COMING UP TO TIME.
Lord Forestfield had gone out, without seeing his wife, immediately
after he had despatched the summons which brought Sir Nugent Uffington
to her death-bed. He had, however, returned a few minutes before the
close of the friend's interview and of May's life; and when Uffington,
after a few words exchanged with the nurse, left the room where the
woman to whom he had been so true a friend lay dead, happily beyond
the need of all human friendship or reach of blame, he encountered her
worthless husband in the hall. He had hoped to escape from the house
unnoticed; but this hope was vain; and so proved his next idea, that
he might hastily pass Forestfield with a word, and get away before he
knew what had happened. He had not taken his own quivering lips and
agitated look into account in this hope, and it vanished with Lord
Forestfield's first glance at him.
'What--what's the matter? What has she said to you?' Lord Forestfield
stammered, staring blankly at Uffington.
'She has said good-bye,' Uffington began; and then, touched by a
momentary pity for the man who so little deserved it--though of the
reaction in his feelings Uffington knew nothing--he took him by the
arm, led him into the library, and told him the truth.
'Dead!' was all Lord Forestfield replied. 'Dead--so soon!'
'Ay, dead--and so soon. She had not much strength to spare, and she
spent it in--saving your life.'
He went away without another word, and for a few seconds Lord
Forestfield gazed vacantly at the door through which he had passed. A
look of hatred then came into his evil face, still worn and rigid with
the traces of wasting fever, and he muttered:
'D--n him! he's beaten at last, and I've got the Decree Absolute,
after all!'
A minute later the nurse knocked at the library-door, having come to
communicate the melancholy intelligence to his lordship, who received
it with sullen propriety; and the dreary, dreadful bustle which
precedes the awful stillness of a house wherein one lies dead, to last
until the drearier and more dreadful bustle of the funeral,
immediately commenced in that beautiful house in Seamore-place, where
May's short life of joy, folly, guilt, repentance, and reparation had
been lived.
When the night was some hours old, Sir Nugent Uffington, who had
passed the interval in walking for miles straight ahead, he did not
know where, returned to Seamore-place, and from the opposite side of
the roadway looked up at the windows of the room where May Forestfield
was lying. The house was invested with the conventional marks of
mourning, and the useless tan was littered deep across the street.
Lights were burning in the death-room, tall torches which threw their
shadows on the blinds, and flickered in the air which passed in at
that ominously open uppermost six inches of window-sash. Sir Nugent's
imagination was busy with the scene which that room presented. He
could see the sweet young face, set in its marble paleness, with the
dark-veined eyelids, on which an expression of pain and weariness had
sat for so long, sealed over the eyes which were never more to smile
as they had smiled so rarely, or weep as they had wept so often, since
he had seen them first, and, seeing them, been reminded of her
mother's eyes, hidden in the dust. He could see the outline of the
graceful wasted limbs, and the waxen hands laid upon the satin
coverlet in the fulness of everlasting rest. It was well that she had
died there, in her husband's house, with such protection as that
formal circumstance might afford her name, that name which meant
nothing now, save to the few who loved her, and would so soon be
utterly forgotten by those who had been most eager to blacken it with
scandal and cover it with reproach; but his heart was full of
bitterness as he thought of _why_ she had died. For that worse than
worthless creature; for that sensual, cynical, selfish, brutal,
dastardly fellow, whose sins against the marriage vow which she had
broken had been countless and unblushing, as they were unrebuked and
unpunished; who owed the life which had been a curse to her, to his
wife's care, and who was set free by her death to carry out any scheme
which might enter his base mind. Not yet could Uffington rejoice in
her release; not yet could he realise the nothingness to her of what
he could not but regard with bitterness and rage as Forestfield's
triumph; and when he turned away at last from his contemplation of the
silent house, and went home to write to Eleanor, it was with a heart
full of hate towards Forestfield and De Tournefort, the two who had to
answer for the fate just fulfilled within those walls.
