IT was about three o’clock in the afternoon when Laura reached the villa on Westbourne Terrace; and, having laid aside her bonnet and handsome furs, she proceeded to the drawing-room, where, as Rosalie had already informed her, her husband Lorenzo was anxiously awaiting her presence.

The fact that he should have stated to the servant his desire that she would speedily return home, was a proceeding so unusual on his part, appearing, as it did, to imply annoyance at her absence, that it roused the haughty temper of the imperious Laura; and for the first time since their marriage, she wore a frown upon her features when she entered his presence.

It was also for the first time that his handsome countenance denoted a storm raging within his breast, and all the pent-up violence of which was about to explode against the deceitful, wanton creature into whose character he had obtained so complete but fatal an insight that morning.

“You have been asking for me, Lorenzo?” said Laura, in a cold tone, as she seated herself with an air of exhaustion upon a sofa.

“Yes, madam—I was most anxious to see you as soon as possible,” answered the Italian, turning abruptly away from the window at which he had been standing, and now advancing towards her. “When I came home an hour ago I was surprised to find that you had been absent since mid-day.”

“And pray, Lorenzo, am I to be kept a prisoner in this house?” demanded Laura, in a tone of unfeigned surprise. “I had certain purchases to make at different shops—and I went out in the carriage for the purpose. Permit me to observe that your conduct is undignified in the extreme, since you so far forget yourself as to express your feelings to my lady’s-maid.”

“My God! and were I to proclaim my feelings to the whole world, there would be but little cause for wonder!” exclaimed the Italian, vehemently; and as he spoke, he thrust his hand into his bosom, and clutched a dagger which he had concealed there.

But his eyes fell upon the countenance of his wife,—that countenance so glorious in its beauty, though now with the sombre cloud overshadowing it;—and he would have slain her then and there, had not his glance thus suddenly embraced all the loveliness of her features and all the rich contours of her splendid form. For, like a whelming tide, rushed to his soul a thousand tender reminiscences,—vividly recalling to his imagination all the joys and delights he had experienced in her arms—the fervid passion he had seen reflected in those magnificent eyes—the luscious kisses he had imprinted on those lips—the wanton playfulness with which her long luxuriant hair had oft-times swept across his cheeks—the ineffable bliss that had filled his raptured soul when his head was pillowed on that glowing, swelling bosom, which now palpitated with haughty indignation,—oh! he thought of all this, and he felt that he could not slay one so exquisitely lovely—so transcendently beautiful!

“Assuredly, your humour is strange to-day, Lorenzo,” said Laura, who, though longing to make it up with the man whom she really and sincerely loved, nevertheless was resolved to exact the homage which all women under such circumstances require—namely, the first overture towards a reconciliation. “At one moment your eyes glare savagely upon me as if I had given you some mortal offence;—and now they assume an expression of pity and commiseration. Come, sir, confess that you have entertained some outrageous suspicion—that you are jealous of me—and I shall take the avowal as a proof of affection. Do this,” she added, a faint smile of encouragement appearing upon her lips, and allowing a glimpse of her brilliant teeth; “do this, Lorenzo—and I will pardon your unkindness.”

“Pardon me!” exclaimed the Italian, bitterly—for the conduct of his wife now appeared to him to be aggravated by levity and flippancy of the most irritating nature, though in reality she was totally ignorant of the fact that grave and serious charges were agitating in his mind against her: “pardon me!” he repeated, his tone now assuming a fierceness that began to amaze and even alarm the young woman, whose conscience, as the reader is well aware, was not the clearest in the world. “Oh! this is indeed a hideous mockery—a cool, deliberate insult,” he continued,—“yes—a vile insult, to offer to pardon me! What have I ever done to offend you—or merit your forbearance or your forgiveness? My God! ’tis I who have been generous and confiding—and ’tis you who have been the gross deceiver and the unprincipled hypocrite!”

“These are harsh words, Lorenzo,” exclaimed Laura, rising from the sofa, and drawing herself up to her full height; and though not tall in stature, there was nevertheless something regal and majestically imperious in her air and bearing: “yes—they are harsh words, I repeat—and they may lead to a quarrel which no subsequent regrets nor apologies can repair.”

