Chapter VII: “The evil that men do lives after them.”

_Julius Cæsar._

Ida flew away. Violet addressed a few polite observations in French to _ma bonne_, and received some English answers, and then Ida returned with her father.

“I will let you out by a shorter way than you came,” he said, after a stiff inclination of his head, “if you will be good enough to come with me. Ida, wish Miss Osborne good-bye.”

She obeyed, and Violet followed Sir William. He fetched his hat, and accompanied her through a glass door into the garden.

“I have to thank you for coming,” he then said, “and I hope it is a visit that will be often repeated.”

“I will certainly come again, if Miss Hamilton likes it,” Violet said.

“She likes it of course; but I was thinking of higher things than liking. My daughter has been much neglected. I have not perhaps thought on the subject as I ought.”

“That is very plain,” Violet thought, but she made no remark.

“I can conceive no better thing for her, Miss Osborne, than your society; such as I hear of you, such as I see you to be.”

He spoke stiffly and formally; but Violet loved praise, and her heart beat with its accustomed pleasure at the sound.

“You know very little of _me_,” she said, however; “but I can fancy that any society that was not bad would be good for Miss Hamilton in the lonely life she leads.”

“We may differ on that point; but be it so. I request from you the benefit of that society for her--at your leisure of course, and convenience.”

“I will certainly come when I can.”

He thanked her; then cleared his throat and hesitatingly said:

“There is a subject on which I wish to say a few words. I believe you have this day seen, been present, I mean, at an interview which may have surprised you.”

“It certainly did,” Violet said frankly. “Miss Hamilton is young for the discussion of such subjects.”

“True; but it was inevitable. May I beg of you to bear that in mind, and to sanction the intercourse permitted and encouraged by me.”

“I am not going to be Miss Hamilton’s governess,” she said smiling. “Pray do not speak of my sanction, or I shall be afraid to visit her.”

“Yet I repeat the word,” he gravely replied. “You are a person, Miss Osborne, evidently accustomed to think and act for yourself. Supposing you to disapprove of the course I am pursuing, I can imagine that your disapprobation could not and would not be confined to your own mind.”

“I would try not to interfere with arrangements with which I have no business,” she answered, becoming interested in the conversation. “But perhaps you are right. I might show my feelings more than I intend. May I ask one question? Is Miss Hamilton bound? Supposing her, supposing Mr. Vane to dislike the engagement, at some future day, may they break it?”

She spoke eagerly.

“I am, I trust, no tyrant, Miss Osborne. If such a desire is expressed, it will then be time to consider the subject. At present we are all bound, whether we will or no. Will you allow me to make known to you a few circumstances connected with this scheme.”

By a shorter path through the pleasure-grounds they had now almost reached the gates into the high road, but Sir William paused in his walk and waited for a reply.

“I am in a hurry to get home,” Violet said, feeling some distaste to a lengthened walk; but at the same time, curiosity prevailing, she said, “still, if it would not take you long, I could wait for a few minutes.”

“I need not detain you long, and I may not have another opportunity. Be so good as to return a few steps.”

They turned backwards, and in as few words as it was possible to make himself understood, he related the following circumstances. His manner was grave and cold during the chief part of the conversation, but on one or two occasions a degree of feeling approaching to agitation might be seen in his countenance and heard in his voice.

Lady Hamilton and Lady Ashford were sisters and co-heiresses; but Lady Hamilton, the elder sister, had a double portion of fortune, and of other gifts likewise; of mind, of body, and of manner. In early days Lord Ashford, a young man with extravagant tastes, and fortune small for his position in life, hearing the fame of her wealth, had sought her out. He sought her for her wealth, but, when he found her, loved her for herself, and for those charms of body and mind in which she excelled. Though of an unsteady and careless disposition, he had many good qualities, and considerable powers of pleasing, and after a time he prevailed upon her to consent to be his wife. But though she consented, her heart was not with him. In the previous year she had met Sir William Hamilton, and to him her first love had been given. Pique at his apparent indifference had made her resolve to conquer her fancy, and with some hesitation to admit the attentions of a new suitor. It happened that after her engagement to Lord Ashford, and during the delay which the settlement of her large fortune produced, she met Sir William Hamilton again, and discovered that shyness and pride had been the secret of his apparent indifference, and that he loved her. This discovery made her marriage abhorrent to her; and though the day was approaching, she, being at this time of age, and her own mistress, broke it off with impetuous haste, and, to avoid persecution and lengthened observation, almost immediately afterwards, with like haste, married Sir William.

Lord Ashford had really loved her, loved her passionately; and though he did not act as if such was the case, his actions were in fact prompted by the bitterness of his heart. Not many months after her marriage, he married her sister. His necessities drove him to seek for money, and he fancied that he, by this act, was revenged on her for her faithlessness. And it was a revenge and a bitter punishment, for the misery of her sister nearly broke her heart. This sister was a timid, gentle, well-meaning, but weak girl. Her character and feelings were not strong, but they were impressible. When Lord Ashford went to her to be comforted, she gave him her pity and her heart; and when he further asked for her hand, she could not withstand his entreaties. She was warned that he did not love her, but she was not given to think much of herself. She pitied him, married him, and he broke her heart.

