Having consoled himself by a canter in Rotten Row, for the minor
martyrdom he had undergone in his pursuit of the fine-arts, as
misrepresented by the Amalgamated Amateurs, Harry made the best of his
way to Park Lane. As he entered, a note was handed to him by the pompous
butler, who took the opportunity to inform him, in a voice husky with
the bee’s-wing, from which his throat was never entirely free, that
“dinner would be served in a quarter of an hour.”--“Then I’ve no time to
lose,” was the reply, and without looking at the note, Harry dashed
up stairs, three steps at a time. On reaching his room, however, and
finding that Alice’s toilet was by no means in an alarming state of
forwardness, he recovered his composure, and opened the note; it ran as
follows:--
“On my arrival here two hours ago, I was surprised and embarrassed by
hearing that you and _your bride_ are staying in the house. Had I been
aware of this fact, I need scarcely tell you I would have delayed making
my appearance until your visit should have ended. But, although I knew
you had married a connection of Mrs. Crane, such a probability never
occurred to me. However, it was not likely that, mixing in the same
grade of society, we should pass through life without ever again
encountering each other; and I am still weak enough to dread our first
meeting, and to wish it over. I know your generous nature, and feel
the utmost confidence that the past will remain a secret between us. It
will, perhaps, be better--easier for us both, not to pretend to meet
as strangers. An accidental travelling acquaintance will sufficiently
account for our knowing the same places, people, &c. For your own sake,
as well as mine.
“I implore you to be careful--I have never forgotten your advice, and
have striven to act upon it--but mine is a rebellious nature. Destroy
this note as soon as you have read it.
“Arabella.”
With stern compressed lips and knitted brow, Harry perused this
mysterious epistle, and when he had finished it, crushed it in his hand
and threw it on the fire with a gesture of impatience.
“Your letter does not seem to please you,” observed Alice; “does it come
from a dun, or is there a screw loose (don’t I get on with my slang!) in
the stable or the kennel?”
Absorbed in thought, Harry made her no reply, until, surprised and
slightly annoyed at his silence, she resumed--
“Has the mysterious epistle stricken you dumb, or have we become so
thoroughly matrimonial, that you don’t consider it worth while to
answer your wife when she asks you a question?”
“Eh! what? I beg your pardon, dear, the letter? no it was not from a
dun. I never was preyed upon by those vampires, thank Heaven; ‘out of
debt, out of danger,’ has always been my motto,” replied Coverdale,
rousing from his reverie.
“If it was not from a dun, whom was it from then?” continued Alice,
pertinaciously.
“You are singularly curious all of a sudden,” rejoined Harry; “all
I shall tell you about the matter is that the note referred to a
disagreeable affair which happened three or four years ago, and which I
had hoped was entirely passed and forgotten.”
“And having raised my curiosity thus, do you actually mean to say that
you will not gratify it farther?” inquired Alice.
“As you can have no good reason for asking, and as I have a very good
and sufficient one for keeping my own counsel, I am afraid I must leave
you in ignorance,” was Harry’s tantalizing reply.
Alice glanced at his face, and reading there that he was in earnest,
and meant to act on what he had said, pouted like a spoilt child who had
been refused some coveted plaything, while Coverdale betook himself to
his dressing-room in a “who-the-deuce-would-have-thought-of-her-turning-up!”
frame of mind, from which he had by no means recovered when, with
his wife, still mildly vindictive, hanging on his arm, he descended to
the drawing-room.
There they found Mr. and Mrs. Crane, and a lady whom Kate introduced as
her old and particular friend, Miss Crofton. Having bowed to Alice, Miss
Crofton turned towards Harry, observing to Kate, as she did so--
“I have never had the pleasure of meeting _Mrs_. Coverdale before; but
Mr. Coverdale and I are old acquaintances; when I was travelling in
Italy with the Muirs. Mr. Coverdale was also indulging his taste for
the fine-arts, and we encountered each other at several points of the
route.”
As she spoke she held out her hand to Coverdale, who, after a moment’s
hesitation, and with a slight accession of colour, just touched and
immediately relinquished it, saying, in a cold but polite tone of
voice--
“Do you know whether the Muirs are in England now, Miss Crofton?”
As the person addressed remarked his look and tone, she pressed her lips
together so forcibly that every trace of red vanished from them; but
repressing all other sign of emotion, she replied to his question. Then
taking a seat next Alice, she began cultivating her good graces with
a degree of tact and talent which evinced her powers of shining in
society, and deserved more success than it appeared to meet with.
