Part 59 (1/2)
CHAPTER I.
AT MADAME MIREBEAU'S, OXFORD STREET.
Half-past four of a delightful June afternoon, and two young ladies sit at two large, lace-draped windows, overlooking a fas.h.i.+onable Mayfair street, alternately glancing over the books they hold, and listlessly watching the pa.s.sers-by. The house was one of those big black West-End houses, whose outward darkness and dismalness is in direct ratio to their inward brilliance and splendor. This particular room is lofty and long, luxurious with softest carpet, satin upholstery, pictures, flowers, and lace draperies. The two young ladies are, with the exception of their bonnets, in elegant carriage costume.
_Young_ ladies, I have said; and being unmarried, they are young ladies, of course. One of them, however, is three-and-thirty, counting by actual years--the peerage gives it in cold blood. It is the Lady Gwendoline Drexel. Her companion is the Honorable Mary Howard, just nineteen, and just ”out.”
Lady Gwendoline yawns drearily over her book--Algernon Swineburne's latest--and pulls out her watch impatiently every few minutes.
”What can keep Portia?” she exclaims, with irritation. ”We should have been gone the last half-hour.”
The Honorable Mary looks up from her Parisian fas.h.i.+on-book, and glances from the window with a smile.
”Restrain your impatience, Gwendoline,” she answers. ”Here comes Lady Portia now.”
A minute later the door is flung wide by a tall gentleman in plush, and Lady Portia Hampton sweeps in. She is a tall, slender lady, very like her sister: the same dully fair complexion, the same coiffure of copper-gold, the same light, inane blue eyes. The dull complexion wears at this moment an absolute flush; the light, lack-l.u.s.tre eyes an absolute sparkle. There is something in her look as she sails forward, that makes them both look up expectantly from their books.
”Well?” Lady Gwendoline says.
”Gwen!” her sister exclaims--absolutely exclaims--”_whom_ do you suppose I have met?”
”The Czarina of all the Russias, Pio Nino, Her Majesty back from Osborne, or the Man in the Moon, perhaps,” retorts Lady Gwendoline.
”Neither,” laughs Lady Portia. ”Somebody a great deal more mysterious and interesting than any of them. You never will guess whom.”
”Being five o'clock of a sultry summer day, I don't intend to try.
Tell us at once, Portia, and let us go.”
”Then--prepare to be surprised! Sir Victor Catheron!”
”Portia!”
”Ah! I thought the name would interest you. Sir Victor Catheron, my dear, alive and in the flesh, though, upon my word, at first sight I almost took him to be his own ghost. Look at her, Mary,” laughs her sister derisively. ”I have managed to interest her after all, have I not?”
For Lady Gwendoline sat erect, her turquoise eyes open to their widest extent, a look akin to excitement in her apathetic face.
”But, Portia--Sir Victor! I thought it was an understood thing he did _not_ come to England?”
”He does, it appears. I certainly had the honor and happiness of shaking hands with him not fifteen minutes ago. I was driving up St.
James Street, and caught a glimpse of him on the steps of Fenton's Hotel. At first sight I could not credit my eyes. I had to look again to see whether it were a wraith or a mortal man. Such a pallid shadow of his former self. You used to think him rather handsome, Gwen--you should see him now! He has grown ten years older in as many months--his hair is absolutely streaked with gray, his eyes are sunken, his cheeks are hollow. He looks miserably, wretchedly out of health. If men ever do break their hearts,” said Lady Portia, going over to a large mirror and surveying herself, ”then that misguided young man broke his on his wedding-day.”
”It serves him right,” said Lady Gwendoline, her pale eyes kindling.
”I am almost glad to hear it.”
Her faded face wore a strangely sombre and vindictive look. Lady Portia, with her head on one side, set her bonnet-strings geometrically straight, and smiled maliciously.
”Ah, no doubt--perfectly natural, all things considered. And yet, even you might pity the poor fellow to-day, Gwendoline, if you saw him.
Mary, dear, is all this Greek and Hebrew to you? You were in your Parisian pensionnat, I remember, when it all happened. _You_ don't know the romantic and mysterious story of Sir Victor Catheron, Bart.”
”I never heard the name before, that I recall,” answered Miss Howard.
”Then pine in ignorance no longer. This young hero, Sir Victor Catheron of Catheron Royals, Ches.h.i.+re, is our next-door neighbor, down at home, and one year ago the handsome, happy, honored representative of one of the oldest families in the county. His income was large, his estates uninc.u.mbered, his manners charming, his morals unexceptionable, and half the young ladies in Ches.h.i.+re”--with another malicious glance at her sister--”at daggers-drawn for him. There was the slight drawback of insanity in the family--his father died insane, and in his infancy his mother was murdered. But these were only trifling spots on the sun, not worth a second thought. Our young sultan had but to throw the handkerchief, and his obedient Circa.s.sians would have flown on the wings of love and joy to pick it up. I grow quite eloquent, don't I?