The fears which her ladyship expressed of Mrs. Luttridge's malicious curiosity were not totally without foundation. Champfort was at work for her and for himself. The memorable night of Lady Delacour's overturn, and the bustle that Marriott made about the key of the boudoir, were still fresh in his memory; and he was in hopes that, if he could discover the mystery, he should at once regain his power over Lord Delacour, reinstate himself in his lucrative place, and obtain a handsome reward, or, more properly speaking, bribe, from Mrs. Luttridge.

The means of obtaining information of all that pa.s.sed in Lady Delacour's family were, he thought, still in his power, though he was no longer an inmate of the house. The _stupid maid_ was not so stupid as to be impenetrable to the voice of flattery, or, as Mr. Champfort called it, the voice of love. He found it his interest to court, and she her pleasure to be courted. On these "coquettes of the _second_ table,"

on these underplots in the drama, much of the comedy, and some of the tragedy, of life depend. Under the unsuspected mask of stupidity this worthy mistress of our intriguing valet-de-chambre concealed the quick ears of a listener, and the demure eyes of a spy. Long, however, did she listen, and long did she spy in vain, till at last Mr. Champfort gave her notice in writing that his love would not last another week, unless she could within that time contrive to satisfy his curiosity; and that, in short, she _must_ find out the reason why the boudoir was always locked, and why Mrs. Marriott alone was to be trusted with the key. Now it happened that this billet-doux was received on the very day appointed for Lady Delacour's last interview with the quack surgeon in the mysterious boudoir. Marriott, as it was her custom upon such occasions, let the surgeon in, and showed him up the back stairs into the boudoir, locked the door, and bade him wait there till her lady came. The man had not been punctual to the hour appointed; and Lady Delacour, giving up all expectation of his coming till the next day, had retired to her bedchamber, where she of late usually at this hour secluded herself to read methodistical books, or to sleep. Marriott, when she went up to let her lady know that _the person_, as she always called him, was come, found her so fast asleep that she thought it a pity to waken her, as she had not slept at all the preceding night. She shut the door very softly, and left her lady to repose. At the bottom of the stairs she was met by _the stupid maid_, whom she immediately despatched with orders to wash some lace: "Your lady's asleep," said she, "and pray let me have no running up and down stairs." The room into which the stupid maid went was directly underneath the boudoir; and whilst she was there she thought that she heard the steps of a man's foot walking over head. She listened more attentively--she heard them again. She armed herself with a gla.s.s of jelly in her hand, _for my lady_, and hurried up stairs instantly to _my lady's_ room. She was much surprised to see my lady fast asleep. Her astonishment at finding that Mrs. Marriott had told her the truth was such, as for a moment to bereave her of all presence of mind, and she stood with the door ajar in her hand. As thus she stood she was roused by the sound of some one clearing his throat very softly in the boudoir--_his_ throat; for she recollected the footsteps she had heard before, and she was convinced it could be no other than a masculine throat. She listened again, and stooped down to try whether any feet could be seen under the door. As she was in this att.i.tude, her lady suddenly turned on her bed, and the book which she had been reading fell from the pillow to the floor with a noise, that made the listener start up instantaneously in great terror. The noise, however, did not waken Lady Delacour, who was in that dead sleep which is sometimes the effect of opium. The noise was louder than what could have been made by the fall of a book alone, and the girl descried a key that had fallen along with the book. It occurred to her that this might possibly be the key of the boudoir. From one of those irresistible impulses which some people make an excuse for doing whatever they please, she seized it, resolved at all hazards to open the mysterious door. She was cautiously putting the key into the key-hole, so as not to make the least noise, when she was suddenly startled by a voice behind her, which said, "Who gave you leave to open that door?"

She turned, and saw Helena standing at the half open bedchamber door.

"Mercy, Miss Delacour! who thought of seeing you? For G.o.d's sake, don't make a noise to waken my lady!"

"Did my mother desire you to go into that room?" repeated Helena.

