CHAPTER XLII.--A TÊTE-À-TÊTE, AND A TRAGEDY.

A PARTY more silent than the trio occupying General Grant’s carriage never drove from the door of Her Majesty’s theatre. Annie, delighted to find herself once again in safety, leant back amidst cloaks and cushions to recover as best she might the effects of the terror she had undergone. Somewhat to her surprise and displeasure, Emily, without uttering a word by way either of explanation or condolence, also threw herself back among the cushions, and arranging a fold of her mantle so as to conceal her face, appeared unconscious of the presence of her companions. To this silent system they scrupulously adhered till they reached Conduit Street, when Emily exclaimed in a quick, eager tone of voice, “Where are they going? Tell him to drive to Berkeley Square directly.”

Lewis, to whom this speech was addressed, let down the window and gave the coachman the requisite order, and in less than five minutes the carriage stopped at the house occupied for the season by the Countess Portici. The servant let down the steps, and Lewis springing out, assisted the Countess to alight; as she did so she turned her head, and saying hurriedly, “Annie, I shall see you tomorrow,” entered the house, and the door closed after her. Lewis resumed his place, and the carriage drove away.

“I think she is very unkind not to have said she was sorry for having missed me, and I’ll never go out with her again,” observed Annie petulantly. “And Lord Bellefield, too,” she continued--for she had by this time reached that stage of recovery when, tracing back her alarm to its first causes, it became a relief to her to pour forth her wrongs, and in Lewis she felt sure of a prudent and sympathising auditor--“it is all his fault for deserting us in such a shameful way.”

“You are not perhaps aware that, meeting me accidentally, his lordship despatched me to you as his substitute,” returned Lewis.

“Did he intend then to have come back himself, if you had been unable to act as his deputy?” inquired Annie quickly.

“He told me it was impossible for him to do so,” was Lewis’s reply.

“Then if he had not happened to meet you by mere chance, he would have left us to find our way to the carriage as best we could. How shameful! just imagine what would have become of me if you had not arrived when you did?--that dreadful man!--I believe I should have died of fright.” She paused, then added, in her usual gentle, winning voice, “I must again plague you with my thanks, Mr. Arundel; you are fated always to render me services for which I am unable to make you any return; except by my sincere friendship,” she continued timidly.

“And that is a reward for which a man might------” began Lewis passionately. He was going to add, “gladly die,” but he checked himself abruptly, and if Annie could at that moment have seen his face, she would have been scared at the expression of despair by which it was characterised, an expression changing instantly to a look of the sternest resolution, as he continued, in a calm, grave voice, “I mean that your uniform kindness and consideration have overpaid any trifling service I may have been fortunate enough to render you.”

“Did Lord Bellefield give any reason for being unable to return to us?” inquired Annie after a pause. Lewis replied in the negative, and Annie resumed, “Papa will be waiting for us--he never goes to bed till I come home. You must tell him all you know of what has occurred, Mr. Arundel; and pray make him understand clearly how much my cousin is to blame in the matter.”

“Of course, if General Grant questions me I must tell him exactly what I have done and why I did it,” returned Lewis gravely; “but--may I indeed use the privilege of a friend, and venture for once to advise you?”

“Oh yes, pray do,” rejoined Annie eagerly; “I shall be so much obliged to you. I dare say I am going to do something very foolish.”

“From my acquaintance with your father’s high and chivalrous character,” continued Lewis, “I feel sure that the facts with which I must make him acquainted will incense him greatly against Lord Bellefield, and as the General is, both from temperament and education, a man of action, his resentment is almost certain to lead to some practical results. Now just at present you are naturally and justly angry with your cousin; but young ladies’ anger is seldom of a very vindictive description, yours least of all so, and when, after frowning him into penitence, you have graciously forgiven him, will not a serious rupture with the General be a source of annoyance (to use no stronger word) both to you and to Lord Bellefield? All that I would recommend,” continued Lewis, seeing that Annie bent down her head and made no reply, “would be, not what the lawyers term _suppressio veri_--I would not for the world have you conceal anything; but much depends upon the spirit in which a tale is told, and I am anxious to save you from the subsequent regret which yielding to a momentary impulse of anger may cost you.”

“Tell me plainly what it is you think my father would do?” inquired Annie abruptly.

“I think--pardon me if I speak too freely--I think the General would resolve to break off the engagement which Mr. Leicester long since informed me existed between yourself and Lord Bellefield; and it was to save you the pain such a resolve might cost you that I ventured to offer you my advice.”

“You are mistaken,” replied his companion hurriedly; “such an arrangement as that to which you refer may have been, perhaps still is, contemplated; but the idea has always been distasteful to me, and anything which would preclude the possibility of further reference to it would be to me a subject of rejoicing rather than of regret You may think it strange in me to speak thus openly to you; but I am sure my confidence is not misplaced, and--and I am most anxious my father should understand clearly the insult (for I consider it no less) my cousin has to-night offered me.”

Whether the information thus communicated was a source of pain or pleasure to her auditor, we must leave the reader to conjecture for himself, as when Lewis next spoke his manner was calm and grave as ever.

