Page:Once a Week Volume 8.djvu/58

50   in her gesture. Was Lionel tempted to forget himself?—to set her right? If so, he beat the temptation down. All men would not have been so forbearing.

“Sibylla, I have told you truth,” he simply said.

“Which is as much as to say that Fred told—” she was vehemently beginning, when the words were stopped by the entrance of John Massingbird. John, caught in the shower near Deerham Court, made no scruple of running to it for shelter, and was in time to witness Sibylla’s angry tones, and inflamed face.

What precisely happened Lionel could never afterwards recal. He remembered John’s free and easy salutation, “What’s the row?”—he remembered Sibylla’s torrent of words in answer. As little given to reticence or delicacy in the presence of her cousin, as she had been in that of Lucy Tempest, she renewed her accusation of her husband with regard to Rachel: she called on him—John—to bear testimony that Fred was truthful. And Lionel remembered little more until he saw Sibylla lying back gasping, the blood pouring from her mouth.

John Massingbird—perhaps in his eagerness to contradict her as much as in his regard to make known the truth—had answered her all too effectually before Lionel could stop him. Words that burnt into the brain of Sibylla Verner, and turned the current of her life’s pulses.

It was her husband of that voyage, Frederick Massingbird, who had brought the evil upon Rachel, who had been with her by the pond, that night.

As the words left John Massingbird’s lips, she rose up, and stood staring at him. Presently she essayed to speak, but not a sound issued from her drawn lips. Whether passion impeded her utterance, or startled dismay, or whether it may have been any physical impediment, it was evident that she could not get the words out.

Fighting her hands on the empty air, fighting for breath or for speech, so she remained for a passing space: and then the blood began to trickle from her mouth. In the excitement, she had burst a blood-vessel.

Lionel crossed over to her: her best support. He held her in his arms, tenderly and considerately, as though she had never given him an unwifely word. Stretching out his other hand to the bell, he rang it loudly. And then he looked at Mr. Massingbird.

“Run for your life,” he whispered. “Get Jan here.”

family of the Von Neuhoffs, which expired in the year 1811, held for many generations a high position in Westphalia. In 1695, the future representative of the family gave it the first push down the path of decadence, by marrying a girl of equivocal character, which caused an irreconcilable breach between him and his relations. He thereupon entered the French army, and while stationed at Metz, a son was born to him in 1696. He was christened Theodore Anton, and is the subject of my memoir. The father died shortly after, and his mother proceeded to Paris, where her conduct was a bad example for the boy. She, namely, became the left-handed wife of the Count de Montague, one of the gentlemen in waiting of that clever German princess, Elizabeth Charlotte, Duchess of Orleans and mother of the Regent, who was so remarkable for her mania for letter-writing.

Theodore Von Neuhoff entered the Duchess’s service as page, and after the custom of the day, was educated for the army. His intimate friend, the Marquis de Courcillon, gave him a lieutenancy in his dragoons, and for awhile Theodore Von Neuhoff lived in magnificent style. Falling hopelessly into debt, he quitted the French service, and made his way to Holland. Here he offered his services to the well-known Baron Von Görtz, at that time Swedish ambassador at the Hague, who employed him upon several diplomatic missions, among others to the court of Spain. My readers may feel surprised that the plenipotentiary of a great power, for such Sweden was at that day, should not hesitate to enter into such friendly relations with a fugitive bankrupt; but the truth is, that Görtz himself was a political adventurer, though on a grander style, and was connected with the countless scamps whom the intriguing policy of that day found it necessary to employ, and who were all linked together by a species of freemasonry.

When Görtz was beheaded at Stockholm, on February 28, 1719, Von Neuhoff was engaged on business of his at Madrid, and would have fallen into an abject state of poverty, had not Cardinal Alberoni, the Spanish prime minister, been a political adventurer of the same breed as Görtz. The adventurer in the red hat did not permit our adventurer to starve, but gave him a commission as colonel, and procured him in addition to his pay a pension of 600 pistoles. Moreover, Von Neuhoff worked his acquaintance with the omnipotent minister so cleverly, that he soon got together a fortune of from ten to twelve thousand pistoles. This success, however, made the young man so arrogant, that he treated the Spaniards impertinently, and hence, on Alberoni’s sudden fall, found himself surrounded by enemies. At the moment when he was preparing to fly the kingdom, another adventurer came to his assistance in the person of the Duke of Ripperda.

Ripperda advised him to marry a lady of the Queen’s bedchamber, who stood extraordinarily well at Court, and introduced him to her. The plan succeeded: Lady Catherine Sarsfield, daughter of Lord Kilmarnock, who was the cousin of the celebrated Duke of Ormond, became the wife of our adventurer, and secured him once more a brilliant position in Madrid. The lady, however, does not seem to have possessed the gift of enchaining her husband; but, on the contrary, shortly became so unendurable to him, that he preferred running away rather than remaining by her side, and he took ship at Carthagena for France. It need not surprise us, in an adventurer of this sort,