Uffington's letter to Eleanor was hard work to write. The intelligence
it had to convey must necessarily be a dreadful shock, as well as a
profound grief, to the girl who had loved May so dearly, and who had
so few besides to love. Eleanor was at Brighton with Mrs. Chadwick,
and though she had been told of May's illness, she had not been
told--because Uffington himself was ignorant of the truth--that a
fatal termination was apprehended. The chill wintry morning had dawned
before his task was completed; but as he wrote, in striving to console
Eleanor consolation came to himself; in endeavouring to convince her
that 'it was better so,' as May herself had said, he came to believe
his own words, to realise that it was indeed well with May; that the
life which she must have faced would have been too hard for her, and
Death, which had taken her definitively out of the hands of man, was
her best friend--a better friend than even he had been, or could be in
the future; a closer friend, shielding her from scorn and unkindness,
from vain regret and self-reproach from external temptation, and from
herself. The memory of the woman whom Uffington had loved, and ruined,
and recompensed for ruin in so far as a man can, was with him as he
wrote to the pure and proud young girl whose love he had won, and won
with a wondering secret exultation; a dead face looked up at him from
beneath the waters of the Swiss lake, as he described that other dead
face, with its fresh set seal of peace. During the hours of that night
something passed into the soul of Nugent Uffington which was the
soundest and safest of guarantees for Eleanor Irvine's happiness and
security as his wife--a message of peace and self-knowledge sent to
him from the dead.
* * * * * *
The heavy days went slowly by, and that on which the mortal remains of
May Forestfield were to be laid in their last resting-place had come.
Her death had been much talked of and the sentiments of 'society' on
the subject were various. After the nine days' wonder of her
restoration to her husband's house had died away, Lady Forestfield had
been suffered to fall into general oblivion. That circumstance was, of
course, much discussed, and many persons were of Mrs. Hamblin's way of
thinking. Those persons were chiefly among the large numbers of the
sinners who have not been found out. Sinners who have been found out
are, as a rule, more charitable, and the _divorcées_ who hover
longingly on the confines of the world in which they once played a
part, and who are perfectly cognisant of the peccadilloes of the women
who, from their own vantage ground of deferred or escaped exposure,
'cut' them, while they eagerly devour every atom of gossip concerning
the new 'milieu' in which their quondam but detected associates live,
were unfeignedly glad of May Forestfield's 'luck.' _They_ knew what
detection and its penalties meant, and they would not wish any one
such 'hard lines.' The undetected were scandalised. They even thought
it very wrong that Lord Forestfield should have been permitted to
sully his 'order' by such an act of misdirected clemency, and a lady
who had been much and deservedly 'talked of' with poor May's husband
was particularly denunciatory of the evil example and the dangerous
precedent. She found consolation only in assuring herself and others
that a restoration of that kind 'meant very little after all,' though
of course Lady Forestfield would be 'kept out of mischief by being
under her husband's roof;' she would be just as much 'out of society'
as if she were not there. All this had concerned May not at all;
indeed she hardly knew or even guessed how any one talked about her,
and never turned her thoughts or her eyes back upon that 'world' which
she had suspected to be a fool's paradise before she had forfeited it.
Very much the same sort of comment was made upon her death; perhaps it
was not in any instance so bitter as that which had attended her
disgrace. Mrs. Hamblin regarded the event as a very good thing indeed
for Lord Forestfield, quite a relief, and spoke of it in a tone which
implied that she considered it the proper thing on the part of
Providence to reward him for his unheard-of generosity by interposing
to prevent his reaping its possibly unpleasant consequences. Mrs.
