Marrying for Money. A novel

Front matter

Pr. SsMj/s Iuto SttbfitH&ms. IN THE PRESS. In 3 vols., price 31s. (sd. (In February). THE CLIFFORDS OF OAKLEY. By the Author of " Constance Dale." In 3 vols,, price 31s. 6d. (In February.) SCAPEGRACE AT SEA. By the Author of " Cavendish," " The Flying Dutchman," <tc, <fcc. In 2 vols., price 21s. (In February.) \ THE WOMAN OF SPIRIT. In 3 vols., price 31s. Gd. (In March.) RIGHT AND LEFT. By Mrs. C NEWBY, Author of " Mabel," " Sunshine and Shadow," &c. In 3 wife, price 31s. Gd. (In March.) YORKE HOUSE. By W. PLATT, Esq., Author of " Betty Westminster," Ac. In 2 vols, price 21s. (In March.) THE DULL STONE HOUSE. By KENNER DEENE, Esq. In 2 vols., 21s. (In March.) MORTEFONTAINE; OR, A MARRIAGE AT THE MADELEINE. By the Chief of Clandouchadt of Mar. In 1 vol., post Svo. ANCIENT POETRY: WITH SOME FRESHER.

By WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR. A NOVEL. By MRS. MACKENZIE DANIELS. AUTHOR OF ".MY SISTER MINNIE," " FERNLEY MANOIt," " OUK GUARDIAN," " OUR BROTHEU PAUL," &C, &C. IN THREE VOLUMES. VOL. III. ILonton: T. CAUTLEY NEWBY, PUBLISHER, 30, WELBECK STREET, CAVENDISH SQUARE. 1862. [The Right of Translation is Reserved.]

Chapter I

This was the letter that had come to multiplv poor Violet's troubles, and the partial reading of which had occasioned so much excitement and distress. " My darling Violet, " My heart aches at the thought of the bitter grief and anxiety which I know too well will follow what I have to communicate, but it must be told, and I can only pray earnestly that my dear child may be supported and vol. tii. B comforted under it. Two days ago, your poor mother was seized quite suddenly with entirely new and very alarming symptoms. For a few hours we feared that every breath would be her last, and Mr. Jones, whom we were obliged to summon, gave us little hope that she would live through the night. We thought it useless to write to you then, as there appeared so small a probability of her surviving till you could arrive, and indeed the whole household was in a state of confusion and bewilderment, and poor Rosamond herself for the greater part of the time, insensible.

Towards morning however, she rallied surprisingly, and Mr. Jones was more hopeful about her — -at least he said she might last several days, and that it would be a pity to frighten you unnecessarily. The moment your mother became conscious, she asked if we had sent for you, and on being told that we had not done so yet, she desired us to wait till the next day. ' Write however,' she added, ' to Sir George and Horace, and beg them to come to me immediately. I shall never leave my bed again, and it will be an unspeakable comfort to me to see my poor child happily married before I die.' Of course, dear, we have not touched upon this matter in our letters to the north, but I must not dis guise from you that your mother's mind appears curiously and resolutely bent upon it ; and foreseeing that you would have to be sent for in a day or two, and that Miss Powis might not be ready to accompany you, we have asked Sir George to call for you • on his way down, since he must pass through London, and it will be nice for you to have such an unexceptionable escort.

This morning poor Rosamond is a shade better than yesterday, but she still speaks of her end as quite close at hand, and was very thankful when she heard of the arrangement we had thought of for Sir George to call for you. According to our calculations he will be with you about the middle of the day that you receive this. I cannot write more, as our poor sufferer has been asking for me. God bless you, my dear, b dear child ! I wish I could think that you were committing all your trouble to Him, Violet.— " Ever your very affectionate and loving Aunt, "Lucy." Miss Po wis' s first care was to restore Violet to consciousness ; it was the only time she had ever seen her faint, and though she believed it to be simply the result of a sudden shock upon a frame already weakened by excitement and fretting, she was still considerably alarmed, and looked almost as white as Violet herself until she saw the poor child open her eyes, and endeavour to raise herself from her com panion's supporting arms.

