A Terrible Secret, May Agnes Fleming [best book clubs .TXT] 📗

the same house with her to find out how quietly she takes it. Women understand how to torture--they should have been grand inquisitors of a Spanish inquisition, if such a thing ever existed. I am afraid to face her. She stabs my wife in fifty different ways fifty times a day, and I--my guilty conscience won't let me silence her. Ethel has not known a happy hour since she entered Catheron Royals, and all through her infernal serpent tongue. Let her take care--if she were ten times my cousin, even she may go one step too far."

"Does that mean, Victor, you will turn her from Catheron Royals?"

"It means that, if you like. Inez is my cousin, Ethel is my wife. You are her friend, Aunt Helena; you will be doing a friendly action if you drop her a hint. I wish you good-morning."

He took his hat and turned to go, his handsome blonde face sullen and set.

"Very well," Lady Helena answered; "I will. You are to blame--not that poor fair-haired child. I will speak to Inez; and, Victor, I will try to forgive you for your mother's sake. Though you broke her heart she would have forgiven you. I will try to do as she would have done--and I like the little thing. You will not fail me on Thursday next? If _I_ take up your wife all the neighborhood will, you may depend."

"We are not likely to fail. The invitation is like your kindness, Aunt Helena. Thanks very much!"

His short-lived anger died away; he gave his hand frankly to his aunt. She was his wife's friend--the only one who had taken the slightest notice of her since her arrival. For the resident gentry had decided that they couldn't--really couldn't--call upon the soap-boiler's daughter.

Sir Victor Catheron had shocked and scandalized his order as it had not been shocked and scandalized for half a century. A banker's daughter, a brewer's daughter, they were prepared to accept--banking and brewing are genteel sort of things. But a soap-boiler!--and married in secret!--and a baby born in lodgings!--and Miss Catheron jilted in cold blood!--Oh it was shameful!--shameful! No, they could not call upon the new Lady Catheron--well, at least until they saw whether the Lady Helena Powyss meant to take her up.

Lady Helena was the only sister of the young baronet's late mother, with no children of her own, and very strongly attached to both Sir Victor and Inez. His mother's dying desire had been that he should marry his cousin. He had promised, and Lady Helena's strongest hope in life had been to see that promise fulfilled. The news of his low marriage fell upon her like a thunderbolt. She was the proudest of dowagers--when had a Catheron made a _mesalliance_ before? No; she could not forgive him--could never receive his wife.

But when he came to her, pale, sad, appealing for pardon, she relented. It was a very tender and womanly heart, despite its pride of birth, that beat in Lady Helena's bosom; and jolly Squire Powyss, who had seen the little wife at the Royals, took sides with his nephew.

"It's done, and can't be undone, my dear," the squire said, philosophically; "and it's always wise to make the best of a bad bargain; and 'pon my life, my love, it's the sweetest little face the sun ever shone on! Gad! I'd have done it myself. Forgive him, my dear--boys will be boys--and go and see his wife."

Lady Helena yielded--love for her boy stronger than pride or anger. She went; and there came into one of the dusk drawing-rooms of the Royals, a little white vision, with fair, floating hair, and pathetic blue eyes--a little creature, so like a child, that the tender, motherly heart of the great lady went out to her at once. "You pretty little thing!" she said, taking her in her arms and kissing her as though she had been eight rather than eighteen. "You're nothing but a baby yourself and you have got a baby they tell me. Take me to see him, my dear."

They were friends from that hour. Ethel, with grateful tears in her eyes, led her up to the dainty berceaunette where the heir of Catheron Royals slept, and as she kissed his velvet cheek and looked pityingly from babe to mother, the last remains of anger died out of her heart. Lady Helena Powyss would "take Lady Catheron up."

"She's pretty, and gentle, and good, and a lady if ever I saw one," she said to Inez Catheron; "and she doesn't look too happy. Don't be too hard on her, my dear--it isn't her fault. Victor is to blame. No one feels that more than I. But not that blue-eyed child--try to forgive her Inez, my love. A little kindness will go a long way there."

Inez Catheron sitting in the sunlit window of her own luxurious room, turned her face from the rosy sunset sky full upon her aunt.

"I know what I owe my cousin Victor and his wife," she answered steadily, "and one day I shall pay my debt."

The large, lustrous Spanish eyes turned once more to the crimson light in the western sky. Some of that lurid splendor lit her dark, colorless face with a vivid glow. Lady Helena looked at her uneasily--there was a depth here she could not fathom. Was Inez "taking it quietly" after all?

"I--I don't ask you to forgive _him_, my dear," she said, nervously--"at least, just yet. I don't think I could do it myself. And of course you can't be expected to feel very kindly to her who has usurped your place. But I would let her alone if I were you. Victor is master here, and his wife must be mistress, and naturally he doesn't like it. You might go too far, and then--"

"He might turn me out of Catheron Royals--is that what you are trying to say, Aunt Helena?"

