Elsa was just out of her bed. She was lolling in a deep luxurious arm-chair, with all her golden hair streaming about her. Her room was in a state of the utmost disorder, and her French maid stood behind her with an expression of deep and embittered sulkiness.
"My good child, what is the meaning of all this mess?" cried Lady Mabel, somewhat aghast. Miss Brabourne"s habits daily set all her teeth on edge; though her shortcomings were probably only the natural rebound after the state of repression and confinement in which she had been brought up.
At Edge Combe there had been no shops, and she had been allowed no pocket-money; consequently she now never went out for a walk without lavishly purchasing a hundred useless and costly trifles with which she strewed her room. Under the regime of the Misses Willoughby no untidiness had been permitted; Miss Brabourne had darned her own stockings and repaired her own gloves. Now she let the natural bent of her untidy disposition have full play, flung her things about in all directions, and never touched a needle. In her childhood she had been obliged to rise at seven, and practise calisthenics for an hour before breakfast. Now that this restraint was removed, she never rose to breakfast at all, but usually spent the entire morning dawdling about in her bed-room in a loose wrapper, and with her hair hanging over her shoulders.
Like Lady Teazle, she was more self-indulgent, and gave far more trouble to her maid, than if she had been reared in habits of the greatest luxury. All her tastes were expensive and elegant. Dress was almost a mania with her, and no sooner had she been allowed to plan her own than she manifested a wonderfully correct taste. The rustic nymph, on whom Percivale"s eyes had first fallen when he landed on Edge Beach, had entirely disappeared in the Miss Brabourne who lived only for fashion, admiration, and amus.e.m.e.nt.
She knew exactly what suited her--how daring her perfect complexion and fine shape permitted her to be in her choice of color and style--how the greatest severity only showed up and enhanced her beauty the more.
Her whole time was devoted to the planning of new toilettes; her lengthiest visits were to her dressmaker.
Henry Fowler had not thought it prudent to make an exceedingly large allowance to a girl who had never had money to spend before; but this in no way circ.u.mscribed Elsa"s movements, since before she had been a week in London she found out that unlimited credit could be hers.
The account-books carefully prepared by Aunt Charlotte before taking leave of her young niece lay at the bottom of her trunk, the virgin whiteness of their pages unmarked by a single entry. She had come to London to enjoy herself, and she meant to do so. Her visit could not last more than a few weeks, and then she would have to go back to Edge.
This thought was horror and misery unutterable. She loathed the place.
Every a.s.sociation was hateful to her. She never wished to behold it again. As each day brought her nearer to the hideous prospect, her spirit shrank from it more and more. There was no other house in London where she could become a visitor, as the break with the Ortons was of course complete and final. And there was no hope at all of the aunts bringing her to town. The agitations of the past summer had greatly aggravated Miss Helen"s weakness, and Miss Charlotte and Miss Emily had declared, on returning from their four months abroad, that they should not dare leave f.a.n.n.y again in sole charge.
The thought of living the spring and summer through mewed up in lonely captivity at Edge, after the intoxicating taste of life and pleasure which she had had, was too terrible to be borne with grat.i.tude.
Elsa could see no way out of the dilemma but to be married.
But Osmond Allonby could not help her here. He could not afford to marry yet; and to be married at once was her aim. And now, suddenly, unexpectedly, dazzlingly, here was Mr. Percivale, the wonderful owner of the yacht, the stately gentleman, the rich, mysterious stranger, offering her his heart as humbly as if she had been an empress.
The girl felt her triumph in every fibre of her nature. It had not occurred to her to think of Percivale as her lover.
His stately courtesy and distant reverence had seemed to her like pride.
He had never been openly her slave, as was Osmond, whose infatuation had been patent from the first moment of meeting. Her admiration for the hero had been always mixed with a certain fear and great shyness.
She had heard him discussed wherever they went--here in London as well as all along the Mediterranean--when, wherever the yacht put in, it had been the cause of boundless excitement and interest, heightened to fever-heat when it was discovered that the solitary and mysterious owner had friends on board.
She knew that he was considered one of the "catches" of society--that to be on intimate terms with him was the aim of some of the leaders of the world of fashion. Town gossip never tired of his name, and whatever it had to say of him had been listened to with eager ears by Elsa.
Gossip and scandal had never been heard at Edge Willoughby; they had all the charm of novelty to the uninitiated girl, who absorbed the contents of every society journal she could get, and was far better versed in the latest morganatic marriage or the Court sensation than was Lady Mabel, who, being genuinely a woman of intelligence, usually let such trash alone.
Thus were filled the blank s.p.a.ces which Elsa"s training had left in her mind. Wynifred"s dictum had been perfectly accurate. Not knowing their niece"s proclivities in the least, the Misses Willoughby had not known what to guard against in her education. They had regarded her as so much raw material, to be converted into what fabric they pleased; now, her natural impulses began to show themselves with untutored freedom.
