his father’s lips, at his father’s bedside. Lord Holchester had charged
him, had earnestly charged him, to bear that name in mind, and to help
the woman who bore it, if the woman ever applied to him in time to come.
Again, he had heard the name, more lately, associated scandalously with
the name of his brother. On the receipt of the first of the anonymous
letters sent to her, Mrs. Glenarm had not only summoned Geoffrey himself
to refute the aspersion cast upon him, but had forwarded a private copy
of the letter to his relatives at Swanhaven. Geoffrey’s defense had not
entirely satisfied Julius that his brother was free from blame. As
he now looked at Anne Silvester, the doubt returned upon him
strengthened--almost confirmed. Was this woman--so modest, so gentle, so
simply and unaffectedly refined--the shameless adventuress denounced
by Geoffrey, as claiming him on the strength of a foolish flirtation;
knowing herself, at the time, to be privately married to another man?
Was this woman--with the voice of a lady, the look of a lady, the manner
of a lady--in league (as Geoffrey had declared) with the illiterate
vagabond who was attempting to extort money anonymously from Mrs.
Glenarm? Impossible! Making every allowance for the proverbial
deceitfulness of appearances, impossible!
“Your name has been mentioned to me,” said Julius, answering her after
a momentary pause. His instincts, as a gentleman, made him shrink from
referring to the association of her name with the name of his brother.
“My father mentioned you,” he added, considerately explaining his
knowledge of her in _that_ way, “when I last saw him in London.”
“Your father!” She came a step nearer, with a look of distrust as
well as a look of astonishment in her face. “Your father is Lord
Holchester--is he not?”
“Yes.”
“What made him speak of _me?_”
“He was ill at the time,” Julius answered. “And he had been thinking of
events in his past life with which I am entirely unacquainted. He said
he had known your father and mother. He desired me, if you were ever in
want of any assistance, to place my services at your disposal. When he
expressed that wish, he spoke very earnestly--he gave me the impression
that there was a feeling of regret associated with the recollections on
which he had been dwelling.”
Slowly, and in silence, Anne drew back to the low wall of the terrace
close by. She rested one hand on it to support herself. Julius had said
words of terrible import without a suspicion of what he had done. Never
until now had Anne Silvester known that the man who had betrayed her was
the son of that other man whose discovery of the flaw in the marriage
had ended in the betrayal of her mother before her. She felt the shock
of the revelation with a chill of superstitious dread. Was the chain of
a fatality wound invisibly round her? Turn which way she might was she
still going darkly on, in the track of her dead mother, to an appointed
and hereditary doom? Present things passed from her view as the awful
doubt cast its shadow over her mind. She lived again for a moment in
the time when she was a child. She saw the face of her mother once more,
with the wan despair on it of the bygone days when the title of wife was
denied her, and the social prospect was closed forever.
Julius approached, and roused her.
“Can I get you any thing?” he asked. “You are looking very ill. I hope I
have said nothing to distress you?”
The question failed to attract her attention. She put a question herself
instead of answering it.
“Did you say you were quite ignorant of what your father was thinking of
when he spoke to you about me?”
“Quite ignorant.”
“Is your brother likely to know more about it than you do?”
“Certainly not.”
She paused, absorbed once more in her own thoughts. Startled, on the
memorable day when they had first met, by Geoffrey’s family name, she
had put the question to him whether there had not been some acquaintance
between their parents in the past time. Deceiving her in all else,
he had not deceived in this. He had spoken in good faith, when he had
declared that he had never heard her father or her mother mentioned at
home.
The curiosity of Julius was aroused. He attempted to lead her on into
saying more.
“You appear to know what my father was thinking of when he spoke to me,”
he resumed. “May I ask--”
She interrupted him with a gesture of entreaty.
“Pray don’t ask! It’s past and over--it can have no interest for you--it
has nothing to do with my errand here. I must return,” she went on,
hurriedly, “to my object in trespassing on your kindness. Have you heard
me mentioned, Mr. Delamayn, by another member of your family besides
your father?”
Julius had not anticipated that sh e would approach, of her own accord,
the painful subject on which he had himself forborne to touch. He was a
little disappointed. He had expected more delicacy of feeling from her
than she had shown.
“Is it necessary,” he asked, coldly, “to enter on that?”
The blood rose again in Anne’s cheeks.
