CHAPTER VIII.

ACCEPTED.

‘Why do you go up to the convent every morning, dear? It is far too long a walk for you.’

I was standing in the little _salle_, holding Ange’s hot hand in my own. Six days had elapsed since Master Fred Stephenson had appeared and so mysteriously disappeared from amongst us, and on each one of them Ange had toiled up to the Convent des Petites Sœurs, which was situated on the brow of a hill, two miles on the road to Artois, and not come back again until it was time for dinner.

I believed that in her feverish and unsettled state of mind, and with her loose notions of theology, she was doing some sort of penance to satisfy her self-accusing conscience, and I so much wished that the dear child would open her mind to Tessie and me instead, and let us give her all the sisterly counsel in our power. But each day she seemed to shrink more and more from us, as well she might, whilst that man was persuading her to stain her fair soul with the blot of deceit.

But there were other reasons for my trying to dissuade Ange from going to the convent. She was very far from well, or fit for the exertion. Whether it proceeded from mind or body, I could not tell, but since the day she had overheard Madame Marmoret’s speech to her father, in the courtyard, she had been quite unlike her former joyous, light-hearted self. Her cheeks were always either unnaturally flushed or unnaturally pale, she complained of a dull headache, and all the bounding elasticity I had so much admired seemed to have deserted her limbs. She was very particular about her religious services at this time, poor dear little Ange, spending an hour almost every evening in the church of St. Marie, and poring over her Bible long after Tessie and I had gone to rest.

Still, neither religion nor exercise and fresh air made any palpable difference in the appearance of the little maid, and I felt sure that something was very wrong. My expostulations on the subject with Tessie only brought to light another instance of Mr. Lovett’s selfishness. She looked very grave over the details of her sister’s symptoms, but was afraid to mention them to her father, because it would seem as though Ange required a doctor, and there was none nearer than Rille.

He visited St. Pucelle once a week, and when he next came she would ask him to prescribe for Ange; but to send for him especially to visit her was to entail an expense which she was sure ‘dear papa’ could not afford. The time was past for disguising my sentiments in Tessie’s presence, and I told her plainly what I thought on this occasion.

Yet she was too timid to move in the matter. ‘Dear papa’ had evidently inspired her with so much wholesome dread of provoking his annoyance, that she preferred to shut her eyes to the fact of there being any danger in delay. But all this time I am standing in the inner _salle_ with that little hot feverish hand in mine.

‘Why must you go to the convent, Ange?’

‘There is no particular necessity, Hilda,’ she answered, yet she would not meet my eyes as she did so, ‘but it is a pleasure to me, and I feel as if I could not breathe in the house this weather. I know all the sisters well, and their parlours are so cool and pleasant. I feel like another creature inside the convent walls.’

‘I hope you are not thinking of joining their community, Ange?’

‘Oh no—oh no!’—with a vivid blush; ‘I am not good enough.’

‘I don’t know about that, but we certainly can’t afford to lose you! However, if you are bent upon going this morning, may I go with you?’

A startled look came into her eyes.

‘Into the convent, do you mean?’

‘No! not so far as that! Only to walk to the gates with you.’

‘Oh! do, Hilda! I shall be very glad of your company. It is a lonely path over the hill.’

So I was mistaken, after all, and had wronged the little maid in thinking that Mr. Charteris must be her cavalier on these occasions.

We walked together through the blazing light over the fern covered hill, and conversed pleasantly on all the topics that interest young women most. Once I tried to sound her on the subject of Charteris, but she shrunk from it so visibly that I had not the heart to try again. It was as if I had plunged a surgeon’s probe into a bleeding wound.

When I had kissed her pretty face for the last time, and left her behind the great iron grille of the convent, I could not help believing that my former supposition was correct, and Ange was brooding over the prospect of shutting herself up for ever within its walls. This idea worried me sadly. It would be like a living death for her!

