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NORINE'S REVENGE,
and
SIR NOEL'S HEIR.
by
MAY AGNES FLEMING
* * * * *
POPULAR NOVELS.
BY MAY AGNES FLEMING.
1.--GUY EARLSCOURT'S WIFE.
2.--A WONDERFUL WOMAN.
3.--A TERRIBLE SECRET.
4.--NORINE'S REVENGE.
5.--A MAD MARRIAGE.
6.--ONE NIGHT'S MYSTERY.
7.--KATE DANTON.
8.--SILENT AND TRUE.
9.--HEIR OF CHARLTON.
10.--CARRIED BY STORM.
11.--LOST FOR A WOMAN.
12.--A WIFE'S TRAGEDY.
13.--A CHANGED HEART.
14.--PRIDE AND PASSION.
15.--SHARING HER CRIME.
16.--A WRONGED WIFE.
17.--MAUDE PERCY'S SECRET.
18.--THE ACTRESS' DAUGHTER (_New_).
"Mrs. Fleming's stories are growing more and more popular every
day. Their delineations of character, life-like conversations,
flashes of wit, constantly varying scenes, and deeply interesting
plots, combine to place their author in the very first rank of
Modern Novelists."
All published uniform with this volume. Price, $1.50 each, and sent
_free_ by mail on receipt of price.
BY G. W. CARLETON & CO., Publishers, New York.
* * * * *
NORINE'S REVENGE,
and
SIR NOEL'S HEIR.
by
MAY AGNES FLEMING,
Author of
"Guy Earlscourt's Wife," "A Wonderful Woman,"
"A Terrible Secret," "A Mad Marriage," Etc.
New York:
G. W. Carleton & Co., Publishers,
London: S. Low, Son & Co.,
MDCCCLXXXVI.
Copyright,
C. W. Carleton & Co.
1875.
Trow's
Printing and Bookbinding Company,
205-213 East 12th St.,
New York.
CONTENTS.
NORINE'S REVENGE.
CHAPTER. PAGE.
I.--Two Black Eyes and their Work 7
II.--A Wise Man's Folly 18
III.--Mr. Laurence Thorndyke 35
IV.--The Lawyer's Warning 42
V.--"I will be your Wife" 55
VI.--Before the Wedding 69
VII.--The Gathering Storm 78
VIII.--Fled 94
IX.--"Mrs. Laurence" 102
X.--"A Fool's Paradise" 109
XI.--Gone 122
XII.--The Truth 131
XIII.--Mr. Liston's Story 142
XIV.--A Dark Compact 150
XV.--"A Fashionable Wedding" 159
XVI.--"His name is Laurence Thorndyke" 167
XVII.--A Letter from Paris 178
XVIII.--After Four Years 185
XIX.--"Whom the gods wish to
destroy they first make mad" 196
XX.--Norine's Revenge 211
XXI.--"The mills of the gods grind slowly, but
they grind exceedingly small" 215
XXII.--"The way of the Transgressor is hard." 225
XXIII.--"Jenny Kissed me." 231
SIR NOEL'S HEIR.
I.--Sir Noel's Deathbed 243
II.--Captain Everard 252
III.--"Little May" 262
IV.--Mrs. Weymore 272
V.--A Journey to London 283
VI.--Guy 288
VII.--Col. Jocyln 298
VIII.--Lady Thetford's Ball 307
IX.--Guy Legard 317
X.--Asking in Marriage 325
XI.--On the Wedding eve 334
XII.--Mrs. Weymore's Story 346
XIII.--"There is many a slip" 354
XIV.--Parted 363
XV.--After Five Years 369
XVI.--At Sorrento 373
XVII.--At Home 376
A DARK CONSPIRACY 379
FOR BETTER FOR WORSE 393
NORINE'S REVENGE.
CHAPTER I.
TWO BLACK EYES AND THEIR WORK.
The early express train from Montreal to Portland, Maine, was crowded.
Mr. Richard Gilbert, lawyer, of New York, entering five minutes before
starting time, found just one seat unoccupied near the door. A crusty
old farmer held the upper half, and moved grumpily toward the window,
under protest, as Mr. Gilbert took the place.
The month was March, the morning snowy and blowy, slushy and sleety, as
it is in the nature of Canadian March mornings to be. The sharp sleet
lashed the glass, people shivered in multitudinous wraps, lifted purple
noses, over-twisted woolen clouds and looked forlorn and miserable. And
Mr. Gilbert, congratulating himself inwardly on having secured a seat by
the stove, opened the damp _Montreal True Witness_, and settled himself
comfortably to read. He turned to the leading article, read three lines,
and never finished it from that day to this. For the door opened, a howl
of March wind, a rush of March rain whirled in, and lifting his eyes,
Mr. Richard Gilbert saw in the doorway a new passenger.