"Dear me! no, miss," said the maid, putting on her stupid face; "but I only thought to open the door, to let in a little air to freshen the room, which my lady always likes, and bids me to do--and I thought--"

Helena took the key gently from her hand without listening to any more of her thoughts, and the woman left the room muttering something about _jelly_ and _my lady_, Helena went to the side of her mother's bed, determined to wait there till she awakened, then to give her the key, and tell her the circ.u.mstance. Notwithstanding the real simplicity of this little girl's character, she was, as her mother had discovered, _a nice observer_, and she had remarked that her mother permitted no one but Marriott to go into the boudoir. This remark did not excite her to dive into the mystery: on the contrary, she carefully repressed all curiosity, remembering the promise she had given to her mother when she talked of Zobeide and the porter. She had not been without temptation to break this promise; for the maid who usually attended her toilette had employed every art in her power to stimulate her curiosity. As she was dressing Helena this morning, she had said to her, "The reason I was so late calling you, miss, this morning, was because I was so late myself last night; for I went to the play, miss, last night, which was Bluebeard. Lord bless us! I'm sure, if I had been Bluebeard's wife, I should have opened the door, if I'd died for it; for to have the notion of living all day long, and all night too, in a house in which there was a room that one was never to go into, is a thing I could not put up with." Then after a pause, and after waiting in vain for some reply from Helena, she added, "Pray, Miss Delacour, did you ever go into that little room within my lady's bedchamber, that Mrs. Marriott keeps the key of always?"

"No," said Helena.

"I've often wondered what's in it: but then that's only because I'm a simpleton. I thought to be sure, _you_ knew."

Observing that Helena looked much displeased, she broke off her speech, hoping that what she had said would operate in due time, and that she should thus excite the young lady to get the secret from Marriott, which she had no doubt afterward of _worming_ from Miss Delacour.

In all this she calculated ill; for what she had said only made Helena distrust and dislike her. It was the recollection of this conversation that made her follow the maid to her mother's bedchamber, to see what detained her there so long. Helena had heard Marriott say, that "she ought not to run up and down stairs, because her lady was asleep," and it appeared extraordinary that but a few minutes after this information she should have gone into the room with a gla.s.s of jelly in her hand.

"Ah, mamma!" thought Helena, as she stood beside her mother's bed, "you did not understand, and perhaps you did not believe me, when I said that I would not try to find out any thing that you wished me not to know.

Now I hope you will _understand_ me better."

Lady Delacour opened her eyes: "Helena," cried she, starting up, "how came you by that key?"

"Oh, mother! don't look as if you suspected me." She then told her mother how the key came into her hands.

"My dear child, you have done me an essential service," said Lady Delacour: "you know not its importance, at least in my estimation. But what gives me infinitely more satisfaction, you have proved yourself worthy of my esteem--my love."

Marriott came into the room, and whispered a few words to her lady.

"You may speak out, Marriott, before my Helena," said Lady Delacour, rising from the bed as she spoke: "child as she is, Helena has deserved my confidence; and she shall be convinced that, where her mother has once reason to confide, she is incapable of suspicion. Wait here for a few minutes, my dear."

She went to her boudoir, paid and dismissed the surgeon expeditiously, then returned, and taking her daughter by the hand, she said, "You look all simplicity, my dear! I see you have no vulgar, school-girl curiosity. You will have all your mother's strength of mind; may you never have any of her faults, or any of her misfortunes! I speak to you not as to a child, Helena, for you have reason far above your years; and you will remember what I now say to you as long as you live. You will possess talents, beauty, fortune; you will be admired, followed, and flattered, as I have been: but do not throw away your life as I have thrown away mine--to win the praise of fools. Had I used but half the talents I possess, as I hope you will use yours, I might have been an ornament to my s.e.x--I might have been a Lady Anne Percival."

Here Lady Delacour's voice failed; but commanding her emotion, she in a few moments went on speaking.

"Choose your friends well, my dear daughter! It was my misfortune, my folly, early in life to connect myself with a woman, who under the name of frolic led me into every species of mischief. You are too young, too innocent, to hear the particulars of my history now; but you will hear them all at a proper time from my best friend, Miss Portman. I shall leave you to her care, my dear, when I die."

