  Oh, love! of whom great Caesar was the suitor, Helen Grahame sat in her dressing-room alone. Scarce half-an-hour had elapsed since she had quitted the side of Lester Vane, after their stroll in the garden. Her handkerchief, which she had dropped during her interview with Hugh Riversdale in the thicket, yet glared before her eyes as it had done when presented by him who, with a sharp, penetrating gaze, had sought to extract evidence out of her confusion to assure him that she was the heroine of the stolen interview he had disturbed. She yet saw it floating and whirling among the circling eddies of the meandering waters, which ran past her feet, and drew such small consolation from the possibility of its never being again recovered—at least to her disadvantage—as it might afford her. It was something to have destroyed the only evidence that could identify her with that stolen meeting, which had been the cause of so much mystification, excitement, and scandal among the household. She could scarcely prevent a proud smile of triumph curling her small upper lip when she reflected that the mastery she possessed over the play of her features, when she brought her will into action, had enabled her to baffle the scrutiny of Vane, which she felt instinctively was exerted to enable him to obtain power over her. Her womanly instincts were too acute, too keen, for her not to comprehend that. It is true she had no notion that he intended to act basely or falsely to her. In spite of his display, his assumption of wealth, and the inferences he left to be drawn from his suggestions, she entertained a conviction that his sources of income were far more limited in capacity than he wished them to appear. Her father’s reputed affluence—of the reality of which she in common with the other members of the family, had no doubt—she could easily understand, would attract the attention of a young man of high family, who had but little with which to support his station, and she as readily comprehended that he would do his best to secure the hand of the eldest daughter of a man of wealth, if with it he ensured also the certainty of a handsome settlement, to say nothing of the unquestionable charms of the “encumbrance” he would have to take with the gold. She had not been twenty-four hours in his company before she detected that he had determined upon becoming a suitor for her hand, having fortified himself with a belief that her father would give with her a dower, which would for ever set at rest his pecuniary anxieties for the future. But she revolted at the thought of being sought for what she should bring, rather than for her beauty—her heart, so brimful of passion and tenderness—for her very self. Especially did she recoil from the supposition that she was a “tassel gentle” to be lured by such a falconer’s voice, for the purpose of his own aggrandisement, and her whole soul rose in rebellion against being made the puppet in such a scheme. The Honorable Lester Vane was well-formed and handsome. There were certain points in his figure and in his lineaments of a character to attract and to win the admiration of many women—those, at least, who, with the failing of their sex, are led by appearances. He had a musically-toned voice, and a tongue, gifted with the soft cunning of oily phrases, in so eminent a degree, that it could be scarcely surpassed by that which our mother Eve found herself unequal to resist. There were few women, who, if heart-free, would have been likely to resist his advances, or to have remained proof against them were he to address himself to them as a lover. Hitherto, he had not found female conquest difficult; there was a peculiarity in his manner and appearance which interested a woman in his favour immediately she beheld him; and thus, having mastered the approaches, he, where he listed, found the citadel not difficult to carry by a coup de main. Helen was conscious of all this. She had read his character intuitively, and had formed a just estimate of him. Perhaps her predominant feeling towards him was contempt; but with that was mingled a strange dread of some power he possessed to injure her, and which, at a future period, he would exercise with a merciless malignity. She knew this impression had no foundation, in fact—was, in truth, a mere in defined sense of impending evil, of which he was to be the perpetrator, she the sufferer. Yet, true to the nature of her sex, her conclusion, arrived at by no process of reasoning, was as clear and determined as though it had been based upon a train of facts which admitted neither of doubt nor dispute. “At least,” she murmured, “Hugh can have nothing to fear from him, even though he will, I am fully convinced, omit no stratagem to gain my love, as the means of securing my hand and portion—the portion being rather a considerable item in the object he proposes to accomplish. His eye looks down searchingly into my heart, as though he would read and interpret its most delicate mysteries and fathom its secrets, that he may hold me in duress. Never! I