debtor for life. Now let any one ask me who is my father, and I will say – "
"He was Edward Sylvester's brother. But come, come, this extreme gratitude is unnecessary. You have always been a favorite with me, Bertram, and now that I have no child, you seem doubly near; it is my pleasure to do what I can for you. But – " and here he surveyed him with a wistful look, "I wish you were entering into this new line from love of the business rather than love of a woman. I fear for you my boy. It is an awful thing to stake one's future upon a single chance and that chance a woman's faith. If she should fail you after you had compassed your fortune, should die – well you could bear that perhaps; but if she turned false, and married some one else, or even married you and then – "
"What?" came in silvery accents from the door, and a woman richly clad, her trailing velvets filling the air at once with an oppressive perfume, entered the room and paused before them in an attitude meant to be arch, but which from the massiveness of her figure and the scornful carriage of her head, succeeded in being simply imperious.
Mr. Sylvester rose abruptly as if unpleasantly surprised. "Ona!" he exclaimed, hastening, however, to cover his embarassment by a courteous acknowledgement of her presence and a careless remark concerning the shortness of the services that had allowed her to return from church so early. "I did not hear you come in," he observed.
"No, I judge not," she returned with a side glance at Mandeville. "But the services were not short, on the contrary I thought I should never hear the last amen. Mr. Turner's voice is very agreeable," she went on, in a rambling manner all her own, "it never interferes with your thoughts; not that I am considered as having any," she interjected with another glance at their silent guest, "a woman in society with a reputation for taste in all matters connected with fashionable living, has no thoughts of course; business men with only one idea in their heads, that of making money, have more no doubt. Do you know, Edward," she went on with sudden inconsequence, which was another trait of this amiable lady's conversation, "that I have quite come to a conclusion in regard to the girl Philip Longtree is going to marry; she may be pretty, but she does not know how to dress. I wish you could have seen her to-night; she had on mauve with old gold trimmings. Now with one of her complexion – But I forget you haven't seen her. Bertram, I think I shall give a German next month, will you come? Oh, Edward!" as if the thought had suddenly struck her, "Princess Louise is the sixth child of Queen Victoria; I asked Mr. Turner to-night. By the way, I wonder if it will be pleasant enough to take the horses out to-morrow? Bird has been obliging enough to get sick just in the height of the season, Mr. Mandeville. There are a thousand things I have got to do and I hate hired horses." And with a petulant sigh she laid her prayer-book on the table and with a glance in the mirror near by, began pulling off her gloves in the slow and graceful fashion eminently in keeping with her every movement.
It was as if an atmosphere of worldliness had settled down upon this room sanctified a moment before by the utterances of a pure and noble love. Mr. Sylvester looked uneasy, while Bertram searched in vain for something to say.
"I seem to have brought a blight," she suddenly murmured in an easy tone somewhat at variance with the glance of half veiled suspicion which she darted from under her heavy lids, at first one and then the other of the two gentlemen before her. "No, I will not sit," she added as her husband offered her a chair. "I am tired almost to death and would retire immediately, but I interrupted you I believe in the utterance of some wise saying about matrimony. It is an interesting subject and I have a notion to hear what one so well qualified to speak in regard to it – " and here she made a slow, half lazy courtesy to her husband with a look that might mean anything from coquetry to defiance – "has to say to a young man like Mr. Mandeville."
Edward Sylvester who was regarded as an autocrat among men, and who certainly was an acknowledged leader in any company he chose to enter, bowed his head before this anomalous glance with a gesture of something like submission.
"One is not called upon to repeat every inadvertent phrase he may utter," said he. "Bertram was consulting me upon certain topics and – "
"You answered him in your own brilliant style," she concluded. "What did you say?" she asked in another moment in a low unmoved tone which the final act of smoothing out her gloves on the table with hands delicate as white rose leaves but firm as marble, did not either hasten or retard.
"Oh if you insist," he returned lightly, "and are willing to bear the reflection my unfortunate remark seems to cast upon the sex, I was merely observing to my nephew, that the man who centered all his hopes upon a woman's faith, was liable to disappointment. Even if he succeeded in marrying her there were still possibilities of his repenting any great sacrifice made in her behalf."
"Indeed!" and for once the delicate cheek flushed deeper than its rouge. "And why do you say this?" she inquired, dropping her coquettish manner and flashing upon them both, the haughty and implacable woman Bertram had always believed her to be, notwithstanding her vagaries and fashion.
"Because I have seen much of life outside my own house," her husband replied with undiminished courtesy; "and feel bound to warn any young man of his probable fate, who thinks to find nothing but roses and felicity beyond the gates of fashionable marriage."
"Ah then, it was on general principles you were speaking," she remarked with a soft laugh that undulated through an atmosphere suddenly grown too heavy for easy breathing. "I did not know; wives are so little apt to be appreciated in this world, Mr. Mandeville, I was afraid he might be giving you some homely advice founded upon personal experience." And she moved towards their guest with that strange smile of hers which some called dangerous but which he had always regarded as oppressive.
She saw him drop his eyes, and smiled again, but in a different way. This woman, whom no one accused of anything worse than levity, hailed every tribute to her power, as a miser greets the glint of gold. With a turn of her large but elegant figure that in its slow swaying reminded you of some heavy tropical flower, hanging inert, intoxicated with its own fragrance, she dismissed at once the topic that had engaged them, and launched into one of her choicest streams of inconsequent talk. But Mandeville was in no mood to listen to trivialities, and being of a somewhat impatient nature, presently rose and excusing himself, took a hurried leave. Not so hurried however that he did not have time to murmur to his uncle as they walked towards the door:
"You would make comparison between the girl I worship and other women in fashionable life. Do not I pray; she is no more like them than a star that shines is like a rose that blooms. My fate will not be like that of most men that we know, but better and higher."
And his uncle standing there in the grand hall-way, with the fresh splendors of unlimited wealth gleaming upon him from every side, looked after the young man with a sigh and repeated, "Better and higher? God in his merciful goodness grant it."
VIII
SHADOWS OF THE PAST
"Memory, the warder of the brain." – Macbeth.
It was long past midnight. The fire in the grate burned dimly, shedding its lingering glow on the face of the master of the house as with bowed head and folded hands he sat alone and brooding before its dying embers.
It was a lonesome sight. The very magnificence of the spacious apartment with its lofty walls and glittering works of art, seemed to give an air of remoteness to that solitary form, bending beneath the weight of its reflections. From the exquisitely decorated ceiling to the turkish rugs scattered over the polished floor, all was elegant and luxurious, and what had splendors like these to do with thoughts that bent the brows and overshadowed the lips of man? The very lights burned deprecatingly, illuminating beauties upon which no eye gazed and for which no heart beat. The master himself seemed to feel this, for he presently rose and put them out, after which he seated himself as before, only if possible with more abandon, as if with the extinguishing of the light some eye had been shut whose gaze he had hitherto feared. And in truth my lady's image shone fainter from its heavy panel, and the smile which had met with unrelenting sweetness the glare of the surrounding splendor, softened in the mellow glimmer of the fire-light to an etherial halo that left you at rest.
One, two, THREE, the small clock sounded from the mantel and yet no stir took place in the sombre figure keeping watch beneath.