“Let the quarrel be eternal—or to the very death!” returned Lorenzo, his handsome countenance now distorted with rage. “Oh! I am sick of this world with its hideous deceits—its hollow hearts—its boundless profligacy! I care not how soon I throw off the coil of this life’s trammels: but with my last breath shall I curse—bitterly, bitterly curse—the odious name of Perdita!”

“Ah!” ejaculated the guilty woman, now perceiving that she was indeed unmasked: but almost immediately recovering her self-possession, she approached her husband and said in her softest, most seductive tones, “You have heard evil reports concerning me, Lorenzo: and I hope ere you prejudge me, that I shall be allowed an opportunity to give a full explanation. Consider my position:—it is that of a friendless and orphan woman, about to lose, perhaps, the only being on earth whom she ever loved, or who has ever sincerely loved her!”

“Oh! how is it that such a demon heart is harboured in such an angelic form!” cried Lorenzo Barthelma, surveying her for a moment with mingled pity and admiration: then immediately afterwards, a full sense of all her tremendous profligacy and deceit springing up in his soul, his eyes glared upon her with the ferocity of a lynx, and a feeling of deep and burning hatred took possession of him.

“If you refuse me a hearing—if you intend to cast me off with contumely and insult,” said Perdita, her own eyes flashing fire in their turn—but it seemed like living fire!—“if such be your intentions,” she continued, in a tone of mingled bitterness and haughty indifference, “the sooner this interview be terminated, the better.”

And she advanced towards the door, her bosom heaving with convulsions almost to bursting from its confinement.

“No—no—you shall not leave me yet, nor thus!” cried the Italian, darting after and catching her violently by the arm. “You shall have the opportunity of explanation which you desire; and God help you in the task!”

Thus speaking he forced her back to the sofa; and then locked the door of the apartment, putting the key in his pocket.

“This behaviour on your part, signor,” said Perdita, assuming a composure which she did not—could not feel, “is alike mean and cowardly. You seek to intimidate me—and that is mean: you use violence towards me—and that is cowardly. What have you heard against me? Name the calumniator, and recite the calumnies. But if the accusation resolve itself into this,—that I was frail—weak—unchaste before I became your wife, remember that I never deceived you on that subject! You yourself were my paramour before you were my husband; and when you offered me your hand, I reminded you that it was no virgin-bride whom you would receive to the bridal-bed. Ere now you called me Perdita—and I admit that such is my Christian name. But am I responsible for the circumstances which induced my mother to bestow it upon me? You are doubtless aware, from the same source whence you have gleaned evil tidings concerning me, that I was born in Newgate, and that my maternal parent gave me that odious name in a moment of contrition. Well—is this my fault? Be just, Lorenzo—I do not ask you to be generous;—but again I say, be just!”

“I have listened to you with attention, Perdita—and I am bound to declare that you seek to veil a hideous depravity beneath the most specious sophistry,” said Barthelma, speaking in a slow, measured tone, but with a concentrated fury in his soul. “I do not reproach you for your mother’s crimes—I commiserate you on that score. But I feel indignant—oh! bitterly, bitterly indignant at all the treachery—the perfidy you have practised towards me! I knew that you were unchaste, as you yourself express it—but I believed that it was mere frailty on your part, and not inveterate profligacy? Oh! Perdita, how dared you bring to the marriage-bed of an honourable man a body polluted with all the vice and iniquity of a penal colony, and which had been for years common as that of the vilest prostitute? I gave you a noble name—circumstances have robbed it of its aristocratic lustre—but it is still honourable;—and now how is it menaced? You have lavished your favours upon hundreds—you have led a life of such frightful wantonness, young in years as you are, that your soul has grown old in iniquity! Oh! I know it all—I know everything, Perdita: all the intricacies of your character are revealed to me—I have read the mysteries of its darkest depths—and my eyes are at length opened to the astounding folly that I perpetrated in linking my fate with such as you!”

“Then let us separate at once,” exclaimed Perdita, her cheeks flushing with indignation. “Wherefore prolong this interview? Our quarrel has gone too far and become too serious ever to admit of pardon or oblivion.”

