Volume I Part 32 (1/2)

Harry's astonishment increased. He could scarcely believe that he had heard her correctly. To whom could she possibly be attached?

”Oh, I wish I had some one here to advise me! Adeline may say what she pleases, I cannot conceal it any longer.”

Harry listened in amazement.

”Is it possible,” he said, at length, ”that there is some difficulty, some embarra.s.sment, that prevents your acting as you would wish? My dear Jane, confide in me. You cannot doubt that I love you, that I have long loved you;” and Harry then ran over a variation of his first declaration. But Jane's trouble seemed only to increase.

”Oh, stop, Harry; don't talk in that way,” she said; ”I ought to have told you before. I wished to tell you when you first came on to New York, but Adeline said we should risk everything by it.”

”What can you possibly risk? What is it you wish to tell me?”

”I was very sorry when you broke with Elinor--I never can have any other feeling for you than I have always had: I have been for some time, almost-----engaged--to--to--Mr. Taylor--”

”You-----engaged to Mr. Taylor!”

”No-----not engaged-----only I have not refused him--We know father and mother dislike Mr. Taylor's family so much--”

It was but natural that Harry should feel indignant at having been deceived by the under-current of plotting that had been going on; that he should feel mortified, ashamed of himself, and disappointed, at the same time; vexed with Jane, and almost furious against the meddling, officious Adeline, and her presuming brother. From a long acquaintance with Jane's character, it flashed upon his mind in a moment, that she must have been misguided, and gradually led on by others. But the mischief was done; it was evident that at present, at least, she cared no more for him than she had always done; while, on the contrary, young Taylor had insinuated himself into her affections. He could not endure to think, that while Jane was indifferent to himself, his successful rival should be one whom he so much disliked. Yet, such was the fact. It was infatuation on the part of Jane, no doubt; and yet how often these deceptions have all the bad effects of realities! He had been silent for some minutes, while the tears were streaming freely from Jane's beautiful eyes.

”Oh, if I had not been so afraid that father would never give his consent, I should not have waited so long. If I only knew what to do now?”

Harry came to a magnanimous resolution. ”I forgive you, Jane,” he said, ”the pain you have caused, since I cannot but think that it is not the fruit of your own suggestions. You could not deliberately have trifled with me in this way; I owe it, no doubt, to the goodness of Miss Taylor,” he added, bitterly. Jane made no answer, but continued to weep. Harry felt some compa.s.sion for her, in spite of her unjustifiable conduct towards himself.

In the course of half an hour, she had fallen very much in his estimation; but he determined to return good for evil, by urging her to take the only step now in her power--the only one proper under the circ.u.mstances. He begged her, as she valued her future peace, to reveal everything to her mother; and to be guided in future by Mrs. Graham. But Jane seemed terrified at the idea.

”Oh,” said she, ”father will be so angry! And we expect him every day: Mother, too, I know, will think I have behaved very badly to you.”

It is probable she might not have had the courage to follow his advice, had not Mrs. Graham accidentally entered the room at the moment. Her attention was immediately attracted to the unusual expression of Harry's face, and the tearful, woe-begone look of her daughter, which she could in no way account for. Harry, merely answering her inquiries by a bow, arose and left the room, leaving the mother and daughter together.

Poor Mrs. Graham was little aware of what awaited her. She could not be called a woman of very high principles, but she had more feeling, and, of course, more experience than Jane. When she discovered the true state of things, she was very much shocked.

She had never had the least idea of what had been going on around her; far from it, indeed, she had never for a moment doubted that, before long, her daughter would become the wife of young Hazlehurst.

Little by little she gathered the whole truth from the weeping Jane. It appeared that the two or three meetings which had taken place between Jane and young Taylor, just before he sailed, had been sufficient for him to fancy himself in love with her. He made a confidante of his sister Adeline, who, as one of the older cla.s.s in her boarding-school, considered all love-affairs as belonging to her prerogative. Her friend, Miss Hunter, was a regular graduate of the Court of Love, according to the code--not of Toulouse--but of a certain cla.s.s of school-girls in New-York.

This young lady had gone through the proper training from her cradle, having been teased and plagued about beaux and lovers, before she could walk alone. She had had several love-affairs of her own before she was fifteen. ”All for love,” was her motto; and it was a love which included general flirtation as the spice of unmarried life, and matrimony with any individual whatever, possessing a three-story house in Broadway, as the one great object of existence. Adeline had, of course, profited by such companions.h.i.+p; and, at the time her brother confessed himself in love with Miss Graham, after having met once on board a steamboat, and once at an evening party, she was fully equal to take the management of the whole affair into her own hands. It is true, young Taylor had entered into a boyish engagement at college; but that was thought no obstacle whatever. She delighted in pa.s.sing her brother's compliments over to Jane; in reporting to him her friend's blushes and smiles. With this state of things, young Taylor sailed for Europe; but Adeline gloried too much in her capacity of confidante, to allow the matter to drop: not a letter was written but contained some allusion to the important subject. In the course of the year she had talked Jane into quite a favourable state of feeling towards her brother; he would probably himself have forgotten the affair, had not Miss Graham arrived in Paris at the moment she did.

