Norine's Revenge, and, Sir Noel's Heir

"Dangerously ill."

"And the people with whom he is will take very little care of him. He's as good as dead. Let us go in – I want to have a look at the latest English papers."

The two men passed in, out of the moonlight, off the piazza, all unconscious that they had had a listener. The pale watcher in the trailing black robes scarcely heeding them at first, had grown more and more absorbed in the careless conversation. She caught her breath quick and hard, the dark eyes dilated, the slender hands pressed tight over the throbbing heart. As they went in off the balcony, she slid from her seat and held up her clasped hands to the luminous night sky.

"Here me, O God!" the white lips cried. "I, who have aided in wrecking a noble heart, hear me, and help me to keep my vow! I offer my whole life in atonement for the cruel and wicked past. If he dies, I shall go to my grave his unwedded widow. If he lives – "

Her voice faltered and died out, her face dropped forward on the window-sill, and the moonlight fell like a benediction on the bowed young head.

CHAPTER XVI.

AT SORRENTO

The low light in the western sky was fading out; the bay of Naples lay rosy in the haze of the dying day; the soft, sweet wind floated over the waters; the fishing boats were coming in; and on this scene an invalid, looking from a window high up on the sea-washed cliff of Sorrento, gazed languidly.

For he was surely an invalid who sat in that window chair and gazed at the wondrous Italian sea, and that lovely Italian sky. Surely an invalid, with that pallid face, those spectral, hollow eyes, those sunken cheeks, those bloodless lips; surely an invalid, and one but very lately risen from the very gates of death, a pale shadow, worn and weak as a child.

As he sits there, where he has sat for hours, lonely and alone, the door opens, and an English face looks in – the face of an Englishman of the lower classes.

"A visitor for you, sir – just come, and a-foot; a lady, sir. She will not give her name, but wishes to see you most particular, if you please."

"A lady! To see me?"

The invalid opens his dark eyes in wonder as he speaks.

"Yes, sir; an English lady, sir, dressed in black, and a wearing of a thick veil. She asked for Mr. Rupert Thetford as soon as she see me, as plain, as plain, sir – "

The young man in the chair started, half rose, and then sunk back; an eager light lit in the hollow eyes.

"Let her come in, I will see her."

The man disappeared; there was an instant's pause, then a tall, slender figure, draped and veiled in black, entered alone.

The visitor stood still. Once more the invalid attempted to rise, once more his strength failed him. The lady threw back her veil with a sudden emotion.

"My God, Aileen!"

"Rupert!"

She was on her knees before him, lifting her suppliant hands.

"Forgive me! forgive me! I have seemed the most heartless and cruel of women. But I too, have suffered. I am base and unworthy; but, oh! forgive me, if you can."

The old love, stronger then death, shone in her eyes, plead in her passionate, sobbing voice, and went to his very heart.

"I have been so wretched, so wretched all these miserable years. While my father lived, I would not disobey his stern command, that I was never to attempt to see or hear from you, and at his death I could not. You seemed lost to me and to the world. Only by the merest accident I heard in Venice you were here, and ill – dying. I lost no time; I came hither at once, hoping against hope to find you alive. Thank God I did come. O Rupert! for the sake of the past forgive me."

"Forgive you!" and he tried to raise her. "Aileen – darling!"

His weak arms encircled her, and the pale lips pressed passionate kisses on the tear-wet face.

So while the glory of the sunset lay on the sea, and until the stars spangled the sky, the reunited lovers sat in the soft haze, as Adam and Eve may have sat in the loveliness of Eden.

"How long since you left England?" Rupert asked, at length.

"Two years ago; poor papa died in the South of France – you mustn't blame him too much, Rupert."

"My dearest, we will talk of blaming no one. And Guy and May are married? I knew they would be."

"Did you? I was so surprised when I read it in the Times; for you know May and I never corresponded – she was frantically angry with me. Do they know you are here?"

"No, I rarely write, and I am constantly moving about; but I know that Guy is very much beloved in St. Gosport. We will go back to England, one of these days, my darling, and give them the greatest surprise they have received since Guy Thetford learned who he really was."

He smiled as he said it – the old bright smile she remembered so well. Tears of joy filled the beautiful upturned eyes.

"And you will go back? O Rupert! it needed but this to complete my happiness."

He drew her closer, and then there was a long delicious silence, while they watched together the late-rising moon climbing the misty hills above Castellamare.

