Page:All the Year Round - Series 2 - Volume 1.djvu/513

Charles Dickens] the first—that I was insensible to the hatred and contempt you dared to feel towards a woman every way your superior?—your disparagement of me to your simple fool of a father?—your arts and wiles to defeat my marriage? No, girl. I knew them all. It was a doubtful battle, but you are defeated, and I have you prisoner, bound and fettered. I hate you. Do you hear? Your shame and sufferings are of my invention. I took this solitary den, I hired this truculent woman to help me to humble your proud heart, destroy your beauty, degrade you, body and soul, at my feet. Yes, my pet—my 'pussy,' as you loved to be called—the 'mermaid' has got the better of the cat, and she cannot save her glossy skin! To your keeper!"

Geraldine had scarcely heard the concluding words. Stricken with surprise and terror, she had stink in a senseless heap on the floor.

A severe illness followed, of which she remembered little. When she recovered, a change had come over her whole being. Her loveliness had faded, but the change in her whole system was more touching still. Her high spirit had departed. Oppressed and hopeless, she submitted wearily to any tyranny the two women chose to inflict.

At length even Mrs. Manning, the impassive, began to tire. She had, at least, the doubtful merit of disliking non-resistance. As a beast of prey, she was of that nobler sort that prefers a hunt and a scuflle.

Passing near Geraldine's room, one day, and fancying she heard her voice, she looked in. The inmate was kneeling at the window, her thin hands clasping the bars.

"What are you doing, my dear?" inquired the governess, tenderer than usual, she knew not why.

Geraldine turned her white worn face to her.

"Trying to forgive you!" she answered.

Her governess looked fixedly at her, and retired without a word.

Five minutes later she walked, with her usual measured stateliness,into the drawing-room.

"I am sorry," she said to Mrs. Fonnereau, "to seem abrupt, but I leave you this day."

"To return—when?"

"Never."

"Never? And—the money—the three hundred?"

"Is here," said Mrs. Manning, placing some notes upon the table, with her habitual grace—"excepting only the wages of an upper domestic, winch I have ventured to retain. I may be an instrument of severity; my necessities may have tempted me to become one of revenge; but I am opposed, on principle, to murder; and, with permission, these words shall be our last."

She curtseyed, and, in tell minutes, had quitted Leafy Dell.

"It matters not," said Melusina, to herself. "Money saved. I can manage her alone, now."

Let us draw the veil over the cruelty that ensued. It is possible that Mrs. Manning's sinister augury might have been fulfilled. But rescue was at hand, and coming fast, from an unexpected quarter.

The reader may remember the name of a certain Lieutenant Haldimand, R.N., who, at a certain pic-nic, had made the acquaintance of Miss Fonnereau. He had never forgotten the beautiful girl, and, with a constancy rarely seen in these later times, embraced the very first opportunity to revisit the isle that contained his treasure. He traced her to the convent. He traced her to Leafy Dell. While devising means for renewing his acquaintance, hitherto of the slightest, with the inmates of that residence, he, as by special providence, fell in with Alice Corham, Geraldine's faithful maid, who, in consequence of some dark rumour concerning her beloved mistress, was hovering in the neighbourhood, hoping to obtain information.

That which she had to communicate so startled and alarmed young Haldimand, that, being a man of action, he rode straightway to Leafy Dell, and, entering almost unopposed, presented himself to Mrs. Fonnereau, as one charged with a mission to her step-daughter, with whom he politely begged an interview.

Melusina, on account of the "dear girl's" health, was compelled to refuse; but did so in her sweetest manner, and exercised so many fascinations, that the young man, puzzled, bewildered, and half admiring, began to think his informant in error, and, a little ashamed at having so misjudged the still beautiful creature before him, took reluctant leave.

"What fools are men!" soliloquised the victorious Melusina, as she gazed at her own face in the mirror that night, La Pareuse caressing her hair. "He has been idolising that miserable thing above: he showed me his errand and his heart at once! And for all that, I could win him from her. I!—ah! that would be the