The new passenger was a young lady, and the young lady was the prettiest
young lady, Mr. Gilbert thought, in that first moment, he had ever seen.
She was tall, she was slim, she was dark, she had long loose, curly
black hair, falling to her waist, and two big, bright, black, Canadian
eyes, as lovely eyes as the wide earth holds. She stood there in the
doorway, faltering, frightened, irresolute, a very picture--the color
coming and going in the youthful, sensitive face, the luminous brown
eyes glancing like the eyes of a startled bird. She stood there, laden
with bundles, bandboxes, and reticules, and holding a little blinking
spaniel by a string.
Every seat was filled, no one seemed disposed to dispossess themselves,
even for the accommodation of youth and beauty. Only for six seconds,
though; then Richard Gilbert, rose up, and quietly, and, as a matter of
course, offered his seat to the young lady. She smiled--what a smile it
was, what a bright little row of teeth it showed, dimpled, blushed--the
loveliest rose-pink blush in the world, hesitated, and spoke:
"But, monsieur!" in excellent English, set to a delicious French accent.
"But, monsieur will have no place."
"Monsieur will do very well. Oblige me, mademoiselle, by taking this
seat."
"Monsieur is very good. Thanks."
She fluttered down into the seat, and Mr. Gilbert disposed of the many
bundles and boxes and bags on the rack overhead. He was smiling a little
to himself as he did so; the _role_ of lady's man was quite a new one in
this gentleman's cast in the great play of Life. The grumpy old farmer,
with a grunt of disapprobation, edged still further up to the window.
"Monsieur can sit on the arm of the seat," suggests the young lady,
glancing up with a pretty girl's glance--half shy, half coquettish; "it
is so very fatiguing to stand."
Monsieur avails himself of the offer immediately, and finds he is in an
excellent position to examine that very charming face. But he does not
examine it: he is not one of your light-minded, mustache-growing,
frivolous-headed youths of three-or-four-and-twenty, to whom the smiling
face of a pretty girl is the most fascinating object under heaven.
Mr. Gilbert casts one look, only one, then draws forth the _True
Witness_ and buries himself in the leading article. The last bell rings,
the whistle shrieks, a plunge, a snort, and they are rushing madly off
into the wild March morning. The young lady looks about her, the grumpy
farmer is between her and the window, the window is all blurred and
blotted; Mr. Gilbert is fathoms deep in his paper. She gives a little
sigh, then lifts her small dog up in her lap, and begins an animated
conversation with him in French. Frollo understands Canadian French,
certainly not a word of English, and he blinks his watery eyes, and
listens sagaciously to it all. The farmer looks askance, and grunts like
one of his own pigs; the lawyer, from behind his printed sheet, finds
the words dancing fantastically before his eyes, and his brain taking in
nothing but the sweet-spoken, foolish little prattle of mademoiselle to
Frollo.
He is thirty-five years of age, he is a hard-headed, hard-working
lawyer, he has a species of contempt for all women, as bundles of nerves
and nonsense, fashions and foolery. He is thirty-five; he has never
asked any woman to marry him in his life; he looks upon that foolish
boy-and-girl idiocy, called love, as your worldly-wise cynics do look
upon it, with a sneer and a scoff. Pretty girls he has met and known by
the score--handsome women and clever women, but not the prettiest, the
handsomest, the cleverest of them all has ever made his well-regulated
legal pulses beat one throb the quicker in all his five-and-thirty years
of life. Why is it then that he looks at this little French Canadienne
with an interest he has never felt in looking at any of the bright New
York beauties he has known so long? Simple curiosity, no doubt--nothing
more.
"She looks like a picture I once saw of Joanna of Naples," he thought,
"only Joanna had golden hair. I hope the similarity to that very
improper person ends with the outward resemblance."
He returned to his newspaper, but somehow politics and cable dispatches,
and Our Foreign Relations, had lost their interest. Again and again,
under cover of the friendly sheet, his eyes wandered back to that fair
drooping face, that piquant profile, those long eyelashes, and the
rippling black tresses falling from beneath the little hat. The hat was
trimmed with crape, and the graceful figure wore dingy black.
"Who is she?" Mr. Gilbert found himself wondering "where is she going?
and for whom is she in mourning?" And then, conscious of his own folly
and levity, he pulled himself up, and went back for the dozenth time to
the _True Witness_.
But--his hour had come, and it would not do. The low French babble to
the dog rang in his ears, the dark mignonne face came between him and
the printed page, and blotted it out.
"She is much too young, and--yes, too pretty to be travelling alone. I
wonder where is she going; and if her friends will meet her? Very
imprudent to allow a child like this to travel alone. She hardly looks
sixteen."
