A Terrible Secret - May Agnes Fleming (best ebook reader txt) 📗

as it chances, and brown and gray meet full. Then he turns away to a tall, languid rather passive lady, who is talking slowly by his side.

"Is Miss Darrell really his cousin? Really? How extremely handsome she is, and how perfectly infatuated Sir Victor seems. Poor Sir Victor! What a pity there is insanity in the family--insanity is such a very shocking thing. How pretty Miss Stuart is looking this evening. She has heard--is it true--can Mr. Stuart inform her--are _all_ American girls handsome?"

And Charley--as Captain Hammond has done--bows, and looks, and replies:

"I used to think so, Lady Gwendoline. I have seen English girls since, and think differently."

Oh, the imbecile falsehoods of society! He is thinking, as he says it, how pallid and faded poor Lady Gwendoline is looking, in her dingy green satin and white Brussels lace overdress, her emeralds and bright golden hair--most beautiful and most expensive shade to be had in London. He is thinking how the Blanc de Perle and rouge vegetal is showing on her three-and-thirty-year-old face, and what his life would be like if he listened to his father and married her. He shudders inwardly and gives it up--"that way madness lies," and while there is a pistol left, wherewith to blow his brains out, he can still hope to escape a worse fate.

But Lady Gwendoline, freighted with eleven seasons' experience, and growing seedy and desperate, clings to him as the drowning cling to straws. She is the daughter of a peer, but there are five younger sisters, all plain and all portionless. Her elder sister, who chaperones her to-night, is the wife of a rich and retired manufacturer, Lady Portia Hampton. The rich and retired manufacturer has purchased Drexel Court, and it is Lady Portia's painful duty to try and marry her sisters off.

The ball is a great success for Miss Edith Darrell. The men rave about her; the women may sneer, but they must do it covertly; her beauty and her grace, her elegance and high breeding, not the most envious dare dispute. Music swells and floats deliciously--scores are suitors for her hand in the dance. The flush deepens on her dusk cheeks, the streaming light in her starry eyes--she is dangerously brilliant to-night. Sir Victor follows in her train whenever his duties allow him; when he dances with others his eyes follow his heart, and go after her. There is but one in all those thronged rooms for him--one who is his idol--his darling--the pride, the joy, the desire of his life.

"My dear, I am proud of you to-night," Lady Helena whispers once. "You surpass yourself--you are lovely beyond compare. You do us all credit."

And Edith Darrell's haughty eyes look up for a moment and they are flashing through tears. She lifts the lady's hand with exquisite grace, and kisses it. Then smiles chase the tears, and she is gone on the arm of some devoted cavalier. Once--only once, she dances with Charley. She has striven to avoid him--no, not that either--it is _he_ who has avoided her. She has seen him--let her be surrounded by scores, she has seen him whispering with Lady Gwendoline, dancing with Lady Gwendoline, fanning Lady Gwendoline, flirting with Lady Gwendoline. It is Lady Gwendoline he leads to supper, and it is after supper, with the enchanting strains of a Strauss waltz filling the air, that he comes up and asks her for that dance. "I am sure I deserve it for my humility," he says plaintively. "I have stood in the background, humbly and afar off, and given you up to my betters. Surely, after all the bitter pills I have been swallowing, I deserve _one_ sugar-plum."

She laughs--glances at Sir Victor, making his way toward her, takes his arm rather hurriedly, and moves off.

"Is Lady Gwendoline a pill, or a sugar-plum?" she asks. "You certainly seem to have had an overdose of her."

"I owe Lady Gwendoline my deepest thanks," he answered gravely. "Her efforts to keep me amused this evening, have been worthy of a better cause. If the deepest gratitude of a too-trusting heart," says Charley, laying his hand on the left side of his white waistcoat, "be any reward for such service, it is hers."

They float away. To Edith it is the one dance of the night. She hardly knows whether she whirls in air or on the waxed floor; she only knows that it is like heaven, that the music is celestial, and that it is Charley's arm that is clasping her close. Will she ever waltz with him again, she wonders, and she feels, feels in her inmost heart, that she is sinning against her affianced husband in waltzing with him now. But it is _so_ delicious--what a pity most of the delicious things of earth should be wrong. If it could only last forever--forever! And while she thinks it, it stops.

"O Charley! that _was_ a waltz!" she says, leaning on him heavily, and panting; "no one else has my step as you have it."

"Let us trust that Sir Victor will learn it," he responds coolly; "here he comes now. It was a charming waltz, Dithy, but charming things must end. Your lawful proprietor approaches; to your lawful proprietor I resign you."

He was perfectly unflushed, perfectly unexcited. He bows, smiles, yields her to Sir Victor, and saunters away. Five seconds later he is bending over Lady Gwendoline's chair, whispering in the pink, patrician ear resting against the glistening, golden chignon. Edith looks once--in her heart she hates Lady Gwendoline--looks once, and looks no more.

And as the serene June morning dawns, and larks and thrushes pipe in the trees, Lady Helena's dear five hundred friends, sleepy and pallid, get into their carriages and go home.