CHAPTER XVII.

AT HOME

Another sunset, red and gorgeous, over swelling English meadows, waving trees, and grassy terrace, lighting up with its crimson radiance the gray forest of Thetford Towers.

In the pretty, airy summer drawing-room, this red sunset streams through open western windows, kindling everything into living light. It falls on the bright-haired girlish figure, dressed in floating white, seated in an arm-chair in the centre of the room, too childish-looking, you might fancy, at first sight, to be mamma to that fat baby she holds in her lap; but she is not a bit too childish. And that is papa, tall and handsome, and happy, who leans over the chair and looks as men do look on what is the apple of their eye, and the pride of their heart.

"It's high time baby was christened, Guy," Lady Thetford – for, of course, Lady Thetford it is – was saying; "and, do you know, I am really at a loss for a name. You won't let me call him Guy, and I sha'n't call him Noel – and so what is it to be?"

"Rupert, of course," Sir Guy suggests; and little Lady Thetford pouts.

"He does not deserve the compliment. Shabby fellow! To keep wandering about the world as he does, and never to answer one's letters; and I sent him half a ream last time, if I sent him a sheet, telling all about baby, and asking him to come and be godfather, and coaxing him with the eloquence of a female Demos – , the man in the tub you know. And to think it should be all of no use! To think of not receiving a line in return. It is using me shamefully; and I don't believe I will call baby Rupert."

"Oh, yes you will, my dear! Well, Smithers, what is it?"

For Mr. Smithers, the butler, stood in the doorway, with a very pale and startled face.

"It's a gentleman – leastways a lady – leastways a lady and gentleman. Oh! here they come theirselves!"

Mr. Smithers retired precipitately, still pale and startled of visage, as a gentleman, with a lady on his arm, stood before Sir Guy and Lady Thetford.

There was a half shout from the young baronet, a wild shriek from the young lady. She sprung to her feet, and nearly dropped the precious baby.

"Rupert! Aileen!"

She never got any further – this impetuous little Lady Thetford, for she was kissing first one, then the other, crying and laughing, and talking all in a breath.

"Oh! what a surprise this is! Rupert my dear, my dear, I'm so glad to see you again! O Aileen! I never, never hoped for this! Guy, O Guy, to think it should all come right at last!"

But Guy was wringing his brother's hand, with bright tears standing in his eyes, and quite unable to reply.

"And this is the baby, May? The wonderful baby you wrote me so much about," Mr. Rupert Thetford said. "A noble little fellow, upon my word; and a Thetford from top to toe. Am I in season to be godfather?"

"Just in season. The name was to have been Rupert in any case, but a moment ago I was scolding frightfully, because you had not answered my letter, little dreaming you were coming to answer in person. And Aileen too! Oh! my dear, my dear, sit down at once and tell me all about it."

Mrs. Thetford smiles at the old impetuosity, and in very few words tells the story of the meeting and the marriage.

"Of course you remain in England?" Sir Guy eagerly asked, when he had heard the brief résumé of those past five years. "Of course Jocyln Hall is to be headquarters and home?"

"Yes," Rupert says, his eyes for a moment lingering lovingly on his wife, "Jocyln Hall is home. We have not yet been there; we came at once here to see the most wonderful baby of modern times – my handsome little namesake."

"It is just like a fairy tale," is all Lady Thetford can say then; but late that night, when the reunited friends were in their chambers, she lifted her golden head off the pillow, and looked at her husband entering the room. "It's so very odd, Guy," slowly and drowsily, "to think that, after all, a Rupert Thetford should be Sir Noel's Heir."

A DARK CONSPIRACY

"In love with her —I want to marry her!" cried Tom Maxwell in a fine fury. "I tell you I hate her, and I hope she may die a miserable, disappointed, cantankerous old maid!"

Striding up and down the floor, his face flaming, his eyes flashing, his very coat-tail quivering with rage – a Bengal tiger, robbed of her young, could not have looked a much more ferocious object. And yet ferocity was not natural to Tom Maxwell – handsome Tom, whose years were only two-and-twenty, and who was hot-headed and fiery, and impetuous as it is in the nature of two-and-twenty to be, but by no means innately savage. But he had just been jilted, jilted in cold blood; so up and down he strode, grinding his teeth vindictively, and fulminating anathema maranathas against his fair deceiver.

