"One is never too young for sorrow. The memory of a companion I loved very dearly is a.s.sociated with this spot."

And then she told him the story of her little adopted sister, as she had heard it often from her nurse Bridget--the little fair-haired child who seemed like her own reflection charmed into life--the happy days and evenings they two had spent together, and how death came untimely and snapped that golden thread.

"I like to look upon the place where my father found her, and the place where she lies in her little grave," said Rena, straining her eyes, first towards the Common which they were now leaving, and then further afield to the low Norman tower of Flamestead Church.

Lady Tredgold woke suddenly when her niece relapsed into silence, and inquired where they were.

"Within half an hour of home, madam," answered Rena.

"Home!" and her ladyship, still half asleep, thought of that stately stone mansion in the fair white city of Bath, where her husband was left in solitude to nurse his gout and lament his wife's absence. Not but that Bath was a very pleasant place for a solitary man in those days, being the resort of fashion, wit, and beauty, statesmen and soldiers, men of letters and fine gentlemen, an ever-shifting gallery of faces, a various a.s.sembly of well-bred people, who all found it necessary from time to time to repair to "the Bath." Golden age for England when Continental spas were known only to the few, and when fashionable people were not ashamed to enjoy themselves on English soil. Had not the distinguished, erratic Lord Peterborough himself been seen hurrying through those busy streets from the market to his lodgings, with a cabbage under one arm and a chicken under the other, blue ribbon and star on his breast all the same? A city of considerable lat.i.tude both as to manners and morals.

"O, you mean Fairmile," muttered her ladyship, with a disappointed air; for though she loved a season in London at somebody else's cost, she had a pa.s.sion for Bath, which to her was veritably home, and in her slumberous state she had fancied herself just entering that delightful city. "I hope the beds will be aired. There was plenty of time for that queer, grim housekeeper to get my letter."

"You need have no fear, aunt. Mrs. Layburne is not an agreeable woman, but she is a very good manager. The servants all fear and obey her."

"That is just the sort of person one wants to look after a household.

Your good, easy-tempered souls are no use, and they are generally arrant cheats into the bargain. Do you lie at the Manor to-night, Lord Lavendale?"

Lavendale had been riding as in a dream, with head bent, and rein loose in a careless hand. A horse less sure-footed than his famous black Styx might have stumbled and thrown him. He was thinking of Lady Judith Topsparkle; wondering why she had so urgently invited him to Ringwood Abbey, when, if she had his sense of peril, she would a.s.suredly have avoided his company. It might be that for her the past was utterly past; so completely forgotten that she could afford to indulge herself in the latest whim of the moment. What but a whim could be her friendship for him, her eagerness to mate him with wealth and beauty? How completely indifferent must she have become to those old memories which had still such potency with him!

"Why, if she can forget, so can I," he told himself. "Should Horace be truer than Lydia to an expired love? and yet, and yet, were Thracian Chloe ten times as fair, one of those old familiar glances from Lydia's starry eyes would send my blood to fever-point."

The gentlemen escorted the coach to the very door of Mr. Bosworth's house, much to Lady Tredgold's contentment, as she suspected marauders even among the old elm-trunks in Fairmile avenue. Arrived at the house, her ladyship honoured Lord Lavendale with a cordial invitation to supper; but as she ignored his companion Lavendale declined her hospitality, on the ground that the horses had done so heavy a day's work that they must needs require the comfort of their own stables. And so the two gentlemen said good-night, and rode away to Lavendale Manor, after promising to be in attendance upon the ladies at eight next morning.

Nurse Bridget was in the hall, eager to welcome her dear charge, from whom she had never been parted until this winter. Nurse and nursling hugged each other affectionately, and then Bridget put back Irene's black silk hood, and contemplated the fair young face in warmest admiration.

"You have grown prettier than ever," she exclaimed, "and taller too; I protest you are taller. I hope your ladyship will pardon me for loving my pet too much to be mannerly," she added, curtsying to Lady Tredgold.

"There is nothing, my good creature, unmannerly in affection. Yes, Miss Bosworth has certainly grown; and then she has had her stays made by my French staymaker, and that improves any young woman's figure and gives a taller air. I hope they have got us a decent supper. I am positively famished. And I hope there are good fires, for my niece and I have been starved this last two hours. The night is horribly cold. And have you aired a room for my maids?"

"Yes, my lady," and "Yes, my lady," said Bridget, with low curtsies, in reply to all these eager questions; and then Lady Tredgold and her niece followed the fat old butler--he had contrived to keep fat by sheer inactivity, in spite of Mrs. Layburne's meagre housekeeping--to the long white drawing-room, where there was a blazing log fire, and where Irene flew to her harpsichord and began to play the Sparrow Symphony from _Rinaldo_. There are moments of happiness, joyous impulses in the lives of women, which can only find expression in music.

CHAPTER XII.

"LOVE IN THESE LABYRINTHS HIS SLAVES DETAINS."

At Lavendale Manor there was no note of expectancy, no stir among the old servants. His lordship had given no intimation of his return. The grooms had to rouse their underlings in the stable from the state of beery somnolence which followed upon a heavy supper. The butler bustled his subordinates and sent off the housemaids to light fires in all the rooms his lordship affected, and in the bedroom and dressing-room known as Mr. Durnford's, and urged cook and scullions to be brisk in the preparation of a pretty little supper. Happily there was a goose hanging in the larder, ready to be clapped on the spit, and this, with the chine which had been cooked for the servants' dinner, and a large venison pasty, with half a dozen speedy sweet dishes, would make a tolerable supper for two gentlemen. The old Italian never joined his patron at meals. He fed apart upon a diet of his own choosing, and on principles laid down by Roger Bacon and Paracelsus--taking only the lightest food, and selecting all those roots and herbs which conduce to long life.

