CHAPTER X.

THE FAIR WIDOW.

While waiting on the door-step he looked a little contemptuously at the female ornament, though it was suggestive of a slender and a pretty wrist; but suddenly the expression of his face changed. He had either seen that gold bracelet before, or one most strangely like it, with a similar circle of diamonds round a large emerald; it gave him some curious, angry and bitter thoughts.

'Mynheer, did you knock?' asked a servant, rousing him from his reverie; and the General then became aware that the door was open, and a flood of warm light was streaming from a chandelier through a stately entrance-hall beyond.

He made known his errand, asked for the young lady, and was ushered into the drawing-room, which at that moment was untenanted.

Then, as now, the Dutch drawing-room was deemed a kind of sanctum or state-room, entered but seldom, the chief glory of which is always its highly-polished floor; so much so, that in some parts of Holland the visitor is still obliged to take off his shoes, or be very careful how he cleans them before admittance is granted.

In the aspect of the mansion there was much that indicated a substantial account at the Bank of Amsterdam; but that was as nothing to General Kinloch: he never thought of it.

By the light of a large lamp, the General had only time to remark that on the walls hung some clever and brilliant flower-pieces by De Heem, Huysum, and others, when Dolores stood before him, still clad in the brilliant costume she had worn at the ridotto, and looking radiantly beautiful.

Though surprised by the visit, she was glad to see her preserver so soon again. Her heart was full of intense gratitude for the succour he had afforded her, and she felt conscious that in her confusion and perturbation of spirit she had not shown enough, or half enough, of gratitude to him; yet he had saved her from a fate that would have been worse than death.

With a low bow he tendered her the bracelet, with a few well-chosen words of explanation.

'Thank you, dear sir, a thousand times!' she exclaimed; 'it was mamma's, and its loss would have grieved me much. To whom am I indebted for all this kindness?'

'My name is Kinloch--General Kinloch, at your service, Colonel-Commandant of the Scots Brigade,' he replied with another profound old-fashioned bow.

Lewie's uncle--the terrible General--the ogre, as she had been wont to call and deem him! The breath of poor Dolores was quite taken away with surprise.

'Mamma is a widow,' said she after a pause; 'you must see her and receive her thanks. A widow and very beautiful,' she added in thought, with the hope that the Countess might win the favour of this grim soldier for Lewie and herself.

'A widow,' repeated the General, with an unmistakable grimace, and with ill-suppressed cynicism in his voice; 'oh, indeed!' and he thought with a writer who says, 'A widow smacks of the charnel-house; she either did love her husband, or she didn't; and in either case who would care to be his successor?'

The Countess at that moment entered the room and came forward with one of her brightest smiles; but suddenly she paused, and the smile faded out of her beautiful face. Kinloch returned her bow with a startled air, and to the acute eyes of Dolores it seemed that a recognition, that was no common one, took place between her mother and the General.

For a time--but a very little time--amid her terror and dismay at the attack made upon herself, Dolores had forgotten the Earl of Drumlanrig's startling intelligence about Lewie's departure for foreign service; but now the memory of it returned in full force, and she looked coldly and earnestly yet distrustfully upon the General as their mutual enemy.

'Mamma,' said she, 'this is the gentleman of whom I told you, and who saved me from my assailants.'

'My daughter is under the greatest of obligations to you--how can I thank you, General Kinloch?' added the Countess, presenting her hand, which he touched slightly, but with reluctance and hesitation.

'Mercedes,' said he; 'you recognise me, then!'

Both were agitated and pale; but the Countess was the first to recover herself.

'What--you know each other, and he even knows your name!' exclaimed Dolores with blank astonishment.

Finding a necessity for speaking, the Countess thanked him for the service so promptly and gallantly rendered to her daughter, and expressed no small indignation at the daring of Maurice Morganstjern and his abettor; but while she spoke the General listened to her as one in a dream, while the sorely puzzled Dolores looked wonderingly on.

The original of the miniature now concealed in a secret drawer of the Dutch cabinet before referred to, treasured for years through all his alleged misogyny, was again before him.

'It is long since we met,' said the Countess.

'And--parted,' replied the General, in a hard voice.

'You have attained high rank now.'

'I was but a lieutenant in Halkett-Craigie's Battalion, _then_,' said he pointedly.