“If it had not been necessary,” she answered, “do you think I could have
forced myself to mention it to _you?_ Let me remind you that I am here
on sufferance. If I don’t speak plainly (no matter at what sacrifice
to my own feelings), I make my situation more embarrassing than it is
already. I have something to tell Mrs. Glenarm relating to the anonymous
letters which she has lately received. And I have a word to say to her,
next, about her contemplated marriage. Before you allow me to do this,
you ought to know who I am. (I have owned it.) You ought to have heard
the worst that can be said of my conduct. (Your face tells me you have
heard the worst.) After the forbearance you have shown to me, as a
perfect stranger, I will not commit the meanness of taking you by
surprise. Perhaps, Mr. Delamayn, you understand, _now,_ why I felt
myself obliged to refer to your brother. Will you trust me with
permission to speak to Mrs. Glenarm?”
It was simply and modestly said--with an unaffected and touching
resignation of look and manner. Julius gave her back the respect and the
sympathy which, for a moment, he had unjustly withheld from her.
“You have placed a confidence in me,” he said “which most persons in
your situation would have withheld. I feel bound, in return to place
confidence in you. I will take it for granted that your motive in
this matter is one which it is my duty to respect. It will be for Mrs.
Glenarm to say whether she wishes the interview to take place or not.
All that I can do is to leave you free to propose it to her. You _are_
free.”
As he spoke the sound of the piano reached them from the music-room.
Julius pointed to the glass door which opened on to the terrace.
“You have only to go in by that door,” he said, “and you will find Mrs.
Glenarm alone.”
Anne bowed, and left him. Arrived at the short flight of steps which led
up to the door, she paused to collect her thoughts before she went in.
A sudden reluctance to go on and enter the room took possession of
her, as she waited with her foot on the lower step. The report of Mrs.
Glenarm’s contemplated marriage had produced no such effect on her as
Sir Patrick had supposed: it had found no love for Geoffrey left to
wound, no latent jealousy only waiting to be inflamed. Her object in
taking the journey to Perth was completed when her correspondence with
Geoffrey was in her own hands again. The change of purpose which
had brought her to Swanhaven was due entirely to the new view of her
position toward Mrs. Glenarm which the coarse commonsense of Bishopriggs
had first suggested to her. If she failed to protest against Mrs.
Glenarm’s marriage, in the interests of the reparation which Geoffrey
owed to her, her conduct would only confirm Geoffrey’s audacious
assertion that she was a married woman already. For her own sake
she might still have hesitated to move in the matter. But Blanche’s
interests were concerned as well as her own; and, for Blanche’s sake,
she had resolved on making the journey to Swanhaven Lodge.
At the same time, feeling toward Geoffrey as she felt now--conscious as
she was of not really desiring the reparation on which she was about
to insist--it was essential to the preservation of her own self-respect
that she should have some purpose in view which could justify her to her
own conscience in assuming the character of Mrs. Glenarm’s rival.
She had only to call to mind the critical situation of Blanche--and to
see her purpose before her plainly. Assuming that she could open the
coming interview by peaceably proving that her claim on Geoffrey was
beyond dispute, she might then, without fear of misconception, take the
tone of a friend instead of an enemy, and might, with the best grace,
assure Mrs. Glenarm that she had no rivalry to dread, on the one easy
condition that she engaged to make Geoffrey repair the evil that he had
done. “Marry him without a word against it to dread from _me_--so long
as he unsays the words and undoes the deeds which have thrown a doubt
on the marriage of Arnold and Blanche.” If she could but bring the
interview to this end--there was the way found of extricating Arnold, by
her own exertions, from the false position in which she had innocently
placed him toward his wife! Such was the object before her, as she now
stood on the brink of her interview with Mrs. Glenarm.
Up to this moment, she had firmly believed in her capacity to realize
her own visionary project. It was only when she had her foot on the step
that a doubt of the success of the coming experiment crossed her mind.
For the first time, she saw the weak point in her own reasoning. For
the first time, she felt how much she had blindly taken for granted, in
assuming that Mrs. Glenarm would have sufficient sense of justice and
sufficient command of temper to hear her patiently. All her hopes of
success rested on her own favorable estimate of a woman who was a total
stranger to her! What if the first words exchanged between them proved
the estimate to be wrong?
It was too late to pause and reconsider the position. Julius Delamayn
had noticed her hesitation, and was advancing toward her from the end
of the terrace. There was no help for it but to master her own
irresolution, and to run the risk boldly. “Come what may, I have gone
too far to stop _here._” With that desperate resolution to animate her,
she opened the glass door at the top of the steps, and went into the
room.
Mrs. Glenarm rose from the piano. The two women--one so richly, the
other so plainly dressed; one with her beauty in its full bloom, the
other worn and blighted; one with society at her feet, the other an
outcast living under the bleak shadow of reproach--the two women stood
face to face, and exchanged the cold courtesies of salute between
strangers, in silence.