defy him! He cannot, shall not, detect or decipher anything I may purpose to conceal. He has destined me for his prey, a golden fly, to be enmeshed in the entanglements of a web, every filament of which is too palpable in my eyes. Ha! there are two words to a bargain. It would be a delicious revenge to bring this schemer down upon his knees before me, actually and absolutely an abject wooer: so that when, with burning words and scorching tears, he pleaded his love, I might spurn him with my foot. I will do it! Already has he commenced, with consummate art, to make me think about him: he must exercise a wily skill indeed to make me love him! I will meet him upon his own battle-field; I will not appear to employ either art or skill, yet will I stake my happiness that I will compel him to love me with a passionate ardour, of which now he does not believe his soul capable. Ay, and when, with a whirlwind of pleadings, urgings, and fervid prayers, he implores me to bestow my heart upon him, then, in my moment of triumph, I will open up to his terrible discomfiture my full knowledge of the speculation which embraced my purse with my person, and laugh with derisive scorn, at so shallow an attempt to win and wear me—me!” While that reference to herself yet trembled upon her lips, a thought rushed through her brain, and a flush of crimson spread itself over her fair neck and face, and then it subsided, and left her deadly pale. At this moment, the postman’s well-known ring at the gate-bell, given with skilful force, resounded suddenly through the house. The noise made her start, and utter a faint scream. Her heart began to beat violently, while a strange presentiment seized her that the epistle which had arrived by this channel was for her. An emotion of dread oppressed her, for which she was at a loss to account, for she had but few correspondents, and among them there was not one whose communication ought to contain any matter to occasion her feelings of dread. She had forgotten one. She listened breathlessly for the light foot-fall of Chayter. She was not disappointed. The door opened, and her quiet, neatly-dressed, sleek maid entered, bearing a note upon a small silver salver. Helen assumed an air of indifference she did not feel. She glanced, from beneath her long dark eyelashes, rapidly at the letter, but she played with the pendants of a bracelet, and yawned in Chayter’s face. “A letter for you, if you please, miss,” said the girl, and handed it to her. “Put it down, Chayter,” said she, “I will read it by and by. I am in no humour now to bore over a long crossed scrawl from a tiresome school friend.” The girl laid the letter upon the small table at Helen’s elbow, remarking to herself, as she gazed upon the superscription, that the school friend wrote a remark ably vigorous, masculine hand. “Where is papa?” inquired Helen, with seeming apathy, although deeply interested in the answer. “In the library, if you please, miss,” the girl answered. “And mamma, and the rest of them,” added Helen. “Your mamma, and his Grace, and Miss Margaret, and Mr. Malcolm, are walking in the garden.” “Yes.” “And the Honorable Mr. Lester Vane and Miss Evangeline are in the drawing-room.” “In the drawing-room?” “Yes, miss.” “Alone?” “Yes, miss, quite alone.” “Indeed!” Helen felt surprised and annoyed to hear this. She did not stay to inquire why. Upon the first blush, it seemed to her that Lester Vane had no right to be alone with her sister. She was irritated and vexed; not, as she suggested to herself, that she cared, because she had a contempt for the man; but then, to preserve merely the harmony of consistency, he ought to be alone with no one else but her, and look into no other eyes than her own. Evangeline, too, so reserved—so shy. She shook her head. Perhaps there was more art and depth in that apparently timid girl than any of them had ever dreamed of. She determined, instantly, to observe her more closely. Evangeline hitherto had passed as a stupid, harmless, nervous child, yet beneath such an exterior might lurk much shrewd sagacity, and a power to think and act for herself for which she had not previously received credit. Helen rather prided herself upon her own perceptive faculties, and, like many of her sex, she was so exceedingly keen-sighted as to be at times precipitated into forming erroneous conclusions. It occurred to her that it would not be altogether impolitic to put in an appearance, rather unexpectedly, in the drawingroom, where Vane was tÊte-À-tÊte with her sister. A glance at the faces of both, she assured herself, would suffice to tell her what course Vane was pursuing, and it would serve to direct her future conduct. She rose with this intention, and, as she moved past her little table, her eye fell upon the letter which the sudden communication by Chayter, respecting her sister and Lester Vane, had caused her to forget. She turned her eyes hastily around the apartment, Chayter was no longer there. She was alone. She took up the letter and held it to the lamp, so that she might see