Little Novels

My instructions to my solicitor forbade him to vindicate my innocence by taking any technical legal objections to the action of the magistrate or of the coroner. I insisted on my witnesses being summoned to the lawyer's office, and allowed to state, in their own way, what they could truly declare on my behalf; and I left my defense to be founded upon the materials thus obtained. In the meanwhile I was detained in custody, as a matter of course.

With this event the tragedy of the duel reached its culminating point. I was accused of murdering the man who had attempted to take my life!

This last incident having been related, all that is worth noticing in my contribution to the present narrative comes to an end. I was tried in due course of law. The evidence taken at my solicitor's office was necessarily altered in form, though not in substance, by the examination to which the witnesses were subjected in a court of justice. So thoroughly did our defense satisfy the jury, that they became restless toward the close of the proceedings, and returned their verdict of Not Guilty without quitting the box.

When I was a free man again, it is surely needless to dwell on the first use that I made of my honorable acquittal. Whether I deserved the enviable place that I occupied in Bertha's estimation, it is not for me to say. Let me leave the decision to the lady who has ceased to be Miss Laroche—I mean the lady who has been good enough to become my wife.

MISS DULANE AND MY LORD.

Part I.

TWO REMONSTRATIONS.

I.

ONE afternoon old Miss Dulane entered her drawing-room; ready to receive visitors, dressed in splendor, and exhibiting every outward appearance of a defiant frame of mind.

Just as a saucy bronze nymph on the mantelpiece struck the quarter to three on an elegant clock under her arm, a visitor was announced—'Mrs. Newsham.'

Miss Dulane wore her own undisguised gray hair, dressed in perfect harmony with her time of life. Without an attempt at concealment, she submitted to be too short and too stout. Her appearance (if it had only been made to speak) would have said, in effect: 'I am an old woman, and I scorn to disguise it.'

Mrs. Newsham, tall and elegant, painted and dyed, acted on the opposite principle in dressing, which confesses nothing. On exhibition before the world, this lady's disguise asserted that she had reached her thirtieth year on her last birthday. Her husband was discreetly silent, and Father Time was discreetly silent: they both knew that her last birthday had happened thirty years since.

'Shall we talk of the weather and the news, my dear? Or shall we come to the object of your visit at once?' So Miss Dulane opened the interview.

'Your tone and manner, my good friend, are no doubt provoked by the report in the newspaper of this morning. In justice to you, I refuse to believe the report.' So Mrs. Newsham adopted her friend's suggestion.

'You kindness is thrown away, Elizabeth. The report is true.'

'Matilda, you shock me!'

'Why?'

'At your age!'

'If he doesn't object to my age, what does it matter to you? '

'Don't speak of that man!'

'Why not?'

'He is young enough to be your son; and he is marrying you—impudently, undisguisedly marrying you—for your money!'

'And I am marrying him—impudently, undisguisedly marrying him—for his rank.'

'You needn't remind me, Matilda, that you are the daughter of a tailor.'

'In a week or two more, Elizabeth, I shall remind you that I am the wife of a nobleman's son.'

'A younger son; don't forget that.'

'A younger son, as you say. He finds the social position, and I find the money—half a million at my own sole disposal. My future husband is a good fellow in his way, and his future wife is another good fellow in her way. To look at your grim face, one would suppose there were no such things in the world as marriages of convenience.'

'Not at your time of life. I tell you plainly, your marriage will be a public scandal.'

'That doesn't frighten us,' Miss Dulane remarked. 'We are resigned to every ill-natured thing that our friends can say of us. In course of time, the next nine days' wonder will claim public attention, and we shall be forgotten. I shall be none the less on that account Lady Howel Beaucourt. And my husband will be happy in the enjoyment of every expensive taste which a poor man call gratify, for the first time in his life. Have you any more objections to make? Don't hesitate to speak plainly.'

'I have a question to ask, my dear.'

'Charmed, I am sure, to answer it—if I can.'

'Am I right in supposing that Lord Howel Beaucourt is about half your age?'