Page:Harper's New Monthly Magazine - v109.djvu/242

224 stepmother. He knew no one in Paris who could enlighten him, and was not clever enough to invent means of getting information for himself. He was induced to promise a sufficient income for the moment on behalf of himself and his co-trustee; and for the rest, was obliged to be content with vague assurances from Colonel Wensleydale that as soon as his wife came into her property, fitting settlements should be made.

Four years passed by. The young people lived with the Blackwaters, and their income kept the establishment going. Lady Alice had a child, and was not altogether unhappy. She was little more than a timid child herself; and no doubt at first she was in love. Then came her majority. In defiance of all her trustees, she gave her whole fortune to her husband, and no power could prevent her from so doing.

The Blackwater ménage blazed up into a sudden splendor. Lady Blackwater's carriage and Lady Blackwater's jewels had never been finer; and amid the crowds who frequented the house, the slight figure, the sallow face, and absent eyes of her stepdaughter attracted little remark. Lady Alice Wensleydale was said to be delicate and reserved; she made no friends, explained herself to no one; and it was supposed that she occupied herself with her little boy.

Then one December she disappeared from the apartment in the Place Vendôme. It was said that she and the boy found the climate of Paris too cold in winter, and had gone for a time to Italy. Colonel Wensleydale continued to live with the Blackwaters, and their apartment was no less sumptuous, their dinners no less talked of, their extravagances no less noisy, than before. But Lady Alice did not come back with the spring; and some ugly rumors began to creep about. They were checked, however, by the death of Lord Blackwater, which occurred within a year of his daughter's departure; by the monstrous debts he left behind him; and by the sale of the contents of the famous apartment,—matters, all of them, sufficiently ugly or scandalous in themselves to keep the tongues of fame busy. Lady Blackwater left Paris, and when she reappeared, it was in Rome as the Comtesse d'Estrées, the wife of yet another old man, whose health obliged them to winter in the south and to spend the summer in yachting. Her salon in Rome under Pio Nono became a great rendezvous for English and Americans, attracted by the historic names and titles that M. d'Estrées' connections among the Black nobility, his wealth, and his interest in several of the Catholic banking-houses of Rome and Naples enabled his wife to command.

Colonel Wensleydale did not appear. Madame d'Estrées let it be understood that her stepdaughter was of a difficult temper, and now spent most of her time in Ireland. Her own daughter, her "darling Kitty," was being educated in Paris by the Sœurs Blanches, and she pined for the day when the "little sweet" should join her, ready to spread her wings in the great world. But mothers must not be impatient. Kitty must have all the advantages that befitted her rank; and to what better hands could the most anxious mother entrust her than to those charming, aristocratic, accomplished nuns of the Sœurs Blanches?

Then one January day M. d'Estrées drove out to San Paolo fuori le Mura, and caught a blast from the snowy Sabines coming back. In three days he was dead, and his well-provided widow had snatched the bulk of his fortune from the hands of his needy and embittered kindred.

Within six months of his death, she had bought a house in St. James's Place, and her London career had begun.

"It is here that we come in," said Lord Grosville, when with more digressions and more plainness of speech with regard to his quondam sister-in-law than can be here reproduced he had brought his story to this point. "Blackwater, the old ruffian, when he was dying had a moment of remorse. He wrote to my wife and asked her to look after his girls,—'For God's sake, Lina, see if you can help Alice; Wensleydale's a perfect brute.' That was the first light we had on the situation, for Adelina had long before washed her hands of him; and we knew that she hated us. Well, we tried; of course we tried. But so long as her husband lived, Alice would have nothing to say to any of us. I suppose she thought that for her boy's sake she'd bet-