They saw each other, of course, and the feelings which Adeline had been encouraging during the last year, and which otherwise would have amounted to nothing at all, now took a serious turn.

Young Taylor was very handsome, and astonis.h.i.+ngly improved in appearance and manners. Jane, herself, was in the height of her beauty, and the young man had soon fallen really in love with her. Unfortunately, just at the moment that he became attentive to her, Mrs. Robert Hazlehurst, who was confined to the house that winter, had confided Jane to the care of Mrs. Howard, the lady who had brought her from America. Young Taylor soon found out that he was rather disliked by Mr. and Mrs. Hazlehurst, and preferred securing Jane's favour, if possible, without attracting the attention of her friends. Adeline, on her part, had discovered that her own family were no favourites with Mr. and Mrs. Graham; of course she recommended the proper degree of mystery, under the name of prudence. Young Taylor left Paris for England, about the time that Harry returned from his eastern journey; but before parting from Jane, he explained himself; and if he had not been accepted, he had certainly not been refused.

Thus matters stood when the whole party returned home. Mr. Graham was known to be a violent, pa.s.sionate man, and as he had taken no pains to conceal his dislike to Tallman Taylor's father, the young people had every reason to believe that he would refuse his consent. The idea of a clandestine marriage had once occurred to Adeline, but never with any serious intention of proposing it.

Had she done so, she would not have been listened to. Jane had not lived so much with Miss Wyllys and Elinor, without deriving some good from such a.s.sociation; besides, she did not think the step necessary. She believed that Mr. Graham would give his consent after a while; and young Taylor was obliged to submit for the present. As for his college engagement, he had paid it no more attention than if it had never taken place; it had been long since forgotten, on his part.

Little by little, Mrs. Graham gathered most of these facts from her daughter, whose weeping eyes and pale face would have delighted Adeline, as being just what was proper in a heroine of romance, on such an important occasion. But Adeline could not enjoy the sight of all the misery which was the fruit of her two years' labours, for Mrs. Graham insisted that Jane should see none of the family until her father had arrived; and knew the state of things.

Harry Hazlehurst, although not quite as well informed as the reader, knew essentially how matters stood. He knew at least, that Jane and young Taylor were all but pledged to each other; he knew what had been Adeline's conduct--what had been his own treatment; and as he walked slowly from one end of the Battery to the other, his reflections were anything but flattering to himself, or to any of the parties concerned. He blamed Mrs.

Graham for her want of maternal caution and foresight; he blamed his brother, and sister-in-law, for their blindness in Paris; Jane, for her weakness, and want of sincerity to himself; Adeline, for such unjustifiable management and manoeuvring; and young Taylor, for what he called his ”presumption and puppyism.”

And to think that he, Harry Hazlehurst, who prided himself upon being clear-sighted, had been so completely deceived by others, and what was worse, by himself! He was obliged to remember how sure he had felt himself of Jane; it was humiliating to think what a silly part he had been playing. Then came a twinge or two, from the consciousness that he had deserved it all, from his conduct to Elinor. He tried to persuade himself that regret that Jane should fall into hands he fancied so unworthy of her--that she should be sacrificed to a mere second-rate sort of dandy, like young Taylor, was his strongest feeling at the time. But he was mistaken: there was a good deal of the lover in his recollection of Jane's transcendant {sic} beauty. He hoped that she would yet be saved from the worst--from becoming the wife of Tallman Taylor. He felt convinced that Mr. Graham would refuse his consent to the marriage.

The next day, Harry returned to Philadelphia. The astonishment of all those interested in himself and Jane, at this rupture, was very great. If Mrs. Stanley had been grieved at Harry's difficulties, Mrs. Robert Hazlehurst was made quite unhappy by her sister's conduct. She reproached herself severely for her blindness; for not having taken as much care of Jane as she ought to have done under the circ.u.mstances. Like all her family, she disliked young Taylor; who, in fact, had nothing to recommend him but his handsome face, and his father's money. Miss Wyllys, too, was much pained by the conduct of one who had been so often under her care--one, in whose welfare she was so warmly interested. She received the news in a note from Mrs. Hazlehurst, who preferred giving it in that form; and as Miss Wyllys was alone with Elinor, she immediately handed the billet to her niece.

It must be confessed that Elinor's heart gave one bound at this unexpected news. She was more moved by it than any one; more astonished that Jane should have refused Harry; that she should have preferred to him that silly Tallman Taylor; more shocked at the double-dealing that had been going on; and more pained that Jane, who had been to her as a sister, should have been so easily misled. Another thought intruded, too--Harry would be free again!