And what else but the burden of a committed wrong could have made Ange’s thoughts turn that way? Could she have discovered more of her father’s pecuniary affairs than Tessie and I knew of? and did the knowledge of disgrace and debt weigh her mind down to that extent that she longed to bury herself from the sight of the world? Or did the poor child imagine that the burthen of one less to keep and provide for would be of any substantial benefit to the family purse?

These questions occupied my mind for half the way back again—until I came, indeed, upon a figure in a velveteen shooting-suit, stretched out at full length upon the thyme-scented grass, and lazily inhaling the light breeze that was wafted across the stream in the valley, and just lifted occasionally a curl of dark hair from his brow.

It was that of my French master, Armand, Baron de Nesselrode.

I feel I have reached a point when I must make a confession—namely, that since the memorable day upon which I was frightened by the dog-wolf on the Piron road, I had received more than one French lesson from the gentleman in question. I had never made a single appointment with him for the purpose; but he seemed to be ubiquitous, and to pop up wherever I went, so that although the verbs I mastered with him were _accidentals_, I had acquired quite a remarkable fluency in conversation, and never felt at a loss to express what I meant.

He said I learned quicker than anybody he had known before; but I suppose, if ‘practice makes perfect,’ there was not so much credit due to me as he would have made me believe. Once I remember I stopped to ask myself if I were studying the French language so diligently _for Tessie’s sake_, and I was fain to answer ‘No.’

Indeed, I am afraid that by this time Tessie’s interests had been withdrawn from the firm altogether. She was very stupid so I inwardly decided; she would not come forward and make the best of herself in the Baron’s presence, and in consequence it was impossible he could discover what a good wife he would gain in her, and so I had given them both up as a bad job.

If people _wouldn’t_ find out what was best for themselves, it was useless wasting my time upon them. So Tessie’s merits had ceased to be dragged in by the head and shoulders, as a topic of conversation between Armand and me, and we only talked of such things as were most agreeable to ourselves.

‘Well, monsieur,’ I exclaimed, as I came up with him, ‘and what may you be doing here?’

‘I followed you, mademoiselle.’

‘That is a pretty confession! How could you tell I had come this way?’

‘I saw Mademoiselle Ange and you leave the curé’s house together.’

‘And so you have been dogging our footsteps,’ I said, as I threw myself down on the grass he had just quitted.

The Baron accepted my action as an invitation to resume his seat.

‘It is about time you accounted for yourself,’ I continued jestingly. ‘I don’t think we have seen you for two whole days.’

‘Is it only two days?’ he said, in a melancholy voice. ‘It seems like two weeks to me.’

‘Why, monsieur, what is the matter with you? Not moping again, I hope! I thought you promised me to be brave and keep your heart up, in hope of better times.’

He sighed deeply.

‘That was a week ago,’ he answered.

‘And what of that? You are talking mysteries to me.’

‘Mademoiselle,’ said the Baron, suddenly changing the topic, ‘do you remember telling me the day we talked together on the road to Piron, that there is no “stooping” in honest labour?’

‘I do.’

‘I have thought much and earnestly of your words since then. I look back on the years that have passed since my great misfortune, and I see they have all been spent in idleness and waste of mind and body! I cannot recall them: they are gone and done for: they must be left to give their own account hereafter. But for the few that remain before I hope to take my station in society again I am determined, if possible, not to blush. I have made up my mind, mademoiselle. I am going to work.’

‘I am sincerely glad to hear you say so!’ I exclaimed.

‘If you are glad, it is all I ask. I will try to be glad also.’

‘But what are you going to do?’

‘I wrote to a friend at Court some weeks ago, telling him all, and asking his assistance to procure me fit employment until I should hold my own again. His answer arrived three days back. In it he offers me the post of _Ministre d’affaires_ in—in—Algiers.’

