CHAPTER VII.

LADY LAMORNA.

It was a difficult task for Constance Devereaux to conceal her undeniable joy from her affectionate and observant son and daughter; and her heart would sometimes upbraid her that she should feel thus happy on an occasion which must cause them all to wear mourning, the external livery of at least conventional woe.

Denzil and his sister attributed her alternate fits of radiance and silence to pleasure at the anticipated return of their father, who on this occasion had necessarily been longer absent than usual from the Villa at Porthellick.

The equivocation and anxiety of years--years the happiness of which had in it so much of alloy--were about to be removed now! She was at last Constance Lady Lamorna of Rhoscadzhel--the wife of him who represented one of the oldest, and perhaps, most noble families in the duchy; but one passage in her husband's letter troubled and perplexed her, though it caused neither fear nor doubt--of one kind at least--in her loving and trusting heart.

"Our marriage must still be kept a secret for a _little time_; when we meet, I shall tell you _why_."

After so much had been endured, and now when the barrier had been swept away by death, why should there be more secresy still--at a time so critical for their Denzil, too?

For a week she tortured herself with endless surmises which might have grown into actual fears but for the arrival of her husband, looking so well and so handsome, and though grave (for he had loved his generous old uncle--his second father, as he termed him), so evidently pleased and happy; and Constance thought it fortunate that their son and daughter were both absent, she had so much to say and to hear.

Denzil had taken his rod and gone forth to fish in some lonely tarn amid the moors, while Sybil had driven away in the pony phaeton to visit some friend at a distance.

"Here's his lord---- the master himself, ma'am!" said Derrick Braddon, who was the only human being in England that shared their mystery, and who was now "dying," as the phrase is, for permission to share with others the great secret the faithful fellow had kept so long and so well; and now Dick's weather-beaten visage was radiant with pride and pleasure as he ushered Richard into the pretty little drawing-room, when, with a girlish bound, Constance sprang into his open arms.

"Well, dearest Materfamilias," said he, kissing her tenderly on the proffered lips and radiant eyes; "you are looking as young and as charming as ever--ay, even as on that eventful morning in St. Mary's, at Montreal, a morning we may remember now without fear, my own one!"

"So the poor old man is gone at last, and our days of dissimulation are over," she replied, sobbing amid the smiles that beamed on her up-turned face.

"And you have acted wisely in not adopting deep mourning yet."

"Why--wisely?" she asked, while perceiving that her husband must have doffed his black costume somewhere on the way to Porthellick, for he was as usual attired in a shooting-suit and brown-leather gaiters; and she felt an unpleasant emotion by this circumstance, for whence this continued caution, she thought; this care, this hateful continuation of an alias, as it seemed, this playing of a double character, if all were right and clear? and now the passage in his letter flashed upon her memory.

"I said 'wisely,' dearest Constance; because we have still a part to play."

"Still?" she queried, mournfully, and her eyelids drooped.

"Tell me--the children know nothing of this change in our fortunes, I hope?"

"No--and dear Denzil, you are aware, has been--gazetted."

"To my old corps--so I saw; God bless the boy?" exclaimed Richard Trevelyan; "yes, but what I mean is, that I must bring you all before the world--you as the wife, and them as the children, of Lord Lamorna, with judicious care and a strength of _conviction_ that none can doubt or challenge."

"Oh, Richard," said she, trembling, "I do not understand you."

"Here, I am still known as Captain Devereaux; but the world, which deems me a bachelor, must be convinced that we were married to each other in _faciæ ecclesiæ_, as those lawyer-fellows have it; and the proofs of that circumstance must be forthcoming."

"Proofs?" she repeated, faintly, as she seated herself, and grew very, very pale, for it seemed to her over-sensitive mind, as if his manner had become hard and sententious, even while he stooped over, and tenderly and caressingly held in his, her little hand whereon was the wedding ring that Père Latour had consecrated; and now there ensued a brief pause, for in his knowledge of her extreme sensibility, and the amount of his own loving nature, he feared the explanation of all he meant might wound.

Though some might have deemed the secresy to which he had condemned her for years (lest they might lose the large fortune now theirs) selfish; Richard Trevelyan had ever been nervously jealous of her honour, and the honour of their innocent children; and at times, he had accused himself of moral cowardice in his submission to the caprice of his uncle. In his heart he had always cursed the duplicity to which they had been compelled to resort, and the false position in which that duplicity had placed them all for such a length of time. All this was to be atoned for now; but he felt that it must be done wisely, warily and surely, or, as he had said, with _strength_, lest the world in which he had hitherto moved as a bachelor--that selfish and suspicious bugbear called "Society" might shrug its shoulders, and ask, "Can all this story be true?"

He had some difficulty in explaining all this to Constance, but, fortunately, what he lacked in tact, he made up for in tenderness; yet, after a minute of silence and tears, she exclaimed with uncontrollable bitterness,

"I alone am to blame! I ought to have foreseen the difficulties with which I should encumber you; but I was a simple, a trusting and a heedless girl!----"

"Nor has the trust of your girlhood been misplaced, Constance," he urged.

"What Eden is without its serpent--what house without its skeleton? and I am yours!"

"My darling Constance, do not speak thus, and do not weep; think if Denzil or Sybil were to return and see you thus agitated--see what they never saw before, tears in your eyes; at least, tears so bitter as these," urged her husband, as he caressed her tenderly. "You know, my own love, that solid proofs of our marriage, beyond mere assertion, _must_ be forthcoming; and until these proofs are in our hands, we must appear to the world as Captain and Mrs. Devereaux; we must act wisely and warily, I repeat, for the sake of our dear children."

