CHAPTER VIII.

A GLASS OF BURGUNDY.

The cold caught by Sir Thomas Dudgeon a few days after the ball at Stammars culminated in an attack of low fever, which confined him to the house for some weeks, and delayed the return of the family to Harley Street at the date first fixed upon.

While the baronet was thus shut up within doors, a certain estate was advertised for sale, of which he thought he should like to become the purchaser. Being unable to attend to the matter in person, he put it into the hands of Mr. Kelvin, who, in the course of the business, found himself, much against his will, under the necessity of going to Stammars, from which place he had kept himself carefully aloof for several months.

The day before going there, Kelvin mentioned his intended visit to his mother, mentioned it casually in conversation, and as a matter of no consequence, for the old lady knew of no disinclination on his part to go to Stammars, and had not the remotest suspicion that he had ever been in love with Miss Lloyd.

As soon as Matthew had left the room, Mrs. Kelvin sat down and penned a short note to Miss Deane, informing her that her cousin would be at Stammars on the morrow, and asking her to see him and write back her opinion as to how he seemed in health, whether better or worse than when Olive saw him at Easter.

The note reached Olive by the evening post while she was correcting her pupils' exercises. She read it through once and then put it quietly into her pocket: but she went up to her room earlier than usual, and it was long past midnight before she went to bed. She put out her candle--she always used to say that she could think better in the dark--and drew up her blinds, and paced her room for hours in the dim starlight. This visit of her cousin to Stammars might mean so much to her!

The main reason which, in the first instance, had induced her to come to Stammars no longer existed. Her scheme for bringing Pomeroy and Miss Lloyd together, that they might have an opportunity of falling in love with each other, had succeeded almost beyond her expectations. She had partly seen, and partly overheard, what had passed between them that evening in the back drawing-room. Her belief, as regarded Pomeroy, was that he was merely playing a part in order to win an heiress for his wife; but that Eleanor was really in love with Pomeroy, she felt equally sure. So sure, indeed, was she on this point, that all fear of Matthew Kelvin ever inducing Miss Lloyd to change her mind and look upon him with kindly eyes had vanished from Olive's mind for ever. Let her cousin marry whomsoever he might, there was one person in the world who would never become his wife, and that person was Eleanor Lloyd--on that point there could be no possible mistake. So far, she had cut her way clearly and boldly towards the end she had had in view from the first. But much remained for her still to do. In the first place, she must satisfy her cousin that all chance of his ever winning Miss Lloyd was utterly at an end. This there would not be much difficulty in effecting; but something much harder would remain to be achieved before she could hope to benefit in the least by all that had gone before. There was no hope of her ever being able to win her cousin's affections, no hope that he would ever ask her to become his wife, unless the opportunity were given her of seeing him and being with him daily--unless, in fact, he and she were living under the same roof. But how was such an end to be accomplished? True it was that she might, on some easily-invented pretext, throw up her position at Stammars, and go and live with her aunt for a week or two while looking out for another situation. But that was not what she wanted. Her next situation might take her a couple of hundred miles away, and so separate her from her cousin for years--for ever. It were better to remain at Stammars than run such a risk as that. True it was that she had lived under her cousin's roof for several weeks before coming to Stammars, without, to all appearance, advancing one single step towards the end she had in view. But she flattered herself that her failure at that time was altogether due to the fact that her cousin had not as yet, whatever he might say to the contrary, given up all expectation of one day inducing Miss Lloyd to change her mind in his favour. In any case, his recent disappointment sat too freshly upon him: his hurt was not yet healed, the image of Miss Lloyd was still too constantly in his mind's eye, for any real hope to exist that he might have his eyes and his thoughts diverted elsewhere. But that time was now gone by. Mr. Kelvin was no love-sick schoolboy, to go whimpering through the world because he could not have the particular toy on which he had set his mind. When once the first sharp pang was over, when once he knew for a fact that the heart he had one day hoped to call his was irrevocably given to another, pride would come to the aid of his natural strength of character, and he would school himself to forget, would school himself to obliterate from his memory all traces of so painful an episode.

Then, if ever, would come Olive's chance; then, if ever, would come the opportunity so intensely longed for. But, in order to avail herself of that opportunity, in order to put it to all the uses of which it was capable, it was imperatively necessary that she should be there--on the spot. Thus, to-night, the problem which Olive Deane had set herself to solve--the problem which kept her out of bed half the night and awake the remaining half, was, "How, and by what means, is it possible for me to make myself an inmate of my cousin's house, so that he may have an opportunity of learning to love me?"

