Part 18

She herself went off to the ball-room, and the effect of her exordium was to make Nina very disagreeable to poor De Kerroualle, whom she really liked, and who was _entete_ about her. Not long afterwards, Nina saw in the distance Vaughan's haughty head and powerful brow, and her silly little heart beat as quick as a pigeon's just caught in the trap: he was talking to the widow.

"Look at our young English friend," Pauline was saying, "how she is flirting with Gaston, and De Lafitolle, and De Concressault. Certainly, when your Englishwomen do coquet, they go further than any of us."

"Est-ce possible?" said Ernest, raising his eyebrows.

"Mechant!" cried madame, with a chastising blow of her fan. "But, do you know, I admire the petite very much. I believe all really beautiful women had that rare golden hair of hers--Lucrezia Borgia (I could never bear Grisi as _Lucrezia_, for that very reason). La Cenci, the Duchess of Portsmouth, AEnone--and Helen, I am sure, netted Paris with those gold threads. Don't you think it is very lovely?"

"I do, indeed," said Vaughan, with unconscious warmth.

Madame laughed gaily, but there was a disagreeable glitter in her eye. "What, fickle already? Ah well, I give you full leave."

"And example, madame," said Ernest, as he bowed and left her side, glad to have struck the first blow of his freedom from this handsome tyrant, who was as capricious and exacting as she was clever and captivating. But fetters made of fairer roses were over Ernest now, and he never bethought himself of the probable vengeance of that bitterest foe, a woman who is piqued.

"Tout beau!" thought Pauline, as she saw him waltzing with Nina. "Mais je vous donnerai encore l'echec et mat, mon brave joueur."

"Did you give Madame de Melusine the bouquet she carries this evening?" asked Nina, as he whirled her round.

"No," said Ernest, astonished. "Why do you ask?"

"Because she said you did," answered Nina, never accustomed to conceal anything; "and, besides, it is exactly like mine."

"Infernal woman!" muttered Ernest. "How could you for a moment believe that I would have so insulted you?"

"I didn't believe it," said Nina, lifting her frank eyes to his. "But how very late you are; have you been at the ballet?"

His face grew stern. "Did she tell you that?"

"Yes. But why did you go there, instead of coming to dance with me? Do you like those danseuses better than you do me? What was Celine's or anybody's debut, to you?"

Ernest smiled at the native indignation of the question. "Never think that I do not wish to be with you; but--I wanted oblivion, and one cannot shake off old habits. Did you miss me among all those other men that you have always round you?"

"How unkind that is!" whispered Nina, indignantly. "You know I always do."

He held her closer to him in the waltz, and she felt his heart beat quicker, but she got no other answer.

That night Nina stood before her toilette-table, putting her flowers in water, and some hot tears fell on the azalias.

"I will have faith in him," she cried, passionately; "though all the world be witness against him, I will believe in him. Whatever his life may have been, his heart is warm and true; they shall never make me doubt it."

Her last thoughts were of him, and when she slept his face was in her dreams, while Ernest, with some of the wildest men of his set, smoked hard and drank deep in his chambers to drive away, if he could, the fiends of Regret and Passion and the memory of a young, radiant, impassioned face, which lured him to an unattainable future.

"Nina dearest," said Selina Ruskinstone, affectionately, the morning after, "I hope you will not think me unkind--you know I have no wish but for your good--but _don't_ you think it would be better to be a little more--more reserved, a little less free, with Mr. Vaughan?"

"Explain yourself more clearly," said Nina, tranquilly. "Do you wish me to send to Turkey for a veil and a guard of Bashi-Bazouks, or do you mean that Mr. Vaughan is so attractive that he is better avoided, like a mantrap or a Maelstrom?"

"Don't be ridiculous," retorted Augusta; "you know well enough what we mean, and certainly you do run after him a great deal too much."

"You are so _very_ demonstrative," sighed Selina, "and it is so easily misconstrued. It is not feminine to court any man so unblushingly."

Nina's eyes flashed, and the blood colored her brow. "I am not afraid of being misconstrued by Mr. Vaughan," she said, haughtily; "gentlemen are kinder and wiser judges in those things than our sex."

"I wouldn't advise you to trust to Ernest's tender mercies," sneered Augusta.