Hamblin was also 'quite thankful' that the future Lady Uffington would
not be exposed to the risks of association with 'such a person as Lady
Forestfield,' and she added, while discussing the subject with a man
newly _lancé_, who was _en train_ to become the successor in her good
graces of Spiridion Pratt--'resigned'--that of course those risks
would have been doubled by the moral obtuseness of Sir Nugent
Uffington, whose character everybody knew, and whose history had
better not be inquired into. Poor Forestfield had behaved like an
angel--angels are not expected to be worldly-wise--and it was the best
possible thing for him. Mrs. Chadwick was genuinely sorry and pitiful;
she loved life herself, she hated the mere idea of death, and kept it
away from her by every means in her power. In health, wealth,
strength, and the full enjoyment of life, she felt a sort of physical
compassion for the young woman who had had to go down into the
darkness and silence of the grave; and she had liked Lady Forestfield.
But Mrs. Chadwick kept these sentiments to herself when she met Mrs.
Hamblin, and her like; was ready to acknowledge that 'perhaps, after
all, considering her hopeless loss of position,' &c.; and by the end
of the week was impatient with Eleanor for her overwhelming grief; and
inclined to resent its evidence in the girl's tears and seclusion as
an injury to herself.
'What a singular fascination there is for some men in the mere fact of
a woman having lost her character,' said Mrs. Hamblin to Frank Eardley
one morning in the melancholy week. The two had met on the new pier at
Brighton, and the gentleman had failed in an attempt to pass the lady
without stopping to speak.
'I have just seen Mr. Pratt going into Mrs. Chadwick's house, and
looking as melancholy as if he had lost his adoring and adored mamma,
the "madre mia" of that charming sonnet you used to quiz so kindly. I
suppose he's going to the Forestfield funeral.'
'He is, Mrs. Hamblin, and so am I. I must wish you good-morning.'
'You too. It will be quite a demonstration. What a lesson to _nous
autres!_ I Henceforth we shall know exactly what are those virtues
which "smell sweet and blossom in the dust." Good-morning.'
Not in the gloomy mausoleum in the Highland country, where the noble
remains of the Stortfords lie, encased in lead and oak, in velvet and
gilding, did they lay May Forestfield; nor was her grave made with the
men and women of her husband's race. On a bright calm day, when the
wintry air was still, and the sky was high and blue, the little train
of friends followed her coffin to Kensal Green. Lord Forestfield
behaved with perfect propriety on the solemn occasion. His demeanour
was as correct as his dress. When the temporary slab had been laid
upon the grave, Sir Nugent Uffington placed a wreath of violets and a
cross of white camellias upon the stone--they were Eleanor's tribute.
Then he and Frank Eardley regained their carriage in silence, which
was hardly broken until they reached town.
When Lord Forestfield returned to his house in Seamore-place, the
dreary stillness which had brooded over it for a week had disappeared.
Luggage, prepared for travelling, was in the hall, and a couple of
servants in deep mourning were busy with straps, buckles, and rugs. He
passed them quickly, and went into the library. Presently a close
carriage with posters came to the door, and the men, directed by
Stephens, put some of the luggage upon it. Lord Forestfield was going
away--going in this unusual style, to avoid the inconvenience of
railway travelling--on the very day of his wife's funeral. He could
not stay in the house; nothing would have induced him to pass another
night there; its profound solitude appalled him, and there was no one
whom he could ask to break or share that solitude. Lord Forestfield's
friends were not of the sort who are naturally turned to in trouble,
whether it be formal or real. He had suffered tortures in that house
while his wife lay dead in it, tortures which even Stephens had not
guessed at, and which he had utterly failed to deaden with drink. And
yet how hard he had tried! In defiance of every warning, of even the
physical loathing with which it inspired him, of the inability to
drink as he had been accustomed to do, which was a lingering result of
the fever, he had swallowed large quantities of wine during the
endless hours which he passed alone in that horrible room; hours when
he could not make up his mind to go to bed, and could not sleep, and
was ashamed to keep his servant with him; hours when the wine, which
would formerly have turned him into a drunken madman, only made him
more hideously conscious, more horribly wide awake. He was going away;
he did not know whether he should ever come back. He might get over
this feeling in time; it was not grief; he did not attempt to deceive
himself about that. He did not know what it was--only his infernal
nerves, no doubt; and if he did get over it, well and good; at present
his keenest desire was to get away from that room, and never to see it
again.
