CHAPTER III. WHAT ONE WOMAN IS CAPABLE OF TOWARD ANOTHER.
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AN hour or two before, Ellinor and Rose
Maverick had issued forth, and strolled
over the russet lawn, to enjoy the mild and
caressing airs of the autumn evening.
It was what is called “St. Martin's Summer.”
The breeze was soft, and fanned their foreheads
like the zephyrs of spring. The cutting blasts
had not whirled the brown leaves from the
trees. The year was going to his death in his
trappings of golden sunsets; mists curled
around the headlands; the moonlight, mixing
with the orange tint in the west, slept serenely
on the charming landscape.
The two girls had wandered some distance in
the shrubbery.
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The superb beauty of Ellinor was unchanged.
Her dark eyes sparkled with satirical wit, her
lips curled with irony, and the magnetic glances
kept for the male sex had given way to an expression
best described as “spiteful.”
Rose was much altered. The delicate carnation
of her cheeks had disappeared. She walked
over the russet turf with slow and languid
steps. It was the pale flower of autumn beside
the dazzling rose of summer, and the summer
flower seemed to be amusing herself at the expense
of the autumn primrose.
“What a very romantic affair! Who would
ever have believed it?” said Ellinor, satirically.
“The elegant and high-born Miss Rose Maverick
in a love-sick condition about an unknown
adventurer!”
Rose turned her head impatiently, and a
slight color came to her pale cheeks.
“I have already told you, Ellinor, that it was
unpleasant to me to be spoken to in that manner,”
she said.
“I don't believe it!” was the reply. It is not
unpleasant, my quiet little cousin! You are
proud of your romance. Come, confess! are
you ashamed of your—well, of your friend
ship for the handsome Mr. Delamere?”
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“I am not,” said Rose, firmly. “He saved
my life, as he did yours. We owe him friendship,
at least—”
“And love? Ah! you wince, my pretty
cousin. Your blushes betray you.”
Rose Maverick drew herself up with some
hauteur, but made no reply.
“Oh! there is your fine air again, my Lady
Disdain!” snarled the fair Ellinor. “If you
are not in love with him, why have you drooped
like a flower when the frost comes, ever since
that night when he disappeared so mysteriously?
Before, your spirits were excellent, and
I think the goody old people, if not the men,
liked you much better than they liked me, preferring
your “sweet smile, full of native goodness,”
one of them said, I remember, “to my
brilliant glances.” Well, where is the sweet
smile? Why do you sit for hours in sad musings?
Why have you lost all interest in your
flowers, and even forgot to feed your linnet
yesterday? I reply that you are in love—in
love with the interesting unknown!”
Rose had turned with an offended air to
re-enter the house.
Ellinor followed, goading and snapping at
her.
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“Deny it, if you dare, my romantic cousin!”
she said.
Rose made no reply. She walked quietly toward
the house, her companion beside her, and
laughing maliciously.
“Now you really ought to have taken pattern
by my insignificant self,” went on her tormentor.
“The late interesting Mr. Delamere had
the bad taste to prefer me to you. I am penniless,
only a poor girl, but he honored me by his
attentions; in spite of which I remained quite
heart-whole and not in the least romantic about
the handsome stranger. Oh, he said a number
of things to me! Did I never tell you that before?
He looked at me in such a way! He
told me at last—but here I am becoming indiscreet.
If he did not kiss my shoes, and lay
his neck down for me to place my foot upon, it
was only because he saw that I was too proper
a young lady to encourage a strange adventurer!
There is the blush again, and this time
it is an angry blush. Very well, but this is
true. He would have knelt down quickly
enough, if he had hoped I would raise him up
in my arms! And what he did do was something!
He—”
“I am weary of all this,” said Rose, stung to
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the quick. “I wonder you take such pains to
prove that you are heartless, Ellinor. You are
witty and brilliant, you think. Other persons
would call your wit ill-temper.”
The words went home and aroused in the
ironical Ellinor a good old-fashioned fit of pure
anger.
“Ah, there you are, my fine cousin!” she
cried. “You treat me, as usual, to moral and
scriptural abuse. Thank your ladyship! But'
tis enough for the present. I'll go home now
and hear the rest of the sermon on another occasion.
Thank you!—I am `ill-tempered'!
Oh, yes! And all because I refer to what
everybody is speaking of! I say what everybody
is speaking of, madam!—your lovesick
state of mind all about this unknown stranger,
Mr. Delamere! The very neighbors laugh at
it! You have no pride, they say. They wonder,
as your family wonder, that you should
thus honor a person of unknown position and
blood, that ever since he disappeared in that
mysterious, and, I must say, very suspicious
manner, you should have mourned him and
cried about him, and loved the very chair he
sat in! That is all I have to say, madam! `Illtempered'!”
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And the fair Ellinor tossed her head in superb
wrath.
“I'd like to know what I have said to expose
myself to that insult!” she added. “ `Illtempered'!
and all because I laugh at your
infatuation about an adventurer!”
“Mr. Delamere was not an adventurer!”
was Rose's cold response.
“What, then, was he? this charming stranger,
whose amateur fishing excursions terminated so
mysteriously, and so very suspiciously.”
“I see no mystery and no ground for suspicion
in his disappearance,” was Rose Maverick's
response. “You know as well as I do, Ellinor,
that he has been missing since the night of the
attack on Westbrooke Hall, when the Viscount
Cecil was carried off. It is nearly certain now,
as you know equally well, that this attack was
made by a party of Frenchmen from a vessel,
in the channel, and that their object was to abduct
persons of rank to hold as hostages.”
“Pray what has that to do with it, if I may
address a question without offence to your
ladyship?”
“Simply this. Mr. Delamere was returning
from his visit here to Oldport, on the night of
the attack. On the next morning he had disappeared,
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and his horse was found grazing in the
fields. Nothing further is known; but it is certainly
reasonable to suppose that he too was carried
off,—since his dress, demeanor, and all
connected with him, you will not deny, indicated
that he was a gentleman. As such he
was worth attention. He was seen no more.
Is it so improbable that the French people captured
him?”
“A fine theory, indeed!”
“It is at least more charitable than to conclude
that he was an adventurer and disappeared
as he came,—“mysteriously.”
“You defend your protegé well, madam.”
“I take the part of the absent, who are defamed.”
“And the absent thanks you!” said a voice
in the shrubbery, very near them.
The young ladies recoiled, and uttering exclamations,
gazed with affright toward the
shadow.
A figure wrapped in a cloak advanced. The
face was pale, thin, and worn, but resolute and
stern.
It was Earle.
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Cooke, John Esten, 1830-1886 [1871], Out of the foam: a novel. (Carleton, New York) [word count] [eaf517T].
