CHAPTER I.

The hidden traynes I know, and secret snares of love; How soon a look will prynte a thoughte, that never may remove.

Lord Surrey.

At the period when our story commences, Lord and Lady Westhope had been married sixteen years. Theirs had been a love-match. The love had lasted on the part of the lady at least seven years and three months; but on that of her lord not quite seven months and three weeks, from the wedding-day.

Lord Westhope had then been thrown with the handsome but designing Lady Bassingham, who made an easy conquest of his heart; which conquest she retained till the rustic bloom of Lucy Meadows, his wife's new maid, eclipsed the somewhat faded charms of the lady of fashion. When weary of Lucy Meadows, he became deeply smitten with the Honourable Miss Asterby, the young beauty of the day, who indulged her vanity in listening to the compliments of a married man, and allowed him to monopolise more of her conversation than was either judicious, or prudent.

To these succeeded another and another object, selected from every rank and condition of life.

During the six years, seven months, and one week, which Lady Westhope's love survived that of her husband, she had undergone tortures of jealousy, anger, indignation, and mortification. At the end of this time she made up her mind to her fate, and bore his infidelities with tolerable composure. Henceforward their domestic life was very peaceable. The wife no longer reproached and wept; and the husband was exceedingly gay and good-humoured.

But now began trials of another sort to Lady Westhope. She was extremely handsome: her beauty was of a sort to be more striking at twenty-five, than at eighteen. Her husband was known to be faithless--she was soon found to be indifferent. All vain and idle young men consequently aspired to her favour. It need not be added, that the number was prodigious!

But though she had been disappointed in her hopes of being loved, she resolved to pass through life admired and respected. She would set the world the example of a beautiful and neglected wife, defying the breath of slander, repressing every sign of admiration, and pursuing her course uncontaminated by the profligacy around her. A word, a look of encouragement, would have brought any of these aspiring youths to sigh at her feet; but on none did she deign to bestow a glance--firmly and calmly did she check the first symptom of preference which might be evinced towards her.

She was not blessed with children, but she had many female friends; and to her cousin, Lady Blanche De Vaux, she was warmly attached. Lady Blanche was fifteen years younger than herself, and her affection for her young cousin combined something of a maternal character, with the ease and companionship of two women who were both in the perfection of womanhood; for Lady Westhope at thirty-four had scarcely lost any of her beauty, and Lady Blanche at nineteen was in the fulness of hers.

The Westhopes were going to Paris; and Lady Westhope proposed to Lord and Lady Falkingham, that their daughter, Lady Blanche, should accompany them. Lady Falkingham had gone through the toilsome duties of chaperonage for a series of years, during which she had successfully disposed of her elder daughters in marriage. She was not sorry, therefore, to repose from her labours, and to entrust the youngest to the care of so unexceptionable a person as her niece, Lady Westhope.

To Paris went Lady Blanche, in all the buoyancy of youth; escaped for the first time from the trammels of an education in which no possible accomplishment had been neglected, and the vigilance of the most correct of mothers. She was enchanted with the Louvre, full of admiration at the beauties and grandeur of Paris; amused with the theatres, the Champs Elysées, with Tivoli--with everything; and entered with spirit and gaiety into the agreeable society which is nowhere to be found in greater perfection than at Paris.

Lady Westhope was also amused and interested; and, for the sake of Blanche, mixed more generally with the world than it was her custom to do.

Lord Westhope also amused himself very much; but how, we do not exactly know.

Independently of their rank and their situation, the beauty of our two cousins would have rendered them no inconsiderable personages among the English at Paris. Lady Westhope's skin was whiter than snow,--her hair blacker than the raven's wing,--her form full and graceful,--her manner calm and self-possessed: had she been unmarried, it might have been thought cold, perhaps haughty;--as a matron, it was dignified. Lady Blanche's clustering curls, and hazel eyes of the same rich dark brown as her hair, the mantling glow of her blooming cheek, her slender form and elastic step, possessed all the graces of youth, while her countenance beamed with animation, joy, tenderness, and each emotion that rapidly succeeded the other in her bosom.

Among the many slight preferences, incipient flirtations, and positive love-makings, which took place in the set to which Lady Westhope belonged, none was more decided than that between the beautiful Lady Blanche and Captain De Molton. She was a romantic, enthusiastic girl, peculiarly calculated to feel the attractions of a man who was formed to figure as a _héros de roman_. He was very tall,--he was pale,--his features were marked, but they bore an expression of melancholy and of feeling. The qualities of his mind corresponded with his exterior. Lofty, uncompromising rectitude, was combined with acute feelings, which, as his appearance indicated, were more calculated to work him woe than weal. A look of sentiment, though to the old and wary it may portend no happiness either to the possessor or to those connected with him, is often to the young and gay more attractive than the most joyous liveliness.

Captain De Molton was in love--desperately in love with Lady Blanche. But he knew he was poor: he knew that if he was to offer her all he had--_i.e._ his whole undivided affections, Lord and Lady Falkingham could not in conscience allow their daughter to accept him. He therefore confined himself to watching her while she was talking to others; he did not allow himself to occupy the seat by her side. If by chance he was betrayed into any expression of his feelings, he studiously avoided her for the next twenty-four hours; and, by so doing, he flattered himself he was playing the part of a martyr. He fancied he was only endangering his own peace of mind; he believed he so completely concealed what was passing within, that hers could run no risk. He had not the self-sufficiency to imagine he could win a heart he did not attempt to gain. But these very starts of passion, these inconsistencies, these uncertainties, the air of intense melancholy which at times overspread his countenance, were more dangerous to a person of Lady Blanche's disposition than the most open and decided attentions.

