Mrs. Halliburton's Troubles Part 67

TAKING AN ITALIAN LESSON.

But the evening is not yet over at Pomeranian Knoll.

The dinner-table had broken up. Anthony Dare left the house soon after his father. Mrs. Dare turned to the fire for her after-dinner nap: the young ladies, Adelaide excepted, proceeded to the drawing-room. Adelaide Dare was thinner than formerly; and there was a worn, restless look upon her face, that told of care or of disappointment. She remained in her seat at the dessert-table, and, fencing herself round with a newspaper, lest Mrs. Dare's eyes should open, took a letter from her pocket and spread it on the table.

Viscount Hawkesley had never come forward to make her the Viscountess; but he had not given up his visits to Pomeranian Knoll, and Adelaide had never ceased hoping. It was one of his letters that she was poring over now. Two or three years ago she might have married well. A clergyman had desired to make her his wife. Adelaide declined. She had possibly her own private reasons for believing in the good faith of Lord Hawkesley.

Adelaide Dare was not the first who has thrown away the substance to grasp the shadow.

Mademoiselle Varsini, on leaving the dinner-table, had gone up to the school-room. There she stirred the fire into a blaze, sat down in a chair, and bent her head in what seemed to be an att.i.tude of listening.

She did not listen in vain. Soon, stealthy footsteps were heard ascending the stairs, and a streak of vermilion flashed into her olive cheek, and she pressed her hand upon her bosom, as if to still its beating. "_Que je suis bete!_" she murmured. French was far more familiar to her than her native tongue.

The footsteps proved to be those of Herbert Dare. A tall, handsome man now, better-looking than Anthony. He, Herbert, would have been very handsome indeed, but that his features were spoiled by the free expression they had worn in his youth--free as that which characterised the face of Mr. Dare. He was coming in to pay a visit to the governess.

He paid her a good many visits: possibly thought it polite to do so.

Some gentlemen are polite, and some are the contrary; some take every opportunity of improving their minds; some don't care whether they improve them or not. Herbert Dare we should place amidst the former: a thirst for foreign languages must, undoubtedly, be reckoned one of the desires for improvement. Minny Dare had one evening broken in upon a visit her brother was paying to mademoiselle, and she (very impertinently, it must be owned) inquired what he was doing there.

"Taking an Italian lesson," Herbert answered, and he did not want Minny to bother him over it. Minny made a wry face at the books spread out between Herbert and mademoiselle, seated opposite each other at either end of the table, and withdrew with all speed lest the governess should press her to share in it. Minny did not like Italian lessons as much as Herbert appeared to do.

He came in with quiet footsteps, and the first thing he did was to--lock the door. The action may have been intended as a quiet reproof to Miss Minny: if so, it is a pity she was not there to profit by it.

"Have they asked for me in the salon?" began the governess.

"Not they," replied Herbert. "They are too much occupied with their own concerns."

"Herbert, why were you not here on Sat.u.r.day night?" she asked.

"On Sat.u.r.day night? Oh--I remember. I had to go out to keep an engagement."

"You might have spoken to me first, then," she answered resentfully.

"Just one little word. I did come up here, and I waited--I waited! After the tea I came up, and I waited again. Ah! quelle patience!"

"Waited to give me my Italian lesson?"

Herbert Dare spoke in a voice of laughing raillery. The Italian girl did not seem inclined to laugh. She stood on one side the fire, and its blaze--it was the only light in the room--flickered on her compressed lips. More compressed than ever were they to-night.

"Now, what's the use of turning cross, Bianca?" continued Herbert, still laughing. "You are as exacting as if I paid you a guinea a lesson, and went upon a system of 'no lesson, no pay.' If----"

"Bah!" interrupted mademoiselle angrily: and it certainly was not respectful of Herbert, as pupil, to call her by her Christian name--if it was that which angered her. "I am getting nearly tired of it all."

"Tired of me! You might have a worse pupil----"

"Will you be quiet, then!" cried she, stamping her foot. "I am not inclined for folly to-night. You shall not say again you are coming here, if you don't come, mind, as you did on Sat.u.r.day night."

"Well, I had an engagement, and I went straight off from the dinner-table to keep it," answered Herbert, becoming serious. "Upon my word of honour it was not my fault, Bianca; it was a business engagement. I had not time to come here before I went."