"My dear child, remember his principles," sighed Selina; "his life--his reputation----"

"Leave both him and me alone," retorted Nina, passionately. "I will not stand calmly by to hear him slandered with your vague calumnies. You preach religion often enough; practice it now, and show more common kindness to your cousin: I do not say charity, for I am sick of the cant word, and he is above your pity. You think me utterly lost because I dance, and laugh, and enjoy my life, but, bad as _my_ principles are, I should be shocked--yes, Selina, and I should think I merited little mercy myself, were I as harsh and bitter upon any one as you are upon him. How can _you_ judge him?--how can you say what nobility, and truth, and affection--that will shame your own cold pharisaism--may lie in his heart unrevealed?--how can you dare to censure _him_?"

In the door of the salon, listening to the lecture his young champion was giving these two blue, opinionated, and strongly pious ladies, stood Ernest, his face even paler than usual, and his eyes with a strange mixture of joy and pain in them. Nina colored scarlet, but went forward to meet him with undisguised pleasure, utterly regardless of the sneering lips and averted eyes of the Miss Ruskinstones. He had come to go with them to St. Germain, and, with a dexterous manoeuvre, took the very seat in the carriage opposite Nina that Eusebius had planned for himself. But the Warden was no match for the _Lion_ in such affairs, and, being exiled to the barouche with Gordon and Augusta, took from under the seat a folio of the "Stones of Venice," and read sulkily all the way.

"My dear fellow," said Vaughan, when they reached St. Germain, "don't you think you would prefer to sit in the carriage, and finish that delightful work, to coming to see some simple woods and terraces? If you would, pray don't hesitate to say so; I am sure Miss Gordon will excuse your absence."

The solicitous courtesy of Ernest's manner was boiling oil to the fire raging in the Warden's gentle breast, and Eusebius, besides, was not quick at retorts. "I am not guilty of any such bad taste," he said, stiffly, "though I do discover a charm in severe studies, which I believe you never did."

"No, never," said Ernest, laughing; "my genius does not lie that way; and I've no vacant bishopric in my mind's eye to make such studies profitable. Even you, you know, light of the Church as you are, want recreation sometimes. Confess now, the chansons a boire last night sounded pleasant after long months of Faithandgrace services!"

Eusebius looked much as I have seen a sleek tom-cat, who bears a respectable character generally, surprised in surreptitiously licking out of the cream-jug. He had the night before (when he was popularly supposed to be sitting under Adolphe Monod) tasted rather too many petits verres up at the Pre Catalan, utterly unconscious of his cousin's proximity. The pure-minded soul thus cruelly caught looked prayers of piteous entreaty to Vaughan not to damage his milk-white reputation by further revelation of this unlucky detour into the Broad Road; and Ernest, who, always kind-hearted, never hit a man when he was down, contented himself with saying:

"Ah! well, we are none of us pure alabaster, though some of the sepulchres _do_ contrive to whiten themselves up astonishingly. My father, poor man, once wished to put me in the Church. Do you think I should have graced it, Selina?"

"I can't say I do," sneered Selina.

"You think I should _disgrace_ it? Very probably. I am not good at 'canting.'" And giving Nina his arm, the Warden being much too confused to forestall him, he whispered: "when is that atrocious saint going to take himself over the water? Couldn't we bribe his diocesan to call him before the Arches Court? Surely those long coats, so like the little wooden men in Noah's Ark, and that straightened hair, so mathematically parted down the centre, look 'perverted' enough to warrant it."

Nina shook her head. "Unhappily, he is here for six months for ill health!--the sick-leave of clergymen who wish for a holiday, and are too holy to leave their flock without an excuse to society."

Vaughan laughed, then sighed. "Six months--and you have been here four already! Eusebius hates me cordially--all my English relatives do, I believe; we do not get on together. They are too cold and conventional for me. I have some of the warm Bohemian blood, though God knows I've seen enough to chill it to ice by this time; but it is _not_ chilled--so much the worse for me," muttered Ernest "Tell me," he said, abruptly--"tell me why you took the trouble to defend me so generously this morning?"

She looked up at him with her frank, beaming regard. "Because they dare to misjudge you, and they know nothing, and are not worthy to know anything of your real self."

He pressed his lips together as if in bodily pain. "And what do you know?"

