“You have been in town today?” she repeated, pointedly, with white and trembling lips.
“And could hear nothing of him,” said Vincent, with a little bitterness. “He was not to be heard of at his address.”
“Where was that?” asked Lady Western again, with the same intent and anxious gaze.
Vincent, who was sinking down, down in hopeless circles of jealousy, miserable fierce rage and disappointment, answered, “10 Nameless Street, Piccadilly,” without an unnecessary word.
Lady Western uttered a little cry of excitement and wonder. She knew nothing of the black abyss into which her companion had fallen any more than she knew the splendid heights to which her favour had raised him; but the sound of her own voice recalled her to herself. She turned away from Vincent and pulled the bell which was within her reach—pulled it once and again with a nervous twitch, and entangled her bracelet in the bell-pull, so that she had to bend over to unfasten it. Vincent sat gloomily by and looked on, without offering any assistance. He knew it was to hide her troubled face and gain a moment to compose herself; but he was scarcely prepared for her total avoidance of the subject when she next spoke.
“They are always so late of giving us tea,” she said, rising from her chair, and going up to Miss Wodehouse: “I can see you have finished your pattern; let me see how it looks. That is pretty; but I think it is too elaborate. How many things has Mary done for this bazaar, Mr. Wentworth?—and do tell us when is it to be?”
What did Vincent care for the answer? He sat disenchanted in that same place which had been his bower of bliss all the evening, watching her as she moved about the room; her beautiful figure went and came with a certain restlessness, surely not usual to her, from one corner to another. She brought Miss Wodehouse something to look at from the worktable, and fetched some music for Lucy from a window. She had the tea placed in a remote corner, and made it there; and insisted on bringing it to the Miss Wodehouses with her own hands. She was disturbed; her sweet composure was gone. Vincent sat and watched her under the shade of his hands, with feelings as miserable as ever moved man. It was not sorrow for having disturbed her;—feelings much more personal, mortification and disappointment, and, above all, jealousy, raged in his heart. Warmer and stronger than ever was his interest in Mr. Fordham now.
After a miserable interval, he rose to take his leave. When he came up to her, Lady Western’s kind heart once more awoke in his behalf. She drew him aside after a momentary struggle with herself.
“I know that gentleman,” she said, quickly, with a momentary flush of colour, and shortening of breath; “at least I knew him once; and the address you mention is my brother’s address. If you will tell me what you want to know, I will ask for you. My brother and he used not to be friends, but I suppose—. What did you want to know?”
“Only,” said Vincent, with involuntary bitterness, “if he was a man of honour, and could be trusted; nothing else.”
The young Dowager paused and sighed; her beautiful eyes softened with tears. “Oh, yes—yes; with life—to death!” she said, with a low accompaniment of sighing, and a wistful melancholy smile upon her lovely face.
Vincent hastened out of the house. He ventured to say nothing to himself as he went up Grange Lane in the starless night, with all the silence and swiftness of passion. He dared not trust himself to think. His very heart, the physical organ itself, seemed throbbing and bursting with conscious pain. Had she loved this mysterious stranger whose undecipherable shadow hung over the minister’s path? To Vincent’s fancy, nothing else could account for her agitation; and was he so true, and to be trusted? Poor gentle Susan, whom such a fate and doom was approaching as might have softened her brother’s heart, had but little place in his thoughts. He was not glad of that favourable verdict. He was overpowered with jealous rage and passion. Alas for his dreams! Once more, what downfall and overthrow had come of it! once more he had come down to his own position, and the second awakening was harder than the first. When he got home, and found his mother, affectionately proud, waiting to hear all about the great lady he had been visiting, it is impossible to express in words the intolerable impatience and disgust with himself and his fate which overpowered the young man. He had a bad headache, Mrs. Vincent said, she was sure, and he did not contradict her. It was an unspeakable relief to him when she went to her own room, and delivered him from the tender scrutiny of her eyes—those eyes full of nothing but love, which, in the irritation of his spirit, drove him desperate. He did not tell her about the unexpected discovery he had made. The very name of Fordham would have choked him that night.
XIV
The next morning brought no letters except from Susan. Fordham, if so true as Lady Western called him, was not, Vincent thought with bitterness, acting as an honourable man
