CHAPTER III.

The last chapter was parenthetical, this takes up the broken thread of the story.

Breakfast over, and her sisters gone their several ways, Lucy Charlmont seized the ‘Times’ Supplement and read the Hartley-Durham paragraph over to herself:—‘On Monday the 13th, at the parish church, Fenton, by the Rev. James Durham, uncle of the bride, Alan Hartley, Esq., of the Woodlands, Gloucestershire, to Everilda Stella, only child and presumptive heiress of George Durham, Esq., of Orpingham Place, in the same county.’

There remained no lurking-place for doubt. Mr. Hartley,—‘her’ Mr. Hartley, as Jane dubbed him,—had married Everilda Stella, a presumptive heiress. Thus concluded Lucy’s one romance.

Poor Lucy! the romance had been no fault of hers, perhaps not even a folly: it had arisen thus. When Miss Charlmont was twenty-one Lucy was eighteen, and had formally come out under her sister’s wing; thenceforward going with her to balls and parties from time to time, and staying with her at friends’ houses in town or country. This paying visits had entailed the necessity of Jane’s having a governess. Miss Drum had by that time ‘relinquished tuition,’ as she herself phrased it, and retired on a comfortable competence earned by her own exertions; therefore, to Miss Drum’s school Jane could not go. Lucy, when the subject was started, declared, with affectionate impulsiveness, that she would not pay visits at all, or else that she and Catherine might pay them separately; but Catherine, who considered herself in the place of mother to both her sisters, and whose standard of justice to both alike was inflexible, answered, ‘My dear’—when Miss Charlmont said ‘my dear’ it ended a discussion—‘My dear, Jane must have a governess. She shall always be with us in the holidays, and shall leave the schoolroom for good when she is eighteen, and old enough to enter society; but at present I must think of you and your prospects.’ So Jane had a fashionable governess, fresh from a titled family, and versed in accomplishments and the art of dress, whilst Catherine commenced her duties as chaperone. Lucy thought that her sister, handsomer than herself and not much older, might have prospects too, and tried hard to discover chances for her; but Catherine nursed no such fancies on her own account. Her promise to her dying mother, that some one of them should always be on the spot at Brompton-on-Sea, literally meant at the moment, she resolved as literally to fulfil, even whilst she felt that only by one not fully in her right mind could such a promise have been exacted. Grave and formal in manner, dignified in person, and in disposition reserved, though amiable, she never seemed to notice, or to return, attentions paid her by any man of her acquaintance; and if one of these ever committed himself so far as to hazard an offer, she kept his secret and her own.

Lucy, meanwhile, indulged on her own account the usual hopes and fears of a young woman. At first all parties and visits were delightful, one not much less so than another then a difference made itself felt between them; some parties turned out dull, and some visits tedious. The last year of Lucy’s going everywhere with Catherine, before, that is, she began dividing engagements with Jane,—for until Lucy should be turned thirty, self-chaperoning was an inadmissible enormity in Miss Charlmont’s eyes, in spite of what she had herself done; as she said, her own had been an exceptional case,—in that last year the two sisters had together spent a month with Dr. Tyke, whose wife had been before marriage another Lucy Charlmont, and a favourite cousin of their father’s: concerning her, tradition even hinted that, in bygone years, she had refused the penniless army surgeon.

Be this as it may, at Mrs. Tyke’s house in London, the sisters spent one certain June, and then and there Lucy ‘met her fate,’ as with a touch of sentiment, bordering on sentimentality, she recorded in her diary one momentous first meeting. Alan Hartley was a nephew of Dr. Tyke’s—handsome, and clever on the surface, if not deep within. He had just succeeded his father at the Woodlands, had plenty of money, no profession, and no hindrance to idling away any amount of time with any pretty woman who was pleasant company. Such a woman was Lucy Charlmont. He harboured no present thoughts of marriage, but she did; he really did pay just as much attention to a dozen girls elsewhere, but she judged by his manner to herself, and drew from it a false conclusion. That delightful June came to an end, and he had not spoken; but two years later occurred a second visit, as pleasant and as full of misunderstanding as the first. Meanwhile, she had refused more than one offer. Poor Lucy Charlmont: her folly, even if it was folly, had not been very blameable.

The disenchantment came no less painfully than unexpectedly: and Lucy, ready to cry, but ashamed of crying for such a cause, thrust the Supplement out of sight, and sitting down, forced herself to face the inevitable future. One thing was certain, she could not meet Alan—in her thoughts he had long been Alan, and now it cost her an effort of recollection to stiffen him back into Mr. Hartley—she must not meet Mr. Hartley till she could reckon on seeing him and his wife with friendly composure. Oh! why—why—why had she all along misunderstood him, and he never understood her? Not to meet him, it would be necessary, to decline the invitation from Mrs. Tyke, which she had looked forward to and longed for during weeks past, and which, in the impartial judgment of Miss Charlmont, it was her turn, not Jane’s, to accept; which, moreover, might arrive by any post. Jane she knew would be ready enough to pay a visit out of turn, but Catherine would want a reason; and what reason could she give? On one point, however, she was determined, that, with or without her reasons being accepted as reasonable, go she would not. Then came the recollection of a cracker she had pulled with him, and kept in her pocketbook ever since; and of a card he had left for her and her sister, or, as she had fondly fancied, mainly for herself, before the last return from Mrs. Tyke’s to Brompton-on-Sea. Treasures no longer to be treasured, despoiled treasures,—she denied herself the luxury of a sigh, as she thrust them between the bars of the grate and watched them burn.