The human face has been often spoken of as an index of the mind. There
are people who boldly declare that they know a man by the height of his
forehead, by the set of his eyes, by the shape of his head, and by the
general expression of his countenance. Whether this rule is true or
not, it certainly has its exceptions. As far as outward expression goes
some minds remain locked, and Satan himself can now and then appear
transformed as an angel of light.
Mortimer Paget, Esq., the head and now sole representative of the once
great ship-broking firm of Paget Brothers, was one of the handsomest
and most striking-looking men in the city. On more than one occasion
sculptors of renown had asked to be permitted to take a cast of his
head to represent Humanity, Benevolence, Integrity, or some other
cardinal virtue. He had a high forehead, calm velvety brown eyes,
perfectly even and classical features, and firm lips with a sweet
expression. His lips were perfectly hidden by his silvery moustache,
and the shape of his chin was not discernible, owing to his long
flowing beard. But had the beard and moustache both been removed, no
fault could have been found with the features now hidden--they were
firmly and well-moulded. On this beautiful face no trace of a sinister
cast lurked.
Mortimer Paget in his business transactions was the soul of honor. No
man in the city was more looked up to than he. He was very shrewd with
regard to all money matters, but he was also generous and kind. The old
servants belonging to the firm never cared to leave him; when they
died off he pensioned their widows and provided for their orphans. He
was a religious man, of the evangelical type, and he conducted his
household in every way from a religious point of view. Family prayers
were held night and morning in the great house in Queen's Gate, and the
servants were expected each and all to attend church twice on Sundays.
Mr. Paget had found a church where the ritual was sufficiently low to
please his religious views. To this church he went himself twice on
Sundays, invariably accompanied by a tall girl, richly dressed, who
clung to his side and read out of the same book with him, singing when
he sang, and very often slipping her little hand into his, and closing
her bright eyes when he napped unconsciously during the prosy sermon.
This girl was his only child, and while he professed to be actuated by
the purest love for both God and his fellow creatures, the one being
for whom his heart really beat warmly, the one being for whom he could
gladly have sacrificed himself was this solitary girl.
Valentine's mother had died at her birth, and since that day Valentine
and her father had literally never been parted. She was his shadow,
like him in appearance, and as far as those who knew her could guess
like him in character.
The house in Queen's Gate was full of all the accompaniments of wealth.
It was richly and splendidly furnished; the drawing-rooms were
spacious, the reception rooms were all large. Valentine had her own
boudoir, her own special school-room, her own bedroom and
dressing-room. Her father had provided a suite of rooms for her, each
communicating with the other, but except that she tossed off her
handsome dresses in the dressing-room, and submitted at intervals
during the day with an unwilling grace to the services of her maid, and
except that she laid her bright little curling head each evening on
the softest of down-pillows, Valentine's suite of rooms saw very little
of their young mistress.
There was an old library in the back part of the house--an essentially
dull room, with windows fitted with painted glass, and shelves lined
with books, most of them in tarnished and worm-eaten bindings, where
Mr. Paget sat whenever he was at home, and where in consequence
Valentine was to be found. Her sunny head, with its golden wavy hair,
made a bright spot in the old room. She was fond of perching herself on
the top of the step-ladder, and so seated burrowing eagerly into the
contents of some musty old volume. She devoured the novels of Smollett
and Fielding, and many other books which were supposed not to be at all
good for her, in this fashion--they did her no harm, the bad part
falling away, and not touching her, for her nature was very pure and
bright, and although she saw many shades of life in one way or another,
and with all her expensive education, was allowed to grow up in a
somewhat wild fashion, and according to her own sweet will, yet she was
a perfectly innocent and unsophisticated creature.
When she was seventeen, Mr. Paget told her that he was going to
inaugurate a new state of things.
"You must go into society, Val," he said. "In these days the daughters
of city men of old standing like myself are received everywhere. I will
get your mother's third cousin, Lady Prince, to present you at the next
Drawing-room, and then you must go the usual round, I suppose. We must
get some lady to come here to chaperon you, and you will go out to
balls and assemblies, and during the London season turn night into
day."
Val was seated on the third rung of the step-ladder when her father
made this announcement. She sprang lightly from her perch now, and ran
to his side.