His interest--fatherly, brotherly of course, in this handsome child
was increasing every moment. It was something not to be explained or
comprehended. He had heard of such imbecility as "love at first
sight," but was it likely that he, a man of five-and-thirty, a lawyer,
without an ounce of sentimentality in his composition should make an
idiot of himself over a French Canadienne, a total stranger, a
bread-and-butter-eating school-girl at his time of life. Not likely.
She interested him as a pretty picture or marble Venus, or other work
of art might--just that.
He did not address her. Lawyers are not bashful as a body. Mr. Gilbert
was not bashful individually, but something, for which he knew no name,
held him silent now. If that grumpy, overgrown farmer were only out of
the way, he thought, instead of sitting sulkily there staring at the
falling rain, he could no doubt find something to say.
Fate favored him, his evil angel "cursed him with the curse of an
accomplished prayer." At the very next station the surly husbandman got
up and left; and the mistress of Frollo, moving close to the window,
lifted those two orbs of wondrous brown light to the lawyer's grave,
thoughtful face, and the sweet voice spoke:
"Will monsieur resume his place now?"
Monsieur needed no second bidding. He resumed it, threw aside his paper,
and opened conversation in the usual brilliant and original way:
"The storm seems to increase--don't you think so? Abominable weather it
has been since March came in, and no hope of its holding up to day."
"Oh, yes, monsieur," mademoiselle answered, with animation; "and it is
such a pity, isn't it? It makes one low-spirited, one can see nothing,
and one does like so to see the country as one goes along."
"Was she going far?" the lawyer inquired.
"Oh, very far!" Mademoiselle makes a little Gallic gesture, with
shoulders and eyebrows and hands all together to express the immensity
of the distance.
"A great way. To Portland," with a strong accent on the name of that
city. "Monsieur knows where Portland is?"
"Yes, very well--he was going there himself _en route_ to New York. You,
mademoiselle," he adds, inquiringly, "are going on a visit, probably?"
Mademoiselle shakes her pretty head, and purses her pretty lips.
"Monsieur, no--I am going home."
"Home? But you are French."
"But yes, monsieur, certainly French, still my home is there. Papa and
mamma have become dead," the brown eyes fill, "and Uncle Louis and Aunt
Mathilde have seven of their own, and are poor. I am going to mamma's
relatives, mamma was not French."
"No?" Mr. Gilbert says in sympathetic inquiry.
"No, monsieur. Mamma was Yan-_kee_, a New England lady, papa French
Canadian. Mamma's friends did not wish her to marry papa, and she ran
away. It is five years ago since she died, and papa--papa could not live
without her, and two years after the good God took him too."
The tearful brown eyes look down at her shabby black dress. "Monsieur
beholds I wear mourning still. Then Uncle Louis took me, and sent me to
school, but Uncle Louis has so many, so I wrote to mamma's brothers in
Portland, and they sent a letter back and money, and told me to come.
And I am going--Frollo and me."
She bends over the little dog, her lips quivering like the lips of a
grieved child, and the lawyer's middle-aged heart goes out to her in a
great compassion.
"Poor little lonely child!" he thinks, watching the sweet overcast face:
"I hope they will be good to her, those Yankee friends." Then aloud.
"But you are very young, are you not, to travel this distance alone?"
"I am seventeen, and I had to travel alone, there was no one to come
with me. My Uncle Kent will meet me at Portland."
"You are Mademoiselle Kent?" he says with a smile.
"No, monsieur, my name is Bourdon--Norine Kent Bourdon."
"Have you ever seen those relatives to whom you are going?"
"Once. They came to see mamma when she was dead. There are three--two
uncles and an aunt. They were very kind. I liked them very much."
"I trust you will be happy in your new home, Miss Bourdon," the lawyer
says gravely. "Permit me to offer you my card. If you ever visit New
York I may meet you again--who knows?"
The young lady smiles as she reads the name.
"Ah--who knows? I am going out as governess by-and-by. Perhaps I shall
write to you to help get me a situation."
"What a frank, innocent child it is!" thought Mr. Gilbert, looking down
at the smiling, trustful face: "other girls of her age would be bashful,
coquettish, or afraid of a masculine stranger. But this pretty child
smiles up in my face, and tells me her little history as though I were
her brother. I wish I were her brother, and had power to shield her from
the hardships of life." "Any service in my power I shall always be happy
to render you, my dear young lady," he said; "if at any time you apply
to me, believe me I shall do my utmost to serve you."
Mademoiselle Norine Kent Bourdon looked up into the grave, genial face,
with soft, trustful eyes that thanked him. She could not have defined
it, but she felt he was a man to be trusted--a good man, a faithful
friend and an honorable gentleman.
The train flew on.