In an hour after Lord Forestfield had reentered his house, he left it
again. As he was crossing the footway to his travelling-carriage, a
man passed between it and him. A man with a pale face, with a wild
look of disturbance in it, and an unsteady step. A man who might be
rather mad, or rather drunk, but, being either, had not quite lost his
self-control, and who knew Lord Forestfield. A man whom Lord
Forestfield knew, for he stepped back, as if from a blow, and
stammered out:
'De Tournefort! You!'
'Yes, it is I. Is this _true_? Speak, man! Is it _true_?'
'Is _what_ true?'
'That _she_ is dead?'
'Yes, it is true--she is dead, and buried to-day.'
Lord Forestfield stepped past the questioner, and got into the
carriage; then he leaned forward, and hissed rather than spoke these
words:
'She has escaped _us both_.'
The carriage drove off, and Gustave de Tournefort stood still outside
the door of Lord Forestfield's house, like a man in a bad dream.
He had kept his word. He had fulfilled the pact which he had made with
his own sense of honour. The interval had expired between the Decree
Nisi and the Decree Absolute; and De Tournefort, who knew nothing of
what had occurred during that interval, had returned to England, with
the intention of again offering to May the reparation of marriage. He
had sought her at Podbury-street, and there learned from Mrs. Wilson
the fact, which that good woman had read, with sincere regret, in the
newspapers. An irresistible impulse drove De Tournefort to look upon
the house whence May had been expelled for him, to which she had so
inexplicably returned. And so the two men who had been her ruin--which
of the two was the more guilty in the matter, who shall dare to
say?--came together, face to face, ere yet the sun had set upon her
grave.
The marriage of Sir Nugent Uffington and Eleanor Irvine took the world
somewhat by surprise, when it was solemnised in the early spring of
the following year. Their engagement had been kept quiet, almost
unsuspected by their few common acquaintance, and Mrs. Chadwick had
not talked about it. She liked Sir Nugent very much, but she was just
a little afraid of him; he puzzled her; as she expressed it, she
'could not make him out;' and she would have thought several times
about disobliging him, and then have left it undone. So that when Sir
Nugent explained to her that he and Eleanor disliked the _éclat_ of
announcements, and hoped she would indulge them by keeping their hopes
and projects within the small family circle, she observed his wish;
Eleanor's only might not have been so strictly respected. The events
which had taken place since Sir Nugent Uffington's appearance on the
rapidly expanding stage of Mrs. Chadwick's life had produced a good
deal of effect on that lady; had forced her, to perceive that wealth
and grandeur might possibly have their seamy side, and had restored
her to those sentiments of content with which she had in the first
instance accepted the rise in life effected by her marriage. For a
while Fanny Chadwick had been in danger of 'spoiling;' she had been
tempted to grumble at her husband's want of the superficial elegance
on which she had learned to set undue value, to compare him, to his
disadvantage, with the fops and fools whom she was proud of collecting
in her rooms at Fairfax-gardens. But the experience of the past season
did Mrs. Chadwick a world of good; she gathered good fruit out of that
miserable business of the Forestfields, as the tragedy of May's life
and death was called, while any one remembered either, and she stored
it up. She was never really guilty of feeling ashamed of her husband
again, and from any approach to such a sentiment she recoiled into
being ashamed of herself. It was wonderful how much Mr. Chadwick's
'Fan' refined under the influence of this clearer vision and sounder
judgment; how short a time elapsed before the people who talked their
own slang, and strove for their own vapid and worthless objects, but
strove for them inside, not outside, the indefinable but irresistible
barrier of fashion, came to acknowledge, with some wonder, that Mrs.
Chadwick was 'hardly vulgar at all.' She would not, as a matter of
fact, have been flattered had she been aware of the concession; and
yet she might well have been, considering the victory it endorsed, and
the habitual insolence of the class who made it.