Just as the first ghostly glimmer of daylight was beginning to creep across the sky, she sat up in bed, moved by a thought against which she had been fighting faintly all night long, but which had conquered her at last. "If only he were ill!" was the thought that at last clothed itself with definite words in her mind. "If only he were ill!" she said aloud, staring out with blank, sleepless eyes at the dawn. "Aye--if! Then I could claim to nurse him; then I could obtain a place by his side. He has no sister, his mother is old and infirm, and no one else is so near to him as I am. And why should he not be ill?"

She went down to breakfast with dark-rimmed eyes and sallow cheeks, and looking as if she had aged five years in a few short hours. Still the same question kept repeating itself like a refrain in her mind, "Why should he not be ill?" Over and over again, as though it were a question asked by some other than herself, it seemed to be whispered in her ear; and even when she was hearing her pupils their lessons, it seemed to write itself in blood-red letters across the book in her hand.

Matthew Kelvin reached Stammars about noon. Olive had asked one of the servants to let her know when he arrived. Then she wrote a little note and sent it to him in the library, where he was closeted with Sir Thomas. "Come and have luncheon with me in my room as soon as your business is over." Then she put on another dress, and laid out her bonnet, mantle, and gloves, so that they would be ready at a moment's notice. She had quite made up her mind that she should go back to Pembridge with her cousin.

Half an hour later, Mr. Kelvin was ushered into her sitting-room, where a comfortable little luncheon was already laid.

"I suppose you would have gone away without coming near me," said Olive, as she held out her hand, "if I had not sent you that note?"

"No, indeed," said Kelvin, pleasantly. "Why should you think such hard things of me? Rather a comfortable little place, this of yours," he added, as he looked round; "but I daresay you feel rather lonely and mopy here at times."

"Very seldom. You know that I am not one who cares for much society, and so long as I have plenty of books, I content myself tolerably well."

"When do you go back to Harley Street?"

"That all depends on the state of Sir Thomas's health. And that reminds me that I have not yet asked after my aunt."

"Oh, my mother is pretty much as usual, I think. Of course, like all of us, she does not grow younger. I believe she would be better if she didn't fidget herself so unnecessarily about me."

"My aunt does not fidget herself without cause, Matthew. You don't look at all well--hardly as well as when I saw you at Easter."

"There, there! you women are all alike," he said, a little impatiently. "Never mind my looks, but give me something to eat. I believe my drive through the crisp spring air has given me an appetite, and that's more than I've had for ever so long a time. You don't look over bright yourself, Olive," he added, as he sat down at table. "A little bit worried, perhaps--eh?"

"No; I don't know that I have anything particular to worry me."

"How do you and the dowager get on together?"

"Oh, pretty well. She does not interfere a great deal with me, and I keep out of her way as much as possible."

"That's sensible on both sides."

He certainly looked older and more careworn, as he sat there, than she had ever seen him look before. It made her heart ache to look at him. If she could but have comforted him! if she could but have laid his head against her bosom, and have kissed back the pleasant light into his eyes, and the sunny smile to his lips, as she remembered them in the days before the shadow of Eleanor Lloyd had ever crossed his path! But that might not be.

"Do you see much of Miss Lloyd nowadays?" asked Kelvin, presently, in as indifferent a tone as he could assume.

"I generally see her at breakfast and luncheon when she is at home. Not often besides."

"She is quite well, I suppose?"

"Quite well, so far as I know. Why should she not be?"

"Anything come of that affair between her and Captain--Captain, what do you call him?"

"Captain Dayrell, you mean. No; I believe the affair is broken off entirely. I have reason to believe that when it came to the point, Miss Lloyd would have nothing more to do with him."

"Ah! what a little coquette she is! If a man like this Captain Dayrell is not good enough for her, what on earth does she expect? I'll take a glass of wine, if you please, Olive."

He had brightened up all in a moment. He looked quite a different individual from the gloomy, careworn man who had entered the room only ten minutes before. "In his heart he loves her still," said Olive to herself, and her own heart overflowed with bitterness at the thought. From that moment any scrap of compunction that might hitherto have clung to her was flung to the winds.

She poured him out a glass of Burgundy with a hand that betrayed not the slightest tremor before she spoke.

"Is it not possible, Matthew," she said, in that icy tone which she knew so well how to assume when it suited her to do so, "is it not possible that Miss Lloyd's refusal to entertain the proposition of Captain Dayrell might arise from some other motive than mere coquetry?"

"What do you mean?" he asked, quickly and suspiciously. "When you ask an ambiguous question like that, Miss Deane, you have generally got the answer to it ready at your tongue's end."