The first to meet the trivial necessities of the situation was Mrs.
Glenarm. She good-humoredly put an end to the embarrassment--which the
shy visitor appeared to feel acutely--by speaking first.
“I am afraid the servants have not told you?” she said. “Mrs. Delamayn
has gone out.”
“I beg your pardon--I have not called to see Mrs. Delamayn.”
Mrs. Glenarm looked a little surprised. She went on, however, as amiably
as before.
“Mr. Delamayn, perhaps?” she suggested. “I expect him here every
moment.”
Anne explained again. “I have just parted from Mr. Delamayn.” Mrs.
Glenarm opened her eyes in astonishment. Anne proceeded. “I have come
here, if you will excuse the intrusion--”
She hesitated--at a loss how to end the sentence. Mrs. Glenarm,
beginning by this time to feel a strong curiosity as to what might be
coming next, advanced to the rescue once more.
“Pray don’t apologize,” she said. “I think I understand that you are
so good as to have come to see _me._ You look tired. Won’t you take a
chair?”
Anne could stand no longer. She took the offered chair. Mrs. Glenarm
resumed her place on the music-stool, and ran her fingers idly over the
keys of the piano. “Where did you see Mr. Delamayn?” she went on. “The
most irresponsible of men, except when he has got his fiddle in his
hand! Is he coming in soon? Are we going to have any music? Have you
come to play with us? Mr. Delamayn is a perfect fanatic in music, isn’t
he? Why isn’t he here to introduce us? I suppose you like the classical
style, too? Did you know that I was in the music-room? Might I ask your
name?”
Frivolous as they were, Mrs. Glenarm’s questions were not without their
use. They gave Anne time to summon her resolution, and to feel the
necessity of explaining herself.
“I am speaking, I believe, to Mrs. Glenarm?” she began.
The good-humored widow smiled and bowed graciously.
“I have come here, Mrs. Glenarm--by Mr. Delamayn’s permission--to ask
leave to speak to you on a matter in which you are interested.”
Mrs. Glenarm’s many-ringed fingers paused over the keys of the piano.
Mrs. Gle narm’s plump face turned on the stranger with a dawning
expression of surprise.
“Indeed? I am interested in so many matters. May I ask what _this_
matter is?”
The flippant tone of the speaker jarred on Anne. If Mrs. Glenarm’s
nature was as shallow as it appeared to be on the surface, there was
little hope of any sympathy establishing itself between them.
“I wished to speak to you,” she answered, “about something that happened
while you were paying a visit in the neighborhood of Perth.”
The dawning surprise in Mrs. Glenarm’s face became intensified into
an expression of distrust. Her hearty manner vanished under a veil
of conventional civility, drawn over it suddenly. She looked at Anne.
“Never at the best of times a beauty,” she thought. “Wretchedly out of
health now. Dressed like a servant, and looking like a lady. What _does_
it mean?”
The last doubt was not to be borne in silence by a person of Mrs.
Glenarm’s temperament. She addressed herself to the solution of it with
the most unblushing directness--dextrously excused by the most winning
frankness of manner.
“Pardon me,” she said. “My memory for faces is a bad one; and I don’t
think you heard me just now, when I asked for your name. Have we ever
met before?”
“Never.”
“And yet--if I understand what you are referring to--you wish to speak
to me about something which is only interesting to myself and my most
intimate friends.”
“You understand me quite correctly,” said Anne. “I wish to speak to you
about some anonymous letters--”
“For the third time, will you permit me to ask for your name?”
“You shall hear it directly--if you will first allow me to finish what
I wanted to say. I wish--if I can--to persuade you that I come here as a
friend, before I mention my name. You will, I am sure, not be very sorry
to hear that you need dread no further annoyance--”
“Pardon me once more,” said Mrs. Glenarm, interposing for the second
time. “I am at a loss to know to what I am to attribute this kind
interest in my affairs on the part of a total stranger.”
This time, her tone was more than politely cold--it was politely
impertinent. Mrs. Glenarm had lived all her life in good society, and
was a perfect mistress of the subtleties of refined insolence in her
intercourse with those who incurred her displeasure.
Anne’s sensitive nature felt the wound--but Anne’s patient courage
submitted. She put away from her the insolence which had tried to sting,
and went on, gently and firmly, as if nothing had happened.
“The person who wrote to you anonymously,” she said, “alluded to a
correspondence. He is no longer in possession of it. The correspondence
has passed into hands which may be trusted to respect it. It will be put
to no base use in the future--I answer for that.”