"Have you not yourself said that you talk to me as you talk to no one else?" answered Nina, impetuously; "besides--I cannot tell why, but the first day I met you I seemed to find some friend that I had lost before. I was certain that you would never misconstrue anything I said, and I felt that I saw further into your heart and mind than any one else could do. Was it not very strange?" She stopped, and looked up at him. Ernest bent his eyes on the ground, and breathed fast.

"No, no," he said at last; "yours is only an ideal of me. If you knew me as I really am, you would cease to feel the--the interest that you say----"

He stopped abruptly; facile as he was at pretty compliments, and versed in tender scenes as he had been from his school-days, the longing to make this girl love him, and his struggle not to breathe love to her, deprived him of his customary strength and nonchalance.

"I do not fear to know you as you are," said Nina, gently. "I do not think you yourself allow all the better things that there are in you. People have not judged you rightly, and you have been too proud to prove their error to them. You have found pleasure in running counter to the prudish and illiberal bigots who presumed to judge you; and to a world you have found heartless and false you have not cared to lift the domino and mask you wore."

Vaughan sighed from the bottom of his heart, and walked on in silence for a good five minutes. "Promise me, Nina," he said at length with an effort, "that no matter what you hear against me, you will not condemn me unheard."

"I promise," she answered, raising her eyes to his, brighter still for the color in her checks. It was the first time he had called her Nina.

"Miss Gordon," said Eusebius, hurriedly overtaking them, "pray come with me a moment: there is the most exquisite specimen of the Flamboyant style in an archway----"

"Thank you for your good intentions," said Nina, pettishly, "but really, as you might know by this time, I never can see any attractions in your prosaic and matter-of-fact-fact study."

"It might be more profitable than----"

"Than thinking of La Valliere and poor Bragelonne, and all the gay glories of the exiled Bourbons?" laughed Nina. "Very likely; but romance is more to my taste than granite. You would never have killed yourself, like Bragelonne, for the beaux yeux of Louise de la Beaume-sur-Blanc, would you?"

"I trust," said Eusebius, stiffly, "that I should have had a deeper sense of the important responsibilities of the gift of life than to throw it away because a silly girl preferred another."

"You are very impolitic," said Ernest, with a satirical smile. "No lady could feel remorse at forsaking you, if you could get over it so easily."

"He _would_ get over it easily," laughed Nina. "You would call her Delilah, and all the Scripture bad names, order Mr. Ruskin's new work, turn your desires to a deanship, marry some bishop's daughter with high ecclesiastical interest, and console yourself in the bosom of your Mother Church--eh, Mr. Ruskinstone?"

"You are cruelly unjust," sighed Eusebius. "You little know----"

"The charms of architecture? No; and I never shall," answered his tormentor, humming the "Queen of the Roses," and waltzing down the forest glade, where they were walking. "How severe you look!" she said as she waltzed back. "Is _that_ wrong, too? Miriam danced before the ark and Jephtha's daughter."

The Warden appeared not to hear. Certainly his mode of courtship was singular.

"Ernest," he said, turning to his cousin as the rest of the party came up, "I had no idea your sister was in Paris. I have not seen her since she was fourteen. I should not have known her in the least."

"Margaret is in India with her husband," answered Vaughan. "What are you dreaming of? Where have you seen her?"

"I saw her in your chambers," answered the Warden, slowly. "I passed three times yesterday, and she was sitting in the centre window each time."

"Pshaw! You dreamt it in your sleep last night. Margaret's in Vellore, I assure you."

"I saw her," said the Warden, softly; "or, at least, I saw some lady, whom I naturally presumed to be your sister."

Ernest, who had not colored for fifteen years, and would have defied man or woman to confuse him, flushed to his very temples.

"You are mistaken," he said, decidedly. "There is no woman in my rooms."

Eusebius raised his eyebrows, bent his head, smiled and sighed. More polite disbelief was never expressed. The Miss Ruskinstones would have blushed if they could; as they could not, they drew themselves bolt upright, and put their parasols between them and the reprobate. Nina, whose hand was still in Vaughan's arm, turned white, and flashed a quick, upward look at him; then, with a glance at Eusebius, as fiery as the eternal wrath that that dear divine was accustomed to deal out so largely to other people, she led Ernest up to her father, who being providentially somewhat deaf, had not heard this by-play, and said, to her cousin's horror, "Papa, dear, Mr. Vaughan wants you to dine with him at Tortoni's to-night, to meet M. de Vendanges. You will be very happy, won't you?"