‘_Algiers!_’

As I repeated the word after him, all the broad smiling landscape of hill and dale and stream which lay spread out before me seemed to be enveloped in a black mist that hid it from my view. A hoarse sound like the rushing of water was in my ears, and a horrid ‘whirring’ like wheels in my brain; then it all cleared off again. The sun broke out over the valley, my senses had returned; but I thought that the earth would never look the same to me again.

‘Do you not congratulate me?’ inquired Monsieur de Nesselrode, quietly. ‘It is a charming climate, I understand, and the place is peopled with French. The salary is almost nominal, so are the duties; but the position is one that I can accept without blushing, and I shall, at all events, have an arena for work amongst my countrymen, small as it may be.’

‘Yes.’

‘Does not the appointment meet your views for me? Will it not be better than dragging out four more years of idleness and false shame at the Château des Roses?’

‘Oh yes.’

‘I am not capable of much at present, you know, whatever I may be hereafter. You—in the goodness of your heart and friendship—may think me fit for a higher post, but I feel I am not. I have crippled my powers by nonusage: I must crawl now before I can fly. Perhaps, after a year or two, I may be fit for something better than the ministration of affairs in such a place as Algiers.’

‘I am sure you will.’

I was so angry with myself for not being able to say something better to him than this. I saw he wanted encouragement to take up this paltry appointment in a strange country. He had applied for it solely on my recommendation, and now that it had come, I had no words in which to praise and thank him for the compliment he had paid to my advice.

But Algiers—a place so far removed from all his friends, and replete, as I ignorantly imagined, with dangers from climate and people—I did not expect that my counsel would have taken so unwelcome a form.

‘You do not congratulate me, mademoiselle,’ he repeated presently. ‘Do you not consider the prospect a good one?’

‘Oh yes,’ I answered nervously; ‘very good indeed—that is, it is rather far from here, is it not, monsieur?’

‘It is very far,’ he said gravely. ‘I do not suppose, when I have once left it, that I shall ever see St. Pucelle again; for the remembrances of the old château have no charm for me. A few weeks back, I would have declared myself ready to bear anything sooner than go to Algiers; but things that have come to my knowledge lately have made me think that the greater distance I put between myself and this place the better.’

‘Have you any fresh trouble?’ I inquired anxiously, for he was my best friend in St. Pucelle, and I had come to be interested in all that befell him.

‘Yes, a very deep trouble!’

‘What is it, monsieur? Will you not tell me?’

He turned round upon his side, so that his face could look directly into mine.

‘If I tell you, will you promise not to be angry with me, nor to feel less my friend than you do now?’

‘I promise!’

But there was an expression in his eyes that made me drop my own, I could not look at him.

‘Remember, before I speak, how much I wish you well. Hilde!’ (he had never called me by that name before), ‘if I could give you happiness by cutting off my right arm, I would do it at this moment. So that I am really and honestly glad to know that you are glad. The pain only is mine, _amie chérie_; and I can bear that bravely, so long as all is well with you.’

‘Monsieur, I do not understand what you mean!’

‘When this appointment was first offered me, I thought I could not take it. I thought it would be impossible to leave St. Pucelle and you. But only a few hours afterwards I met Mademoiselle Markham, and she told me all about your _affaire de cœur_, and I was happy it should be so; only I felt I could not stay and see it.’

‘What did she tell you?’ I asked quickly.

‘That you are _fiancée_ to Monsieur Sandilands. Ah, you need not blush, Hilde! It is all right if you wish it so. But for me it is better I should go to Algiers, and forget the pleasant times that we have spent together.’

‘Armand!’ I said vehemently, ‘it is a lie! I am not _fiancée_ to Mr. Sandilands, nor to anybody.’

How his face changed from quiet melancholy to radiant hope. The dullest eye might have interpreted that look.

‘What!’ he exclaimed. ‘You are free!’

‘I _am_ free.’

‘And you are sorry I am going to Algiers?’

‘I _am_ sorry!’