"Well, my dear--"

"Victor was to see you yesterday. Did he tell you this? No need to distress yourself--I see he did. And so I am to be turned from Catheron Royals for the soap-boiler's daughter, if I don't stand aside and let her reign. It is well to be warned--I shall not forget it."

Lady Helena was at a loss. What could she say? What could she do? Something in the set, intense face of the girl frightened her--absolutely frightened her. She rose hurriedly to go.

"Will you come to Powyss Place on Thursday next?" she asked. "I hardly like to press you, Inez, under the circumstances. For poor Victor's sake I want to make the best of it. I give a dinner party, as you know; invite all our friends, and present Lady Catheron. There is no help for it. If I take her up, all the country will; but if _you_ had rather not appear, Inez--"

There was a sharp, quick, warning flash from the black eyes.

"Why should I not appear? Victor may be a coward--_I_ am not. I will go. I will face our whole visiting list, and defy them to pity me. Take up the soap-boiler's heiress by all means, but, powerful as you are, I doubt if even you will be able to keep her afloat. Try the experiment--give the dinner party--I will be there."

"It's a very fine thing for a tradesman's daughter to marry a rich baronet, no doubt," commented Lady Helena, as she was driven home; "but, with Inez for my rival, _I_ shouldn't care to risk it. I only hope, for my sake at least, she will let the poor thing alone next Thursday."

The "poor thing" indeed! If Sir Victor's life had been badgered during the past fortnight, his wife's life had been rendered nearly unendurable. Inez knew so well how to stab, and she never spared a thrust. It was wonderful, the bitterest, stinging things she could say over and over again, in her slow, _legato_ tones. She never spared. Her tongue was a two-edged sword, and the black deriding eyes looked pitilessly on her victim's writhes and quivers. And Ethel bore it. She loved her husband--he feared his cousin--for his sake she endured. Only once, after some trebly cruel stab, she had cried aloud in her passionate pain:

"I can't endure it, Victor--I cannot! She will kill me. Take me back to London, to Russell Square, anywhere away from your dreadful cousin!"

He had soothed her as best he might, and riding over to Powyss Place, had given his aunt that warning.

"It will seem a horribly cruel and inhuman thing to turn her from the home where she has reigned mistress so long," he said to himself. "I will never be able to hold up my head in the county after--but she _must_ let Ethel alone. By fair means or foul she must."

The day of Lady Helena Powyss' party came--a terrible ordeal for Ethel. She had grown miserably nervous under the life she had led the past two weeks--the ceaseless mockery of Miss Catheron's soft, scornful tones, the silent contempt and derision of her hard black eyes. What should she wear? how should she act? What if she made some absurd blunder, betraying her plebeian birth and breeding? What if she mortified her thin-skinned husband? Oh! why was it necessary to go at all?

"My dear child," her husband said, kissing her good-humoredly, "it isn't worth that despairing face. Just put on one of your pretty dinner-dresses, a flower in your hair, and your pearls. Be your own simple, natural, dear little self, and there will not be a lady at Aunt Helena's able to shine you down."

And when an hour after, she descended, in a sweeping robe of silvery blue, white lilies in her yellow hair, and pale pearls clasping her slim throat, she looked fair as a dream.

Inez's black eyes flashed angrily as they fell upon her. Soap-boiler's daughter she might be, with the blood of many Dobbs in her veins, but no young peeress, born to the purple, ever looked more graceful, more refined.

For Miss Catheron herself, she was quite bewildering in a dress of dead white silk, soft laces and dashes of crimson about her as usual, and rubies flashing here and there. She swept on to the carriage with head held haughtily erect, a contemptuous smile on her lips, like anything on earth but a jilted maiden.

Lady Helena's rooms were filled when they entered; not one invitation had been declined. Society had mustered in fullest force to see Sir Victor Catheron's low-born wife, to see how Miss Catheron bore her humiliation. How would the one bear their scrutiny, the other their pity? But Miss Catheron, handsome, smiling, brilliant, came in among them with eyes that said: "Pity me if you dare!" And upon Sir Victor's arm there followed the small, graceful figure, the sweet, fair face of a girl who did not look one day more than sixteen--by all odds the prettiest girl in the rooms.

Lady Helena--who, when she did that sort of thing, _did_ do it--took the little wife under her wing at once. People by the score, it seemed to the bewildered Ethel, were presented, and the stereotyped compliments of society were poured into her ear. Sir Victor was congratulated, sincerely by the men, with an under-current of pity and mockery by the women. Then they were all at dinner--the bride in the place of honor--running the gauntlet of all those eyes on the alert for any solecism of good manners.

She went through it all, her cheeks flushing, her eyes kindling with excitement growing prettier every moment. Her spirits rose--she would let