Ernest pressed her little hand against his side, and thanked her with his eyes.

Gordon was propitiated for that day; he was not likely to quarrel with a man who could introduce him to "Son Altesse Monseigneur le Duc de Vendanges."

V.

MORE MISCHIEF--AND AN END.

In a little cabinet de peinture, in a house in the Place Vendome, apart from all the other people, who having come to a dejeuner were now dispersed in the music rooms, boudoirs, and conservatories, sat Madame de Melusine, talking to Gordon, flatteringly, beguilingly, bewitchingly, as that accomplished widow could. The banker found her charming, and really, under her blandishments, began to believe, poor old fellow, that she was in love with him!

"Ah! by-the-by, cher monsieur," began madame, when she had soft-soaped him into a proper frame of mind, "I want to speak to you about that mignonne Nina. You cannot tell, you cannot imagine, what interest I take in her."

"You do her much honor, madame," replied her bourgeois gentilhomme, always stiff, however enraptured he might feel internally.

"The honor is mine," smiled Pauline. "Yes, I do feel much interest in her; there is a sympathy in our natures, I am certain, and--and, Monsieur Gordon, I cannot see that darling girl on the brink of a precipice without stretching out a hand to snatch her from the abyss."

"Precipice--abyss--Nina! Good Heavens! my dear madame, what do you mean?" cried Gordon--a fire, an elopement, and the small-pox, all presenting themselves to his mind.

"No, no," repeated madame, with increasing vehemence, "I will not permit any private feelings, I will not allow my own weakness to prevent me from saving her. It would be a crime, a cruelty, to let your innocent child be deceived, and rendered miserable for all time, because I lack the moral courage to preserve her. Monsieur, I speak to you, as I am sure I may, as one friend to another, and I am perfectly certain that you will not misjudge me. Answer me one thing; no impertinent curiosity dictates the question. Do you wish your daughter married to Mr. Vaughan?"

"Married to Vaughan!" exclaimed the startled banker; "I'd sooner see her married to a crossing sweeper. She never thought of such a thing. Impossible! absurd! she'll marry my friend Ruskinstone as soon as she comes of age. Marry Vaughan! a fellow without a penny----"

Pauline laid her soft, jewelled hand on his arm:

"My dear friend, _he_ thinks of it if you do not, and I am much mistaken if dear Nina is not already dazzled by his brilliant qualities. Your countryman is a charming companion, no one can gainsay that; but, alas! he is a roue, a gambler, an adventurer, who, while winning her young girl's affections, has only in view the wealth which he hopes he will gain with her. It is painful to me to say this" (and tears stood in madame's long, velvet eyes). "We were good friends before he wanted more than friendship, while poor De Melusine was still living, and his true character was revealed to me. It would be false delicacy to allow your darling Nina to become his victim for want of a few words from me, though I know, if he were aware of my interference, the inference he would basely insinuate from it. But you," whispered madame, brushing the tears from her eyes, and giving him an angelic smile, "I need not fear that you would ever misjudge me?"

"Never, I swear, most generous of women!" said the banker, kissing the snow-white hand, very clumsily, too. "I'll tell the fellow my mind directly--an unprincipled, gambling----"

"Non, non, je vous en prie, monsieur!" cried the widow, really frightened, for this would not have suited her plans at all. "You would put me in the power of that unscrupulous man. He would destroy my reputation at once in his revenge."

"But what am I to do?" said the poor gulled banker. "Nina's a will of her own, and if she take a fancy to this confounded----"

"Leave that to me," said la baronne, softly. "I have proofs which will stagger her most obstinate faith in her lover. Meanwhile give him no suspicion, go to his supper on Tuesday, and--you are asked to Vauvenay, accept the invitation--and conclude the fiancailles with Monsieur le Ministre as soon as you can."

"But--but, madame," stammered this new Jourdain to his enchanting Dorimene, "Vauvenay is an exile. I shall not see you there?"

