CHAPTER XXII.

How Everything went on.

"Go down, dear, to your company," resumed Lady Alice, sadly; "they will miss you. And tell your father, when he comes to the drawing-room, I wish to see him, and won't detain him long."

So they parted, and a little later Sir Jekyl arrived with a knock at the old lady's bed-room door.

"Come in--oh! yes--Jekyl--well, I've only a word to say. Sit down a moment at the bedside."

"And how do you feel now, you dear old soul?" inquired the Baronet, cheerfully. He looked strong and florid, as gentleman do after dinner, with a genial air of contentment, and a fragrance of his wonderful sherry about him; all which seemed somehow brutal to the nervous old lady.

"Wonderfully, considering the surprise you had prepared for me, and which might as well have killed me as not," she made answer.

"I know, to be sure--Strangways, you mean. Egad! I forgot. Trixie ought to have told you."

"_You_ ought to have told me. I don't think I should have come here, Jekyl, had I known it."

"If I had known _that_," thought Sir Jekyl, with a regretful pang, "I'd have made a point of telling you." But he said aloud--

"Yes. It was a _sottise_; but _I_'ve got over the likeness so completely that I forgot how it agitated you. But I ought to tell you they have no connexion with the family--none in the world. Pelter and Crowe, you know--devilish sharp dogs--my lawyers in town--they are regular detectives, by Jove! and know everything--and particularly have had for years a steady eye upon them and their movements; and I have had a most decided letter from them, assuring me that there has not been the slightest movement in that quarter, and therefore there is, absolutely, as I told you from the first, nothing in it."

"And what Deverells are now living?" inquired the old lady, very pale.

"Two first cousins, they tell me--old fellows now; and one of them has a son or two; but not one called Guy, and none answering this description, you see; and neither have a shadow of a claim, or ever pretended; and as for that unfortunate accident--"

"Pray _spare_ me," said the old lady, grimly.

"Well, they did not care a brass farthing about the poor fellow, so they would never move to give me trouble in that matter; and, in fact, people never do stir in law, and put themselves to serious expense, purely for a sentiment--even a bad one."

"I remember some years ago you _were_ very _much_ alarmed, Jekyl."

"No, I was not. Who the plague says that? There's nothing, thank Heaven, I need fear. One does not like to be worried with lawsuits--that's all--though there is and can be no real danger in them."

"And was it from these cousins you apprehended lawsuits?" inquired Lady Alice.

"No, not exactly--no, not at all. I believe that fellow Strangways--that fellow that used to live on poor Guy--I fancy he was the mover of it--indeed I know he was."

"What did they proceed for?" asked the old lady. "You never told me--you are so secret, Jekyl."

"They did not proceed at all--how could I? Their attorneys had cases before counsel affecting me--that's all I ever heard; and they say now it was all Strangways' doing--that is, Pelter and Crowe say so. I wish I _were_ secret."

Old Lady Alice here heaved a deep groan, and said, not with asperity, but with a fatigued abhorrence--

"Go away; I wonder I can bear you near me."

"Thank you very much," said the Baronet, rising, with one of his pleasant chuckles. "I can't tell you how glad I am to see you here, and I know you'll be very glad to see me in the morning, when you are a little rested."

So he kissed the tips of his fingers and touched them playfully to the back of her thin hand, which she withdrew with a little frown, as if they chilled her. And by her direction he called in her maid, whom he asked very smilingly how she did, and welcomed to Marlowe; and she, though a little _passé_, having heard the fame of Sir Jekyl, and many stories of his brilliant adventures, was very modest and fluttered on the occasion. And with another little petting speech to Lady Alice, the radiant Baronet withdrew.

It is not to be supposed that Lady Alice's tremors communicated themselves to Beatrix. Was it possible to regard that handsome, refined young man, who spoke in that low, sweet voice, and smiled so intelligently, and talked so pleasantly, and with that delicate flavour of romance at times, in the light of a goblin?

The gentlemen had made their whist-party. The Rev. Dives Marlowe was chatting to, not with, Lady Jane, who sat listlessly on an ottoman. That elderly girl, Miss Blunket, with the _naïve_ ways, the animated, smiling, and rather malevolent countenance, had secured little Linnett, who bore his imprisonment impatiently and wearily it must be owned. When Miss Blunket was enthusiastic it was all very well; but her playfulness was wicked, and her satire gaily vitriolic.

"Mr. Marlowe is fascinated, don't you think?" she inquired of harmless little Linnett, glancing with an arch flash of her fierce eyes at the Rev. Dives.

"She's awfully handsome," said Linnett, honestly.

"Oh, dear, you wicked creature, you can't think I meant that. She is some kind of cousin, I think--is not she? And her husband has that great living--what's its name?--and no relation in the Church; and Lady Jane, they say, rules him--and Sir Jekyl, some people say, rules her."

Linnett returned her arch glance with an honest stare of surprise.