" Now Heaven be praised !" exclaimed Susan, kissing Violet (a ceremony she was by no means given to) and beginning to cry hi her grateful excitement at having so soon brought her round. " I thought you were going to fasten your wings on, and fly away for good and all. Bless the girl ! how unearthly she looks. Here, drink a drop of this wine and water — do now, and then you'll feel like another person. What's in that stupid letter on the ground ? I havn't had time to think of it yet. Are they all dead or dying at the Rosery, or has Aunt Martha run off with the bachelor curate ? " Here a sudden burst of passionate tears interrupted her, and Violet buried her white face in her hands, murmuring, — ■ " Oh mama, mama, poor mama! " Then Miss Powis picked up the letter and read it aloud, execrating her own ill-timed levity, and really sympathizing heart and soul with the twofold grief she was very sure this un fortunate epistle had brought to the weeping girl beside her.

As soon as Violet's emotion had in some degree exhausted itself, she lifted her head abruptly, and spoke in apparent obedience to a sudden thought which had brought a little life blood for the moment into her grief stricken face. " Miss Powis, those letters, my letters, they did not go, did they ? " " No, my dear," replied Susan, mis interpreting her anxiety, " I have been too busy about you to think of any letters ; but don't be uneasy, they shall be in the post in less than five minutes." u Oh no, no," said Violet in a voice that was resolute for all its faintness, " they must not go at all now ; don't you know what aunt Lucy has written ? Can I think of self in any way after that ? Ah me ! there is indeed no help for me either in earth or Heaven." Her tone and look both expressed such utter, piteous hopelessness, that Susan was deeply affected, and she was just considering whether there was any single thing she could do or say to afford her the smallest consolation, when Violet, having swallowed the wine and water, abruptly rose from her chair.

" I must be doing now, however, not think ing," she said with a quiet decision that greatly astonished Susan; "it is nearly eleven o'clock, and Sir George may be here by twelve. I will not keep him waiting when he comes. While I pack my box, Miss Powis, will you kindly order some luncheon to be prepared for him ? ' ' " Some luncheon — only to think of you remembering that. Poor child, poor child ! but I shall return home with you, Violet. I should be utterly miserable here alone, and not knowing what was going on." Violet laid her hand impressively on Su san's hand, and her eyes had an entreating look in them through all their deep sad ness — "Miss Powis — please to stay a little longer — until Marcus is gone. It will be such a great comfort to him to have you here, and you know he has no other friend.

I will write to you myself every day." " Well, well, I'll stay if you wish it, and indeed I had forgotten that poor dear fellow for the moment. Am I to give him any message from you, Violet?" " No — no message, only tell him the con tents of aunt Lucy's letter, and he will understand everything." " To be sure he will — he has understood from the first that there was no hope for him — more's the pity, for he's worth but there, there, what's the good of talking this non sense ? May I come and help you pack, my girl?" " Oh no, thank you," Violet said quickly, " you know I have scarcely anything to do, and for just a little while, I should like to be alone." Miss Powis did not disturb her for more than an hour, and then the hurriedly prepared luncheon was on the table, and a gentle man, who had travelled many miles since day break, waiting for Violet to come down, ere he satisfied the demands of hunger.

" My dear," said Susan presenting herself at the bed room door, " as I see your box is ready, will you come and get something to eat? I suppose you heard the double knock ten minutes ago. Your escort is anxiously expecting your appearance, and the train you will go by, starts at two precisely." "I am coming immediately," Y'iolet replied, turning from the window where she had been standing, but which did not look into the street. " I had no idea Sir Gorge had arrived. Does he say that Mr. Seymour has gone on to Silverton ?" " My dear, it is Mr. Seymour himself who has come for you. Sir George was very anxious about your mother, and went straight down without stopping." Violet said not a word, and her face, per fectly colourless before, retained the same deathlike hue, nevertheless Susan felt con vinced that no minor event could just now have troubled her more than this unexpected substitution of the son for the father.

Horace received his betrothed with a look of b quiet sympathy, and an absence of " many words " that Violet was especially grateful for. The manifest suffering her appearance betrayed, he of course associated with the sad tidings of the morning, and while he urged her to partake of the refreshments spread be fore them, he avoided (with an intuitive sense of propriety) any special reference to her care worn face, or to those weary, listless move ments which, from physical as well as mental exhaustion, A7iolet was quite unable to con trol. During the rapid journey that followed, his care for her in every way was assiduous though unobtrusive. There was no attempt to make her talk, or to rouse her even tem porarily from the profound dejection that seemed growing upon her. Whenever any thing could be done for her comfort or con venience, Horace was on the watch to do it, but otherwise he let her be, and appeared, except on the occasions just referred to, en tirely absorbed by his own reflections.

