Her mind had not been educated to the acceptance of sin and folly as a natural element in a young man's life. In her view of mankind the good men were all Bayards--fearless, stainless; the bad were a race apart, to be shunned by all good women. To be told that her niece's future husband--the man for whose sake her whole scheme of life had been set aside, the man whom Christabel and she had so implicitly trusted--was a fashionable libertine--the lover of an actress--the talk of the town--was a revelation that changed the whole colour of life.

"Are you sure that this is true?" she asked, falteringly.

"My dear creature, do I ever say anything that isn't true? There is no need to invent things. G.o.d knows the things people do are bad enough, and wild enough, to supply conversation for everybody. But this about Hamleigh and Stella Mayne is as well known as the Albert Memorial. He was positively infatuated about her; took her off the stage: she was in the back row of the ballet at Drury Lane, salary seventeen and sixpence a week. He lived with her in Italy for a year; then they came back to England, and he gave her a house in St. John's Wood; squandered his money upon her; had her educated; worshipped her, in fact; and, I am told, would have married her, if she had only behaved herself.

Fortunately, these women never do behave themselves: they show the cloven-foot too soon; _our_ people only go wrong after marriage. But I hope, my dear, you will not allow yourself to be worried by this business. It is all a thing of the past, and Hamleigh will make just as good a husband as if it had never happened; better, perhaps, for he will be all the more able to appreciate a pure-minded girl like your niece."

Mrs. Tregonell listened with a stony visage. She was thinking of Leonard--Leonard who had never done wrong, in this way, within his mother's knowledge--who had been cheated out of his future wife by a flashy trickster--a man who talked like a poet, and who yet had given his first pa.s.sionate love, and the best and brightest years of his life to a stage-dancer.

"How long is it since Mr. Hamleigh has ceased to be devoted to Miss Mayne?" she asked, in a cold, dull voice.

"I cannot say exactly: one hears so many different stories; there were paragraphs in the Society papers last season: 'A certain young sprig of fashion, a general favourite, whose infatuation for a well-known actress has been a matter of regret among the _haute volee_, is said to have broken his bonds. The lady keeps her diamonds, and threatens to publish his letters,' and so on, and so forth. You know the kind of thing?"

"I do not," said Mrs. Tregonell. "I have never taken any interest in such paragraphs."

"Ah! that is the consequence of vegetating at the f.a.g-end of England: all the pungency is taken out of life for you."

Mrs. Tregonell asked no further questions. She had made up her mind that any more detailed information, which she might require, must be obtained from another channel. She did not want this battered woman of the world to know how hard she was. .h.i.t. Yes--albeit there was a far-off gleam of light amidst this darkness--she was profoundly hurt by the knowledge of Angus Hamleigh's wrong-doing. He had made himself very dear to her--dear from the tender a.s.sociation of the past--dear for his own sake. She had believed him a man of scrupulous honour, of pure and spotless life.

Perhaps she had taken all this for granted, in her rustic simplicity, seeing that all his ideas and instincts were those of a gentleman. She had made no allowance for the fact that the will-o'-the-wisp, pa.s.sionate love, may lure even a gentleman into swampy ground; and that his sole superiority over profligates of coa.r.s.er clay will be to behave himself like a gentleman in those mora.s.ses whither an errant fancy has beguiled him.

"I hope you will not let this influence your feelings towards Mr.

Hamleigh," said Lady c.u.mberbridge; "if you did so, I should really feel sorry for having told you. But you must inevitably have heard the story from somebody else before long."

"No doubt. I suppose everybody knows it."

"Why yes, it was tolerably notorious. They used to be seen everywhere together. Mr. Hamleigh seemed proud of his infatuation, and there were plenty of men in his own set to encourage him. Modern society has adopted Danton's motto, don't you know?--_de l'audace, encore de l'audace et toujours de l'audace!_ And now I must go and get my siesta, or I shall be as stupid as an owl all the evening. Good-bye."

Mrs. Tregonell sat like a statue, absorbed in thought, for a considerable time after Lady c.u.mberbridge's departure. What was she to do? This horrid story was true, no doubt. Major Bree would be able to confirm it presently, when he came back to dinner, as he had promised to come. What was she to do? Allow the engagement to go on?--allow an innocent and pure-minded girl to marry a man whose infatuation for an actress had been town talk; who had come to Mount Royal fresh from that evil a.s.sociation--wounded to the core, perhaps, by the base creature's infidelity--and seeking consolation wherever it might offer; bringing his second-hand feelings, with all the bloom worn off them, to the shrine of innocent young beauty!--dedicating the mere ashes of burned-out fires to the woman who was to be his wife; perhaps even making scornful comparisons between her simple rustic charms and the educated fascinations of the actress; bringing her the leavings of a life--the mere dregs of youth's wine-cup! Was Christabel to be permitted to continue under this shameful delusion--to believe that she was receiving all when she was getting nothing? No!--ten thousand times, no!