"I had no idea of that, egad," said he.

"She thinks him so wise in all worldly matters, you know; and people in London fancied she would have been the second Lady Marlowe, if she had not met General Lennox just at a critical time, and fallen in love with him;" and as she said this she laughed.

"Really!" exclaimed Linnett; and he surveyed Lady Jane in this new light wonderingly.

"I really don't know; I heard it said merely; but very likely, you know, it is not true," she answered with an artless giggle.

"I knew you were quizzing--though, by Jove, you did sell me at first; but I really think Sir Jekyl's a little spoony on that pretty little Mrs. Maberly. Is she a widow?"

"Oh, dear, no--at least, not quite; she has a husband in India, but then, poor man, he's so little in the way she need hardly wish him dead."

"I _see_," said Linnett, looking at Mrs. Maberly with a grave interest.

While Miss Blunket was entertaining and instructing little Linnett with this sort of girlish chatter, and from the whist-table, between the deals, arose those critical discussions and reviews, relieved now and then by a joke from the Baronet, or from his partner, Colonel Doocey, at the piano, countenanced by old Lady Blunket, who had come to listen and remained to doze, Beatrix, her fingers still on the keys, was listening to young Strangways.

There are times, lights, accidents, under which your handsome young people become incredibly more handsome, and this Guy Strangways now shared in that translated glory, as he leaned on the back of a tall carved chair, sometimes speaking, sometimes listening.

"It is quite indescribable, Miss Marlowe, how your music interests me--I should say, haunts me. I thought at first it was because you loved ballad music, which I also love; but it is not that--it is something higher and more peculiar."

"I am sure you were right at first, for I _know_ I am a very indifferent musician," said Beatrix, looking down under her long lashes on the keys over which the jewelled fingers of her right hand wandered with hardly a tinkle, just tracing dreamily one of those sweet melancholy airs which made in fancy an accompaniment to the music of that young fellow's words.

How beautiful she looked, too, with eyes lowered and parted lips, and that listening smile--not quite a smile--drinking in with a strange rapture of pride and softness the flatteries which she refused and yet invited.

"It _is_ something higher and mysterious, which, perhaps, I shall never attempt to explain, unless, indeed, I should risk talking very wildly--too wildly for you to understand, or, if you did, perhaps--to forgive."

"You mentioned a Breton ballad you once heard," said Beatrix, frightened, as girls will sometimes become whenever the hero of their happy hours begins on a sudden to define.

"Yes," he said, and the danger of the crisis was over. "I wish so much I could remember the air, you would so enter into its character, and make its wild unfathomable melancholy so beautifully touching in your clear contralto."

"You must not flatter me; I want to hear more of that ballad."

"If flattery be to speak more highly than one thinks, who can flatter Miss Marlowe?" Again the crisis was menacing. "Besides, I did not tell you we are leaving, I believe, in a day or two, and on the eve of so near a departure, may I not improve the few happy moments that are left me, and be permitted the privilege of a leave-taking, to speak more frankly, and perhaps less wisely than one who is destined to be all his life a neighbour?"

"Papa, I am sure, will be very sorry to hear that you and Monsieur Varbarriere are thinking of going so soon; I must try, however, to improve the time, and hear all you can tell me of those interesting people of Brittany."

"Yes, they are. I will make them another visit--a sadder visit, Mademoiselle--for me a far more interesting one. You have taught me how to hear and see them. I never felt the spirit of Villemarque, or the romance and melancholy of that antique region, till I had the honour of knowing you."

"My friends always laughed at me about Brittany. I suppose different people are interested by different subjects; but I do not think anyone could read at all about that part of the world and not be fascinated. You promised to tell all you remember of that Breton ballad."

"Oh, yes; the haunted lady, the beautiful lady, the heiress of Carlowel, now such a grand ruin, became enamoured of a mysterious cavalier who wooed her; but he was something not of flesh and blood, but of the spirit world."

"There is exactly such a legend, _so_ far, at least, of a castle on the Rhine. I must show it to you. Do you read German?"

"Yes, Mademoiselle."

"And does the ballad end tragically?"

"Most tragically. You shall hear."

"Where are you, Guy?" in French, inquired a deep ringing voice.

And on the summons, Guy glanced over his shoulder, and replied.

"Oh," exclaimed the same voice, "I demand pardon. I am disturbing conversation, I fear; but an old man in want of assistance will be excused. I want my road book, Guy, and you have got it. Pray, run up-stairs and fetch it."

With great pleasure, of course, Guy Strangways ran up-stairs to tumble over block-books, letters, diaries, and the general residuum of a half-emptied valise.

Miss Beatrix played a spirited march, which awoke Lady Blunket, whom she had forgotten; and that interesting woman, to make up for lost time, entertained her with a history of the unreasonableness of Smidge, her maid, and a variety of other minute afflictions, which, she assured Beatrix seriously, disturbed her sleep.