When the time appointed for the marriage drew near, and people began
to know, about it, Mrs. Chadwick was surprised to find that Mrs.
Hamblin, of all people in the world, looked on the arrangement
with cold disapproval. That lady had been too wise to drop her
surface-intimacy with Mrs. Chadwick when her purpose with regard to
Spiridion Pratt was fulfilled. Its fulfilment had not been attended
with any triumph or profit to herself; she was intensely conscious of
her defeat, but she was all the more resolute to hide it. Even when
the replacement of Spiridion was in process of accomplishment, she did
not choose to lose sight of him, and she knew that, unless she
continued to visit Mrs. Chadwick, she must do so; for the little man
had established himself on the tame-cat footing at Fairfax-gardens,
and was imperturbably impervious to remark or ridicule. Eleanor Irvine
had refused to marry him, it was true, and it was even true also that
he had, in a surprisingly short time, arrived at the conclusion that
she had done wisely; but there was no earthly reason why Eleanor, who
suited him, being nice to look at and pleasant to talk to, very
agreeable and not oppressively clever--Spiridion hated _very_ clever
women--should not be the friend of his 'soul.' Eleanor had no
objection, especially as this sentimental arrangement did not impose
any severe demands upon her time and attention, and as it did prevent
the pretty constant presence of Sir Nugent from being unduly remarked
upon before the convenient season.
Spiridion had been admitted to the confidence of the affianced pair,
and had experienced no difficulty worth speaking of in reconciling
himself to the spectacle of his rival's happiness, though he wrote
some sweetly pretty verses expressive of the torments of such a
situation, which Mr. Shamus O'Voca set to music, and a Diva actually
sang at some of the best concerts last season. The torments in
question were, however, of the mildest, and, as a matter of fact,
Spiridion Pratt enjoyed himself immensely under the novel conditions
of his being. How much share in his peaceful serenity his
enfranchisement from Mrs. Hamblin had, it would be ungenerous to
inquire; and, indeed, it is not likely that Spiridion ever asked
himself the question. _She_ did, however, and she hated Eleanor as
Spiridion's friend only a little less bitterly than she hated
Spiridion himself. When the marriage of Miss Irvine with Sir Nugent
Uffington was announced, only a few days before its occurrence, Mrs.
Hamblin saw her way, having saved appearances, to backing out of a
position which had served her purpose, and was fast becoming an
intolerable bore.
She assumed a tone of high and cold morality. 'She ventured, in
consideration of dear Mrs. Chadwick's _comparative_ ignorance of the
world--Mrs. Chadwick must bear in mind that the London world, in which
she was even yet hardly _lancée_, had been Mrs. Hamblin's proper home
and element since her early girlhood--to inquire whether she was
altogether aware of the serious responsibility she was incurring by
intrusting her sister's fortune, its happiness and its credit, to such
a man as Sir Nugent Uffington? Did Mrs. Chadwick know the dreadfully
disgraceful history of his past life? Was she aware that he had never
shown the slightest deference to the opinion of society; that, in
short, the--the _affaire_ Mudge had lasted until the death of the
creature? Mrs. Hamblin could hardly conceive the possibility of a lady
like Mrs. Chadwick, whose former sphere must have accustomed her to
much more serious views on questions of the kind than those prevalent
in the wretched world of fashion, being satisfied to place a young
girl's welfare in such hands. She felt sure that Mrs. Chadwick, and
especially Mr. Chadwick--such a straightforward, honest, good sort of
man as he was--could not be in full possession of the facts; and
though she never offered advice, or interfered in other people's
affairs, she really must depart from her rule in this case, as she
felt a genuine interest in Mrs. Chadwick, and could not bear the idea
that her inexperience of society was possibly being imposed upon.'