It was womanhood's stern duty to come to the rescue of guileless, too-trusting girlhood. Bitter as the ordeal must needs be for both, Christabel must be told the whole cruel truth. Then it would be for her own heart to decide. She would still be a free agent. But surely her own purity of feeling would teach her to decide rightly--to renounce the lover who had so fooled and cheated her--and, perhaps, later to reward the devotion of that other adorer who had loved her from boyhood upwards with a steady unwavering affection--chiefly demonstrated by the calm self-a.s.sured manner in which he had written of Christabel--in his letters to his mother--as his future wife, the possibility of her rejection of that honour never having occurred to his rustic intelligence.

Christabel peeped in through the half-opened door.

"Well, Aunt Di, is your conference over? Has her ladyship gone?"

"Yes, dear; I am trying to coax myself to sleep," answered Mrs.

Tregonell from the depths of her armchair.

"Then I'll go and dress for dinner. Ah, how I only wish there were a chance of Angus coming back to-night!" sighed Christabel, softly closing the door.

Major Bree came in ten minutes afterwards.

"Come here, and sit by my side," said Mrs. Tregonell. "I want to talk to you seriously."

The Major complied, feeling far from easy in his mind.

"How pale you look!" he said; "is there anything wrong?"

"Yes--everything is wrong! You have treated me very badly. You have been false to me and to Christabel!"

"That is rather a wide accusation," said the Major, calmly. He knew perfectly what was coming, and that he should require all his patience--all that sweetness of temper which had been his distinction through life--in order to leaven the widow's wrath against the absent.

"Perhaps, you won't think it too much trouble to explain the exact nature of my offence?"

Mrs. Tregonell told him Lady c.u.mberbridge's story.

"Did you, or did you not, know this last October?" she asked.

"I had heard something about it when I was in London two years before."

"And you did not consider it your duty to tell me?"

"Certainly not. I told you at the time, when I came back from town, that your young protege's life had been a trifle wild. Miss Bridgeman remembered the fact, and spoke of it the night Hamleigh came to Mount Royal. When I saw how matters were going with Belle and Hamleigh, I made it my business to question him, considering myself Belle's next friend; and he a.s.sured me, as between man and man, that the affair with Stella Mayne was over--that he had broken with her formally and finally. From first to last I believe he acted wonderfully well in the business."

"Acted well!--acted well, to be the avowed lover of such a woman!--to advertise his devotion to her--a.s.sociate his name with hers irrevocably--for you know that the world never forgets these alliances--and then to come to Mount Royal, and practise upon our provincial ignorance, and offer his battered life to my niece! Was that well?"

"You could hardly wish him to have told your niece the whole story.

Besides, it is a thing of the past. No man can go through life with the burden of his youthful follies hanging round his neck, and strangling him."

"The past is as much a part of a man's life as the present. I want my niece's husband to be a man of an unstained past."

"Then you will have to wait a long time for him. My dear Mrs. Tregonell, pray be reasonable, just commonly reasonable! There is not a family in England into which Angus Hamleigh would not be received with open arms, if he offered himself as a suitor. Why should you draw a hard-and-fast line, sacrifice Belle's happiness to a chimerical idea of manly virtue?

You can't have King Arthur for your niece's husband, and if you could, perhaps you wouldn't care about him. Why not be content with Lancelot, who has sinned, and is sorry for his sin; and of whom may be spoken praise almost as n.o.ble as those famous words Sir Bohort spoke over his friend's dead body."

"I shall not sacrifice Belle's happiness. If she were my daughter I should take upon myself to judge for her, and while I lived she should never see Angus Hamleigh's face again. But she is my sister's child, and I shall give her the liberty of judgment."

"You don't mean that you will tell her this story?"

"Most decidedly."

"For G.o.d's sake, don't!--you will spoil her happiness for ever. To you and me, who must have some knowledge of the world, it ought to be a small thing that a man has made a fool of himself about an actress.

We ought to know for how little that kind of folly counts in a lifetime. But for a girl brought up like Christabel it will mean disenchantment--doubt--perhaps a lifetime of jealousy and self-torment.

For mercy's sake, be reasonable in this matter! I am talking to you as if I were Christabel's father, remember. I suppose that old harridan, Lady c.u.mberbridge, told you this precious story. Such women ought to be put down by Act of Parliament. Yes, there should be a law restricting every unattached female over five-and-forty to a twenty-mile radius of her country-house. After that age their tongues are dangerous."

"My friend Lady c.u.mberbridge told me facts which seem to be within everybody's knowledge; and she told them at my particular request. Your rudeness about her does not make the case any better for Mr. Hamleigh, or for you."

"I think I had better go and dine at my club," said the Major, perfectly placid.

"No, stay, please. You have proved yourself a broken reed to lean upon; but still you are a reed."

"If I stay it will be to persuade you to spare Belle the knowledge of this wretched story."

"I suppose he has almost ruined himself for the creature," said Mrs.

Tregonell, glancing at the subject for the first time from a practical point of view.

"He spent a good many thousands, but as he had no other vices--did not race or gamble--his fortune survived the shock. His long majority allowed for considerable acc.u.mulations, you see. He began life with a handsome capital in hand. I dare say Miss Mayne sweated that down for him!"

"I don't want to go into details--I only want to know how far he deceived us?"

"There was no deception as to his means--which are ample--nor as to the fact that he is entirely free from the entanglement we have been talking about. Every one in London knows that the affair was over and done with more than a year ago."