Chapter VII: The Daughter of Nox

'And you have actually found us out--here? How strange!' exclaimed Ellinor, blushing deeply with pleasure and surprise.

'Through my appreciative friend--appreciative in art, I mean--who bought your charming landscape, the view of that dear old--what is it?--Linn--Linn of the May--yes, darling,' replied Sleath--Sleath the slimy, with the china-blue eyes and Mephistophelian smile, as he twirled out his tawny moustache, and regarded the girl with a passionate expression rippling over his face. '_Après moi le deluge!_ you will think, perhaps; but now, darling Ellinor, that I have found you at last, we must not part again.'

Ere leaving Birkwoodbrae Ellinor had felt mortified, even insulted, on finding that Sir Redmond, after the night of the frustrated elopement, made no sign that he remembered her existence; but the moment she saw him the barriers she had mentally raised between them fell at once, and she no more sought, as she had done of late, to erase him from her heart.

Poor foolish Ellinor!

'I had ever a hope,' said Sleath, caressing her, 'that I would come upon you suddenly again, and take you by surprise with the earnestness and passion of my love; and, Ellinor, the time has come--thank heaven, the time has come!'

And he cast his eyes upward and sighed sentimentally to the ceiling.

'An age seems to have elapsed since that night,' he added.

'I was at the appointed place,' said Ellinor, softly, and colouring deeply.

'So was I,' said Sir Redmond.

'And why--why----'

'Did I not appear, you would ask?'

'Yes--though perhaps it was as well not now.'

'I was pinned by the leg by that accursed brute of your sister's.'

'Jack.'

'D--n him--yes! Pardon me; but there was something grotesque, humiliating, and exasperating in the whole episode.'

'I was certain it was thus; but--but why did you never write to me?'

'Never write to you!' exclaimed Sleath, with well-feigned surprise; 'you left--what's its name--Birkwoodbrae----'

'Early in September.'

'Exactly--that is the reason you did not get my letters.'

'You wrote, then?' exclaimed Ellinor, her soft face brightening with pleasure.

'A score of letters, and they were all returned to me from the Post Office,' replied Sleath, unblushingly.

So Ellinor thought, 'I have wronged him; it was but a short time ago since this man loved me passionately, and so he must love me still. No love worthy of the name would die in a couple of months.'

'I always wrote in fear, too, dearest Ellinor.'

'Fear of whom?'

'Of your sister--of that old devil-dodger Wodrow, that sly, spying fellow Colville--my uncle, too, who is ailing still, but whose wealth will all be ours--ours, Ellinor! In my heart of hearts I have ever looked forward to the time when--on finding one who loved me truly--I should settle down into a quiet life and be happy, in a cottage near a wood, and all that sort of thing if necessary, my wants are so few--so simple; but that is not required; we shall have a mansion in Belgravia, a moor in the Highlands, a bog in Ireland for the snipe shooting, a place in the Midlands, and a yacht at Cowes, and heaven only knows all what more--when my uncle dies.'

And as he folded her caressingly to his heart and nestled her face in his neck, the poor little fool believed every word he uttered; and then Sleath began to talk to her of that dangerous and fascinating past--the days of their early meeting among the Birks of Invermay.

Even while caressing and fondling her, his practised eye took in the whole details of the room in which they were seated, with its furniture and appurtenances. There was an air of poverty--even meanness--he thought (for his eye was accustomed to luxury and splendour) within the place, and this, with the ugly and sordid prospect without, as seen through the windows, encouraged him greatly in his insolent and daring projects.

He would try again to carry off the girl somehow--anyhow and without delay. Who was to punish him, or who was there to protect her?

That 'cousin' story of Colville's was, of course, all bosh! The very circumstance of her residence in such a place as Paddington proved it to be so.

By a man of his address and past experience in all manner of worldly rascality, her timidity, coyness, or scruples must, he thought, be eventually overcome. He had entered stakes on the race; he would not readily drop out of the hunt--the pursuit of a helpless girl; if it did not redound to his credit, it would at least afford him pleasure, and if successful would flatter his vanity, for her beauty was undoubted.

Moreover, he strangely felt somewhat revengeful for the trouble she had already given him, and to this sentiment the downfall of her pride and the destruction, if possible, of her delicacy and purity of nature would be soothing to his spirit.