"The miserable, heartless jilt! The deceitful, shameless coquette!" burst out Tom, ferociously. "She gave me every encouragement that a woman could give, until she drew me on by her abominable wiles to make a fool of myself; and then she turns round and smiles and puts her handkerchief to her eyes and is 'very sorry,'" mimicking the feminine intonation, "'and never dreamed of such a thing, and will be very happy to be my friend; but for anything further – oh! dear, Mr. Maxwell, pray don't think of it!' Confound her and the whole treacherous sex to which she belongs! But I'm not done with her yet! I'll have revenge as sure as my name is Tom Maxwell!"

"As how?" asked a lazy voice from the sofa. "She's a woman, you know. Being a woman, you can't very well call her out and shoot her, or horsewhip her, or even knock her down. A fellow may feel like that – I often have myself, after being jilted; but still it can't be did. It's an absurd law, I allow, this polite exemption of womankind from condign and just punishment; but it is too late in the day for chaps like you and me to go tilt against popular prejudices."

It was a long speech for Paul Warden, who was far too indolent generally to get beyond monosyllables. He lay stretched at full length on the sofa, languidly smoking the brownest of meerschaums, and dreamily watching the smoke curl and wreath around his head. A genial, good-looking fellow, five years Tom's senior, and remarkably clever in his profession, the law, when not too lazy to exercise it.

Tom Maxwell paused in his excited striding to look in astonishment at the speaker.

"You jilted!" he said, "You! You, Paul Warden, the irresistible!"

"Even so, mon ami. Like measles, and mumps, and tooth-cutting, it's something a man has to go through, willy nilly. I've been jilted and heart-broken some half-dozen times, more or less, and here I am to-night not a ha'penny the worse for it. So go it, Tom my boy! The more you rant and rave now, the sooner the pain will be over. It's nothing when you're used to it. By-the-way," turning his indolent eyes slowly, "is she pretty, Tom?"

"Of course!" said Tom, indignantly. "What do you take me for? Pretty! She's beautiful, she's fascinating. Oh, Warden! it drives me mad to think of it!"

"She's all my fancy painted her – she's lovely, she's divine," quoted Mr. Warden; "but her heart, it is another's, and it never – What's her name, Tom?"

"Fanny Summers. If you had been in this place four-and-twenty hours, you would have no need to ask. Half the men in town are spooney about her."

"Fanny. Ah! a very bad omen. Never knew a Fanny yet who wasn't a natural born flirt. What's the style – dark or fair, belle blonde, or jolie brunette?"

"Brunette; dark, bright, sparkling, saucy, piquant irresistible! Oh!" cried Tom, with a dismal groan, sinking into a chair, "it is too bad, too bad to be treated so!"

"So it is, my poor Tom. She deserved the bastinado, the wicked witch. The bastinado not being practicable, let us think of something else. She deserves punishment, and she shall have it; paid back in her own coin, and with interest, too. Eh? Well?"

For Tom had started up in his chair, violently excited and red in the face.

"The very thing!" cried Tom. "I have it! She shall be paid in her own coin, and I'll have most glorious revenge, if you'll only help me, Paul."

"To my last breath, Tom; only don't make so much noise. Hand me the match-box, my pipe's gone out. Now, what is it?"

"Paul, they call you irresistible – the women do."

"Do they? Very polite of them. Well?"

"Well, being irresistible, why can't you make love to Fanny Summers, talk her into a desperate attachment to you, and then treat her as she has treated me – jilt her?"

Paul Warden opened his large, dreamy eyes to their widest, and fixed them on his excited young friend.

"Do you mean it, Tom?"

"Never meant anything more in my life, Paul."

"But supposing I could do it; supposing I am the irresistible conqueror you gallantly make me out; supposing I could talk the charming Fanny into that deplorable attachment – it seems a shame, doesn't it?"

"A shame!" exclaimed poor Tom, smarting under a sense of his own recent wrong; "and what do you call her conduct to me? It's a poor rule that won't work both ways. Let her have it herself, hot and strong, and see how she likes it – she's earned it richly. You can do it, I know, Paul; you have a way with you among women. I don't understand it myself, but I see it takes. You can do it, and you're no friend of mine, Warden, if you don't."

"Do it! My dear fellow, what wouldn't I do to oblige you; break fifty hearts, if you asked me. Here's my hand – it's a go."

"And you'll flirt with her, and jilt her?"

"With the help of the gods. Let the campaign begin at once, let me see my fair, future victim to-night."