She could not think he was indifferent towards her; yet she was piqued by his occasional avoidance, touched by his air of intense melancholy, delighted with the fire which gleamed from his eye when she addressed him, and with the smile which, when it did light up his countenance, was bright and dazzling as the sunbeam after a summer-storm.

In short, while intending to preserve her heart from the sentiment which possessed his own, he unconsciously acted with the most consummate coquetry--

"Piqued her and soothed by turns."

Things were in this state, when Captain De Molton's particular friend, Lord Glenrith, arrived at Paris. He was immediately struck with Lady Blanche's beauty, and fascinated by her manners. He was an eldest son, and heir to a fine property. He was extremely good-looking--his character was excellent--as a _parti_ he was unexceptionable.

De Molton, with a lover's quickness of perception, read Lord Glenrith's feelings almost before he was aware of them himself; and he thought it would be a crime to stand in the way of an union which would be advantageous to Lady Blanche, and which must indeed make the happiness of his best and earliest friend. Although it was almost agony to see Glenrith constantly occupy at dinner the place he resolutely did not take, and to see him whisper soft nothings into her ear, which it would have been rapture to him to utter; though it was maddening to see Glenrith act as her escort on all morning excursions, when he seldom dared approach; still a sort of fascination bound him to the spot. It was with trembling anxiety that he watched Lady Blanche's reception of his friend's attentions, with pain which he could not control that he marked anything which might be construed into encouragement on her part; but it was with most unreasonable joy that he perceived her listen to him with cold indifference, and sometimes that he caught her eye glance towards himself while Lord Glenrith was by her side.

Any doubt he might entertain as to his friend's real intentions was soon set at rest by his one day confiding to him that he was very much attached to Lady Blanche, that his parents wished him to marry, and that he had made up his mind to propose, as soon as he felt sure of the lady.

This annunciation fell as a final death-blow on De Molton's hopes--if hopes they might ever have been called. "Yet Glenrith spoke doubtfully of her reception of his offer--and Glenrith is not usually over-diffident of himself," thought De Molton in the midst of his despair. Still he felt it would be folly, madness, to linger in the society of Lady Blanche. In all probability she would soon be the affianced wife of his friend. It would be base and treacherous in him to attempt to circumvent that friend--cruel to sport with her feelings; and now that Glenrith had spoken thus confidentially, there was nothing left but to withdraw himself from witnessing the prosecution of a suit, in the probable success of which he felt he ought to rejoice, while his spirit recoiled from the bare anticipation of such a result.

Accordingly he told Lord Glenrith that he was suddenly recalled to England on particular business. He seated himself in the cabriolet of the Calais diligence, and took his weary way to his native land with the most profound adoration of wealth--with the most ardent aspirations for honour, rank, riches, and all the good things of this world--that he might, without folly, or presumption, be entitled to throw himself at the feet of Lady Blanche.

Lady Westhope's duty, as a wise chaperon, would have been to discourage in every way the attentions of Captain De Molton, and to foster those of Lord Glenrith. She meant to do so,--she thought she did so. She constantly repeated to Blanche how impossible it was that Captain De Molton should ever propose, how impossible that he should be accepted, how totally impossible that they could ever marry--or that, if married, they could have bread to eat; and she thought she had done her duty. But the spectacle of a man, sincerely, ardently, respectfully, and hopelessly in love, was to her feelings, naturally warm, though she had encased them in an armour of coldness and reserve, so interesting a sight, that she could not help treating him and speaking of him as a person formed to win the heart of woman. All those who had formerly seemed inclined to pay her attention, she had from the very beginning treated with such repelling coldness, that she had never been exposed to the trial of witnessing real and sincere emotions strongly excited. In the desolation of her own secret soul, the sight was tantalising and painful. She could not help envying Blanche the power of calling them forth, nor could she help looking back with a sigh upon the blank of her own loveless career. She would have given anything for Aladdin's lamp, that she might have endowed young De Molton with the worldly wealth which could have secured to them the fate from which she was herself cut out.

The few months they passed at Paris had a sensible effect upon the minds of both the cousins. Lady Blanche for the first time felt love. She also felt keen mortification--for to nothing does love more completely blind its victim than to the sensations experienced by the object beloved. While Lady Westhope saw in Captain De Molton an interesting and high-minded young man struggling with a hopeless passion,--in short, while she accurately read, and was able to appreciate, his feelings,--Lady Blanche thought him cold, indifferent, capricious, and frequently doubted whether indeed he entertained any preference at all for her.

In Lady Westhope's mind a great change also had taken place. Perhaps the example of all around her (for, whatever the propriety of French women under the new _régime_ may be, the conduct of English women, when once they have crossed the Channel, is not such as to impress foreign nations with a high idea of the morality for which we would fain be thought remarkable), perhaps the more easy footing of society abroad, combined to produce in her vague aspirations after an interchange of sincere affection: visions of mutual love, devotion, attachment, &c.--notions against which, for nine years, she had been shutting her ears and barring her heart--again found entrance to her bosom.