East Lynne Part 3

Mrs. Vane gave vent to a groan. She never had been a girl herself--she had been a woman at ten; and she complimented Isabel upon being little better than an imbecile. "Put it inside my frock!" she uttered in a torrent of scorn. "And you eighteen years of age! I fancied you left off 'frocks' when you left the nursery. For shame, Isabel!"

"I meant to say my dress," corrected Isabel.

"Meant to say you are a baby idiot!" was the inward comment of Mrs.

Vane.

A few minutes and Isabel forgot her grievance. The brilliant rooms were to her as an enchanting scene of dreamland, for her heart was in its springtide of early freshness, and the satiety of experience had not come. How could she remember trouble, even the broken cross, as she bent to the homage offered her and drank in the honeyed words poured forth into her ear?

"Halloo!" cried an Oxford student, with a long rent-roll in prospective, who was s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g himself against the wall, not to be in the way of the waltzers, "I thought you had given up coming to these places?"

"So I had," replied the fast n.o.bleman addressed, the son of a marquis.

"But I am on the lookout, so am forced into them again. I think a ball- room the greatest bore in life."

"On the lookout for what?"

"For a wife. My governor has stopped supplies, and has vowed by his beard not to advance another shilling, or pay a debt, till I reform. As a preliminary step toward it, he insists upon a wife, and I am trying to choose one for I am deeper in debt than you imagine."

"Take the new beauty, then."

"Who is she?"

"Lady Isabel Vane."

"Much obliged for the suggestion," replied the earl. "But one likes a respectable father-in-law, and Mount Severn is going to smash. He and I are too much in the same line, and might clash, in the long run."

"One can't have everything; the girl's beauty is beyond common. I saw that rake, Levison, make up to her. He fancies he can carry all before him, where women are concerned."

"So he does, often," was his quiet reply.

"I hate the fellow! He thinks so much of himself, with his curled hair and shining teeth, and his white skin; and he's as heartless as an owl.

What was that hushed-up business about Miss Charteris?"

"Who's to know? Levison slipped out of the escapade like an eel, and the woman protested that he was more sinned against than sinning. Three- fourths of the world believed them."

"And she went abroad and died; and Levison here he comes! And Mount Severn's daughter with him."

They were approaching at that moment, Francis Levison and Lady Isabel.

He was expressing his regret at the untoward accident of the cross for the tenth time that night. "I feel that it can never be atoned for,"

whispered he; "that the heartfelt homage of my whole life would not be sufficient compensation."

He spoke in a tone of thrilling gentleness, gratifying to the ear but dangerous to the heart. Lady Isabel glanced up and caught his eyes gazing upon her with the deepest tenderness--a language hers had never yet encountered. A vivid blush again arose to her cheek, her eyelids fell, and her timid words died away in silence.

"Take care, take care, my young Lady Isabel," murmured the Oxonian under his breath, as they pa.s.sed him, "that man is as false as he is fair."

"I think he is a rascal," remarked the earl.

"I know he is; I know a thing or two about him. He would ruin her heart for the renown of the exploit, because she's a beauty, and then fling it away broken. He has none to give in return for the gift."

"Just as much as my new race-horse has," concluded the earl. "She is very beautiful."

CHAPTER III.

BARBARA HARE.

West Lynne was a town of some importance, particularly in its own eyes, though being neither a manufacturing one nor a cathedral one, nor even the chief town of the county, it was somewhat primitive in its manners and customs. Pa.s.sing out at the town, toward the east, you came upon several detached gentleman's houses, in the vicinity of which stood the church of St. Jude, which was more aristocratic, in the matter of its congregation, than the other churches of West Lynne. For about a mile these houses were scattered, the church being situated at their commencement, close to that busy part of the place, and about a mile further on you came upon the beautiful estate which was called East Lynne.