CHAPTER XVI. "O MY COUSIN SHALLOW-HEARTED!"

The middle of the day is past before one by one they straggle down. Breakfast awaits each newcomer, hot and tempting. Trix eats hers with a relish. Trix possesses one of the chief elements of perpetual human happiness--an appetite that never fails, a digestion that, in her own metaphorical American language, "never goes back on her." But Edith looks fagged and spiritless. If people are to be supernaturally brilliant and bright, dashing and fascinating all night long, people must expect to pay the penalty next day, when lassitude and reaction set in.

"My poor Edie!" Mr. Charles Stuart remarks, compassionately, glancing at the wan cheeks and lustreless eyes, as he lights his after-breakfast cigar, "you do look most awfully used up. What a pity for their peace of mind, some of your frantic adorers of last night can't see you now. Let me recommend you to go back to bed and try an S. and B."

"An 'S. and B.'?" Edith repeats vaguely.

"Soda and Brandy. It's the thing, depend upon it, for such a case as yours. I've been seedy myself before now, and know what I'm talking about. I'll mix it for you, if you like."

There is a copy of Tennyson, in blue and gold, beside Miss Darrell, and Miss Darrell's reply is to fling it at Mr. Stuart's head. It is a last effort of expiring nature; she sinks back exhausted among her cushions. Charley departs to enjoy his Manila out under the waving trees, and Sir Victor, looking fresh and recuperated, strolls in and bends over her.

"My dear Edith," he says, "how pale you are this morning--how tired you look. If one ball is going to exhaust you like this, how will you stand the wear and tear of London seasons in the blissful time to come?"

She does not blush--she turns a trifle impatiently away from him and looks out. She can see Charley and Hammond smoking sociably together in the sunny distance.

"I will grow used to it, I dare say. 'Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.'"

"Have you had breakfast?" "I made an effort and failed. I watched Trix eat hers, however, and that refreshed me quite as well. It was invigorating only to look at her."

He smiles and bends lower, drawing one long brown silken tress of hair fondly through his fingers, feeling as though he would like to stoop and kiss the pale, weary face. But Trix is over yonder, pretending to read, and kissing is not to be thought of.

"I am going over to Catheron Royals," he whispered; "suppose you come--the walk will do you good. I am giving orders about the fitting up of the old place. Did I tell you the workmen came yesterday?"

"Yes; you told me."

"Shall I ring for your hat and parasol? Do come, Edith."

"Excuse me, Sir Victor," Edith answers, with an impatient motion, "I feel too tired--too lazy, which ever you like--to stir. Some other day I will go with pleasure--just now I feel like lying here and doing the _dolce far niente_. Don't let me detain you, however."

He turns to leave her with a disappointed face. Edith closes her eyes and takes an easier position among the pillows. The door closes behind him; Trix flings down her book and bursts forth:

"Of all the heartless, cold-blooded animals it has ever been my good fortune to meet, commend me to Edith Darrell!"

The dark eyes unclose and look up at her.

"My dear Trix! what's the matter with you now? What new enormity have I committed?"

"Oh, nothing new--nothing new at all," is Trixy's scornful response; "it is quite in keeping with the rest of your conduct. To be purely and entirely selfish is the normal state of the future Lady Catheron! Poor Sir Victor! who has won you. Poor Charley! who has lost you. I hardly know which I pity most."

"I don't see that you need waste your precious pity on either," answered Edith, perfectly unmoved by Miss Stuart's vituperation; "keep it for me. I shall make Sir Victor a very good wife as wives go, and for Charley--well, Lady Gwendoline is left to console him."

"Yes, of course, there is Lady Gwendoline. O Edith! Edith! what are you made of? Flesh and blood like other people, or waxwork, with a stone for a heart? How can you sell yourself, as you are going to do? Sir Victor Catheron is no more to you than his hall-porter, and yet you persist in marrying him. You love my brother and yet you hand him over to Lady Gwendoline. Come, Edith, be honest for once; you love Charley, don't you?"

"It is rather late in the day for such tender confessions as that," Edith replies, with a reckless sort of laugh; "but yes--if the declaration does you any good, Trix--I love Charley."

"And you give him up! Miss Darrell, I give you up as a conundrum I can't solve. Rank and title are all very well--nobody thinks more of them than I do; but if _I_ loved a man," cried Trix, with kindling eyes and glowing cheeks, "I'd marry him! Yes; I would, though he were a beggar."

Edith looked up at her kindly, with a smothered sigh.

"I believe you, Trix; but then you are different from me." She half-raised herself, looking dreamily out on the sunlit prospect of lawn, and coppice, and woodland. "Here it is: I love Charley, but I love myself better. O Trix, child, don't let us talk about it; I am tired, and my head aches." She pushed back the heavy, dark hair wearily off her temples with both hands. "I am what you call me, a selfish wretch--a heartless little brute--and I am going to marry Sir Victor Catheron. Pity him, if you like, poor