Arabella Crofton was a handsome woman of thirty, looking younger than
her age. She was tall, and her figure was fully developed without being
actually _embonpoint_. Her hands and feet, although proportioned to her
height, were beautifully modelled, and the former unusually white and
soft. In feature she resembled Kate, so much so that she had more
than once been mistaken for her former pupil’s elder sister; but the
_expression_ of the two faces was totally dissimilar. In Kate Crane
a fiery passionate nature was kept under control by an equally strong
degree of pride, and an amount of self-respect which served her in place
of a higher principle; in Arabella Crofton lay concealed even a greater
depth of passion, but its sole antagonist was an intellect keen, strong,
and acute, though not of the highest order, and a determination of
will and fixity of purpose which, while it led her straight towards the
object she sought, rendered her somewhat unscrupulous as to the means by
which it was to be attained; and as the mind usually writes itself more
or less legibly on the countenance, so did the expression differ in Kate
and her late governess. Still Miss Crofton’s was a face to attract and
rivet attention, a face which exercised a species of fascination over
those who beheld it, so peculiar that it is not easy to define it.
As you gazed upon it, you felt that you were in the presence of an
intelligence of no common order, but of whose nature, hopes, fears,
wishes, and designs, you were entirely ignorant--nay, in regard to which
you could not decide whether the good or evil principle predominated. In
this sense of power with which she impressed others, together with the
uncertainty how it might be directed, lay the secret of much of Arabella
Crofton’e influence. Alice, not being metaphysical, did not attempt to
define the sensations with which her new acquaintance inspired her; had
she done so, it might have appeared that she had formed much the
same estimate of her manner and appearance as that with which we have
furnished the reader. But if Alice did not moralize, she arrived at
strong and definite conclusions without that process, for before she had
been half an hour in Miss Crofton’s company, she felt morally
convinced that she should hate her, and that it would turn out that the
_ci-devant_ governess either had done, or was about to do, something
which would completely account for and justify this sudden animosity.
During dinner, a note arrived from Lord Alfred Courtland, offering
Alice and Harry seats in his opera-box, which offer, after a few polite
speeches to and from Mr. Crane, in his (in?) capacity as master of
the house, was accepted. As they drove to the theatre, the following
conversation passed between the husband and wife, the lady of course
beginning it.
“What a detestable woman that Miss Crofton is! I’m sure I shall never
be able to endure her. I see now where Kate’s faults came from. Miss
Crofton has taught her to be worldly-minded, and ambitious, and all
sorts of horrid things which she never used to be; and the creature is
an old acquaintance of yours, too! Did you know her well--intimately?”
“Eh? yes! I saw a good deal of her at one time. How slow this fellow
drives, we shall lose the overture!” was Harry’s reply, which, if he
intended thereby to change the subject of the conversation, proved a
dead failure, for Alice continued:--
“Oh! then you are not mere acquaintances, as she tried to make out! I
thought she wasn’t speaking the truth. Well, and did you like her?--I
dare say you did, for I feel sure she was in love with you; indeed I
think she is still, by the way she casts down those great rolling eyes
of hers whenever you say a word to her. I declare I feel quite jealous.”
Coverdale paused for a moment, ere he replied: “My dear Alice, you speak
thoughtlessly, but you do not know how such remarks annoy me--faults I
have, and more serious, ones than until lately I was at all aware of;
but to suppose that since I first saw you, I have ever devoted one
minute’s thought to any other woman breathing, would be to do me a foul
injustice.” Alice perceived, from his manner of speaking, that her vague
suspicions had really pained him, and having no other ground for
them but an instinct which she confessed to herself to be utterly
unsanctioned by reason, she determined to confess her sin and obtain
absolution. This is in many cases a tedious and difficult operation, but
when individuals are on those easy and agreeable terms which sometimes
last so long as a year after marriage, the process becomes greatly
facilitated. Thus, by a little graceful and appropriate pantomime, Alice
caused it to be understood that she felt deeply penitent, and in a state
of mental self-accusation only to be allayed by a remedy consisting (as
some light-minded jester has phrased it), like a sermon, of “two heads
and an application.” When this specific for female grief had been duly
administered by Harry, peace was for the time restored, and the evening
passed away most harmoniously in every sense of the word.