“You answer for that?” repeated Mrs. Glenarm. She suddenly leaned
forward over the piano, and fixed her eyes in unconcealed scrutiny on
Anne’s face. The violent temper, so often found in combination with the
weak nature, began to show itself in her rising color, and her lowering
brow. “How do _you_ know what the person wrote?” she asked. “How do
_you_ know that the correspondence has passed into other hands? Who are
you?” Before Anne could answer her, she sprang to her feet, electrified
by a new idea. “The man who wrote to me spoke of something else besides
a correspondence. He spoke of a woman. I have found you out!” she
exclaimed, with a burst of jealous fury. “_You_ are the woman!”
Anne rose on her side, still in firm possession of her self-control.
“Mrs. Glenarm,” she said, calmly, “I warn--no, I entreat you--not to
take that tone with me. Compose yourself; and I promise to satisfy you
that you are more interested than you are willing to believe in what I
have still to say. Pray bear with me for a little longer. I admit that
you have guessed right. I own that I am the miserable woman who has been
ruined and deserted by Geoffrey Delamayn.”
“It’s false!” cried Mrs. Glenarm. “You wretch! Do you come to _me_ with
your trumped-up story? What does Julius Delamayn mean by exposing me
to this?” Her indignation at finding herself in the same room with Anne
broke its way through, not the restraints only, but the common decencies
of politeness. “I’ll ring for the servants!” she said. “I’ll have you
turned out of the house.”
She tried to cross the fire-place to ring the bell. Anne, who was
standing nearest to it, stepped forward at the same moment. Without
saying a word, she motioned with her hand to the other woman to stand
back. There was a pause. The two waited, with their eyes steadily fixed
on one another--each with her resolution laid bare to the other’s view.
In a moment more, the finer nature prevailed. Mrs. Glenarm drew back a
step in silence.
“Listen to me,” said Anne.
“Listen to you?” repeated Mrs. Glenarm. “You have no right to be in this
house. You have no right to force yourself in here. Leave the room!”
Anne’s patience--so firmly and admirably preserved thus far--began to
fail her at last.
“Take care, Mrs. Glenarm!” she said, still struggling with herself.
“I am not naturally a patient woman. Trouble has done much to tame my
temper--but endurance has its limits. You have reached the limits of
mine. I have a claim to be heard--and after what you have said to me, I
_will_ be heard!”
“You have no claim! You shameless woman, you are married already. I know
the man’s name. Arnold Brinkworth.”
“Did Geoffrey Delamayn tell you that?”
“I decline to answer a woman who speaks of Mr. Geoffrey Delamayn in that
familiar way.”
Anne advanced a step nearer.
“Did Geoffrey Delamayn tell you that?” she repeated.
There was a light in her eyes, there was a ring in her voice, which
showed that she was roused at last. Mrs. Glenarm answered her, this
time.
“He did tell me.”
“He lied!”
“He did _not!_ He knew. I believe _him._ I don’t believe _you._”
“If he told you that I was any thing but a single woman--if he told
you that Arnold Brinkworth was married to any body but Miss Lundie of
Windygates--I say again he lied!”
“I say again--I believe _him,_ and not you.”
“You believe I am Arnold Brinkworth’s wife?”
“I am certain of it.”
“You tell me that to my face?”
“I tell you to your face--you may have been Geoffrey Delamayn’s
mistress; you are Arnold Brinkworth’s wife.”
At those words the long restrained anger leaped up in Anne--all the more
hotly for having been hitherto so steadily controlled. In one breathless
moment the whirlwind of her indignation swept away, not only all
remembrance of the purpose which had brought her to Swanhaven, but
all sense even of the unpardonable wrong which she had suffered at
Geoffrey’s hands. If he had been there, at that moment, and had offered
to redeem his pledge, she would have consented to marry him, while Mrs.
Glenarm s eye was on her--no matter whether she destroyed herself in her
first cool moment afterward or not. The small sting had planted itself
at last in the great nature. The noblest woman is only a woman, after
all!
“I forbid your marriage to Geoffrey Delamayn! I insist on his performing
the promise he gave me, to make me his wife! I have got it here in his
own words, in his own writing. On his soul, he swears it to me--he will
redeem his pledge. His mistress, did you say? His wife, Mrs. Glenarm,
before the week is out!”
In those wild words she cast back the taunt--with the letter held in
triumph in her hand.
Daunted for the moment by the doubt now literally forced on her, that
Anne might really have the claim on Geoffrey which she advanced, Mrs.