the superscription clearly. She started as she recognised the handwriting. “Heaven! I thought so,” she ejaculated. “It is from Hugh. How thoughtless to address to me here!” She examined the post-mark, which bore the name of Southampton. She drew a long breath, as though to nerve herself to meet the contents of the letter, which she felt would have a marked influence upon her future destiny, and then she broke the seal. The contents were penned by a hurried and trembling hand; the very character of the scrawled letters betrayed the workings of a mind convulsed by passion and sorrow—the words themselves only too emphatically proved what the ill-formed characters suggested. She read, with burning eyes, what follows— “Helen! thou passionately loved! Measure the intensity of my grief when you learn that my dread forebodings are verified. I sail by the ‘Ripon’ to India on the 4th, three days hence. My agony is insupportable! To be parted from you for years—perhaps never more to meet on earth—drives me to despair—distraction! I could refuse to quit England. I did. An alternative was presented to me; it involved the desolation of one to insure whose happiness my life were too mean a gift; it would have hurled me into beggary, and would still have sundered me from you—from you, Helen, you my life-spring, the font from whence I draw the only joy this world can yield me. What could I do? The chained and manacled slave had more freedom of action than I! My choice lay between this loathed voyage and comparative annihilation, and my consent to leave England has been thus wrung from me. Helen, though but these feeble words greet your tender eyes, yet I am with you face to face, near, near to you in spirit.” A cold thrill ran through the frame of Helen as she read these words, and she raised her eyes, shrinking and gazing into the misty space before her, as if expecting to see his form, phantom-like and grim, standing there. But she saw only the pictures on the walls and the hanging draperies, so, with a cold tremor, she went on with the perusal of the letter— “You remember, Helen, that night when we stood together in the abbey ruins alone—the cold, grey moonlight streamed through the oriel window—shattered and decayed it was—and rested upon a mutilated cross. You remember that cross, Helen, as, silver like, it stood out in bold relief? My earnest gaze was upon it, Helen, when my fevered, trembling lips uttered words in your ear only too feeble and inexpressive to convey the depth and intensity of that love, which your gentle tenderness and your unsurpassed beauty had won from me. And by that cross I swore to be true to you while I had life. I see that cross now, Helen! Can you? I repeat the oath I took on that night. Will you, oh, Helen, dearest? You do not forget that, while my vow was yet vibrating in your ear, you turned your lustrous eyes upon that glowing emblem of mortal redemption. Your sweet head reclined upon my heaving breast, and in faltering words, you owned that the passion was not unrequited—that you loved me. Your warm, fragrant breath played upon my cheeks as you pointed to that cross, and called Heaven to witness to your truth—to testify that, in the time to come, your affection should be as unchanging and as unchangeable as my own. Look, Helen, there! See you not that cross standing sharply and brightly out from the shadows beyond? Will you refuse the duty it calls upon you to perform, or forget the oath it commands you to remember? Out of my deep love for you, at what sacrifice would I pause? What hesitate to do and dare, that you might be mine? Ah, Helen, will you be mine, as you have so often fondly sworn you were, and would be ever? Are you prepared for the test which shall prove it? It is this. Will you, on receipt of this letter, join me here? Will you, Helen? I have made every arrangement by which you can travel on the 3rd by the four o’clock train to Southampton alone and secure from interruption. On your arrival, you will be received by a lady, who will be expecting you, and will conduct you to apartments prepared for you. On the 4th, we will be united by a legal marriage, as we have been by love, and—nay, we will then bid farewell to England, with hearts light and free; for, come any evil after it, we shall at least be happy in the possession of each other, and can no more be parted, but by death. Helen, my own Helen, if you will fly to me, the devotion of a life will be too poor a return for the integrity, the purity, the magnanimity of your love. If you come not—well, words would be idle. “Hugh Riversdale.” Helen staggered to her chair as she concluded the epistle. She pressed her hands to her throbbing temples; her brain was in a whirl; she had not the power for a minute or two to summon a single thought to her aid. Remember that night! Ay! the events crowded into it were not likely to be forgotten by her. As her hot palms pressed down her eyelids, she saw as in a vision the ruined abbey, desolate and silent, in the broad moon-light, the moss-grown, ivy-bound walls, the