“It is not I who will seek such reconciliation,” returned Barthelma, with terrible malignity in his tone and manner. “I loved you, Perdita—God only knows how tenderly, how sincerely, how devotedly I loved you! I would have died for you,—aye, and should have rejoiced to surrender up my life, could such a sacrifice have benefitted you! Confident, frank, and full of generous candour, I gave you the love of an honourable man;—and you deceived me! Oh! I am now no stranger to all your syren wiles—your Circean witcheries: I recognise all that artifice and all that duplicity in many of the circumstances which marked our first meetings, and which rivetted the chains that you threw around me. What! do you suppose that I can consent to live and become the scorn, the laughing-stock, and the scandal of all who know me?—and think you that I will permit you to go forth into the world and point me out with taunting finger to the first idiot whom you may win as your paramour? My God! the thought is maddening—it sears my very brain!”

And so terrible became the young Italian’s aspect,—with his flashing eyes, convulsing countenance, and quivering lips,—that Perdita, now seriously alarmed, rushed to the door, forgetting that it was locked.

But it opened not to her touch, and, with a cry of terror, she turned towards her husband, who was evidently exercising superhuman efforts to restrain the fury that boiled in his breast and darted in lightning-shafts from his wild eyes.

“O Lorenzo—Lorenzo!” she exclaimed, joining her hands together; “what do you mean to do?—what is it that you require of me? My God! I know that I have been wicked—vile—profligate: but I have been faithful to you—I have never ceased to love you from the first moment we met! That day in the Champs ElysÉes has ever been a bright one—aye, the brightest on which my retrospective looks could dwell—”

“That day in the Champs ElysÉes,” repeated Barthelma, in a low and hollow tone, “is one accursed in my memory and in my life! Wretch—profligate—shameless wanton,” he exclaimed, all his infuriate passion now bursting forth,—“how dare you allude to that day?—how can you think of it without the crimson blush of shame? For whose sake did you deck yourself out so meretriciously on that occasion?—whose jealousy was it to inspire, that you bent your warm and lustful looks on me that day?—whom to beguile and win back to your arms, perhaps, was that deceptive note written that induced me, Di Ponta, and Charles Hatfield—”

“Ah! then you know every thing!” exclaimed Perdita, suddenly throwing off the suppliant air and the appealing looks which she had ere now assumed, and resolving to act with the energy natural to her character. “It is useless, signor, to prolong this painful interview: I have already made the same observation—and I now wish you to understand that I will not remain a prisoner any longer here. Open that door and let me depart—or I shall summon the servants.”

Thus speaking, she advanced towards the bell-pull.

“You menace me—you dare to menace me?” exclaimed Barthelma, springing forward and confronting her so as to bar the way; and his whole frame was quivering with a rage that appeared ready to burst forth into the ungovernable fury of a perfect madness.

“How dare you thus coerce me?” demanded Perdita, her eyes flashing fire. “Out of my path, coward—unless you intend to enact the Italian bravo in this country where men are wont to be brave and chivalrous.”

And, as she spoke, she pushed him disdainfully aside.

But ere the eye had time to wink or the heart to palpitate once—and while a sound, between a cry and a yell, of frenzied rage burst from the lips of the maddened Barthelma,—his dagger flashed before the sight of Perdita, and was instantly buried deep in her bosom.

A thrilling, agonising scream proclaimed her mortal agony—then ceased suddenly; and, staggering forward a few paces, she fell heavily on the carpet—and expired!

Barthelma stood for a few moments rivetted to the spot, silent and motionless with horror at the deed which he had perpetrated; while in his soul a revulsion of feeling took place with the whelming rapidity that marks the ebb of a portentous tide.

A mortal dread came over him—and then he burst into an agony of tears; and throwing himself on the still palpitating body of her whose wondrous beauty had been his pride and his joy, he began to lament her death in the most passionate terms.

But suddenly there was a sound as of several footsteps rushing up the stairs—and then came a loud knocking at the door, and the voices of the valet, Rosalie, and another servant demanding what was the matter and what meant the piercing scream that had reached their ears.