"But you'll be careful, Paul," said Tom, cooling down as his friend warmed up. "She's very pretty, uncommonly pretty; you've no idea how pretty, and she may turn the tables and subjugate you, instead of you subjugating her."

"The old story of the minister who went to Rome to convert the Pope, and returned a red-hot Catholic. Not any thanks. My heart is iron-clad; has stood too many sieges to yield to any little flirting brunette. Forewarned is forearmed. Come on, old fellow," rising from his sofa, "if 'tis done, when it is done, 'twere well 'twere done quickly.'"

"How goes the night?" said Tom, looking out; "it's raining. Do you mind?"

"Shouldn't mind if it rained pitchforks in so good a cause. Get your overcoat and come. I think those old chaps – what-do-you-call-'em, Crusaders? must have felt as I do now, when they marched to take Jerusalem. Where are we to find la belle Fanny?"

"At her sister's, Mrs. Walters, she's only here on a visit; but during her five weeks' stay she has turned five dozen heads, and refused five dozen hands, my own the last," said Tom, with a groan.

"Never mind, Tom; there is balm in Gilead yet. Revenge is sweet, you know, and you shall taste its sweets before the moon wanes. Now then, Miss Fanny, the conquering hero comes!"

The two young men sallied forth into the rainy, lamp-lit streets. A passing omnibus took them to the home of the coquettish Fanny, and Tom rang the bell with vindictive emphasis.

"Won't she rather wonder to see you, after refusing you?" inquired Mr. Warden, whilst they waited.

"What do I care!" responded Mr. Maxwell, moodily; "her opinion is of no consequence to me now."

Mrs. Walters, a handsome, agreeable-looking young matron, welcomed Tom with a cordial shake of the hand, and acknowledged Mr. Warden's bow by the brightest of smiles, as they were ushered into the family parlor.

"We are quite alone, this rainy night, my sister and I," she said. "Mr. Walters is out of town for a day or two. Fanny, my dear, Mr. Warden; my sister, Miss Summers, Mr. Warden."

It was a pretty, cozy room, "curtained, and close, and warm;" and directly under the gas-light, reading a lady's magazine, sat one of the prettiest girls it had ever been Mr. Warden's good fortune to see, and who welcomed him with a brilliant smile.

"Black eyes, jetty ringlets, rosy cheeks, alabaster brow," thought Mr. Warden, taking stock; "the smile of an angel, and dressed to perfection. Poor Tom! he's to be pitied. Really, I haven't come across anything so much to my taste this month of Sundays."

Down sat Mr. Paul Warden beside the adorable Fanny, plunging into conversation at once with an ease and fluency that completely took away Tom's breath. That despondent wooer on the sofa, beside Mrs. Walters, pulled dejectedly at the ears of her little black-and-tan terrier, and answered at random all the pleasant things she said to him. He was listening, poor fellow, to that brilliant flow of small talk from the mustached lips of his dashing friend, and wishing the gods had gifted him with a similar "gift of the gab," and feeling miserably jealous already. He had prepared the rack for himself with his eyes wide open; but that made the torture none the less when the machinery got in motion. Pretty Fanny snubbed him incontinently, and was just as bewitching as she knew how to his friend. It was a clear case of diamond cut diamond – two flirts pitted against each other; and an outsider would have been considerably puzzled on which to bet, both being so evenly matched.

Tom listened, and sulked; yes, sulked. What a lot of things they found to talk about, where he used to be tongue-tied. The magazine, the fashion-plates, the stories; then a wild launch into literature, novels, authors, poets; then the weather; then Mr. Warden was travelling, and relating his "hair-breadth escapes by flood and field," while bright-eyed Fanny listened in breathless interest. Then the open piano caught the irresistible Paul's eyes, and in a twinkling there was Fanny seated at it, her white fingers flying over the polished keys, and he bending above her with an entranced face. Then he was singing a delightful love-song in a melodious tenor voice, that might have captivated any heart that ever beat inside of lace and muslin; and then Fanny was singing a sort of response, it seemed to frantically jealous Tom; and then it was eleven o'clock, and time to go home.

Out in the open air, with the rainy night wind blowing bleakly, Tom lifted his hat to let the cold blast cool his hot face. He was sulky still, and silent – very silent; but Mr. Warden didn't seem to mind.