dilapidated aisles, the triple-arched windows, mouldering and falling away, very skeletons of what they had once been; the rude masses of masonry half buried in the long, rank grass; but, above all, that cross. That cross! It now glittered and sparkled and wreathed before her eyes as if it were living flame, and darted out long, forked, arrowy tongues, to blister and consume her if she violated her oath. She sprang to her feet with a scream and a shudder of horror. She gazed affrightedly round her; the sight of her maid, Chayter, who had, with noiseless step, reentered the room, however, dispelled the vision, and restored her to something like composure. She looked for her letter; it was open upon the table where it had fallen; waving her hand, she said, in a voice hoarse with emotion— “Leave me, Chayter; I will ring when I require your services.” The girl glanced at the letter and then at her mistress. She gave a short cough. “It is growing late, miss!” she said, hesitatingly, “I thought——” “Leave me!” almost shrieked the haughty beauty, stamping her foot violently. The girl dropped a hurried curtsey, and slunk swiftly out of the room. She had been witness to small displays of irritability, but never to such an ebullition of temper as this. When alone, Helen strode to the door and locked it. She threw herself into her chair, and again pressed her beating temples with her hands. “Is he mad?” she murmured. “Fly with him and to India! How selfish—how unreasonable!” He asked for a sacrifice as the test of her love; but what a sacrifice! She loved him—he ought to know that. What had she not done to give him proofs of it? If the proofs he had already received were insufficient, what could suffice? Not even the very sacrifice he called upon her to make. He had spoken of sacrifices, he had reminded her of their mutual vow, but now he sought to make her crown those cumulative sacrifices by inducing her to fling away all personal considerations, and follow his fortunes—to minister to his happiness by the surrender of her own. Not that she doubted she should be happy in becoming his wife, but then there was so much that went to make up the sum of perfect contentment, which she must forego upon quitting home, and which she could not hope to possess or enjoy after she had linked her fate with his. Trifles are they at best, but to have pleasure the rule, and retirement the exception to be flattered, admired, the cynosure of adoring eyes—are constituent parts of many a woman’s happiness, wanting only the love of one to make a perfect felicity. Helen was called upon to make her election. She could not, it appeared, have done both. If she flung away the pleasures of the world and the comforts of wealth, she would have to be compensated by Hugh’s passionate love and entire devotion. If she flung away his love—well, there was still her luxurious home, and—and if he was bent upon being so very, very obstinate in his selfish demands, and in the event of her not taking part in his wild scheme, were to sunder the connection between them—well, there were others moving in a higher sphere than his, who would kneel at her feet, and give to her entire and undisputed sway, so that she but bestowed her hand upon the suppliant. “I will write to him,” she said, taking up his letter, and placing it in her desk, which she carefully locked. “Yes, I will write to him, and show to him the weakness and the folly of what he asks. Papa would be frenzied, and mamma would surely die of mortified pride if I were to take such a step. No, no; it must not be. You were not in your senses, Hugh, when you addressed that letter to me, and so thoughtless, too, to direct it here. Poor fellow!—poor dear fellow!—how he loves me!—how deeply, dearly, he truly loves me!—dear Hugh!—yes, I well remember that night of mutual confession—oh! I well remember the tumult of joy which swelled my bosom when your trembling voice, and nearly inarticulate words, told me that which I already instinctively knew, but which I so longed for you to confess, my dear, dear Hugh!” To what result the train of reflection, now taking an opposite path to that which at first it pursued, might have led, we do not pretend to say. Helen was here interrupted by a knock at the door, followed by the voice of Chayter, who informed her young mistress that she was expected in the drawing-room, inquiries having been already made for her. She gave a rapid glance at her face in the glass. It was pale as alabaster, but there was no further trace of the disorder her mind had suffered; and so assuming a calm demeanour, she admitted Chayter. “I do believe I have been dozing,” she said to the sleek girl. “I don’t believe anything of the kind,” thought Chayter; but, smiling, said—“Dear me, miss, what a thing it is to be lovely, and have a dozen noble and beautiful gentlemen grieving to death for you.” “Chayter!” “Ah, miss! it is as I say,” continued the girl. “I can see. There is his Grace talking of nothing but you, and the Honorable Mr. Vane hoping that you are not ill because