"Thank you, Matthew," said Olive, quietly. "When Miss Lloyd turned her back on Captain Dayrell, is it not possible that she might be influenced in doing so by her liking for some one else?"

Mr. Kelvin's face grew a shade paler, and he did not answer at once.

"If you know so much, you can doubtless tell me the rest," he said, at last. "Let us have no more beating about the bush. You can, if you choose to do so, tell me the name of the person for whom you believe Miss Lloyd to have a preference. Who is the man?" His last question might have been a cry wrung from him by his own agony, so sharp and bitter was its tone.

"What will you say if I tell you that it is your friend, Mr. Pomeroy?"

"Pomeroy! Eleanor Lloyd in love with Pomeroy!" he cried, as he started to his feet. "No; I will never believe it. It is a lie!"

"A lie, Matthew? Thank you again. It is but a few evenings ago since I saw--myself unseen--the head of Eleanor Lloyd laid on the shoulder of John Pomeroy: since I saw the lips of John Pomeroy pressed without reproof to those of Eleanor Lloyd. Such is my evidence. Set on it what value you please."

He seized a knife suddenly, as though he would have liked to stab her to the heart. But her eyes met his unflinchingly, as she stood opposite to him, and presently he sank back into his chair, and let his arm fall on to the table, and so sat with bowed head for a time, without speaking.

"This is your doing and my mother's!" he said at last, speaking slowly and bitterly. "It was through you that this vagabond had the opportunity given him of doing what he has done!"

"How was either I or your mother to know that what has happened would happen?" asked Olive. She felt that the time had not yet come when it would be safe for her to tell her cousin that Pomeroy had been brought to Stammars for the express purpose of falling in love with Miss Lloyd.

"To think of Eleanor Lloyd so far forgetting herself as to fall in love with an adventurer like Pomeroy! It seems impossible."

"You seem to forget that Pomeroy passes here as a gentleman. A poor one, it may be, but still a gentleman. And if you know anything at all of Miss Lloyd, you must know this, that the fact of Mr. Pomeroy being without a shilling in the world would not influence her estimate of him in the slightest possible degree."

"We will soon strip his fine feathers off him," exclaimed Kelvin, "and expose him for what he really is--an adventurer and a vagabond. I'll go to Sir Thomas this very day, and tell him everything."

Olive had quite expected that her cousin would be angry when he heard her news, and would threaten to expose everything to Sir Thomas; but she had kept an arrow in store for such an occasion, which she now proceeded to let fly.

"How inconsistent you are, cousin Matthew!" she exclaimed. "Why has certain news been kept back from Eleanor Lloyd for so long a time? That question you can answer as well as I can. Cannot you, therefore, comprehend how much more complete will be your revenge on this woman who rejected you with contempt and scorn, if, through your agency, she is hoodwinked into marrying a penniless adventurer like Pomeroy, rather than a gentleman and a man of honour like Captain Dayrell? Cannot you, I say, comprehend all this?"

"The question did not strike me in that light," said Kelvin, in the quick way habitual with him when any fresh idea was put before him. "If I have wished once, I have wished a thousand times," he said, "that I had never hidden from Eleanor that which it was my duty to have told her the moment the knowledge came into my possession. But such regrets are useless."

"They are worse than useless," said Olive, in her cold, measured tones, as she looked fixedly at him. There was something either in her words or her look that stung him.

"You think me weak," he said; "but how is it possible for you to understand the thoughts and feelings of a man placed as I am."

"You will not go to Sir Thomas to-day, as you said you would," was all she answered.

"No, I will not go to Sir Thomas. She rejected me and she has accepted Pomeroy. Let her abide by her choice. Having kept the secret so long, I will keep it a little while longer. Let her find out, when no remedy can avail, that this man sought her for her money alone--that money which belongs to another. Had she been the beggar's daughter of Bethnal Green, I would have made her my wife."

He had spoken passionately, and he now got up and walked to the window, and stood I gazing out of it, as if to hide his emotion.

He had half emptied his glass of Burgundy when he first sat down. Olive now filled it up, while he stood thus with his back towards her, and then, quickly and deftly, from a little phial which she extracted from the bosom of her dress, she let fall into the wine three drops of some thick, dark tincture. Very white, but very determined, was the face that was turned next moment on Mr. Kelvin.

"You have scarcely tasted anything. Are you not going to finish your cutlet?"

"No," he said, as he turned from the window. "My appetite has gone. I can't eat."

"You will, at least, drink this glass of wine. If you cannot eat, you must drink."