“There is one possibility,” he said, “of which you must not entirely lose sight: there may have been some urgent necessity for Lord Belle-field’s presence elsewhere--some sufficient reason for his apparent neglect, which he will only have to mention in order alike to disarm your indignation and that of General Grant.”

“Really, my cousin appears to have secured a most able advocate,” returned Annie, with the slightest possible shade of annoyance perceivable in her tone. “I was scarcely prepared to find you so zealous in his cause.”

Lewis’s face grew dark as he replied in a low, earnest voice, “While I live, Lord Bellefield shall always meet with the strictest justice at my hands! Justice!” he continued bitterly, “it is a god-like principle, and sculptors have symbolised it well--the blinded brow, to show the stern singleness of heart; the scales, to weigh the merits of the case; and the keen sword, the agent of a sudden and full retribution.”

He spoke in a tone of such deep and concentrated feeling, that Annie, as she listened to his words, trembled involuntarily. With the keenness of a woman’s instinct she appreciated the intensity of the feeling and the power of the will that was, for the time, able to control it. For the time!--in that phrase lay the secret of her prescient, terror.

Lewis was too much engrossed by the strength of his own emotions to perceive the alarm he had excited; nor was it till they reached the corner of Park Crescent that he again spoke--

“How did you contrive to become separated from the Countess Portici?” he inquired. “You were absolutely alone amongst those people--were you not?--when I came up.”

Scarcely had Annie informed him of the circumstances which led to her desertion when the carriage stopped.

“The General wishes to see you before you retire for the night, Miss Grant,” insinuated the aristocratic butler, as, leaning on Lewis’s arm, Annie entered the paternal mansion.

“Where is my father?” she inquired hastily--“in the library?” Receiving an affirmative answer, she continued, turning to Lewis: “You must come with me; remember your promise!--I by no means consider myself safe till this interview is over.”

Lewis smiled assent; his unnatural stiffness of manner seemed to have disappeared like magic the moment their _tête-à-tête_ was over, and Annie again restored to the protection of her own home.

The General appeared in high good humour. “You are late, you dissipated puss!” he said as Annie entered. “Ah! Mr. Arundel,” he continued, “I did not know you had been of the party. What have you done with Emily and Bellefield, Annie?”

“Emily is safely at home,” was the reply; “she would not come further than Berkeley Square. As to my cousin Bellefield, he must answer for himself, if he is not irrecoverably lost; he chose to leave us to take care of ourselves. We have had an adventure, and I should have died of fright if Mr. Arundel had not come to my assistance like one of the good genii in the ‘Arabian Nights’ Entertainments.’ But I must go to bed, or Aunt Martha will be implacable; she always examines Lisette on oath as to the precise moment at which she finally leaves my room. Mr. Arundel will tell you the whole history much better than I can--so good-night!” and casting a glance, half arch, half imploring, but wholly irresistible, at Lewis, she glided out of the apartment, and was gone ere the General had sufficiently “come at” the meaning of her speech to attempt to detain her.

Fixing his eyes on Lewis with a look of sublime perplexity, which bordered closely on the ludicrous, he exclaimed, “Pray, what is the meaning of all this, Mr. Arundel? Can you explain to what my daughter alluded?”

Thus called upon, Lewis was forced to narrate the adventures of the evening, with the details of which the reader has been already made acquainted.

The General heard him attentively, though his brow grew dark as he proceeded. He listened in silence, however, till Lewis began to describe the scene in the crush-room at the Opera-house, when he became so much excited that he sprang from his seat and began pacing the apartment with impatient strides. At the mention of Sir Gilbert Vivian’s impertinent behaviour he exclaimed--

“A scoundrel! I remember when he was broke upon parade for insolence to his commanding officer. I hope you knocked him down, sir!”

“I felt strangely tempted to do so,” replied Lewis, “but he had several of his friends with him, so that I should have been certain to get into a disagreeable squabble; and in that case what would have become of Miss Grant?”

“Very true, sir, very true,” returned the General hastily; “next to courage, coolness in action is the greatest attribute in a soldier--that is to say, in a gentleman--and I honour your forbearance for such a cause. Shake hands, sir!” and suiting the action to the word, General Grant crossed the room, and seizing Lewis by the hand, shook it warmly.

At this unusual display of feeling Lewis’s pale cheek flushed, and he continued his narration to the point when he handed Sir Gilbert Vivian his card. Here he paused, and continued in an embarrassed tone of voice: “I dare say he will take no notice of this--but if he should--of course I am aware that the affair must be left entirely in your hands, and that it is Lord Bellefield’s privilege to--to defend--that is, to chastise any insult offered to Miss Grant; but as you have so kindly signified your approval of my conduct in the affair hitherto--if you could reward me by allowing me to go out with this scoundrel----?”