Lavendale went straight to the old chapel, without even waiting to take off his boots. The student's att.i.tude amidst his books and crucibles might have suggested that he had been sitting there like Frederick Barbarossa in his cave, ever since that summer evening upon which his lordship had with equal suddenness burst in upon his studies.

"Well, old friend, how do thy researches thrive? Is Hermes propitious?"

asked Lavendale gaily. "Hast thou hit upon an easy way of manufacturing diamonds, or turning vulgar lead into the golden rain in which Danae's ravisher veiled his divinity? Art thou any nearer the great secret?"

"Do you remember the infinitely little to which distance is reduced in that fable of Achilles and the tortoise?" asked Vincenti; "and how by descending to infinitesimals the logician gives the idea of progress, and thus establishes a paradox? My progress has been infinitely little; but yes, I think there has been something gained since we parted."

The sigh with which his sentence closed was not indicative of triumph.

The finely cut features were drawn with thought and care; the skin, originally a pale olive, was withered and yellow, and had a semitransparent look, like old parchment. Death could hardly be more wan and wasted than life appeared in this searcher into the dark mysteries of man and Nature.

"You have been absent longer than usual," said the old man, "or at least it seems to me that it has been so. I may be mistaken, for I keep no actual count of time--except this bare record of years."

He turned to a flyleaf in a black-letter volume at his right hand; and on that, beginning in ink that had grown brown and pale with time, there appeared a calendar of years, and opposite each the name of a place.

This was the only record of the philosopher's existence. Lavendale's keen eye noted that it began early in the previous century, and that the handwriting was uniform throughout, though the colour of the ink varied. Could this man, whom he had guessed at about seventy years old, have really seen the beginning of the last century? Vincenti had been ever curiously reticent about his past life--had told his patron only one fact in his history, namely, that he was by birth and parentage a Venetian.

"No, my dear friend, you are not mistaken; I stayed longer in town than I intended when I left you. People seemed glad to see me--mere seeming, of course, since in that selfish town of ours there is not a mortal who cares a snap of the fingers for any other mortal; except lovers, and theirs is but a transient semi-selfish liking. But there is a fascination in crowds; and I saw a woman who has quite forgotten me, but whom I never can forget."

"How do you know she has forgotten you?"

"By her indifference."

"a.s.sumed as likely as not. There is no such hypocrisy as a woman's.

There are liars and traitors among men, I grant you, but with them falsehood is an acquired art. In a woman deceit is innate: a part of her very being. She will smile at you and lie to you with the virginal sweetness of sixteen as cleverly as with the wrinkled craftiness of sixty. Never believe in a woman's affectation of indifference. It is the safest mask for pa.s.sion. They all wear it."

"If I thought that it were so: if I thought Judith Topsparkle still loved me--"

"Topsparkle!" muttered the old man, staring at him in blank wonder.

"Did I think those old embers were not quite extinct, did I think that one lingering spark remained, I would risk the world to rekindle them, would perish in the blaze, die in a savage triumph of love and despair, like Dido on her pyre. But no, she is a woman of fashion pure and simple, cares no more for me than Belinda cared for Sir Plume."

"Topsparkle!" repeated Vincenti; "whom do you know of that name?"

"Only the famous Vyvyan Topsparkle, dilettante, eccentric, and Croesus. A gentleman whose name is familiar, and even ill.u.s.trious, in all the countries where works of art are to be seen and fine music is to be heard. A gentleman who left England forty years ago with a very vile reputation, and who has not improved it on the Continent; but we do not hang men of fabulous fortune: we visit them at their country houses, ride their horses, win their money at ba.s.set, and revile them behind their backs. Mr. Topsparkle is a very fine gentleman, and has been lucky enough to marry the loveliest woman in London, who has made his house the fashion."

"Vyvyan Topsparkle! I thought he had gone into a Portuguese monastery--turned Trappist, and repented of his sins. I was told so ten years ago."

"Yes, I remember there was a rumour of that kind soon after I left the University. I believe the gentleman disappeared for some time, and stimulated the inventive powers of his friends by a certain mysteriousness of conduct; but I can a.s.sure you there is nothing of the monk about Mr. Topsparkle nowadays. He is altogether the fop and man of fashion, and, if wrinkles counted for nothing, would be almost a young man."

"He is a scoundrel, and may he meet with a scoundrel's doom!" muttered Vincenti gloomily.

"What, have you any personal acquaintance with him? Did you ever meet him in Italy?"

"Yes, more than forty years ago."

Lavendale flushed and paled again in his agitation. Here was one who perchance might help him to some clue to that old mystery, the scandal and suspected crime related by Tom Philter. He told Vincenti the story exactly as Philter had told it to him.

The old man listened intently, those dark eyes of his shining under the bushy white brows, shining with the reflected light of the fire, shining with a fiercer light from within.

"I have heard this story before," he said.

"And do you believe it? Do you believe there was foul play?"

"Yes, I believe Vyvyan Topsparkle was a murderer as well as a seducer.

It is not true that his mistress was a dancing-girl. She was a girl of respectable birth, brought up in a convent--highly gifted, a genius, with the voice and face of an angel."