They went from Lucerne to Como, and lingered in that enchanting region until the midsummer heat drove them into the mountains. They roughed it in the Dolomites till October, and then went down to Lake Leman, and established themselves for the winter at Lausanne, where Eve took her sister’s education seriously in hand, and placed her as day-boarder in a very superior establishment “to be finished.” Here they lived very quietly, Hetty interested in her work, and improving herself with a rapidity which astounded her mistresses, who had been scandalized at her benighted condition from the educational point of view, and who had not yet grasped the idea that a girl who has led a free out-of-door life until she is fifteen years old has a stock of brain power that makes education a much easier business for her between that age and twenty than it is for the victim of premature culture, who has been straining and exhausting the growing brain ever since she was five.
Hetty revived her juvenile French, and took to German and Italian as readily as to tennis or golf. Eve was delighted with her progress, and for Hetty’s sake she stayed at Lausanne, with only a summer holiday in the Jura, until the second winter of her exile, when by her English doctor’s advice she went up to St. Moritz, Hetty, who was growing a very pretty girl, accompanying her, and turning the heads of all the young men at the Kulm Hotel, most especially when she played one of poor Samary’s characters in a little French duologue with the all-accomplished Dr. Holland.
Home letters told Eve that Vansittart was still in Africa, and that his mother was living very quietly at Merewood. From that lady, directly, Eve had not heard of late. She had answered her daughter-in-law’s letter coldly and cruelly, as it seemed to Eve.
“I cannot enter into your domestic mystery,” she wrote. “I only know that you took my son’s life into your keeping, and that you have wrecked it. He was the only son of his mother, and she was a widow. We were very happy together till you crossed his path; and now he is an exile, and I do not even know the reason of his banishment. Forgive me if I say I wish he had never seen your face.”
Lord Haverstock’s daughter was now the Honourable Mrs. Sefton, and her husband was said to have secured the highest matrimonial prize in Sussex. The lady’s aristocratic features had the stamp of a shrewish temper, as plainly as ever a knife was stamped “Sheffield.” She was proud of her birth and of her money, and a lesser man than Wilfred Sefton would have had a bad time with her, but he was reported to be equal to the situation. They entertained enormously, and were considered an acquisition to the neighbourhood. The Miss Marchants had been bidden to all their parties, and Sophy’s cheerful tone in describing the high jinks at the Manor showed that she had outlived her disappointment.
“Everybody knows that he married for money,” concluded Sophy, after a graphic account of a New Year’s dance given by Mrs. Sefton, “and everybody admires the way he manages his wife. He is obviously supreme in everything. If he had married a curate’s daughter he could not be more completely the master, although her income is nearly treble his, and they are always buying land, either adding to the Sefton property, or creeping over the county in other directions. They have no heir as yet, or promise of an heir, which is a disappointment to Lord Haverstock, who wanted a grandson immediately. I don’t believe it is possible to imagine a more unhappy marriage, looked at from our point of view; but as, in my opinion, he never had a heart, in spite of his folly about the Venetian singer, it is just the kind of marriage to suit him.
“Lady Hartley’s last baby is perfection—a girl—and I am asked to be godmother, a great compliment, considering her extensive circle and what snobs people are.
“Nancy sends you her dear love, and wants me to tell you that she always uses the lovely carved workbox, with the sleeping lion on the lid, which you sent her from Lucerne.
“Shall I secure you a few remnants at Marshall’s or Robinson’s before the January sales are over? You must pay outrageous prices for everything in Switzerland.”
So much for news from home. The London papers afforded ample information about Signora Vivanti, who pursued her successful career unchecked, and rose a step or so in public estimation with each new part she created—“created” was the word the critics used of this uncultured islander’s impersonations. She had fresh whims, and eccentricities, and gaieties for each new character. She was peuple to the marrow of her bones, and she had all the cleverness and unflagging pleasure in life which belongs to the populace. Her London public adored her, and to provincial audiences she came as a revelation of what gaiety of heart really means. She seemed a wellspring of joyousness, and sent her audience home convinced that life was not so very dreary after all.
Could Eve have known more than the newspapers told her she would have known that the Signora was keeping herself what Mr. Hawberk called “straight.” Slander had not breathed upon her name. She had loved, and her love had been rejected; and from the hour of that disillusion she had concentrated her affections upon that which never betrays or disappoints. Lisa and her aunt found the chief delight of their lives in the scraping and self-denial which enabled them to add to their hoard.
Lisa no longer bought diamonds, and wore her whole fortune upon her neck and arms. The diamonds were a very delightful form of investment, but the elementary theory of principal and interest had been gradually borne in upon her mind,
