life. The world had been informed that she was dying, and had, upon the whole, been really very sorry for her. She had interested the world, and the world had heard much of her youth and beauty,--of the romance too of her story, of her fidelity to the tailor, and of her persecutions. During these months of her illness the world was disposed to think that the tailor was a fine fellow, and that he ought to be taken by the hand. He had money now, and it was thought that it would be a good thing to bring him into some club. There was a very strong feeling at the Beaufort that if he were properly proposed and seconded he would be elected,--not because he was going to marry an heiress, but because he was losing the heiress whom he was to have married. If the girl died, then Lord Lovel himself might bring him forward at the Beaufort. Of all this Daniel himself knew nothing; but he heard, as all the world heard, that Lady Anna was on her deathbed.

When the news first reached him,--after a fashion that seemed to him to be hardly worthy of credit,--he called at the house in Keppel Street and asked the question. Yes; Lady Anna was very ill; but, as it happened, Sarah the lady's-maid opened the door, and Sarah remembered the tailor. She had seen him when he was admitted to her young mistress, and knew enough of the story to be aware that he should be snubbed. Her first answer was given before she had bethought herself; then she snubbed him, and told no one but the Countess of his visit. After that Daniel went to one of the doctors, and waited at his door with patience till he could be seen. The unhappy man told his story plainly. He was Daniel Thwaite, late a tailor, the man from Keswick, to whom Lady Anna Lovel was engaged. In charity and loving kindness, would the doctor tell him of the state of his beloved one? The doctor took him by the hand and asked him in, and did tell him. His beloved one was then on the very point of death. Whereupon Daniel wrote to the Countess in humble strains, himself taking the letter, and waiting without in the street for any answer that might be vouchsafed. If it was, as he was told, that his beloved was dying, might he be allowed to stand once at her bedside and kiss her hand? In about an hour an answer was brought to him at the area gate. It consisted of his own letter, opened, and returned to him without a word. He went away too sad to curse, but he declared to himself that such cruelty in a woman's bosom could exist only in the bosom of a countess.

But as others heard early in February that Lady Anna was like to recover, so did Daniel Thwaite. Indeed, his authority was better than that which reached the clubs, for the doctor still stood his friend.

Could the doctor take a message from him to Lady Anna;--but one word?

No;--the doctor could take no message. That he would not do. But he did not object to give to the lover a bulletin of the health of his sweetheart. In this way Daniel knew sooner than most others when the change took place in the condition of his beloved one.

Lady Anna would be of age in May, and the plan of her betrothed was as follows. He would do nothing till that time, and then he would call upon her to allow their banns to be published in Bloomsbury Church after the manner of the Church of England. He himself had taken lodgings in Great Russell Street, thinking that his object might be aided by living in the same parish. If, as was probable, he would not be allowed to approach Lady Anna either in person, or by letter, then he would have recourse to the law, and would allege that the young lady was unduly kept a prisoner in custody. He was told that such complaint would be as idle wind, coming from him,--that no allegation of that kind could obtain any redress unless it came from the young lady herself; but he flattered himself that he could so make it that the young lady would at any rate obtain thereby the privilege of speaking for herself. Let some one ask her what were her wishes and he would be prepared to abide by her expression of them.

In the meantime Lord Lovel also had been anxious;--but his anxiety had been met in a very different fashion. For many days the Countess saw him daily, so that there grew up between them a close intimacy.

When it was believed that the girl would die,--believed with that sad a.s.surance which made those who were concerned speak of her death almost as a certainty, the Countess, sitting alone with the young Earl, had told him that all would be his if the girl left them. He had muttered something as to there being no reason for that. "Who else should have it?" said the Countess. "Where should it go? Your people, Lovel, have not understood me. It is for the family that I have been fighting, fighting, fighting,--and never ceasing. Though you have been my adversary,--it has been all for the Lovels. If she goes,--it shall be yours at once. There is no one knows how little I care for wealth myself." Then the girl had become better, and the Countess again began her plots, and her plans, and her strategy. She would take the girl abroad in May, in April if it might be possible.

They would go,--not to Rome then, but to the south of France, and, as the weather became too warm for them, on to Switzerland and the Tyrol. Would he, Lord Lovel, follow them? Would he follow them and be constant in his suit, even though the frantic girl should still talk of her tailor lover? If he would do so, as far as money was concerned, all should be in common with them. For what was the money wanted but that the Lovels might be great and n.o.ble and splendid? He said that he would do so. He also loved the girl,--thought at least during the tenderness created by her illness that he loved her with all his heart. He sat hour after hour with the Countess in Keppel Street,--sometimes seeing the girl as she lay unconscious, or feigning that she was so; till at last he was daily at her bedside.

"You had better not talk to him, Anna," her mother would say, "but of course he is anxious to see you." Then the Earl would kiss her hand, and in her mother's presence she had not the courage,--perhaps she had not the strength,--to withdraw it. In these days the Countess was not cruelly stern as she had been. Bedside nursing hardly admits of such cruelty of manner. But she never spoke to her child with little tender endearing words, never embraced her,--but was to her a careful nurse rather than a loving mother.

Then by degrees the girl got better, and was able to talk. "Mamma,"

she said one day, "won't you sit by me?"

"No, my dear; you should not be encouraged to talk."

"Sit by me, and let me hold your hand." For a moment the Countess gave way, and sat by her daughter, allowing her hand to remain pressed beneath the bedclothes;--but she rose abruptly, remembering her grievance, remembering that it would be better that her child should die, should die broken-hearted by unrelenting cruelty, than be encouraged to think it possible that she should do as she desired. So she rose abruptly and left the bedside without a word.

"Mamma," said Lady Anna; "will Lord Lovel be here to-day?"

"I suppose he will be here."

"Will you let me speak to him for a minute?"

"Surely you may speak to him."

"I am strong now, mamma, and I think that I shall be well again some day. I have so often wished that I might die."

"You had better not talk about it, my dear."

"But I should like to speak to him, mamma, without you."

"What to say,--Anna?"

"I hardly know;--but I should like to speak to him. I have something to say about money."

"Cannot I say it?"

"No, mamma. I must say it myself,--if you will let me." The Countess looked at her girl with suspicion, but she gave the permission demanded. Of course it would be right that this lover should see his love. The Countess was almost minded to require from Lady Anna an a.s.surance that no allusion should be made to Daniel Thwaite; but the man's name had not been mentioned between them since the beginning of the illness, and she was loth to mention it now. Nor would it have been possible to prevent for long such an interview as that now proposed.

"He shall come in if he pleases," said the Countess; "but I hope you will remember who you are and to whom you are speaking."