She took up the glass of Burgundy as she spoke, and handed it to him with a hand that was as steady as his own. He took it without a word, and drank it slowly to the last drop. Then he gave her back the glass, making a slight grimace as he did so.

"Either my palate is out of order," he said, "or else Sir Thomas's wine merchant is a vendor of rubbish." Then he added, "I promised that I would give Sir Thomas another look in before I went back, but I'll go first and have a weed in the shrubbery. A quarter of an hour in the fresh air will bring me down to my ordinary business level."

"I shall want to see you again before you go," said Olive. "I have a tiny parcel for you to take to my aunt."

Her heart was fluttering so fast, that she was obliged to press one hand over it in an effort to still its wild beating.

"All right. I'll look in again for a minute before starting," said Mr. Kelvin, as he took up his hat.

He was just about to open the door, when Olive, whose eyes had been anxiously following him, saw him stagger slightly, and lift his hand to his head. She was by his side in a moment.

"What is it, Matthew? Are you not well?"

"It was nothing. Only a sudden giddiness. I shall be better when I get into the fresh air."

Then he opened the door and went out.

Olive went to the window, from which place the side-door could be seen by which her cousin would gain access to the grounds Even her lips seemed to have lost their colour this afternoon. She stood there, rubbing one thin white hand against the other, with a slow, restless motion, as though that were the only outlet she could find for the intense life burning within her.

"It begins to take effect already!" she whispered, as though she were breathing her secret in some one's ear. "He shall take me back with him to Pembridge this very day. When he gets over this foolish passion, as he must do when Eleanor Lloyd is another man's wife, then his heart will turn to me--the heart that once was mine, and that shall be mine again! With me for his wife, all his old, ambitious dreams would spring up again with renewed vigour. He should not live and die a mere country lawyer, as, with Eleanor Lloyd for his wife, he surely would do. Raby House is his already--so his mother told me. He is far richer than the world believes him to be. In a little while he will be in Parliament--and then! What wild, ambitious dreams are these! But they are dreams that shall one day become realities, if a woman's will can make them so. There he is in the Laurel Walk! He sits down and presses his hand to his forehead. It wrings my heart to see him suffer; but what can I do? How gladly would I suffer instead of him, if thereby I could charm him to my side and make him my own for ever! It is time to go and get ready for my journey."

Lady Dudgeon had just hunted up Sir Thomas in the library (he had ventured downstairs for an hour this afternoon), in order to point out to him a flagrant error of two shillings in the casting of the butcher's monthly account, when there came a tap at the door, and next moment Miss Deane entered.

"I hope, Lady Dudgeon, you will pardon my intrusion," she said, "but my cousin, Mr. Kelvin, has been suddenly taken ill, and----"

"Kelvin ill!" burst out Sir Thomas. "What is the matter with him? Where is he?"

"He is in the conservatory, Sir Thomas. A sudden attack--giddiness--nausea. I have ordered the fly to be brought round in which he drove over from Pembridge."

"It's nothing contagious, I hope," said her ladyship. "My two darling pets--where are they?"

"Safe in the schoolroom. But your ladyship need fear nothing on the score of contagion."

"I am sorry I can't go and look after him myself," said the baronet. "Is he well enough to be sent home alone?"

"I was about to ask her ladyship to allow me to go home with him," said Olive, "although, in such a case, I could not promise to get back before to-morrow morning."

"It is very thoughtful on your part, Miss Deane," said her ladyship. "You must go with Mr. Kelvin, by all means."

"Your ladyship is very kind."

"Yes, go, by all means," said Sir Thomas. "A most invaluable, man, Kelvin--so clear-headed, and all that--never seems in a muddle, you know--never messes his fingers with the ink when he's writing."

Matthew Kelvin was indeed very ill--worse, perhaps, than Olive Deane had thought he would be. But, on the other hand, had he not been very ill, no valid necessity would have existed for Olive to accompany him home. He was grateful to her for offering to go with him. It was much nicer to have Olive by his side than one of the Stammars footmen. He had no strength to talk; but they had hardly got out of the park, and well on to the high road that led to Pembridge, when he took one of Olive's cool hands in both his, and let his head droop on to her shoulder.

"Are you in great pain, dear?" she whispered.

She had never called him _dear_ before.

"It is rather hard to bear," said he, squeezing her hand tightly.

Presently he became aware that she was crying.

"Don't cry, Olive," he said.

But she could not help it. It made her cry to see him suffer so much; but none the more on that account did she waver for a single moment in her determination to carry out the scheme on which her mind was so firmly bent.