you keep your own room, and you all the while so indifferent, dozing in your chair, and Miss Margaret looking—I beg your pardon, miss—as if she would give her ears to be taken notice of by either of them.” “Dress me, Chayter!” exclaimed Helen, abruptly, “and, if you can, pray be silent; your volubility makes my head ache.” Chayter understood a hint, though she did not quite comprehend whether volubility meant impertinence or overwhelming information. She gathered from Helen’s tone that she was in no humour to listen to her prattle, and she was shrewd enough to keep her tongue still when its rattle was likely to be unwelcome. Helen quickly made her toilet, and had seldom looked more beautiful than she did when she entered the drawing-room, which, though half filled by the guests and family, was all but silent without her. Her eye ran round the apartment as she glided in, and she perceived her mamma and sister Margaret conversing together. Her papa was discoursing with the young Duke upon the management of estates, and detailing a plan by which to obtain the largest possible amount of income with the least possible expenditure, to all of which the Duke appeared to listen, though he yawned frequently; but he rescued himself from the charge of inattention by occasionally observing—“Weally!” “Pwecisely,” “Pwobably,” “Wemawkable!” Malcolm was half-asleep upon a couch, and Lester Vane was seated by the side of her sister Evangeline, talking with her in a tone sufficiently low as not to be heard—at least, where she stood. What strange feeling was it that possessed her when her eye fell upon Evangeline and Lester Vane, as it were tÊte-À-tÊte? Why did a flush mount to her brow, and a pang of vexation shoot through her breast? He was nothing to her; what he might do ought to have no interest in her eyes, for if any feeling for him was predominant in her heart, it was not certainly of a favourable nature. Yet he had gazed upon her so ardently, and spoken to her with such gentle tones, that if she could draw a conclusion from his manner, it was that her beauty had made a deep impression upon his heart. Now to see his dreamy eyes dwelling on Evangeline’s innocent face so earnestly, to observe his impressive manner, as he addressed her with words toned so as to make her gentle heart thrill with a new emotion, was to be made to feel that she had made no impression upon him at all, or that he made love to her simply pour passer le temps. She burnt with vexation. “He shall love me,” she thought, “woo me, kneel to me. Oh! but how I will spurn him—shatter him with my scorn.” Poor Hugh Riversdale! Upon the appearance of Helen, the Duke of St Allborne flung over the elaborate dissertation to which he was supposed to be listening, and quitting Mr Grahame, advanced hastily to his daughter; Lester Vane caught sight of her at the same moment, and rose to his feet, but without evincing any emotion, other than that of pleasure at her arrival. “My deah Miss Gwahame,” exclaimed the Duke, all in a flutter of excitement, “I am twuly delighted that you have wejoined us; I began to feah you weah not well, and would afflict us by not wetawning any moah this evening. I should have been gweatly gwieved at youah absence, but faw moah so if you had been weally indisposed.” “Your Grace will, I hope, pardon my not being present with my mamma and sisters to receive you in the drawing-room,” replied Helen, favouring him with one of her most bewitching smiles. “I am really ashamed to acknowledge to your Grace the truth, but I am afraid that while reading a few pages of a novel I fell into the most unromantic doze possible.” The Duke laughed appreciatively—a doze after dinner! Who comprehended its luxury more keenly than himself? “Pway don’t apologise, Miss Gwahame,” he exclaimed, “I think a nap after one’s wine one of the wosiest and most delicate awdinations of natchaw.” Helen smiled bewitchingly again at the Duke, for she knew the eye of Lester Vane, who had slowly approached her, was on her face. “My Lord Duke,” she returned, “do not misinterpret me—I dozed after my book.” “Ha! ha!” laughed the Duke. “I beg pawdon. Exactly! I could not suppose however, Miss Gwahame, that the wine you sipped at dinnaw would have thwown you into a doze. I alluded to myself, eh, Vane?” “Weally this girl is devilish pwetty,” thought the Duke, as he turned to his friend. “She is a pawfect beauty; I must weally wun off with her.” “You are skilled in after-dinner indulgence, you are, in fact, a perfect master of that species of luxury, St. Allbome,” replied Vane, smiling, and added, with marked empressement to Helen, “I would not have done you the injustice, Miss Grahame, to have presumed that a post prandial slumber had denied us the pleasure of your fair society, if you had not yourself offered it in explanation of your absence. I should, if permitted to speculate upon your movements, have imagined that a stroll by moonlight, along the sinuous paths of the most excellently arranged garden attached to this mansion, had occupied you