Then Barthelma recollected that, as a murderer, he would receive a murderer’s doom; and in a moment to his appalled soul started up all the grim and terrible array of the criminal tribunal—the executioner—the assembled myriads—and the gibbet!

All the frenzy of his maddening mind returned;—and tearing forth the stiletto from the bosom of his slaughtered wife, he plunged it deep into his own breast.

At the same instant the door of the apartment was forced in; and the horror-stricken domestics caught sight of their master just at the moment that he fell upon the corpse of their mistress!

So perished this youthful pair,—each endowed with a beauty of no ordinary kind!

Yes—thus died the tender, impassioned Lorenzo, and the profligate, wanton Perdita!

The world has seen no loveliness superior to hers, nor known a depravity more inveterate.

But was she to be blamed only, and not pitied in the slightest degree? It were unjust thus to regard her memory:—for, when her eyes first saw the light, had some kind hand been nigh to receive the innocent babe—to bear it away from that Newgate-cell which was the ominous scene of its birth—to rear it tenderly and save it from passing in the arms of a felon-mother into a penal settlement,—then to foster and cherish the growing girl with a true maternal care—bend her mind to the contemplation of virtue, and protect it from all bad influences—preserve her soul from the effects of vile examples, and inculcate principles of chastity, rectitude, and religion,—Oh! then would the prison-born Perdita have given by her conduct a refutation to her name, and she would have haply excelled in every accomplishment, every amiable characteristic, and every endearing qualification that combine like brilliant gems to form for the chaste woman’s brow a diadem such as angels wear!

Oh! my Lady Duchess—or you, highborn daughter of some proud Peer whose line of ancestry may be traced back to the period of the Norman Conquest,—look not with unmitigated disgust upon the character of Perdita, the Lost One! Let pity temper the feeling;—for—though the truth which we are about to tell may be not over palatable—yet is the moral which the Lost One’s history affords deserving of consideration. Suppose, my Lady Duchess—or you, highborn maiden,—suppose that either of you had been ushered into this world under such circumstances as those which attended on the birth of Perdita;—suppose that you first saw the light in Newgate—that you had been taken by a vile mother to the far-off place of her exile—that you had been reared where temptations abounded and virtuous influences were unknown—and that every example you had before you was evil and profligate,—what would have been the result? Do not dare to say, my Lady Duchess—or you, highborn maiden—that an innate perception of right and wrong, and a natural inclination to virtue, would have preserved you pure, and chaste, and untainted throughout the terrible ordeal! No—no—you would have fallen as Perdita fell—you would have been dragged through the mire of demoralisation as she was—you would have imbibed the infectious poison of vice as she did,—and, under such circumstances, you, my Lady Duchess—and you, highborn maiden—would have justified and illustrated in your own lives the history of the Lost One!

What, then, do we wish to impress upon our readers?—what do we seek to impress upon the Legislature and the Government? That it is better to adopt means to prevent crime, than to study how to punish it when it is committed. We have a thousand laws which proclaim how a man may be sent to the treadmill, or to the bulks, or to the penal colonies, or to the gibbet: but we have none devising measures to keep him away from those places. Everything is to punish—nothing to prevent. The codes are crowded with enactments inflicting penalties upon grown-up criminals,—but do not contain a single statute for the protection of the children of the poor against contamination. Look at those emaciated little beings rolling about all day long in the gutters, or eating the offal off dust-heaps: does the law stretch forth its hand and pluck them out of that filth which is only too painfully emblematical of the moral mire in which their minds are likewise wallowing? No: the law allows them to play on unheeded; but when, a few years afterwards, these unhappy creatures, who can neither read nor write, and have no idea of God nor hope nor heaven, pilfer a slice of rusty bacon or a morsel of cheese from a shop-board in order to satisfy the cravings of hunger—then does the Law thrust forth its long arm and its great hand, and seize upon the victims of——what?—its own neglect!

Yes: those are truths which we are never wearied of insisting upon. Session after session is frittered away in party squabbles; but what remedial steps are taken to moralise, christianise, and civilise the children of the poor?