Even amid his caresses and love-making there was an easy insolence in his manner, born of his innate and perverse vulgarity of race and nature, and encouraged by the girl's unprotected condition, without parents or brothers; but it was so veiled that poor Ellinor never suspected it till he said, with something of irritation in his manner,

'As for the old devil-dodger, we do not require his consent now, I suppose?'

'Who--what?' asked Ellinor, with perplexity.

'Doctor Wodrow--the psalm-singing old beggar.'

'Do not speak of him so irreverently,' said Ellinor, imploringly; 'he made a pet of me from my infancy, and I love him as if he was my father.'

'Oh,' said Sir Redmond, jealously, 'and his son, too, I suppose?'

'How can you speak to me thus?' asked Ellinor, as the agonised face of the young hussar she had seen in the park came upbraidingly before her. How little Sleath knew or appreciated the depth of her pure, innocent, and dreamy nature, albeit that, through fanning her ambition, he had taught her to be false to Robert Wodrow.

After a pause, resuming his softest tone, he said, while holding her hands in his, and looking fondly and admiringly down into her soft hazel eyes,

'Then, dearest, you will, as before, consent to a private marriage?'

'If Mary will give me permission,' replied Ellinor, slowly and with hesitation.

'Mary--is she your keeper?'

'She is my dear and only sister.'

'But--but will she accord her permission?'

'I can only hope so.'

'If not?'

'Then we can but wait.'

'My uncle's death, for he will never consent.'

'It is a sad event to look forward to.'

'Very,' replied Sleath, with difficulty repressing a smile; 'but I cannot wait.'

'There must be no running away--no attempt at eloping again,' said Ellinor, firmly.

Sir Redmond thought of Jack's teeth, and looked nervously and furtively about him.

'Jack is with Mary,' said Ellinor, who detected the glance.

'As you will--what you please, darling, so that you'll be mine. I'll see a sky-pilot--I mean a clergyman--on the subject,' he added, thinking that, after a little coaching, Gaiters might officiate in that capacity; but then how about the registrar and a church? 'Well, that is agreed upon, and we shall soon be one.'

To change the subject for a time, that he might consider the further development of his nefarious scheme,

'How on earth did you come to select such a queer locality as this to reside in?' asked Sleath, looking with genuine surprise at the humble but neat apartment, where, however, there were now many traces of ladies' hands and work.

'It was a chance. We were, and are, so ignorant of London.'

'And your landlady--you have one, I suppose?'

'Is the kindest, most attentive, and dearest old thing; not that she is very old either. And she has seen better days, it would seem.'

'Of course. I never knew a landlady who had not. And so she is kind to you?'

'And to Mary--unvaryingly so.'

'Ah, I must thank her for all this.'

'Here she comes to lay the tea things. Mrs. Fubsby,' said Ellinor, as the latter entered the room, 'this is the gentleman who bought----'

'Fubsby!' interrupted Sleath, in a dismayed tone. 'What the devil--Seraphina Fubsby!'

'Gentleman!' shrieked Mrs. Fubsby, letting her tray fall crash with all its contents on the floor. 'Villain! double-dyed villain, do we meet again--again after all these years?'

'She is mad!' said he, starting to his feet and keeping the table between herself and him.

'This is Sir Redmond Sleath!' exclaimed Ellinor, in tones of terror and explanation.

'The same man who married me under the name of Redmond, and then deserted me in France. My husband at last, after all these years of cruel desertion.'

'Your husband?' said Ellinor, in a voice like a husky whisper.

'Yes; and look at the white-faced craven. He does not deny it. Listen, Miss Ellinor, though what has brought him here I know not. No good, you maybe assured. I was waiting-maid to Lady Dunkeld in Paris when he and I became acquainted on the Boulevards, and he married me under the name of Redmond.'

'You married me, you mean, or thought you did, you artful and accursed Jezebel,' exclaimed Sleath, choking with rage.

'Oh, what is all this I hear?' moaned Ellinor, overwhelmed with horror, dismay, and humiliation.

'The bitter truth, young lady,' said Mrs. Fubsby, beginning partly to take in the situation.

