Sybil, Or, The Two Nations, Earl of Beaconsfield Benjamin Disraeli [chrysanthemum read aloud TXT] 📗

It was the Spring of last year, and Lady Bardolf was making a morning visit to Lady St Julians.

“I heard they were to be at Lady Palmerston’s last night,” said Lady St Julians.

“No,” said Lady Bardolf shaking his head, “they make their first appearance at Deloraine House. We meet there on Thursday I know.”

“Well, I must say,” said Lady St Julians, “that I am curious to see her.”

“Lord Valentine met them last year at Naples.”

“And what does he say of her.”

“Oh! he raves!”

“What a romantic history! And what a fortunate man is Lord Marney. If one could only have foreseen events!” exclaimed Lady St Julians. “He was always a favourite of mine though. But still I thought his brother was the very last person who ever would die. He was so very hard!”

“I fear Lord Marney is entirely lost to us,” said Lady Bardolf looking very solemn.

“Ah! he always had a twist,” said Lady St Julians, “and used to breakfast with that horrid Mr Trenchard, and do those sort of things. But still with his immense fortune, I should think he would become rational.”

“You may well say immense,” said Lady Bardolf. “Mr Ormsby, and there is no better judge of another man’s income, says there are not three peers in the kingdom who have so much a year clear.”

“They say the Mowbray estate is forty thousand a year,” said Lady St Julians. “Poor Lady de Mowbray! I understand that Mr Mountchesney has resolved not to appeal against the verdict.”

“You know he has not a shadow of a chance,” said Lady Bardolf. “Ah! what changes we have seen in that family! They say the writ of right killed poor Lord de Mowbray, but to my mind he never recovered the burning of the Castle. We went over to them directly, and I never saw a man so cut up. We wanted them to come to us at Firebrace, but he said he should leave the county immediately. I remember Lord Bardolf mentioning to me, that he looked like a dying man.”

“Well I must say,” said Lady St Julians rallying as it were from a fit of abstraction, “that I am most curious to see Lady Marney.”

The reader will infer from this conversation that Dandy Mick, in spite of his stunning fall, and all dangers which awaited him on his recovery, had contrived in spite of fire and flame, sabre and carbine, trampling troopers and plundering mobs, to reach the Convent of Mowbray with the box of papers. There he enquired for Sybil, in whose hands, and whose hands alone he was enjoined to deposit them. She was still absent, but faithful to his instructions, Mick would deliver his charge to none other, and exhausted by the fatigues of the terrible day, he remained in the court-yard of the Convent, lying down with the box for his pillow until Sybil under the protection of Egremont herself returned. Then he fulfilled his mission. Sybil was too agitated at the moment to perceive all its import, but she delivered the box into the custody of Egremont, who desiring Mick to follow him to his hotel bade farewell to Sybil, who equally with himself, was then ignorant of the fatal encounter on Mowbray Moor.

We must drop a veil over the anguish which its inevitable and speedy revelation brought to the daughter of Gerard. Her love for her father was one of those profound emotions which seemed to form a constituent part of her existence. She remained for a long period in helpless woe, soothed only by the sacred cares of Ursula. There was another mourner in this season of sorrow who must not be forgotten; and that was Lady Marney. All that tenderness and the most considerate thought could devise to soften sorrow and reconcile her to a change of life which at the first has in it something depressing were extended by Egremont to Arabella. He supplied in an instant every arrangement which had been neglected by his brother, but which could secure her convenience and tend to her happiness. Between Marney Abbey where he insisted for the present that Arabella should reside and Mowbray, Egremont passed his life for many months, until by some management which we need not trace or analyse, Lady Marney came over one day to the Convent at Mowbray and carried back Sybil to Marney Abbey, never again to quit it until on her bridal day, when the Earl and Countess of Marney departed for Italy where they passed nearly a year, and from which they had just returned at the commencement of this chapter.

During the previous period however many important events had occurred. Lord Marney had placed himself in communication with Mr Hatton, who had soon become acquainted with all that had occurred in the muniment room of Mowbray Castle. The result was not what he had once anticipated; but for him it was not without some compensatory circumstances. True another, and an unexpected rival, had stepped on the stage with whom it was vain to cope, but the idea that he had deprived Sybil of her inheritance, had ever, since he had became acquainted with her, been the plague-spot of Hatton’s life, and there was nothing that he desired more ardently than to see her restored to her rights, and to be instrumental in that restoration. How successful he was in pursuing her claim, the reader has already learnt.

Dandy Mick was rewarded for all the dangers he had encountered in the service of Sybil, and what he conceived was the vindication of popular rights. Lord