Through all Rees Pennant’s changes of conduct, of manner, of
thought, of appearance, Lady Marion Cenarth had remained unswervingly
faithful and devoted, brooding over the short notes Goodhare induced
him to write to her, with alternate rapture and anxiety; making
appointments to meet him at the house of a convenient friend, bearing
with his caprices of temper, proud of his tepid sufferance of her
vehement adoration, ready at all times, as she repeatedly hinted, to
throw away the dignity of her sex and position, and incur all the
humiliation and danger of a private marriage. This step, in spite of
Goodhare’s persuasions, Rees was in no hurry to take. Poor Lady
Marion’s devotion was perhaps too slavish, too entirely unconcealed,
to have been highly valued by any man. It therefore speedily palled
upon Rees, who was not only accustomed to feminine adoration, but who
had become doubly fastidious since Deborah Audaer’s visit to town.
The appearance of the beautiful country girl, with her modest,
straightforward manner, and handsome, yet most innocent, eyes, had
been like a draught of fresh, sweet air to a man coming out of a
chamber foul with asphyxiating gases--not without a certain chilling
effect, but refreshing, invigorating, pure--reminding him of the
wholesome joys of the life he had left, and contrasting them with the
feverish, soul-deadening pleasures of the life he was leading. So
that, dropping out of his mind altogether his own shameful conduct on
that occasion, he had allowed himself to brood over Deborah’s image as
that of the angel who--but not before he was tired of it--should lead
him back from his exhausting London life to recruit his energies in
quiet Carstow.
So that this mandate of Amos Goodhare’s to go and marry Lady Marion
fell in the midst of his dreams with disconcerting suddenness. Amos
had used his craft so well on Rees’s weak nature that not all Sep’s
shrewd observations had been able to shake the young man’s confidence
in the judgment of the old. Amos thought for him, and Rees acted upon
those thoughts with docility, though he constantly protested with a
verbal freedom which Goodhare, while permitting, hated him for.
Rees, therefore, did not now stay to ask himself whether Amos had some
private motive in this matter of his marriage, but he arrived at the
meeting-place in the worst possible temper.
Mrs. Walker, Lady Marion’s accommodating friend, was the wife of a
city architect, and one of those persons who are ready, by no matter
what means, to attach themselves to people of a rank superior to their
own. Although exceedingly small, plain, and vulgar she had, by the
attractions of a coarse, easy-going good nature and a somewhat
startling freedom of speech, secured the equivocal attentions of a
young fellow of no brains but of good social position, and it was
through him that she had made the acquaintance of Lady Marion Cenarth,
who was his own cousin. Mrs. Walker was therefore just the sort of
person to be an accommodating friend, and Lady Marion, while inwardly
loathing her unrefined manners, was glad to make use of her.
On this particular evening Mrs. Walker had had an appointment to go to
the theatre, but the fog having prevented her keeping it, she gave
Lady Marion her undesirable companionship, and the two sat in the
drawing-room with Francis Cenarth, the brainless one before mentioned;
the hostess trying to talk a jargon of fashionable slip-slop, to which
Lady Marion who, whatever her faults might be, was not frivolous,
turned rudely inattentive ears.
“He’s not coming, my dear, that is clear, so I should advise you to
give up hope, and look pleasant,” whispered Mrs. Walker, as she
crossed over to her friend with a cup of tea.
But at that moment a cab stopped at the door, and Lady Marion, with a
naïve start and a flushing face, betrayed her hopes. A minute later
Rees was in the room.
If Lady Marion was annoyed at the presence of Mrs. Walker, her admirer
was unspeakably relieved by it. He drank cup after cup of tea, and
bore lightly the chief burden of the conversation, delighted to
shorten the inevitable tête-à-tête in which he would have to
forswear his liberty and be surfeited with unwelcome caresses. At
last, however, the hostess proposed to show her own admirer a picture
her husband had just bought, in order to allow the supposed passionate
lovers an opportunity of exchanging mutual vows. The two
drawing-rooms, which were both furnished with a good taste which
seemed at first sight a surprising characteristic of their occupier,
ran from the front to the back of the house, and were divided simply
by a reed curtain. Mrs. Walker passed through these with Francis
Cenarth, and Rees was left to make his proposal. As usual, having let
Amos make up his mind for him, Rees was not long in carrying out his
instructions when once he and the opportunity stood face to face.
The reed curtain had scarcely ceased to rustle behind his hostess and
her companion, when he threw himself into a chair by Lady Marion’s
side.
“Well, Marion,” he said in a rather languid, pretty-pretty manner,
“have you any idea why I was so anxious to see you to-night?”
The poor girl flushed with surprise and agitation. Indeed, she had not
noticed any great degree of anxiety in her lover’s manner. Knowing her
own personal disadvantages, with a cankering knowledge that she was
lean, high-shouldered, awkward, and altogether without beauty, and
regarding Rees with worshipful eyes which even exaggerated his good
looks and attractions, she had always been content with very little.