The face of Constance became ghastly, and a dangerous gleam, such as Richard had never seen before, was in her dark eyes, while she said, huskily,

"Honest Derrick Braddon witnessed our marriage, Richard."

"True; but I am now a peer of the realm, and I wish the full proof of it all. You know that during the past year I have thrice written to the Père Latour for the certificate of our marriage, but wrote in vain, he has left my letters unanswered. I might employ those lawyers, Gorbelly and Culverhole to sift the matter, but to use their aid, might set abroad a scandal at once; hence I now propose to start by the first steamer for America to get the necessary documents in person, and Derrick Braddon shall accompany me."

"And may not I?" she pleaded, softly.

"No, darling Constance, I shall be gone for more than a month--for two, perhaps, and you have to get Denzil fitted out for his regiment--my poor Denzil, I shall grudge those two months' loss of his society fearfully, as you may suppose."

"Pardon my momentary bitterness, dearest Richard, but after so much endurance, after such long concealment--" her voice failed her, and wreathing her soft arms round his neck, she nestled her little head on his breast, and whispered with a sigh, as if her heart would burst, "is it irrevocable--and must I too, be separated from my boy?"

"It is but for a time, Conny--no young fellow should be idle; and a year or so in the army----"

"And he will return, Richard----"

"As the son and heir of Lord Lamorna!"

"But oh, how I shall miss him!"

"You will have Sybil and me!"

"But you, too, I am about to lose."

"For a time only; and do not speak so forbodingly, dear Constance."

"I felt such disappointment that Denzil should appear at Sandhurst, and even in the Gazette, not as a Trevelyan, but as a Devereaux!"

"And a Devereaux he deems himself, and must continue to do so, till I return from Montreal. Old Trecarrel is going in command to India, and when matters are all squared here, I'll get Denzil on his Staff with ease. We have been the victims of circumstances; have I not a thousand times said, that if my uncle had discovered our marriage, we should have lost all? He is gone at last; but you know, Conny darling, that his ideas were simply absurd--in some respects suited only to the middle-ages--the middle ages do I say? By Jove, to those when the Anglo-Saxons wore coats of paint, and dyed their yellow hair blue. But are things arranged in this world wisely, think you, Constance?'

"I dare not impugn the plans of a beneficent Providence."

"But Providence never meant the conditions of life to turn out as they too often do."

"How, Richard," she, asked gently; "I don't quite understand you?"

"That the greatest number of the rich, the powerful and the most successful--by flukes, perhaps--are fools or knaves."

"Ah, but if riches brought talent--the wealthy and powerful would be too happy, and Fate or Providence do not make them so."

"I cannot express to you how my heart was wrung with jealous envy, and even with shame, when I saw Downie's family stand around my uncle's grave, and enjoying all the freedom and hospitality of Rhoscadzhel--even his cold-blooded, fashionable wife, too--and thought how my own three tender loves were debarred----"

"And unknown--"

"Yes----d--m it, unknown, and must be for a few weeks still, but time cures all evils, and it will cure this. Yet is not the gazetting of the two cousins, Denzil and the oldest of Downie's four boys, in one paragraph, and to my old corps, too a remarkable coincidence--all the more so, that they are ignorant of each other's existence?"

"My poor Denzil--he is so bright and clever!"

"Ay, more clever than ever I was. In my time, when I met you so happily in pleasant Montreal, one could be a fair average soldier without all the polyglot accomplishments so necessary now, when he who quits Sandhurst as a candidate for a commission direct, with five shillings and threepence per diem to further his extravagance, might quite as well come out for the Church or Bar, with the chance of a safer and better paid berth in either."

"And he joins his regiment as a Devereaux--my poor boy!"

"Still harping on that string!" said Richard, a little impatiently. "On my return when matters are all sorted and made clear by the legal documents, Denzil and Sybil must be simply told, that my succession to estates and a title have necessitated a change of name."

"But our Denzil is no longer a boy--and I shall almost blush for my past duplicity, before my own girl!"

"Come, come, Conny, this is foolish; what is done cannot be undone, and it is useless to cry over spilt milk."

"And how to explain this absence, for perhaps two months, you say, when they have been longing every hour for your return from London, where they believed you to be?"

"I know not yet, Constance; but a little time will make all things clear. We had no marriage contract--a love-sick subaltern and a schoolgirl were not likely to think of such a thing--we had only the brief certificate deposited with Père Latour; but a will executed by me, in favour of you and the children shall make all right and secure; and now my little wife, for a biscuit and glass of dry sherry, as I have ridden this morning all the way from beyond Launceston."

Constance retired for a minute to bathe her eyes, to smooth her hair, and came back to look composed and smiling; for she had still to act a part.

The hour for which she had so pined and yearned--especially since her son Denzil first saw the light in a lonely village among the Apennines--the time when she should take her place as the wife of Richard Trevelyan, (not that she cared for the wealth that place might bring her) had come; and yet there were fresh delays to be endured by her, and now it might be dangers dared by him she loved so well; but he strove in his honest, manly, and affectionate way to cheer her; and as he filled his glass with the sparkling golden sherry, he kissed her once more as if they were lovers still and said merrily,

"I drink to your speedy welcome home, my dear little Lady Lamorna!"