"Then you might have come when you returned," she said.

"Scarcely," replied he. "I was not home till two in the morning."

Bianca Varsini lifted her strange eyes to his. "Why tell me that?" she asked, her voice changing to one of mournful complaint. "I know you went out from dinner--I watched you out; and I saw you when you went out again. It was past ten. I saw you with my own eyes."

"You must have good eyes, Bianca. I went out from the dinner-table----"

"Not then--not then; I speak not of then," she vehemently interrupted.

"You might have come here before you went out the second time."

"I declare I don't know what you mean," he said, staring at her. "I did not come in until two in the morning. It was past two."

"But I saw you," she persisted. "It was moonlight, and I saw you cross the lawn from the dining-room window, and go out. I was at this window, and I watched you go in the direction of the gate. It was long past ten."

"Bianca, you were dreaming! I was not near the house."

Again she stamped her foot. "_Why_ you deceive me? Would I say I saw you if I did not?"

Herbert had once seen Bianca Varsini in a pa.s.sion. He did not care to see her in one again. When he said that he had not come near the house, from the time of his leaving it on rising from dinner, until two in the morning, he had spoken the strict truth. What the Italian girl was driving at, he could not imagine: but he deemed it as well to drop the subject.

"You are a folle, Bianca, as you often call yourself," said he jestingly, taking her hands. "You go into a temper for nothing. I'd get rid of that haste, if I were you."

"It was my mother's temper," she answered, drawing her hands away and letting them fall by her side. "Do you know what she once did! She spit in the face of the Archeveque of Paris!"

"She was a lady!" cried Herbert ironically. "How was that?"

"He offended her. He was pa.s.sing her in procession at the _Fete Dieu_, and he said something reproachful to her, and it put her in a temper, and she spit at him! She could do worse than that if she liked! She could have died for those who were kind to her; but let them offend her--je les en fais mes compliments!"

"I say, mademoiselle, who was your mother?"

"Never you mind! She was on the stage; not what you English call good.

But she was good to me; and she wished me to be what she was not. When I was twelve she put me into a convent. La maudite place!"

Herbert laughed. He knew enough of French to understand the expression.

"It was maudite to me. I must not dance; I must not sing; I must not have my liberty to do the simplest thing on earth. I must be up in the morning to prayers; and then at my lessons all day; and then at prayers again. I did pray. I did pray to the Virgin to take me from it. I nearly prayed my heart out--and she never heard me! I had been there a year--figure to yourself, a year!--when my mother came to see me. She had been back in Italy. 'Take me away,' I said to her, 'before I die!'

'No, Bianca mia,' she answered, 'I leave you here that you may not die; that your life may be happier than mine is, for mine is the vraie misere.' I not tell you in Italian, as she spoke, for you not understand it," rapidly interrupted mademoiselle. "My mother, she continued to me: 'When you are instructed, you shall become a gouvernante in a family of the n.o.blesse; you shall consort with the princes without shame; and perhaps you will make a good parti in marriage. Though you have no fortune, you will be accomplished; you will have the maniere and the tournure; you will be belle.' Do you think me belle?" she abruptly broke off again.

"Enchanting!" answered Herbert. "Have I not told you so five hundred times?"

She stole a glance at the little old-fashioned oval gla.s.s which hung over the mantel-piece, and then went on.

"My mother would not take me out. Though I lay on the flagstones of the visitors' parlour, though I wept for it, she would not take me out. 'It is for your good, Bianca mia,' she said. And I remained there seven years. Seven years! Do you figure it?"

"But I suppose you grew reconciled?"

"We grow reconciled to the worst in time," she answered, dreamily gazing into the fire with her strange eyes. "I pressed down my despair into myself at first, and I looked out for the opportunity to run away. We were as closely kept as the nuns in their cells, in their barred rooms, in their grated chapel; but, sooner than not have had my will and get away, I would have set the place on fire!"

"I say, mademoiselle, don't you talk treason!" cried Herbert, laughing.

"Do you think I would not?" she answered, turning to him, a gleaming look in her eyes. "But I had to wait for the opportunity to escape; and, while I waited, news came that my mother had died. She caught cold one night when she was in her evening robe, and it settled in her throat, and formed a depot, and she died. And so it was all over with my escape!

My mother gone, I had nowhere to fly to. And I stopped in that enfer seven years."