Miss St. John had, for at least six years, been the most renowned woman
in Europe. In Paris and St. Petersburg, no less than in London, her name
was equally familiar both to princes and to pot-boys; indeed, the gaze
of all the world was fixed on her. Yet, in spite of this exposed
situation, scandal had proved powerless to wrong her; she defied
detraction. Her enemies could but echo her friends' praise of her
beauty; her friends could but confirm her enemies' description of her
character. Though of birth that might almost be called humble, she had
been connected with the heads of many distinguished families; and so
general was the affection she inspired, and so winning the ways in which
she contrived to retain it, that she found herself, at the age of
thirty, mistress of nothing except a large fortune. She was now
converted with surprising rapidity by a Ritualistic priest, and she
became in a few months a model of piety and devotion. She made lace
trimmings for the curate's vestments; she bowed at church as often and
profoundly as possible; she enjoyed nothing so much as going to
confession; she learnt to despise the world. Indeed, such utter dross
did her riches now seem to her, that, despite all the arguments of her
ghostly counsellor, she remained convinced that they were far too
worthless to offer to the Church, and she saw nothing for it but to
still keep them for herself. The mingled humility and discretion of this
resolve so won the heart of a gifted colonial bishop, then on a visit to
England, that, having first assured himself that Miss St. John was
sincere in making it, he besought her to share with him his humble
mitre, and make him the happiest prelate in the whole Catholic Church.
Miss St. John consented. The nuptials were celebrated with the most
elaborate ritual, and after a short honeymoon the bishop departed for
his South Pacific diocese of the Chasuble Islands, to prepare a home for
his bride, who was to follow him by the next steamer.
Professor Paul Darnley, in his own walk of life, was even more famous
than Virginia had been in hers. He had written three volumes on the
origin of life, which he had spent seven years in looking for in
infusions of hay and cheese; he had written five volumes on the entozoa
of the pig, and two volumes of lectures, as a corollary to these, on the
sublimity of human heroism and the whole duty of man. He was renowned
all over Europe and America as a complete embodiment of enlightened
modern thought. He criticised everything; he took nothing on trust,
except the unspeakable sublimity of the human race and its august
terrestrial destinies. And, in his double capacity of a seer and a
_savant_, he had destroyed all that the world had believed in the past,
and revealed to it all that it is going to feel in the future. His mind
indeed was like a sea, into which the other great minds of the age
discharged themselves, and in which all the slight discrepancies of the
philosophy of the present century mingled together and formed one
harmonious whole. Nor was he less successful in his own private life.
He married, at the age of forty, an excellent evangelical lady, ten
years his senior, who wore a green gown, grey corkscrew curls, and who
had a fortune of two hundred thousand pounds. Deeply pledged though she
was to the most vapid figments of Christianity, Mrs. Darnley was yet
proud beyond measure of her husband's worldwide fame, for she did but
imperfectly understand the grounds of it. Indeed, the only thing that
marred her happiness was the single tenet of his that she had really
mastered. This, unluckily, was that he disbelieved in hell. And so, as
Mrs. Darnley conceived that that place was designed mainly to hold those
who doubted its existence, she daily talked her utmost and left no text
unturned to convince her darling of his very dangerous error. These
assiduous arguments soon began to tell. The Professor grew moody and
brooding, and he at last suggested to his medical man that a voyage
round the world, unaccompanied by his wife, was the prescription most
needed by his failing patience. Mrs. Darnley at length consented with a
fairly good grace. She made her husband pledge himself that he would not
be absent for above a twelvemonth, or else, she said, she should
immediately come after him. She bade him the tenderest of adieus, and
promised to pray till his return for his recovery of a faith in hell.
The Professor, who had but exceeded his time by six months, was now on
board the _Australasian_, homeward bound to his wife. Virginia was
outward bound to her husband.