Between the gentlemen's houses mentioned and East Lynne, the mile of road was very solitary, being much overshadowed with trees. One house alone stood there, and that was about three-quarters of a mile before you came to East Lynne. It was on the left hand side, a square, ugly, red brick house with a weatherc.o.c.k on the top, standing some little distance from the road. A flat lawn extended before it, and close to the palings, which divided it from the road, was a grove of trees, some yards in depth. The lawn was divided by a narrow middle gravel path, to which you gained access from the portico of the house. You entered upon a large flagged hall with a reception room on either hand, and the staircase, a wide one, facing you; by the side of the staircase you pa.s.sed on to the servants' apartments and offices. That place was called the Grove, and was the property and residence of Richard Hare, Esq., commonly called Mr. Justice Hare.

The room to the left hand, as you went in, was the general sitting-room; the other was very much kept boxed up in lavender and brown Holland, to be opened on state occasions. Justice and Mrs. Hare had three children, a son and two daughters. Annie was the elder of the girls, and had married young; Barbara, the younger was now nineteen, and Richard the eldest--but we shall come to him hereafter.

In this sitting-room, on a chilly evening, early in May, a few days subsequent to that which had witnessed the visit of Mr. Carlyle to the Earl of Mount Severn, sat Mrs. Hare, a pale, delicate woman, buried in shawls and cushions: but the day had been warm. At the window sat a pretty girl, very fair, with blue eyes, light hair, a bright complexion, and small aquiline features. She was listlessly turning over the leaves of a book.

"Barbara, I am sure it must be tea-time now."

"The time seems to move slowly with you, mamma. It is scarcely a quarter of an hour since I told you it was but ten minutes past six."

"I am so thirsty!" announced the poor invalid. "Do go and look at the clock again, Barbara."

Barbara Hare rose with a gesture of impatience, not suppressed, opened the door, and glanced at the large clock in the hall. "It wants nine and twenty minutes to seven, mamma. I wish you would put your watch on of a day; four times you have sent me to look at that clock since dinner."

"I am so thirsty!" repeated Mrs. Hare, with a sort of sob. "If seven o'clock would but strike! I am dying for my tea."

It may occur to the reader, that a lady in her own house, "dying for her tea," might surely order it brought in, although the customary hour had not struck. Not so Mrs. Hare. Since her husband had first brought her home to that house, four and twenty-years ago, she had never dared to express a will in it; scarcely, on her own responsibility, to give an order. Justice Hare was stern, imperative, obstinate, and self- conceited; she, timid, gentle and submissive. She had loved him with all her heart, and her life had been one long yielding of her will to his; in fact, she had no will; his was all in all. Far was she from feeling the servitude a yoke: some natures do not: and to do Mr. Hare justice, his powerful will that must bear down all before it, was in fault: not his kindness: he never meant to be unkind to his wife. Of his three children, Barbara alone had inherited his will.

"Barbara," began Mrs. Hare again, when she thought another quarter of an hour at least must have elapsed.

"Well, mamma?"

"Ring, and tell them to be getting it in readiness so that when seven strikes there may be no delay."

"Goodness, mamma! You know they do always have it ready. And there's no such hurry, for papa may not be at home." But she rose, and rang the bell with a petulant motion, and when the man answered it, told him to have tea in to its time.

"If you knew dear, how dry my throat is, how parched my mouth, you would have more patience with me."

Barbara closed her book with a listless air, and turned listlessly to the window. She seemed tired, not with fatigue but with what the French express by the word ennui. "Here comes papa," she presently said.

"Oh, I am so glad!" cried poor Mrs. Hare. "Perhaps he will not mind having the tea in at once, if I told him how thirsty I am."

The justice came in. A middle sized man, with pompous features, and a pompous walk, and a flaxen wig. In his aquiline nose, compressed lips, and pointed chin, might be traced a resemblance to his daughter; though he never could have been half so good-looking as was pretty Barbara.

"Richard," spoke up Mrs. Hare from between her shawls, the instant he opened the door.

"Well?"