"Ah, silly man," laughed the widow, "I shall be only two miles off. I am going to stay with the Salvador; they leave Paris in three weeks. Listen--your daughter is singing 'The Swallows.' Her voice is quite as good as Ristori's."

Three hours after, madame held another tete-a-tete in that boudoir. This time the favored mortal was Vaughan. They had had a pathetic interview, of which the pathos hardly moved Ernest as much as the widow desired.

"You love me no longer, Ernest," she murmured, the tears falling down her cheeks--her rouge was the product of high art, and never washed off--"I see it, I feel it; your heart is given to that English girl. I have tried to jest about it; I have tried to affect indifference, but I cannot. The love you once won will be yours to the grave."

Ernest listened, a satirical smile on his lips.

"I should feel more grateful," he said, calmly, "if the gift had not been given to so many; it will be a great deal of trouble to you to love us all to our graves. And your new friend Gordon, do you intend cherishing his grey hairs, too, till the gout puts them under the sod?"

She fell back sobbing with exquisite _abandon_. No deserted Calypso's _pose_ was ever more effective.

"Ernest, Ernest! that I should live to be so insulted, and by you!"

"Nay, madame, end this vaudeville," said he bitterly. "I know well enough that you hate me, or why have you troubled yourself to coin the untruths about me that you whispered to Miss Gordon?"

"Ah! have you no pity for the first mad vengeance dictated by jealousy and despair?" murmured Pauline. "Once there was attraction in this face for you, Ernest; have some compassion, some sympathy----"

Well as he knew the worth of madame's tears, Ernest, chivalric and generous at heart, was touched.

"Forgive me," he said, gently, "and let us part. You know now, Pauline, that she has my deepest, my latest love. It were disloyalty to both did we meet again save in society."

"Farewell, then," murmured Pauline. "Think gently of me, Ernest, for I _have_ loved you more than you will ever know now."

She rose, and, as he bent towards her, kissed his forehead. Then, floating from the room, passed the Reverend Eusebius, standing in the doorway, looking in on this parting scene. The widow looked at herself in her mirror that night with a smile of satisfaction.

"C'est bien en train," she said, half aloud. "Le fou! de penser qu'il puisse me braver. Je ne l'aime plus, c'est vrai, mais je ne veux pas qu'elle reussisse."

Nina went to bed very happy. Ernest had sat next her at the dejeuner; and afterwards at a ball had waltzed often with her and with nobody else; and his eyes had talked love in the waltzes though his tongue never had.

Ernest went to his chambers, smoked hard, half mad with the battle within him, and took three grains of opium, which gave him forgetfulness and sleep. He woke, tired and depressed, to hear the gay hum of life in the street below, and to remember he had promised Nina to meet them at Versailles.

It was Sunday morning. In England, of course, Gordon would have gone up to the sanctuary, listened to Mr. Bellew, frowned severely on the cheap trains, and, after his claret, read edifying sermons to his household; but in Paris there would be nobody to admire the piety, and the "grandes eaux" only play once a week, you know--on Sundays. So his Sabbath severity was relaxed, and down to Versailles he journied. There must be something peculiar in continental air, for it certainly stretches our countrymen's morality and religion uncommonly: it is only up at Jerusalem that our pharisees worship. Eusebius dare not go--he'd be sure to meet a brother-clerical, who might have reported the dereliction at home--so that Vaughan, despite Gordon's cold looks, kept by Nina's side though he wasn't alone with her, and when they came back in the _wagon_ the banker slept and the duenna dozed, and he talked softly and low to her--not quite love, but something very like it--and as they neared Paris he took the little hand with its delicate Jouvin glove in his, and whispered,

"Remember your promise: I can brave, and have braved most things, but I could not bear your scorn. _That_ would make me a worse man than I have been, if, as some folks would tell you, such a thing be possible."

It was dark, but I dare say the moonbeams shining on the chevelure doree showed him a pair of truthful, trusting eyes that promised never to desert him.

The day after he had, by dint of tact and strategy, planned to spend entirely with Nina. He was going with them to the races at Chantilly, then to the Gaite to see the first representation of a vaudeville of a friend of his, and afterwards he had persuaded Gordon to enter the Lion's den, and let Nina grace a petit souper at No. 10, Rue des Mauvais Sujets, Chaussee d'Antin.