Now, therefore, she scarcely dared to think that the goal of her hopes
was really reached.
“No, Rees,” she stammered, looking at him with sudden, most eloquent
shyness, and a bright gleam of excitement in her rather dull blue
eyes, “I--I didn’t know that you had any particular reason.”
“And if I tell you that I have, can you guess what it is?”
“No--no, Rees.”
She had scarcely uttered these words when a cab drew up so sharply
outside that, in the fog, the horse stepped upon the curbstone, and
was got off amid much shouting and clatter. Rees jumped up and looked
out from behind the blind to see what had happened. He stepped back
muttering an exclamation, with a strange look in his eyes.
“It’s the earl,” he said briefly.
Lady Marion started to her feet with a cry, and stood for a few
moments staring at him vacantly. Then, whispering quickly:
“Behind the curtain--the other room--papa must not see you!” she met
Mrs. Walker, just as the latter, hearing a loud and peremptory ring,
ran in from the next room.
“It’s my father,” said Lady Marion.
Mrs. Walker did not notice the girl’s tone of alarm. The honor of
having an earl in her house, no matter what his errand might be,
out-weighed every other thought in her mind. She had only time to draw
one deep breath of gratification before the drawing-room door was
opened and Lord St. Austell was announced.
He walked in with a firm step and dignified manner--“every inch a
nobleman” was the description Mrs. Walker afterwards gave of him. With
a curt bend to the lady, who came forward very ready to overflow with
an effusive welcome, he asked shortly:
“My daughter is here, I believe, madam?”
“Yes, papa,” said a tremulous voice behind him.
He turned and saw Lady Marion standing near the door, with a very
white face. Then, with only a glance at her, he again addressed the
lady of the house.
“Can I have a few words with my daughter alone, madam?”
Nothing could be more courteous than his words and attitude, nothing
more contemptuous than his tone and manner. It was impossible to
mistake the fact that he took at a glance the measure, social and
moral, of the person he was addressing. No upbraidings, no
explanations were necessary. Mrs. Walker retired at once with some
incoherent words which sounded like an apology, and the earl turned at
once again to his daughter.
“Last week you begged of me,” he began at once, without any preface,
“two letters from General Wenlock as autographs, you said. Who did you
give them to?” No answer. “Was it to Amos Goodhare?”
Another pause.
Then, in a stifled voice, poor Lady Marion answered, “No, papa.”
“Who was it to, then?”
He was perfectly quiet. Rees, who was listening, with bated breath,
behind the reed curtain, could only just distinguish the words.
Again Lady Marion made no answer.
The earl spoke again, after a short silence, in very measured tone.
“Your uncle Charles will be a ruined man by this time to-morrow unless
we find out into what hands those letters have got. They have been
used for purposes of forgery.”
The girl uttered a low cry and hid her face in her hands.
“Will you tell me now?”
“I cannot.”
She lifted a countenance like that of a dead person, staring wildly,
blankly, before her.
“Then I know. It was Rees Pennant!”
Lord St. Austell was by no means a dull person when an important
occasion arose for the exercise of his wits. He had been told where to
find his daughter by a servant who knew better than to say what reason
took her to Mrs. Walker’s, and until this moment he had not had the
least suspicion of her attachment to Rees and her secret
correspondence with him. But he had caught sight of a slight,
well-formed figure he recognised behind the reed curtain, for neither
Rees nor Lady Marion had remembered that a small lamp was burning at
the back of the second room. In an instant the earl understood
everything. Connecting Amos with the change in Rees, as he had already
known how to connect him with the personation of himself at the Tower
that day, he felt that he had now more than a clue, and therefore
spoke with certainty.
Marion was in despair. She at once began a denial so energetic that
Rees, perceiving that the game was up, stepped through the rustling
reeds with a grand air.
“It is unnecessary to say more,” he said, standing in the centre of
the room, conscious even at this moment of the effective picture he
made. “I admit that the letters were given to me.”
The earl came to the point at once. What were these two, this knave
and this fool, that he should spend time and words on them when the
honor of his family was at stake?
“Then you know where the jewels are,” he said, still in a low voice,
but with perceptibly rising excitement. “Put me in the way of finding
them to-night, and you may marry my daughter to-morrow.”
Rees gave him a low bow.
“Thank you,” he said. “You do me too great an honor. For, in the first
place, I don’t want to marry your daughter; and in the second, the
jewels you speak of have already passed out of my reach and out of my
knowledge altogether. I wish your daughter a better husband than I
should make, the Crown jewels a better keeper than your brother, and
yourself a very good evening.”
With a low but a very rapid bow, Rees darted out of the room, only
just evading the grasp which the earl, beside himself with rage, would
have laid upon his coat-collar. In another instant the front door
slammed behind him with a noise that echoed through the house, and two
minutes later still he was as much lost to the earl in the pitchy
blackness of the fog as if he had left the regions of earth.