This was a request so thoroughly after the General’s own heart, that, as he listened to it, his little, bright eyes danced and sparkled with satisfaction, which he had much difficulty not to express in words; but his moral obligations, as a disciplinarian and the father of a family, came across him, and he replied: “Duelling is a practice alike subversive of military discipline, and contrary to the dictates of religion; it is one, therefore, against which I have always--that is, for many years past--felt obliged to set my face. Until Lord Bellefield shall have afforded me some perfectly satisfactory explanation of his extraordinary conduct, his intercourse with this household must entirely cease; a man who could thus neglect his trust is the last person to whom I should dream of committing the honour of--ahem!--my family. As to this Sir Gilbert Vivian, from what I have heard of him, he is beneath the notice of a gentleman--quite a contemptible character; the fact of his annoying my daughter proves this. If it were not so, I vow to Heaven I’d have the fellow out myself on Monday morning.” And finishing with this consistent remark his tirade against duelling, the General resumed his peripatetic exercise, much to the detriment of the library carpet.

When Lewis had completed his recital, his auditor again “took the chair,” and leaning his head on his hand, remained pondering the matter for some minutes in silence. At length he said, “Did Lord Bellefield give you any possible clue to the reason why he could not return to the Opera-house?”

“He said nothing, sir, to throw any light upon the matter; but when I accidentally met him, as I have already mentioned, he appeared much agitated, his features were unusually pale, and characterised by an expression--I should almost say of horror.”

“Have you any knowledge of the house he was leaving? Why do you hesitate?”

“I will tell you frankly, General Grant,” returned Lewis, drawing himself up and meeting the General’s scrutinising glance with a clear, steadfast gaze. “For some time past Lord Bellefield and I have not been on good terms together. Since I have lived beneath your roof he is the only person who has treated me ungenerously, or caused me to feel the full bitterness of my dependent situation. Respect for you, and a sense of my own position, have prevented my resenting his lordship’s conduct as under other circumstances I might have done, but enough has passed between us to prove that we regard each other with no very friendly feeling.”

“I was not at all aware of this--you should have told me this sooner, Mr. Arundel. I allow no one to be treated discourteously in my house,” interrupted the General hastily.

“I should not have mentioned the fact now, sir,” replied Lewis calmly, “had I not been anxious to explain to you why it is in the highest degree repugnant to me to be forced by circumstances to appear as Lord Bellefield’s accuser, and thus lay myself open to the suspicion of being actuated by malicious motives.”

“No one who knew you would imagine that, sir,” returned the General; “but the truth should always be spoken regardless of consequences, and you must yourself perceive how important it is that I should form a just estimate of Lord Bellefield’s conduct in this affair.”

Lewis paused a moment in reflection, and then replied, “The part I have taken in this business was none of my own seeking, nor do I see that I am bound by any obligation of honour to withhold from you the only other fact of which I am aware in regard to the matter. I do happen to know the character of the house which Lord Bellefield was leaving, for as I walked down to the Palaeontological Society this afternoon with my friend Richard Frere, he pointed it out to me as a gaming-house of some notoriety.”

The expression of the General’s face, when he became aware of this uncomfortable little fact, grew so stern, that a distressed artist, wishing to paint some Roman father sacrificing his son, would have given all the small change he might have happened to have about him at the time for one glimpse of that inflexible countenance. Suggestive, however, of evil as was this circumstance, the whole affair appeared wrapped in such a veil of mystery that neither General Grant nor Lewis could, as they that night lay awake revolving the matter in their anxious minds, arrive at any satisfactory hypothesis by which to account for Lord Bellefield’s extraordinary behaviour. The following paragraph, which appeared in several of the Sunday papers, and was recopied in the “Morning Post” of Monday, was the first thing that tended to enlighten them; it was headed “appalling suicide.

“As our columns were going to press we received intelligence of one of the most awful catastrophes which it has ever been our melancholy duty to record; we refer to the untimely decease of Captain Mellerton, of the----th foot, who perished by his own hand in a notorious gambling-house not far from Charing Cross. As far as we have been able to ascertain the facts of the case, the unfortunate young gentleman, who was adjutant of the----th, lost a considerable sum of money (it is said £12,000) to Lord B--f--d, a nobleman of sporting notoriety, at the first Newmarket meeting. Being unable to meet so large a call upon his finances, he was induced in an evil hour to speculate with some of the regimental money committed to his charge, intending to replace it by the sale of an estate in Yorkshire; and having thus satisfied the demands of his noble creditor, he was on Saturday last unexpectedly called upon to send in his regimental accounts. In this extremity we have heard it rumoured that he was induced to apply to Lord B--f--d, as the only person on whom he had the slightest claim; but if we have not been misinformed, the appeal was vain, and urged to desperation by this failure of his last hope, the unfortunate young man repaired to the gaming-house in which the rash act was committed, played deeply, and when fortune again declared against him, drew a loaded pistol from his breast, and before the bystanders were aware of his design, terminated his existence by blowing out his brains. Captain Mellerton was the eldest son of the Honourable H. Mellerton, of Harrowby Park, Beds., and was shortly to be married to Miss A------ D----------, daughter of Sir ---------- D----------, the wedding-day being fixed immediately after the commencement of the recess.”