'You have no proofs now of what you say, you infernal Jezebel, who in your maturer years entrapped me in my boyhood!' thundered Sleath.

'No proofs!'

'No--the old devil-dodger--the curé who performed the ceremony, as I suppose you will call it, was shot in the days of the Commune.'

'True, but the records of his chapel still exist.'

'What is all this to me?'

'You will soon learn to your cost, now that I have discovered you under your true name.'

As related, Mrs. Fubsby (who had resumed her maiden name) was not without personal attraction; but she was wasted in aspect, though only about forty--perhaps forty-five--years of age; and now her dark eyes were ablaze with rage and grief. Thus she spoke the truth when she said,

'I was a pretty young woman, Miss Ellinor, when I first met this wretch in human form; but disappointment, disgust, neglect, and shame, too, have all made me what I seem now--old-looking, wasted, and blasted!'

At this crisis Robert Wodrow came upon the scene. Entering abruptly and unannounced, he regarded the trio with extreme bewilderment. He saw Mrs. Fubsby, whom he knew not, convulsed with just indignation; Ellinor in tears on a sofa, her bowed face hidden in her hands, her whole air that of one completely crushed, and sitting gathered in a heap, as it were; while Sleath, pale with rage, spite, and baffled knavery, was about to withdraw.

Robert Wodrow never stopped to make any inquiry. He could only conceive one thing--that Ellinor had been somehow insulted or wronged. All the jealousy, fury, and hatred that had so long swelled in his heart now gushed up in fiercer heat, and, endued with thrice his usual strength thereby, he sprang upon Sleath, grasped him by the collar behind, and, with many a kick and heavy lash of his riding-switch thrust him from the room, down the stair, and headlong into the street, where by one final impetus from his foot he flung him in a half breathless heap by the kerbstone, and then closed the house door.

Gathering himself up quickly, Sleath hastened away, registering a truly infernal vow of vengeance--a vow all the deeper that it was unuttered.

Thus had light been suddenly and luridly thrown on the great secret of his life--the secret which prevented him from raising his eyes to Blanche Galloway, as stated in the fifth chapter of our first volume--which he dared not do as a married man.

He was decidedly unfortunate in his views regarding Ellinor Wellwood; and now the daughter of Nox--inevitable Nemesis--had overtaken him!

Panting with exertion, and with something of a grim laugh, Robert Wodrow returned to the room, muttering to himself,

'He'll not forget that last kick with my regulation boot, in the region of the _os coccygis_. By Jove, I haven't forgotten my Quain and Turner! And now to find out what all this was about.'

We need scarcely say that Ellinor's soul almost died within her at the contemplation of the two narrow escapes she had from ruin and despair!

Robert Wodrow literally ground his teeth when he heard of all that had just transpired.

He looked worn and haggard, and amid her own mortification Ellinor's heart bled for him, for she knew that his life had been crushed by her; while she was ever to him

'His love that loved him so,
His love who loved him years ago.'

'I don't think, Ellinor, said he, 'that even in my dear old governor's "Analecta" would he find a quotation suitable to this fellow's rascality; but I agree with Calvin and Knox in their views of some men.'

'How?'

'That they are born to be damned, and this fellow Sleath is one of them.'

'If men or women are bad they often become so through the faults of each other,' said the landlady; 'but I'll bring my man to book if there is law to be had in London.'

And now Mary arrived, accompanied by her faithful four-footed friend, who recognised Robert Wodrow, despite his hussar uniform, and was profuse in his delight, leaping almost to his face at times.

The minutes of this farewell interview sped like lightning!

Robert Wodrow, without a thought of himself, had always loved Ellinor in the past, and he loved her still, 'for true love can live even in despair,' says a writer; but true love is scarce as the phœnix; and he had for Ellinor, despite her ill-usage of him, all the reverence that went out with the age of chivalry.

'I am going far away,' said he, while hot tears rolled over the cheeks of both girls, and his own too; 'and when we meet again, if ever--if ever, Ellinor--we shall both be old and cold perhaps--old in experience, and--thank God--cold in heart--old and cold, and feeling none of the bitterness of an hour like this!'

A few days after the public prints announced the departure of the Hussars for India, and the sisters thought sadly that, too probably, never would they see or hear of Robert Wodrow again.