Glenarm answered nevertheless with the obstinacy of a woman brought to
bay--with a resolution not to be convinced by conviction itself.
“I won’t give him up!” she cried. “Your letter is a forgery. You have
no proof. I won’t, I won’t, I won’t give him up!” she repeated, with the
impotent iteration of an angry child.
Anne pointed disdainfully to the letter that she held. “Here is his
pledged and written word,” she said. “While I live, you will never be
his wife.”
“I shall be his wife the day after the race. I am going to him in
London--to warn him against You!”
“You will find me in London, before you--with this in my hand. Do you
know his writing?”
She held up the letter, open. Mrs. Glenarm’s hand flew out with the
stealthy rapidity of a cat’s paw, to seize and destroy it. Quick as she
was, her rival was quicker still. For an instant they faced each other
breathless--one with the letter held behind her; one with her hand still
stretched out.
At the same moment--before a word more had passed between them--the
glass door opened; and Julius Delamayn appeared in the room.
He addressed himself to Anne.
“We decided, on the terrace,” he said, quietly, “that you should speak
to Mrs. Glenarm, if Mrs. Glenarm wished it. Do you think it desirable
that the interview should be continued any longer?”
Anne’s head drooped on her breast. The fiery anger in her was quenched
in an instant.
“I have been cruelly provoked, Mr. Delamayn,” she answered. “But I have
no right to plead that.” She looked up at him for a moment. The hot
tears of shame gathered in her eyes, and fell slowly over her cheeks.
She bent her head again, and hid them from him. “The only atonement I
can make,” she said, “is to ask your pardon, and to leave the house.”
In silence, she turned away to the door. In silence, Julius Delamayn
paid her the trifling courtesy of opening it for her. She went out.
Mrs. Glenarm’s indignation--suspended for the moment--transferred itself
to Julius.
“If I have been entrapped into seeing that woman, with your approval,”
she said, haughtily, “I owe it to myself, Mr. Delamayn, to follow her
example, and to leave your house.”
“I authorized her to ask you for an interview, Mrs. Glenarm. If she has
presumed on the permission that I gave her, I sincerely regret it, and I
beg you to accept my apologies. At the same time, I may venture to add,
in defense of my conduct, that I thought her--and think her still--a
woman to be pitied more than to be blamed.”
“To be pitied did you say?” asked Mrs. Glenarm, doubtful whether her
ears had not deceived her.
“To be pitied,” repeated Julius.
“_You_ may find it convenient, Mr. Delamayn, to forget what your brother
has told us about that person. _I_ happen to remember it.”
“So do I, Mrs. Glenarm. But, with my experience of Geoffrey--” He
hesitated, and ran his fingers nervously over the strings of his violin.
“You don’t believe him?” said Mrs. Glenarm.
Julius declined to admit that he doubted his brother’s word, to the lady
who was about to become his brother’s wife.
“I don’t quite go that length,” he said. “I find it difficult to
reconcile what Geoffrey has told us, with Miss Silvester’s manner and
appearance--”
“Her appearance!” cried Mrs. Glenarm, in a transport of astonishment and
disgust. “_Her_ appearance! Oh, the men! I beg your pardon--I ought to
have remembered that there is no accounting for tastes. Go on--pray go
on!”
“Shall we compose ourselves with a little music?” suggested Julius.
“I particularly request you will go on,” answered Mrs. Glenarm,
emphatically. “You find it ‘impossible to reconcile’--”
“I said ‘difficult.’”
“Oh, very well. Difficult to reconcile what Geoffrey told us, with Miss
Silvester’s manner and appearance. What next? You had something else to
say, when I was so rude as to interrupt you. What was it?”
“Only this,” said Julius. “I don’t find it easy to understand Sir
Patrick Lundie’s conduct in permitting Mr. Brinkworth to commit bigamy
with his niece.”
“Wait a minute! The marriage of that horrible woman to Mr. Brinkworth
was a private marriage. Of course, Sir Patrick knew nothing about it!”
Julius owned that this might be possible, and made a second attempt to
lead the angry lady back to the piano. Useless, once more! Though she
shrank from confessing it to herself, Mrs. Glenarm’s belief in the
genuineness of her lover’s defense had been shaken. The tone taken by
Julius--moderate as it was--revived the first startling suspicion of the
credibility of Geoffrey’s statement which Anne’s language and conduct
had forced on Mrs. Glenarm. She dropped into the nearest chair, and
put her handkerchief to her eyes. “You always hated poor Geoffrey,” she
said, with a burst of tears. “And now you’re defaming him to me!”