She was acutely alive to the importance of her conquest, but she was, let it be granted her, perfectly honest, as far as she knew, in telling Percivale that she loved him. She liked him very much; she admired his personal appearance exceedingly; she was beyond measure flattered at his preference; she preferred him, on every ground, to either Osmond Allonby, or any other man she had ever seen.
Of what love, in its highest and deepest sense, meant--such love as Percivale offered her--she was intensely ignorant; but few men will quarrel with incomprehension, if only it be beautiful; and how beautiful she was! Even Lady Mabel confessed it, much as the girl irritated her, as she sat supine before her in the easy-chair, lightly holding a hand-mirror.
"My dear Elsa, are you aware that Mr. Miles will be here in half-an-hour for a sitting?"
"I know," said Elsa, in her laconic way; adding, as if by an after-thought. "It isn"t my fault; Mathilde is so stupid this morning. I must have my hair properly done when Mr. Miles comes, and I have had to make her pull it all down twice."
"There is no satisfying mademoiselle," muttered Mathilde.
"Mathilde, don"t be rude," said Elsa, calmly.
Poor Mathilde! To her were doled out, day after day, all the countless small grudges owed to Jane Gollop by her young mistress. Like all oppressed humanity, when once the oppression was removed, Elsa tyrannised. The maid proceeded to lift the luminous flexible ma.s.ses of threaded gold, and to pack them afresh over the top of the small head in artistic loops, the girl keenly watching every movement in the mirror.
"Don"t wait, please, Lady Mabel," said she, abstractedly, arranging the soft short locks on her brow. "I shall be down in ten minutes; I want to say something to you particularly."
Lady Mabel, after a significant glance round the room, shrugged her shoulders, and went out.
"Her husband need be rich," she soliloquised as she descended the stairs.
Claud was seated in her morning-room, his youngest niece upon his knee.
This fascinating person, whose age was three, was confiding to her uncle the somewhat unlooked-for fact that she was a policeman, and intended to take him that moment to prison. If he resisted, instant death must be his portion. Two plump white fists were clenched in his faultless shirt-collar, and he hailed his sister"s entrance with a whoop of relief.
"Just in time, Mab! My last hour had come," he cried, as he relegated the zealous arm of the law to the hearth-rug, stood up, and shook himself. "Why do children invariably select the tragedy and not the comedy of life for their games? I should think, Mab, for once that you and I a.s.sisted at a wedding we took part in a hundred executions--ay, leading parts, too; the bitterness of death ought to be past for us two."
"Have you been taking care of this monkey?" said Mab, rubbing her face lovingly against his arm. "What a comfort you are to have in the house, dear boy; far more useful than my visitor upstairs, for instance. She is not handy with children, to say the least of it."
"She has not had my long apprenticeship," returned Claud, good-humoredly. "Hallo, Kathleen mavourneen, I draw the line at the poker, young lady."
"Baby, be good," said baby"s mother, as her daughter was reluctantly induced to part with her weapon. "You make excuses for Elsa, Claud; why don"t you admit that you are as much disappointed in her as I am?"
"Because I am not at all disappointed in her. You know, after the first few days, she never attracted me in the least."
"I know. I used to wonder why. Now I give you credit for much discrimination. She will never make a good wife."
"I say, that is going too far, Mab. She may develop--I hope--" he paused, and his voice took an inflection of deep feeling--"I devoutly hope she may."
"Why?"
"Because the happiness of the best man I know is absolutely dependent on her."
"Claud! He told you?"
"Yes."
The young man leaned his arm on the mantelpiece, fixing a meditative eye on his niece as she crawled up his leg.
"Did you--did you not--dissuade him in any way?"
"No," was the slow reply.
"I think, Claud, if he asked for your opinion--"
"Well, he didn"t--that is, not on the lady. He did not even mention her name. I told him that, broadly speaking, I thought everything depended on compatibility of disposition; but what on earth is the use, Mab, of cautioning a man who is head over ears in love, as he is? You might as well try to stop Niagara; he is beyond the reasoning stage. Besides, what could I urge? That I believed the lady of his choice to be selfish, vain, and not too sweet-tempered? I couldn"t say that, you know; and of course he thinks he is likely to know about as much of her as I do; he has been with her, on and off, ever since the autumn."
"Oh, you men, you men!" cried Mab. "Caught by a pretty face, even the best and n.o.blest of you!"
"Not I," interrupted Claud, shortly. "No! That beautiful girl upstairs doesn"t know what it means to love as I would have my wife love me. She has no pa.s.sion in her! And she does not know the value of love! She does not know that it is the one, only central force of life--the thing without which any lot is hard--with which any hardship is merely a trifle not worth noticing. How should she know the power of it, that flame which, once lit, burns slowly at first,--cold, perhaps, and faintly--for the loves that flare up at once are straw fires, they burn out. This that I mean grows slowly, steadily, till all the heart is one glowing, throbbing ma.s.s, flinging steadfast heat and radiance around.
This is love."
Lady Mabel"s susceptible Irish eyes were wet. She had missed her life"s aim, not through her own fault: which fact perhaps helped to make her brother so tender to her failings, so anxious for her happiness.