All this, delivered with a smooth and smiling countenance, and in
mellifluous tones to whose covert impertinence it would be impossible
to do justice, Mrs. Chadwick listened to, in a state of mind which she
found it difficult to describe when she afterwards repeated it to her
husband. She was astounded at the woman's insolence, and her
irritation was sufficiently complete to enable her to comprehend very
thoroughly its _portée_; but the extraordinary transformation in Mrs.
Hamblin's own way of thinking and talking puzzled her profoundly.
'It is not as if she had any pretensions, you know,' said Mrs.
Chadwick in an aggrieved voice. 'One could put up with it from women
who go in thoroughly for that sort of thing, and won't have anything
to do with anybody who has ever been compromised in any way; but _Mrs.
Hamblin!_'
There was a good deal of untutored eloquence in the tone in which Mrs.
Chadwick pronounced her quondam friend's name. She had never thrown so
much expression into even her most successful song in the old days.
'Fan,' said Mr. Chadwick, with a funny twinkle in his eye and a funny
roll in his voice, 'prepare yourself for a blow! Mrs. Hamblin means to
weed her visiting-list, and "Chadwick, Mrs." will disappear from the
C's. She's in the forties, or very near them, isn't she?'
'I don't know for certain; but Mr. Pratt says so.'
'And Mr. Pratt! Terribly trustworthy authority, he. She's going in for
goody, my dear; that's it, rely upon it; and poor Eleanor will be her
first "example," and Uffington the text of her first sermon. Of course
you'll say nothing to them about her impertinence, and I shall be more
nearly angry with you than I have ever been in my life if you waste a
thought of your own upon it.'
Mrs. Chadwick could not dismiss the matter with all the celerity her
husband prescribed; but she really did not mind it much. Her
fashionable education had made good progress in the direction of
callousness.
The wedding took place, and Sir Nugent and Lady Uffington went abroad.
This was on Eleanor's account. Sir Nugent had seen all that Europe had
to show, but Eleanor had never travelled beyond Paris; and the old
familiar scenes acquired a fresh interest for him in the delight with
which they inspired her. Eleanor was very happy; as happy as she had
expected to be, which, though she was much more sensible than most
girls of her age, and her early life had not been of a kind to nourish
illusions, is saying a great deal. She had perhaps credited Sir Nugent
with some qualities in which she found him wanting; but, on the other
hand, she had prepared herself to discover and bear with faults which
did not exhibit themselves. She had heard him described as a 'devil of
a temper,' but he was not ill-tempered to her; on the contrary, he
treated her always with gentleness and courtesy, and, without
departing entirely from his characteristic undemonstrativeness,
studied her wishes and her welfare with practical steadiness. When
their marriage was several months old, Eleanor ventured to tell him
that he had 'turned out better than she expected in point of
amiability;' and he remarked simply,
'You see, Nell, I have always observed that good women get horribly
snubbed and bullied, where they don't meet with even more active
ill-treatment. There's a better chance for the bad ones, taking life
in the lump, all round. And so I am determined to keep one good woman
from being sorry that she has trusted herself to a man.'
Eleanor feels and expresses a happy security that she shall never be
sorry for having placed such practical confidence in him. And, indeed,
it looks as if her assurance were not unfounded.
They mean to 'settle' in London, but to live their own life there; not
the life of the multitude. Eleanor's home Paradise is imaged upon a
different plan from that of her sister and her sister's friends.
It does not exclude sociability, but it does not include
servility to 'Society;' and if she carries out her ideas, the
Uffingtons' house will be a pleasant one at which to have the
not-too-easily-to-be-obtained _entrée_.