"When you die!--Oh, mother!" said Helena, "but why do you talk of dying?" and she threw her arms round her mother.

"Gently, my love!" said Lady Delacour, shrinking back; and she seized this moment to explain to her daughter why she shrunk in this manner from her caresses, and why she talked of dying.

Helena was excessively shocked.

"I wished, my dear," resumed her mother, calmly, "I wished to have spared you the pain of knowing all this. I have given you but little pleasure in my life; it is unjust to give you so much pain. We shall go to Twickenham to-morrow, and I will leave you with your Aunt Margaret, my dear, till all is over. If I die, Belinda will take you with her immediately to Oakly-park--you shall have as little sorrow as possible.

If you had shown me less of your affectionate temper, you would have spared yourself the anguish that you now feel, and you would have spared me--"

"My dear, kind mother," interrupted Helena, throwing herself on her knees at her mother's feet, "do not send me away from you--I don't wish to go to my Aunt Margaret--I don't wish to go to Oakly-park--I wish to stay with you. Do not send me away from you; for I shall suffer ten times more if I am not with you, though I know I can be of no use."

Overcome by her daughter's entreaties, Lady Delacour at last consented that she should remain with her, and that she should accompany her to Twickenham.

The remainder of this day was taken up in preparations for their departure. The _stupid maid_ was immediately dismissed. No questions were asked, and no reasons for her dismissal a.s.signed, except that Lady Delacour had no farther occasion for her services. Marriott alone was to attend her lady to Twickenham. Lord Delacour, it was settled, should stay in town, lest the unusual circ.u.mstance of his attending his lady should excite public curiosity. His lordship, who was naturally a good-natured man, and who had been touched by the kindness his wife had lately shown him, was in extreme agitation during the whole of this day, which he thought might possibly be the last of her existence. She, on the contrary, was calm and collected; her courage seemed to rise with the necessity for its exertion.

In the morning, when the carriage came to the door, as she parted with Lord Delacour, she put into his hand a paper that contained some directions and requests with which, she said, she hoped that he would comply, if they should prove to be her _last_. The paper contained only some legacies to her servants, a provision for Marriott, and a bequest to her excellent and beloved friend, Belinda Portman, of the cabinet in which she kept Clarence Hervey's letters.

Interlined in this place, Lady Delacour had written these words: "My daughter is n.o.bly provided for; and lest any doubt or difficulty should arise from the omission, I think it necessary to mention that the said cabinet contains the valuable jewels left to me by my late uncle, and that it is my intention that the said jewels should be part of my bequest to the said Belinda Portman.--If she marry a man of good fortune, she will wear them for my sake: if she do not marry an opulent husband, I hope she will sell the jewels without scruple, as they are intended for her convenience, and not as an ostentatious bequest. It is fit that she should be as independent in her circ.u.mstances as she is in her mind."

Lord Delacour with much emotion looked over this paper, and a.s.sured her ladyship that she should be obeyed, if--He could say no more.

"Farewell, then, my lord!" said she: "keep up your spirits, for I intend to live many years yet to try them."

CHAPTER XXII.

A SPECTRE.

The surgeon who was to attend Lady Delacour was prevented from going to her on the day appointed; he was one of the surgeons of the queen's household, and his attendance was required at the palace. This delay was extremely irksome to Lady Delacour, who had worked up her courage to the highest point, but who had not prepared herself to endure suspense. She spent nearly a week at Twickenham in this anxious state, and Belinda observed that she every day became more and more thoughtful and reserved. She seemed as if she had some secret subject of meditation, from which she could not bear to be distracted. When Helena was present, she exerted herself to converse in her usual sprightly strain; but as soon as she could escape, as she thought, un.o.bserved, she would shut herself up in her own apartment, and remain there for hours.

