Page:Mysteries of Melbourne Life.djvu/19

 cause that day to be irritated. Had notWould it not be better to return and beg Linda's pardon for his harsh behavior; and then he knew she would fly into his arms and abjectly beg his pardon, and weep away all ill-feeling on his bosom!

He had got to the Balaclava Station as he was thinking thus, and stood surveying the multitude of villas that lay beneath his glance, but not seeing them. He was about to return when the train dashed into the station, and stopped just before him. In the carriage directly in front was Hugh Hanlon. Not the deplorable Hugh Hanlon we have seen in Part I., but a finely-dressed fellow, extremely handsome, with rings and jewellery innumerable, &c. Quite a respectable man! But who, looking into that face, could not detect the marks left by care, dissipation, sin; who could not see the shadow of an irregular life over all? By his side was that beautiful woman we have already introduced. Splendid she looked in her matured beauty, dressed with a taste that suited her style to the minutest particular. One could have noticed that she colored slightly when she saw Robert. So did he when he met her eye.

"Coming to town," said Hugh gaily.

"No—no," stammered Robert.

"Yes, yes," said Hugh. "Come and dine with me at Scott's, and I'll show you round the town. You live too quiet a life."

A sudden desire entered Robert's mind to do this, and make Linda suffer for her behavior. Such desires often enter the minds of those who have a "tiff" with persons they love.

"Come," said Hugh, taking Robert's hand.

Before he well knew what he did, he found himself seated between Hugh and that beautiful siren, and the train whirling away past the little home where poor Linda was weeping and wailing over the first cloud of her young life.

Whirling away to

What great consequences arise from small events?

"It is now some time since I met you one day in Collins-street, an object so miserable, so degraded, that you feared to meet the eye of an acquaintance. Hollow-cheeked with famine, shivering with cold, what a deplorable creature you appeared! Yet I did not turn away from you. On the contrary, I gave you the means to appear once more what you were. Many have wondered why I did so, knowing as I did the career which had led to your degradation. But you know me pretty well by this time, and are fully aware that I do nothing without a purpose. Since I began life for myself, I have laid down certain principles up to which I act with more strictness than those persons who call themselves religious. I rescued you for my own ends, and these you know, for I have employed you towards compassing them; unsuccessfully, it is true, up to the present, but succeed you will—succeed you must. Indeed, I must give you the credit that it is to your invention I will owe success, if it is ever mine; for the blundering plans I have laid have always come to grief.

"Yet you cannot comprehend how my whole soul, is centred upon the success of the scheme which you have formed to bring Robert within my power. For I love him beyond all. No wanderer in unknown regions of the seas fixed his eye upon the star which he knew to shine above his home more ardently than I on that handsome face and form. In the day, in the midst of business and company, the face is ever present; in the gay night, when wine and wit and music pass away the hours, it is ever with me; in the still night, when solitude is mine, my thoughts, are all of him. 'The power of love'—the enthralling spell of an unrequited affection! Ah! the suffering of those who love cannot be understood by others!

"When Robert Wilton was a bright and beautiful boy, budding into youth, I met him, and from that moment my soul has been his. How often have I stood watching him when rowing on the river, playing at manly games with his companions, or walking in the street—watched him with the hunger of one who loved almost without hope! How I have longed for his arms to be around my waist, his lips to my lips, and his heart beating in unison with mine! And yet I did not make his acquaintance then. Had he become my lover, he might have saved me from the fate which is mine; he might have lifted me up to his own sphere. Fallacious dream? But he went on his way, handsome, loving and loved, in the spring of a glorious youth, the pet of all, while I turned into the dark road—but you know all.

"But I was fated to become known to him. We were to meet under very different circumstances to those which I had imagined.