Page:010 Once a week Volume X Dec 1863 to Jun 64.pdf/724



For beautiful trifles such as these, woman has before now given up her soul: how much more, then, her hand and heart! Not one but bore charms for the eyes of Miss Lethwait; symbols, all of them—the scarlet slipper, the curl, the silk armlet, the bracelet—of that path of pleasure that must beset the future partner of Lord Oakburn's coronet. These things in prospective bear so plausible a magic! The packet of letters, sickly with their excess of perfume, would hold out to Miss Lethwait the least attraction; love-letters penned by the old peer could savour of little save the ridiculous.

Would the tempting bait win her? Hear what success followed that thrown by the "Red Fisherman."

The loving and the lovely, the pure and the sullied, the guilty and the innocent, all have succumbed to the golden visions held out to them: had Miss Lethwait withstood, she had been more than woman. Lord Oakburn waited for her answer patiently—patiently for him.

"If you wish to make me yours, my lord, so be it," she said, and her very lips quivered as she yielded to the temptation. "I will strive to be to you a good and faithful wife.

"Then that's settled," said the matter-of-fact earl, with more straightforwardness than gallantry. But he laid his hand upon her shoulder again, and bent to take a kiss from her lips.

At that moment one stood in the doorway, her haughty eyelids raised in astonishment, her blood bubbling up in fiery indignation. It was Lady Jane Chesney. She had come in search of the governess in consequence of the communication made by Lucy. That any serious intention accompanied that kiss, Jane suspected not. Never for a moment had it glanced across the mind of Jane that her father would marry again. In her devotion, her all-absorbing love, there had existed not a crevice for any such idea to insinuate itself. She gazed; but she only believed him to have been betrayed into a ridiculous bit of folly, not excusable even in a young man, considering Miss Lethwait's position in the family; worse than inexcusable in Lord Oakburn. And the governess lingering in the room with him, standing passively to receive the kiss! No pen could express the amount of scornful condemnation cast on her from that moment by Jane Chesney.

Too pure-minded, too lofty-natured, too much the gentlewoman to surprise them, Jane drew back, noiselessly, but some movement in the velvet curtain had attracted the notice of the earl. The door to this room was nothing but a sliding panel—and which Miss Lethwait had unslided (if there be such a word) when the pipe was finished—with looped-back inner curtains of crimson.

The curtain stirred, and Lord Oakburn, probably thinking he had been hidden long enough away from his guests, and that it might be as well to show himself again if he wished to observe a decent hospitality, went forth. Jane waited an instant, and entered. The governess was sitting then, her hands clasped before her, as one who is in deep thought or pain, her eyes strained on vacancy, and a burning spot of scarlet on her cheeks, scarlet as the geraninmgeranium [sic] wreath in her black hair.

"Are you here, Miss Lethwait! I have been searching for you everywhere. Allow me to request that you pay proper attention to Lady Lucy."

She spoke in a ringing tone of command, one never yet heard by the governess from the quiet Jane Chesney. Miss Lethwait bowed her head as she quitted the room in obedience to see after Lucy, and the scarlet of emotion was turning to pallor on her cheeks.

Jane watched her out. She was not one to make a scene, but she had to compress her lips together, lest they should open in defiance of her will. Her mind was outraged by what she had witnessed; the very house was outraged; and she determined that on the morrow Miss Lethwait should quit. In her fond prejudice she cast little blame on her father; it all went to the share of the unlucky governess. Jane believed—and it cannot be denied that circumstances appeared to justify the belief—that Miss Lethwait had sought Lord Oakburn in that room, and hidden herself there with him, on purpose to play off upon him her wiles and fascinations.

"Never more shall she have the opportunity," murmured Jane, "never more, never more. Ere midday to-morrow the house shall be rid of her."

Jane mixed again with the crowd, but so completely vexed was she by what had occurred