His love for Lady Hamilton, and her superior qualities, would most probably have steadied him; but Lady Ashford had no power to work upon him, except gratitude, and that was shortlived. He neglected her; she withdrew into herself, pined in secret, and finally turned to Heaven for support and comfort. The strong religious principles which thenceforward guided her might have been brought in time to bear on him; but unfortunately she learnt her views in a narrow school, and instead of exciting his admiration, he called her strait-laced, and held her in contempt. They separated more and more, and though occupants of the same house, she was sometimes for weeks together uncheered by his presence.

Lady Ashford had a son a year or two after her marriage, but Lady Hamilton was seven years without a child. After the birth of her daughter, she fell into weak health; and in the brooding state of mind--the effect of a weakened body and weakened nerves--which followed, she allowed a remorse that, however just in itself, was exaggerated in its degree, for her conduct to Lord Ashford, to fasten on her imagination. She saw that it had exercised a fatal influence on his character, that it had caused the unhappiness of her sister, and with the warped and biassed views of an impulsive nature and awakened conscience, she became desirous of purchasing forgiveness, and becoming the healer of the blow she had inflicted. In one respect the plan she adopted was a safe one. Her sister’s fortune, though large, had been insufficient for the exigencies of Lord Ashford’s property and the gratification of his expensive tastes. She knew that money was a constant source of anxiety to him, and was therefore the point by which his ill-regulated mind could be touched. Her desire, therefore, was to restore that of which she had deprived him, through the union of her daughter with his son. Having won Sir William’s consent (for he was so fondly attached to her, that in her then state of health he could deny her nothing), she made known her wishes to both Lord Ashford and her sister, and met from both a ready acquiescence. From her sister because she loved her and trusted in her wisdom and experience; from Lord Ashford because he saw the advantages of the plan, and because in an interview with Lady Hamilton, her words and manner soothed the bitterness still rankling in his heart, and rendered him also unable to resist her. A solemn engagement was entered into by all the parties concerned, the minutest particulars of the arrangements were legally drawn up and signed, and Lionel and Ida were brought up to consider themselves bound.

“And now,” Sir William said, when he had concluded his narration, “you will not blame me, I hope, for the circumstances in which I am involved.”

“I have no right either to praise or to blame,” Violet said, very decidedly; “and I am glad of it. It is not a case in which I should like to have any responsibility.”

“But you will not, I hope, so far refuse your sanction as to decline to visit my daughter. I thought it best to be open with you, but I should regret my openness if it withdrew your society from her.”

Half gratified, half-provoked at his pertinacity, Violet replied that she saw no reason to make any change. She had said she would be glad to be of use to Miss Hamilton, and she adhered to what she had said.

He gravely thanked her, observing,

“Should it happen, therefore, that Lionel Vane visits my daughter during such times and hours as your kindness may bestow upon her, you will not express any disapprobation?”

“Oh! certainly not!”

He thanked her again, and then added:

“This engagement is known to few. I did not wish to subject either party to scrutiny and observation. They are cousins, that suffices for the explanation of their intimacy. May I therefore beg of you, Miss Osborne, to consider what I have said as spoken in the strictest confidence, and spoken to you alone.”

“You may depend upon it,” Violet said, quickly, for her discretion, her freedom from girlish gossip, was one of the points in her character of which she was slightly vain.

“Then I need detain you no longer. Thank you for hearing me.”

They were again near the gate, and bowing formally, he withdrew.

Violet hurried homewards, the tale she had heard occupying her mind. Though far more concisely put than in the above pages, Sir William had given force and vividness by choice of words, tone, and manner to his narrative, and it had excited her interest in no small degree. Engaged in ruminating on the circumstances, it was not till she came in sight of home that it struck her she had been heedless in her promise of secresy. It flashed across her that she was full young to be entrusted with such secrets apart from her parents. The thought flashed, was disagreeable, and was put by with the reflection that what is done can’t be undone. She had been hasty, but unless she had an opportunity of renewing the conversation, it was too late to retract. Naturally open and communicative, she found herself several times in the course of the evening perplexed how to answer her father’s questions, and internally fretted at the bondage imposed upon her; but before she went to bed a chance observation of Mr. Osborne’s reassured her mind, and disposed her to think she had been wise.

He was speaking of a story he had been reading, in which a secret had been kept for years in a remarkable manner.

“It would have been different if I had been there,” he said, in his good-humoured, easy way; “when a secret is entrusted to me, unless I am really put upon oath, I find myself alluding to it the next half hour. People have such a habit of saying, ‘don’t mention this,’ that for the life of me my puzzled head never knows what is to be published and what is not.”

“The best way, papa,” observed Violet sagely, “is not to publish anything.”

“But, my dear child, life would be unbearable under such circumstances. I would rather be a convict in chains.”

“Then you can’t expect to hear my secrets,” she gaily said.

“Yours, darling? Your own, do you mean? I think I will promise to keep yours; but tell me no others, not even Mr. Pope’s, if he entrusts them to you. I shall be sure to allude to them at an improper moment.”

“I don’t believe you,” she said, kissing him, and wishing him good night; “but I shall take warning by what you say;” and her conscience went quietly to sleep.