As the afternoon wore away the storm increased. The trees rocked in the
high wind, and the ceaseless sleet beat against the windows. Miss
Bourdon had a novel in her satchel, an English novel, and she perused a
few pages of this work at intervals, and watched the storm-blotted
landscape flitting by. She made small French remarks to Frollo, and she
refreshed herself with apples, ginger-bread and dyspeptic confectionery.
But, all these recreations palling after a time, and as the darkness of
the stormy March day closed, drowsiness came, and leaning her head
against the window, the young lady fell asleep.
Mr. Gilbert could watch her now to his heart's content, and he did watch
her with an interest all-absorbing, and utterly beyond his
comprehension. He laid his railway rug lightly over her, and shielded
her from all other male eyes, with jealous care. What was it that
charmed him about this French girl?
He could no more have told you then than he could ever have told you
afterward. It was written, it was Kismet; his fate had come to him as it
comes to all, in unlooked-for form. She looked, the poetic simile came
to the unpoetical mind of the lawyer--like a folded rose, the sweetness
and bloom yet unbrushed from the leaves.
Mademoiselle did not awake until the train stopped; then she opened her
eyes bewildered. But Mr. Gilbert gathered up the boxes and bundles, drew
her hand under his arm, and led her out of the cars, and up to the big
noisy hotel, where they were to stop for the night. Miss Bourdon took
her supper seated beside her friend, at the long crowded table, and was
dazzled, and delighted. It was all so new to her; and at seventeen,
novelty is delight. After supper her protector gave her into the hands
of a chambermaid, told her at what hour they started next morning, bade
her good-night, and dismissed her.
Were Richard Gilbert's dreams that night haunted by the vision of a
dark, soft face, two dark tender eyes, and the smile of an angel?
Richard Gilbert only knows. But this is certain: when Mademoiselle
Bourdon descended the stairs next morning he was standing at the
dining-room door awaiting her, and his calm eyes lit up, as few had ever
seen them light in his life. He led her into breakfast, and watched her
hearty, school-girl morning appetite with pleasure. Then, there being
half-an-hour to spare before the train started, he proposed a little
stroll in the crisp, cool sunshine that had followed yesterday's storm.
It was very fair, there in that lovely valley in Vermont, with the tall
mountains piercing the heavens, and the silvery lakes flashing like
mirrors below.
It was past noon when they reached Portland. The usual rush followed,
but Norine, safe under the protecting wing of Mr. Gilbert, made her way
unscathed. She looked eagerly among the crowd in the long depot, and
cried out at last at sight of a familiar face.
"There, monsieur--there! Uncle Reuben is standing yonder with the blue
coat and fur cap. He is looking for me. Oh! take me to him at once,
please."
Mr. Gilbert led Miss Bourdon up to where a bluff-looking, middle-aged
countryman stood--"Down East" from top to toe.
"Uncle," cried Norine, holding out both hands, eagerly, "I have come."
And then, heedless of the crowd, of Mr. Gilbert, mademoiselle flung both
arms around Uncle Reuben's neck with very French effusion, and kissed
him, smick--smack, on both cheeks.
"Hey! bless my soul! it is you, is it?" Uncle Reuben exclaimed,
extricating himself. "It is, I swow, and growed out of all knowin'.
You're welcome, my dear, and I'm right glad to have you with us, for
your poor mother's sake. You ain't a look of her, though--no, not
one--Gustave Bourdon all over. And how did you manage on your journey? I
tell you, we was all considerable uneasy about you."
He looked at her tall companion as he ceased, half suspiciously, half
inquiringly, and Miss Bourdon hastened to introduce them.
"This gentleman is Mr. Gilbert, uncle. He has been very kind to me all
the way. I don't know what I should have done but for him. He has taken
care of me ever since we left Montreal."
"Thanky, sir--much obliged to you for looking after this little girl.
Come along and spend the day with us at my place, Kent Farm."
"Thanks, very much," the lawyer answered; "I regret more than I can say
that circumstances render that pleasure impossible. I must be in New
York to-morrow, but the very next time I am in Portland I shall
certainly avail myself of your kind invitation. Miss Bourdon, until that
time comes, good-by."
He shook hands with her, and saw her led away by her uncle, with a
feeling of strange, yearning regret. A two-seated country sleigh stood
near. Uncle Reuben helped her in, took his seat beside her, tucked her
up, said "Ga'lang," and they were off. Once she looked back, to smile,
to wave her hand to him in adieu. One more glimpse of that brunette
face, of that rare smile, of those black Canadian eyes, and the clumsy
sleigh turned an acute angle, and she was gone.
Gone. A blank seemed to fall, the whole place turned desolate and empty.
With a wistful look in his face he turned slowly away.
"Poor little girl!" the lawyer thought. "I hope she will be happy. She
is so pretty--so pretty!"