pleasantly, that, tempted by the beauty of the night—or some other cause—you had been induced to linger in the purple shadows thrown upon the place beneath, by the luxuriant foliage of a certain cluster of graceful trees, bending in pensive reflection over the flowing stream, whose rippling waters lave their base, the balmy air responding to the chant of the water’s low music with soft sighs, and gently fondling in its murmuring the deep green leaves still and silent in their evening dreams.” The Duke looked up at his friend in indescribable astonishment. Lester Vane went on— “Such a scene, Miss Grahame, heightened by those associations your own glowing thoughts could supply, would naturally furnish an ample excuse for an absence so much regretted by all present. May I suggest that you should adopt it, rather than confess to an afterdinner nap?” “And dreams of pumpkin pie,” interposed Helen, with sarcastic bitterness, and a very formal bend. She understood his allusion; it brought a scarlet flush on her cheek, and made her eye flash like a diamond. Her lip curled scornfully as she replied to him, and if the sarcastic tone she adopted was unnoticed by others, it was not lost upon him. “Mr. Vane,” she added, not concealing an expression of disdain, “I prefer to adhere to the vulgar truth. There are people to whom such a course is inconvenient, but I find it less troublesome than to have to coin a number of small prevarications. I am afraid I am rather an unromantic individual. I catch cold, and have bad fits of sneezing come on, when I am foolish enough to be tempted by some poetical enthusiast to enjoy the beauty of a moonlight night, shadowy trees, rippling waters, and sighing breezes. On those occasions there is always a quantity of mist about, moist exhalations, powerfully suggestive I assure you Mr. Vane, of influenza. Moonlight scenes are very pretty things at the Opera, or in a picture, but the reality is really very trying to the constitution.” “The vewy weflections I have frequently made myself,” burst forth the Duke with much vivacity. ‘’You enwapchaw me, Miss Gwahame, youaw impwes-sions squaw so wondwously with mine. Moonlight nights aw vewy damp aflaws; I nevaw venchaw upon one without a heavy boat cape, a box of cigaws, and a pawson to play the twumpet, to keep me awake, nevaw!” “You surprise me, Miss Grahame,” said Vane, nettled by the tone she assumed. “I imagined that your temperament was highly sentimental and poetical.” There was a hidden meaning even in these words. Helen detected so much; though she did not at the moment perceive the object at which the shaft was levelled; she replied quickly— “You have been premature, Mr. Vane, in forming your estimate of my character. I am not so easily read as my sister Evangeline. She is imbued with romance, as, no doubt, you have before this discovered. She trusts to seeming, poor child—I do not.” For a moment her eye fastened itself piercingly upon him. She then took the Duke’s ready arm, and advanced up the salon to a magnificent harp, to fulfil a promise made by her to the Duke at dinner. As she did so, she looked for Evangeline, but she had quitted the room when Lester Vane rose up to greet her, and she liked not her disappearance. Lester Vane looked after Helen as, with queenly dignity, she paced the room, leaning upon the arm of his bulky, ungraceful friend, all the brighter and more beautiful for the contrast. “I am right,” he mused; “I am on the track; she chafes at the very mention of garden and moonlight. My experiment, too, succeeds—two suns may not shine in her hemisphere—she is already jealous of my attention to her little, simple, innocent sister. There is power in that. I will use it. I will have her completely in my grasp.” He moved towards Mrs. Grahame and the passionless statue, her daughter Margaret, perfectly at his ease, and as unconcerned as though the incident of the moment alone occupied his thoughts. Helen, too, appeared to commence her task in perfect serenity of mind, yet the words, “You remember that cross, Helen!” were ringing in her brain, and though she sang words and music correctly, and never faltered in the accompaniment, she prayed for the hour of release from the presence of guests, the sounds of voices, the glaring lights; to be again alone in her room, to wrestle with memories of passion and promise, to contend with conflicting emotions, to decide upon obeying the impulse of her heart, or to determine upon one great sacrifice, in order to secure the glittering’ triumphs of a brilliant position. Alone! What would she not have given at that moment, while singing with such charming taste, to have been alone! Before her song commenced, Mr. Grahame had been summoned to an interview with some person, who required to see him on business of importance, and during the performance of the song, while approving smiles were upon the features of his guests, and his wife and daughter Margaret sat in ineffable elation, he lay upon the floor of his library in a fit!
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