I do not know if there ever lived any women in this world (such as some novelists depict for us) who could cast away the whole of their lives’ happiness for want of a single word to clear up a misunderstanding—but if so, I am not one of them. Armand de Nesselrode looked me full in the face as he put that question, and I should have been ashamed of myself, if I had not answered him truthfully.

‘Hilde!’ he said passionately, ‘will you go with me?’

Then I felt that my woman’s victory was won, and I could afford to be silent and let silence speak for me.

‘I should not have dared to ask for this,’ he went on rapidly, ‘had it not been for the sweet encouragement your words have given me. You have told me that you despise wealth in comparison with love; that you rank a true heart and a strong arm above any earthly advantage, and that you think my honour still unstained. Will you take me, then, beloved Hilde, a poor man, disgraced in the eyes of the world, and with nothing to offer the woman he would make his wife, except a true affection and an earnest desire to prove himself worthy of hers? Oh, Hilde! do not keep me in suspense. I have loved you ever since the day you prayed for me in St. Marie?’

I raised my eyes and looked at the dear face lifted so pleadingly to my own, and felt that nothing on this earth could repay me for the loss I should sustain in losing him.

‘Armand,’ I said tremblingly, ‘I must go with you to Algiers—because I don’t pronounce French half as well yet as you would wish to hear me do it, you know!’

And then I put my head down in my hands and burst into tears, from sheer excess of happiness.

I shall not write down here how he soothed me. Were I not my own biographer I might be able to tell it, but from the moment Armand said he loved me, our affection has been too sacred a thing for me to make public. In half an hour we were still sitting on that grass, chatting away as if we had been engaged for years, and making all sorts of plans for the future.

I confided to him my money matters and Mr. Lovett’s strange dealings with me regarding them, and he told me how much his card transactions with the reverend gentleman had got him into debt, and how he proposed to liquidate it so that we might start free when we were married.

And we mutually agreed not to say a word of what had passed between us that morning, until after Mr. Warrington’s visit had been paid to St. Pucelle, and my affairs with my guardian set straight again.

‘Oh, how charming it was sitting in that lovely sunlight, and talking of the happy days to come! Algiers no longer seemed a horrid desert, situated a thousand leagues away from St. Pucelle. Our love had drawn it closer, and peopled it with pleasant forms and faces, until it looked like fairyland! I had but one regret amidst my pleasure: that my dear mother had not lived to see it! Bear witness for me, best beloved of parents, that you were not forgotten in your lonely grave in Norwood at that most ecstatic moment of my existence, for the tears ran down my cheeks as I recalled your love for me, and I told Armand what he had lost in never knowing it.’

‘I will be thy mother and thy father and thy everything to thee, _chérie_,’ he answered, with the sweet _tu-toy_ that sounded like music in my ears; ‘only let me wipe away those tears, and see my Baronne smile again!’

It was difficult to remain subject to any melancholy long, whilst under the influence of Armand’s new-born happiness. His face positively beamed with joy. I had never caught even a glimpse of such an expression on his countenance before.

‘I let thee go, my Hilde!’ he said, when I had persuaded him that after four hours’ absence from the house I ran the risk of being questioned as to how I had spent my time, ‘but I shall count the moments till we meet again.’

‘But thou wilt never feel lonely now, Armand,’ I replied. ‘Thou wilt look forward to the future we shall spend hand-in-hand.’

‘I shall look forward to the time, my friend, when the angel who watches over me shall fold her wings upon my heart,’ he answered.

It is very nice to be called an angel! I almost believed I was one by the time we got back to the house. But we had to walk with the utmost propriety through the town—at least three feet apart—and to bow to each other most politely as we parted at the door.

‘Art thou sure thou art not _fiancée_ to Monsieur Sandilands?’ whispered Armand, as he doffed his hat to me, and the look of perfect happiness upon his face as he said so, gave me the strangest joy my life had ever known.

[Illustration: [Fleuron]]