"So," he said, lighting a cigar, "the campaign has begun, the first blow has been struck, the enemy's ramparts undermined. Upon my word, Tom, the little girl is uncommonly pretty!"

"I told you so," said Tom, with a sort of growl.

"And remarkably agreeable. I don't think I ever spent a pleasanter tête-à-tête evening."

"So I should judge. She had eyes, and ears, and tongue for no one but you."

"My dear fellow, it's not possible you're jealous! Isn't that what you wanted? Besides, there is no reason, really; she is a professional flirt, and understands her business; you and I know just how much value to put on all that sweetness. Have a cigar, my dear boy, and keep up your heart; we'll fix the flirting Fanny yet, please the pigs!"

This was all very true; but, somehow, it wasn't consoling. She was nothing to him, Tom, of course – and he hated her as hotly as ever; but, somehow, his thirst for vengeance had considerably cooled down. The cure was worse than the disease. It was maddening to a young man in his frame of mind to see those brilliant smiles, those entrancing glances, all those pretty, coquettish, womanly, wiles that had deluded him showered upon another, even for that other's delusion. Tom wished he had never thought of revenge, at least with Paul Warden for his handsome agent.

"Are you going there again?" he asked, moodily.

"Of course," replied Mr. Warden, airily. "What a question, old fellow, from you of all people. Didn't you hear the little darling telling me to call again? She overlooked you completely, by-the-by. I'm going again, and again, and yet again, until my friend, my fides Achates, is avenged."

"Ah!" said Tom, sulkily, "but I don't know that I care so much for vengeance as I did. Second thoughts are best; and it struck me, whilst I watched you both to-night, that it was mean and underhand to plot against a woman like this. You thought so yourself at first, you know."

"Did I? I forget. Well, I think differently now, my dear Tom; and as you remark, second thoughts are best. My honor is at stake; so put your conscientious scruples in your pocket, for I shall conquer the fascinating Fanny or perish in the attempt. Here we are at my boarding house – won't you come in? No. Well, then, good-night. By-the-way, I shall be at the enemy's quarters to-morrow evening; if you wish to see how ably I fight your battles, show yourself before nine. By-by!"

Mr. Maxwell's answer was a deeply bass growl as he plodded on his way; and Paul Warden, running up to his room, laughed lightly to himself.

"Poor Tom! Poor, dear boy! Jealousy is a green-eyed lobster, and he's a prey to it – the worst kind. Really, Paul, my son, little black eyes is the most bewitching piece of calico you have met in your travels lately; and if you wanted a wife, which you don't, you couldn't do better than go in and win. As it is – Ah! it's a pity for the little dear's sake you can't marry."

With which Mr. Warden disrobed and went to bed.

Next evening, at half-past eight, Tom Maxwell made his appearance at Mrs. Walters, only to find his fides Achates there enthroned before him, and basking in the sunshine of the lovely Fanny's smiles. How long he had been there Tom couldn't guess; but he and Fanny and Mrs. Walters were just settling it to go to the theatre the following night. There was a bunch of roses, pink-and-white, his gift, Tom felt in his bones, in Fanny's hand, and into which she plunged her pretty little nose every five seconds. It was adding insult to injury, the manifest delight that aggravating girl felt in his friend's society; and Tom ground his teeth inwardly, and could have seen Paul Warden guillotined, there and then, with all the pleasure in life.

That evening, and many other evenings which succeeded were but a repetition of the first. An easy flow of delightful small talk, music, singing, and reading aloud. Yes, Paul Warden read aloud, as if to goad that unhappy Tom to open madness, in the most musical of masculine voices, out of little blue-and-gold books, Tennyson, and Longfellow, and Owen Meredith; and Fanny would sit in breathless earnestness, her color coming and going, her breath fluttering, her eyes full of tears as often as not, fixed on Paul's classic profile. Tom didn't burst out openly – he made no scene; he only sat and glowered in malignant silence – and that is saying everything for his power of self-control.

Two months passed; hot weather was coming, and Fanny begun to talk of the heat and the dust of the town; of being home-sick, for the sight of green fields, new milk, strawberry-patches, new-laid eggs, and pa and ma. It had been a very delightful two months, no doubt; and she had enjoyed Mr. Warden's society very much, and gone driving and walking with him, and let him take her to the theatre, and the opera, and played for him, and sung for him, and danced with him, and accepted his bouquets, and new music, and blue-and-gold books; but, for all that, it was evident she could leave him and go home, and still exist.