At first he saw Lizzie Eustace, upon whom the misfortune of the day had had a most depressing effect. The wedding was to have been the one morsel of pleasing excitement which would come before she underwent the humble penance to which she was doomed. That was frustrated and abandoned, and now she could think only of Mr. Camperdown, her cousin Frank, and Lady Glencora Palliser. “What’s up now?” said Lord George, with that disrespect which had always accompanied his treatment of her since she had told him her secret. “What’s the meaning of all this?”
“I daresay that you know as well as I do, my lord.”
“I must know a good deal if I do. It seems that among you there is nothing but one trick upon another.”
“I suppose you are speaking of your own friends, Lord George. You doubtless know much more than I do of Miss Roanoke’s affairs.”
“Does she mean to say that she doesn’t mean to marry the man at all?”
“So I understand;—but really you had better send for Mrs. Carbuncle.”
He did send for Mrs. Carbuncle, and after some words with her, was taken up into Lucinda’s room. There sat the unfortunate girl, in the chair from which she had not moved since the morning. There had come over her face a look of fixed but almost idiotic resolution; her mouth was compressed, and her eyes were glazed, and she sat twiddling her book before her with her fingers. She had eaten nothing since she had got up, and had long ceased to be violent when questioned by her aunt. But, nevertheless, she was firm enough when her aunt begged to be allowed to write a letter to Sir Griffin, explaining that all this had arisen from temporary indisposition. “No; it isn’t temporary. It isn’t temporary at all. You can write to him; but I’ll never come out of this room if I am told that I am to see him.”
“What is all this about, Lucinda?” said Lord George, speaking in his kindest voice.
“Is he there?” said she, turning round suddenly.
“Sir Griffin?—no indeed. He has left town.”
“You’re sure he’s not there? It’s no good his coming. If he comes forever and ever he shall never touch me again;—not alive; he shall never touch me again alive.” As she spoke she moved across the room to the fireplace and grasped the poker in her hand.
“Has she been like that all the morning?” whispered Lord George.
“No;—not like. She has been quite quiet. Lucinda!”
“Don’t let him come here, then; that’s all. What’s the use? They can’t make me marry him. And I won’t marry him. Everybody has known that I hated him—detested him. Oh, Lord George, it has been very, very cruel.”
“Has it been my fault, Lucinda?”
“She wouldn’t have done it if you had told her not. But you won’t bring him again;—will you?”
“Certainly not. He means to go abroad.”
“Ah—yes; that will be best. Let him go abroad. He knew it all the time—that I hated him. Why did he want me to be his wife? If he has gone abroad, I will go downstairs. But I won’t go out of the house. Nothing shall make me go out of the house. Are the bridesmaids gone?”
“Long ago,” said Mrs. Carbuncle, piteously.
“Then I will go down.” And, between them, they led her into the drawing-room.
“It is my belief,” said Lord George to Mrs. Carbuncle, some minutes afterwards, “that you have driven her mad.”
“Are you going to turn against me?”
“It is true. How you have had the heart to go on pressing it upon her, I could never understand. I am about as hard as a milestone, but I’ll be shot if I could have done it. From day to day I thought that you would have given way.”
“That is so like a man—when it is all over, to turn upon a woman and say that she did it.”
“Didn’t you do it? I thought you did, and that you took a great deal of pride in the doing of it. When you made him offer to her down in Scotland, and made her accept him, you were so proud that you could hardly hold yourself. What will you do now? Go on just as though nothing had happened?”
“I don’t know what we shall do. There will be so many things to be paid.”
“I should think there would—and you can hardly expect Sir Griffin to pay for them. You’ll have to take her away somewhere. You’ll find that she can’t remain here. And that other woman will be in prison before the week’s over, I should say—unless she runs away.”
There was not much of comfort to be obtained by any of them from Lord George, who was quite as harsh to Mrs. Carbuncle as he had been to Lizzie Eustace. He remained in Hertford Street for an hour, and then took his leave, saying that he thought that he also should go abroad. “I didn’t think,” he said, “that anything could have hurt