"I won't go anywhere without you, dad; so that's settled. Poor old
man!--dear old man!"
She put her arms round his neck, and his white moustache and beard
swept across her soft, peach-like cheek.
"But I hate going out in the evening, Val. I'm getting an old
man--sixty next birthday, my dear--and I work hard all day. There's no
place so sweet to me in the evening as this worm-eaten, old
armchair;--I should find myself lost in a crowd. Time was when I was
the gayest of the gay. People used to speak of me as the life and soul
of every party I went to, but that time is over for me. Val; for you it
is beginning."
"You are mistaken, father. I perch myself on the arm of this wretched,
worm-eaten, old chair, and stay here with you, or I go into society
with you. It's all the same to me--you can please yourself."
"Don't you know that you are a very saucy lass, miss?"
"Am I? I really don't care--I go with you, or I stay with you--that's
understood. Dad--father dear--that's always to be the way, you
understand. You and I are to be always together--all our lives. You
quite see what I mean?"
"Yes, my darling. But some day you will have a husband. Val. I want you
to marry, and have a good husband, child; and then we'll see if your
old father still comes first."
Valentine laughed gaily.
"We'll see," she repeated. "Father, if you are not awfully busy, I must
read you this bit out of Roderick Random--listen, is not it droll?"
She fetched the volume with its old-fashioned type and obsolete s'es,
and the two faces so alike and so beautiful, and so full of love for
one another, bent over the page.
Valentine Paget had her way, and when she made her _debut_ in the world
of fashion she was accompanied by no other chaperon than her handsome
father. A Mrs. Johnstone, a distant relative of Valentine's mother had
been asked to come to drive with the young lady in the Parks, and to
exercise a very mild surveillance over her conduct generally, when she
received her visitors at five o'clock tea, but in the evenings Mr.
Paget alone took her into society. The pair were striking enough to
make an instant success. Each acted as a foil and heightener to the
beauty of the other. Mortimer Paget was recognized by some of his old
cronies--fair ladies who had known him when he was young, reproached
him gently for having worn so well, professed to take a great interest
in his girl, and watched her with narrow, critical, but not unkindly
eyes. The girl was fresh and _naive_, perfectly free and untrammelled,
a tiny bit reckless, a little out of the common. Her handsome face, her
somewhat isolated position, and her reputed fortune, for Mortimer Paget
was supposed to be one of the richest men in the city, soon made her
the fashion. Valentine Paget, in her first season, was spoken about,
talked over, acknowledged to be a beauty, and had, of course, plenty of
lovers.
No one could have taken a daughter's success with more apparent
calmness than did her father. He never interfered with her--he never
curbed her light and graceful, although somewhat eccentric, ways; but
when any particular young man had paid her marked attention for more
than two nights running, had anyone watched closely they might have
seen a queer, alert, anxious look come into the fine old face. The
sleepy brown eyes would awake, and be almost eagle-like in the keenness
of their glance. No one knew how it was done, but about that possible
suitor inquiries of the closest and most delicate nature were instantly
set on foot; and as these inquiries, from Mr. Paget's point of view, in
each case proved eminently unsatisfactory, when next the ardent lover
met the beautiful Miss Paget, a thin but impenetrable wall of ice
seemed to have started up between them. Scarcely any of Valentine's
lovers came to the point of proposing for her; they were quietly
shelved, they scarcely knew how, long before matters arrived at this
crisis. Young men who in all respects seemed eligible of the
eligible--men with good names and rent-rolls, alike were given a sort
of invisible _conge_. The news was therefore received as a most
startling piece of information at the end of Valentine's first season,
that she was engaged, with the full consent and approval of her most
fastidious father, to about the poorest man of her acquaintance.
Gerald Wyndham was the only son of a country clergyman--he was young,
only twenty-two; he was spoken about as clever, but in the eyes of
Valentine's friends seemed to have no one special thing to entitle him
to aspire to the hand of one of the wealthiest and most beautiful girls
of their acquaintance.
It was reported among Mr. Paget's friends that this excellent,
honorable and worthy gentleman must surely have taken leave of his
senses, for Gerald Wyndham had literally not a penny, and before his
engagement to Valentine, the modest career opening up before him was
that of Holy Orders in one of its humblest walks.