'Sir, I pray you to be seated,' and he mechanically took the chair indicated by a motion of her pretty white hand; 'you are not much changed since--since----'

'And you are scarcely changed at all.'

In the lovely matron, in ripe and full womanhood, he had recognised her in a moment--the girl of the hidden miniature, the early love of his youth, Mercedes who had deceived him, who had well-nigh broken his heart and embittered his whole existence.

The golden-brown hair his hands had once loved to fondle and toy with, seemed now more golden than ever, as it was sprinkled a little with brown _marchale_, in the fashion of the day; but Dolores, in advance of it, wore her rich hair without any such doubtful accessory, and simply brushed backward over a low toupee that showed the contour of her low, broad, and beautiful forehead.

Twenty years had come and twenty years had gone since he last looked on them, yet in the eyes of Mercedes was the old subtle influence, in her voice the old subtle power; and he felt both so keenly--so intensely--that the thrill which passed through the heart of Kinloch amounted to--if we may use a paradox--a joyous pain!

Memories of the past time, by the Berbice river--memories sweet and sad and thrilling--were coming back with strange and curious force; the past returned, the present fled, and much that both had thought was long since dead, was reawakened within them.

'Mamma!' exclaimed Dolores, with irrepressible impatience and curiosity; 'you know General Kinloch! you have met before!'

'Yes, Dolores darling--my heart certainly tells me so,' replied the Countess, colouring deeply.

'Heart!' said the General; 'madame, the heart is an obsolete organ, in this our eighteenth century.'

'Perhaps it is too late in life to assume you can have any interest in me now; but if you will not, even once, take my hand kindly in yours, I shall think that it is not wounded love, but wounded pride, that inspires you still.'

The Countess spoke sweetly, and with one of her brightest and most caressing smiles.

He pressed her little hand for a moment; it was a mighty advance for the General to do so, but the touch sent a thrill to his heart, and he thought how absurdly young she looked to be the mother of Dolores!

'Good heavens!' that young lady was thinking, 'wonders will never cease.'

So the courteous gentleman, the brave Scottish soldier who had saved her--Lewie's terrible uncle--was her mother's early lover!

'The past is gone,' said the General gravely and sadly, and making an effort to withdraw, and yet staying nevertheless; 'so let us not tear open an old wound.'

'Pardon, and permit me to heal it, if I can,' said the Countess coquettishly, as she touched his bronzed hand with her lovely lips, and at this touch he trembled; so Dolores, saying something about taking off her ornaments, withdrew and left them, wonder and joy mingling in her heart together, while the General made an effort to appear indifferent, and to speak calmly, an effort in which he, eventually, signally failed.

'It is strange, madame,' said he; 'but I have lived so completely in camp and caserne, that I knew not that Mercedes--the Mercedes of other days, and the Countess van Renslaer, of whom my nephew speaks so much, were one and the same.'

'My husband, the Lieutenant----'

The General coughed, and said interrupting:

'Whom you preferred to poor John Kinloch of the Scots Brigade--well?'

'Died soon after succeeding to his title--a Flemish one--and I have been a widow since.'

'All these years?'

'All these years.'

Her long dark eyelashes flickered as she looked coyly at him, and then cast them down.

'I have never cared for another woman since _that_ time,' said the General after a pause; 'and I never shall if I lived for--for--as long as the Brigade has been in Holland--and that is two hundred years.'

She laughed, but noiselessly; for she knew that when he began to talk thus, how his thoughts were wandering, and that he might, after all, begin to think that his future, for pleasure or pain, lay in the little white hands of the charming widow before him--of herself--the Mercedes of his early days by the Berbice river.

'As for the Count----' she began, but paused, for the General made a gesture of impatience, and playing with his sword-knot, said:

'Well, you married him, and not John Kinloch. You are a free woman now; would you like to take my heart in your toils again, Mercedes, to make sport of it after all these years?'

'Do not speak to me thus,' said she in her most seductive voice, as she touched his hand caressingly; 'I say too, after all these years, do not be so implacable. Ah! what must I think of you?'

'Think what you please.'

Again the long lashes flickered, and the snow-white eyelids drooped.

The General felt his position was becoming imperilled, that he 'was getting his flanks turned,' and so forth; and he rose to retire.

But the General resumed his seat, and began to look a little vacantly and helplessly about him.