"What do you want me to do?" she said at last, in rather a breathless kind of way.
"Well, my dear Rosy, since you ask me, I should say that it would be far wiser to drop Brooke"s acquaintance."
"That is impossible."
"And why impossible?"
"His daughter is coming to him for a year: he has been here to-night to ask me to call on her--to chaperone her sometimes."
"Is the man a fool?" said Oliver.
"I think," Mrs. Romaine answered, somewhat unsteadily, "that Mr. Brooke never knew--exactly--that his wife was jealous of me."
"Oh, that"s too much to say. He must have known."
"I am pretty sure that he did not. From things that he has said to me, I feel certain that he attributed only a pa.s.sing irritation to her on my account. You do not believe me, Oliver; but I think that he is perfectly ignorant of the real cause of her leaving him."
"And _you_ know it?"
"I know it, and Lady Alice knows it: no one else."
"What was it, then? You mean more than simple jealousy, I see."
"Yes, but--I am not obliged to tell you what it was."
"Oh, no. Keep your own counsel, by all means. But you are placing yourself in a very risky position. Lady Alice Brooke knows something that would, I suppose, compromise you in the world"s eyes, if it were generally known. Her daughter is coming to Brooke"s house. You mean--you seriously mean--to go to his house and visit this girl? thereby offending her mother (who is sure to hear of the visit) and bringing down the ill-will of all the Courtleroys upon your head? Have you no regard for your character and your position in the world? You are risking both, and you have nothing to gain."
"Yes, I have."
"What is it?"
"I cannot tell you."
"You mean you will not tell me?"
"Perhaps so."
Oliver Trent deliberately took a match-box from the mantelpiece, struck a match, and lighted a wax candle. "I should like to see your face," he said.
Rosalind looked at him fully and steadily for a few seconds; then her eyelids fell, and for the second time that evening the color mounted in her pale cheeks.
"I think that I know the truth," said her brother, composedly, after a careful study of her face. "You are mad, Rosalind, and you will live to rue that madness."
"I don"t know what you mean," she said, turning away from the light of the candle. "You speak in riddles."
"I will speak in riddles, then, no longer. I will be very plain with you. Rosalind, you are in love with Caspar Brooke."
She sank down on a low chair as if her limbs would support her no longer and rested her face upon her hands.
"No," she said, in a low voice, "you are wrong: I do not love Caspar Brooke."
"What other motive can you have?"
She waited for a moment, and then said, still softly--
"I suppose I may as well tell you. I loved him once. In those first days of our acquaintance--when he was disappointed in his wife and seeking for sympathy elsewhere--I thought that he cared for me. I was mistaken.
Oliver, can you keep my secret? No other soul in the world knows of this from me but you. I told him my love. I wrote to him--a wild, mad letter--offering to fly to the ends of the earth with him if he would go."
Oliver stared at her as if he could not believe his ears.
"And what answer did he make?"
"He made none--because he never saw it. That letter fell into Lady Alice"s hands. She did not know that it was the first that had been written: she took it to be one of a series. She wrote a short note to me about it; and the next thing I heard was that she had gone. But I know that he never saw that letter of mine."
"All this," said Oliver, in a hard contemptuous voice, "does not explain your present line of conduct."
She lifted her face from her hands. "Yes, it does," she said quickly.
"If you were a woman you would understand! Do you think I want her to come back to him? No, if he cannot make me happy, he shall not be happy at _her_ side. I shall never forgive her for the words she wrote to me!
If her daughter comes, Oliver, it is all the more reason why I should be here, ready to nip any notion of reconciliation in the bud. It is hate, not love, that dominates me: it is in my hatred for Caspar Brooke"s wife that you must seek the explanation of my actions. _Now_, do you understand?"
"I understand enough," said Oliver, drily.
"And you will not interfere?"
"For the present I will not interfere. But I will not bind myself. I must see more of what you are doing before I make any promises. Whatever you do, you must not compromise yourself or me."
"Hate!" he repeated to himself scornfully as he left the house at a somewhat later hour in the evening. "It is all very well to put it down to her hate for Lady Alice. She is still in love with Brooke; and that is the beginning and the end of it."
And Oliver was not far wrong.
CHAPTER VI.
LESLEY COMES HOME.
Caspar Brooke was a busy man, and he was quite determined that his daughter"s arrival should make no difference in his habits. In this determination he was less selfish than stern: he had reason to believe that his wife"s treatment of him proceeded from folly and fickleness, and that his daughter had inherited her foibles. It was not worth while, he said to himself, to make any radical change in his way of life: Lesley must accommodate herself, if she could, to his habits; and if she could not, she must go back to her mother. He was not prepared, he told himself, to alter his hours, or his friendships, or his peculiarities one whit for Lesley"s sake.
Lesley arrived an hour later than the time at which she had been expected. It was nearly eight o"clock when her cab stopped at the door of the house in Upper Woburn Place, and the evening was foggy and cold.
To Lesley, fresh from the clear skies and air of a French city, street, house, and atmosphere alike seemed depressing. The chimes of St.
Pancras" church, woefully out of tune, fell on her ear, and made her shiver as she mounted the steps that led to the front door. How dear they were to grow to her in time she did not then suspect, nor would have easily believed! At present their discordance was part of the general discordance of all things, and increased the weight of dejection which lay upon her. Her mother"s maid had orders to deliver her over to Mr. Brooke and then to come away: she was not to spend an hour in the house, nor to partake of food within its walls. She had strict orders from Lady Alice on this point.
The house was a very good house, as London dwellings go; but to Lesley"s eyes it looked strangely mean and narrow. It was very tall, and the front was painted a chocolate brown. The double front doors, which opened to admit Lesley"s boxes, showed an ordinary London hall, narrow, crowded with an oaken chest, an umbrella and hat stand, and lighted by a flaring gas lamp. At these doors two persons showed themselves; a neat but hard-featured maid-servant, and a lady of uncertain age, whom Lesley correctly guessed to be his sister and housekeeper, Miss Brooke. There was no sign of her father.
"Is this Mr. Brooke"s house?" inquired Dayman, formally. She used to know Mr. Brooke by sight, for she had lived with Lady Alice for many years.