"I wish to Heaven, Miss Portman," said Marriott, coming one morning into her room with a portentous face, "I wish to Heaven, ma'am, that you could any way persuade my lady not to spend so many hours of the day and night as she does in reading those methodistical books that she keeps to herself!--I'm sure that they do her no good, but a great deal of harm, especially now when her spirits should be kept up as much as possible.

I am sensible, ma'am, that 'tis those books that have made my lady melancholy of a sudden. Ma'am, my lady has let drop very odd hints within these two or three days, and she speaks in a strange _disconnected_ sort of style, and at times I do not think she is quite right in her head."

When Belinda questioned Marriott more particularly about the strange hints which her lady had let fall, she with looks of embarra.s.sment and horror declined repeating the words that had been said to her; yet persisted in a.s.serting that Lady Delacour had been very _strange_ for these two or three days. "And I'm sure, ma'am, you'd be shocked if you were to see my lady in a morning, when she wakens, or rather when I first go into the room--for, as to wakening, that's out of the question.

I am certain she does not sleep during the whole night. You'll find, ma'am, it is as I tell you, those books will quite turn her poor head, and I wish they were burnt. I know the mischief that the same sort of things did to a poor cousin of my own, who was driven melancholy mad by a methodist preacher, and came to an untimely end. Oh, ma'am! if you knew as much as I do, you'd be as much alarmed for my lady as I am."

It was impossible to prevail upon Marriott to explain herself more distinctly. The only circ.u.mstances that could be drawn from her seemed to Belinda so trifling as to be scarcely worth mentioning. For instance, that Lady Delacour, contrary to Marriott's advice, had insisted on sleeping in a bedchamber upon the ground floor, and had refused to let a curtain be put up before a gla.s.s door that was at the foot of her bed.

"When I offered to put up the curtain, ma'am," said Marriott, "my lady said she liked the moonlight, and that she would not have it put up till the fine nights were over. Now, Miss Portman, to hear my lady talk of the moon, and moonlights, and liking the moon, is rather extraordinary and unaccountable; for I never heard her say any thing of the sort in her life before; I question whether she ever knew there was a moon or not from one year's end to another. But they say the moon has a great deal to do with mad people; and, from my own experience, I'm perfectly sensible, ma'am, it had in my own cousin's case; for, before he came to the worst, he took a prodigious fancy to the moon, and was always for walking by moonlight, and talking to one of the beauty of the moon, and such melancholy nonsense, ma'am."

Belinda could not forbear smiling at this melancholy nonsense; though she was inclined to be of Marriott's opinion about the methodistical books, and she determined to talk to Lady Delacour on the subject.

The moment that she made the attempt, her ladyship, commanding her countenance, with her usual ability, replied only by cautious, cold monosyllables, and changed the conversation as soon as she could.

At night, when they were retiring to rest, Marriott, as she lighted them to their rooms, observed that she was afraid her lady would suffer from sleeping in so cold a bedchamber, and Belinda pressed her friend to change her apartment.

"No, my dear," replied Lady Delacour, calmly. "I have chosen this for my bedchamber, because it is at a distance from the servants' rooms; and when _the operation_, which I have to go through, shall be performed, my cries, if I should utter any, will not be overheard. The surgeon will be here in a few days, and it is not worth while to make any change."

The next day, towards evening, the surgeon and Dr. X---- arrived.

Belinda's blood ran cold at the sight of them.

"Will you be so kind, Miss Portman," said Marriott, "as to let my lady know that they are come? for I am not well able to go, and you can speak more composed to her than I can."

Miss Portman went to Lady Delacour's bedchamber. The door was bolted.

As Lady Delacour opened it, she fixed her eyes upon Belinda, and said to her with a mild voice, "You are come to tell me that the surgeon is arrived. I knew that by the manner in which you knocked at the door.

I will see him this moment," continued she, in a firm tone; and she deliberately put a mark in the book which she had been reading, walked leisurely to the other end of the room, and locked it up in her book-case. There was an air of determined dignity in all her motions.

"Shall we go? I am ready," said she, holding out her hand to Belinda, who had sunk upon a chair.