People who have met them abroad report favourably of Sir Nugent and
Lady Uffington. Frank Eardley is enthusiastic about Eleanor's looks,
and her increased appreciation of art and china. He always thought her
bright, you know, but, by Jove, Lady Uffington takes the shine out of
Eleanor Irvine in a surprising way. Lydyeard, whose irascible temper
is generally sent up to white heat by the 'infernal folly,' which is
his mildest term for a friend's marriage, has not once been heard to
growl, and has even deigned to ask when the Uffingtons are coming
home? These small particulars, together with the general news,
domestic and otherwise, in which she and her husband are supposed to
be interested, are communicated to Eleanor by Mrs. Chadwick, who
yields to no born fine lady in existence in fluency of epistolary
composition, and in always having 'an immense number of letters to get
through.' Mrs. Chadwick delights in letters, dearly loves to live in
an avalanche of notes and messages, and never loses an opportunity of
despatching telegrams. She has a notion that it is _chic_ to be
perpetually busy 'with people and things outside her home, and she has
succeeded in accreting to herself a number of fussy little intimacies
which don't really mean anything--which would smash and go to pieces
under the weight of a real trial, a genuine difficulty, either on her
own part or on that of the object of any one of them, but which she
maintains with scrupulous care. One result of this is, that she really
has a good chance of hearing a great deal about every thing that is
'going on' among a certain set, and within a certain limited sphere of
human action and interests, which, however, is quite wide enough for
the taste and the intelligence of Mrs. Chadwick and her friends. To be
beforehand with the _Morning Post_ is a triumph to her and her like;
to be forestalled in its columns of exclusive intelligence concerning
any member of the favoured classes, whose movements only are worth
study, whose histories only are worth tracing from point to points is
a defeat. In such triumphs and such defeats it had always been
desperately difficult to interest Eleanor; and it was with something
approaching to exultation that Mrs. Chadwick commenced one of the
latest of her letters to her sister, previous to Eleanor's return,
with the announcement that she had something to tell her which would
arouse even _her_ curiosity.
'There really is quite a sensation about it, my dear Eleanor,' wrote
Mrs. Chadwick; 'for it appears the Duchess of Matlock used to have a
very bad opinion of Lord Forestfield, and always said he drove our
poor darling friend to all that happened by his brutal neglect. So
that people _do_ think it is a little inconsistent of her to let
Lady Amabel marry him, especially as the Duchess is so very
evangelical,--family prayers, tracts in the kitchen, and lots of 'Low'
curates to luncheon; you know exactly the sort of thing. Mr. Pratt,
who really is wonderfully faithful to you in a reflected kind of
way--for he's constantly here--told me all about it on Sunday. And he
says it's the coal-mine. I don't know whether I told you, by the bye,
that coal has been found in a small place of Lord F.'s in the North,
and he is going to be ever so rich. Of course I don't quite believe
_that_--one can't, you know, believe a thing of that kind about the
dear Duchess--but it is quite certain that Lord F. was never invited
to Matlock Park until the rumour of the coal got about; and in three
weeks Lady Amabel was engaged to him. The Duchess despises all these
rumours; _she_ says it is not coal, but conversion, and that she is
thankful her dear Amabel has been chosen by Providence to confirm a
repentant sinner in grace. I hope it will be all right; but I could
not help thinking of poor Lady Forestfield in her beauty and youth,
and regretting he had not repented in _her_ time. Lady Amabel is
hideous, _I_ think, and they say she has a violent temper. I hope it
is true. The Duchess went to Woodburn the other day, and had every
trace of poor Lady F. removed; all her boudoir furniture and a number
of pictures have been sold by auction, and that good little Mr. Pratt
has bought a lot of both for Sir Nugent; and he declares the Duchess
speaks of the poor thing as "that unhappy person whom, of course, we
cannot name." Lady Amabel will take her name cheerfully enough, and
her place too. James says, "What a blessing the poor thing left no
children, to suffer for her misdeeds after her death at the hands of
so eminent a Christian as Lady Amabel." I daresay she isn't so bad
after all, but James cannot endure that kind of religion. The wedding
is to come off in three weeks, at Matlock, and Mr. Pratt says they are
already getting the Duke into training, in order that he may _look_
sober, or a least _not too drunk_, on the occasion.'
THE END.
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Woodfall & Kinder, Printers, 70 to 76, Long Acre, London, W.C.