Kindness received in the day of gladness and prosperity, may make a strong impression at the moment, but it is very soon forgotten, whereas kindness received (no matter from whom) in the sorrowful and dark day, becomes a portion of the memory itself, and must, un less the recipient be of the lightest or hardest nature, bear its fruit in the coming years, and be reckoned back, with rich interest, to the bestower. Horace Seymour obeyed but a natural instinct in being kind and considerate to Vio let at this time. He was by no means a par ticularly benevolent person, but he had a certain courtesy of mind as well as of manner which is often mistaken for benevolence ; and besides this he was gifted with a fine tact, especially rare in men, and scarcely ever pos sessed in union with great intellect.

He did not himself attach the slightest importance to the attentions he rendered to the poor girl who was coming under the shadow of so great an affliction, and he would have thought gratitude for a prettily worded compliment concerning her bright eyes, much more natural than for any little matter-of-course kind ness that her present situation exacted. But Violet judged differently, and it was well for Horace hereafter that she did so. The winter evening had quite closed in by the time they reached Silverton. Mrs. Milner had only just got over the excitement of receiving her old friend, Sir George Trevelyan, so it was decided that she should not be in formed of the new arrivals till the next day. Violet's excessive fatigue gave her an excuse for retiring immediately after their late dinner, and even Aunt Lucy, who had accompanied her niece upstairs, was dismissed with a fond, apologizing kiss, and an assurance from the poor, weary child, that she was good for no thing to-night.

" To-morrow, dear aunty, to-morrow we will talk of everything. If you knew how I am longing now for rest." " Ah, my darling, and for a fuller rest than you'll get to-night, I'm afraid," said the aunt, looking earnestly into the white, joyless face, " but, as you say, we'll talk of everything to morrow."

Chapter II

" And now, aunty, you know all, and you shall tell me what I ought to do — what is right and kind, and best to be done under these unhappy circumstances. If Horace loved me, I think I should know at once how to act. In such a case I could not deceive him, nor leave him to the possibility of discovering hereafter that he had married a woman whose heart was given to another man ; but you know, amity, that he does not love me, and I confess that there is something terrible to me in the idea of talking to him about the things of which I have been now talking to you. My love for Marcus is the one sacred treasure of my life, and death would be easier to me than the exposure of it to unhallowed and curious eyes." " My dearest Violet," said Aunt Lucy, in her gentlest and most sympathizing tones, " I think I can understand a little of the feeling you describe in such very strong terms, but you seem to have overlooked the fact that marriage (from whatever motives entered into) is in itself an infinitely more sacred thing than any remembrance of a girlish love can be.

No absence of passionate attachment on your part, will alter the nature of the contract, or lessen the claims of your husband upon you. As your husband, he is entitled to your fullest confidence, your most unreserved obedience, and your tenderest affection. If you withhold the latter, the former at least are in your power, and I think, my darling, when you are once a wife you will feel that these are but a trifling compensation, after all, for the first, pure, fresh heart love, which now you can never give to the man who is to be your husband." " Then you mean me to understand, aunty," said Violet with some bitterness in her voice, " that I ought — that it is my duty, in short, to tell Horace Seymour that I love Marcus Thornton ?" " If indeed you are fully resolved on be coming Horace Seymour's wife, I think you should at least tell him that your heart has been strongly interested in some one else.

If, as you suppose, he is not very much in love himself, it will probably make little difference in his sentiments now — but should he discover it hereafter, when you may both have become sincerely attached to each other, there is no calculating the unhappiness it may occasion." Unless the slight, involuntary curl of Violet's lip might be taken for a silent com ment, there was no part of this speech that she appeared to have heard except the opening of it — to which she replied with a little im patience — " I must marry him now, Aunt Lucy, and at once. I gave mama a solemn promise to this effect at our first interview this morning. Poor mama !" she continued in a softer tone, and with tears filling her eyes, " she at least shall have no cause to complain of me. I will be a good daughter if I cannot be a good wife."

" You will be a good wife, Violet," said Aunt Lucy, laying her hands impressively on her niece's drooping shoulders, and looking earnestly with her own pure eyes into Violet's eyes. " Of this I have not the shadow of a fear. I only wish I was as sure that you would be a happy one." " Ah, don't let us talk of that, Aunt Lucy. I shall certainly be as happy as I deserve to be. Horace is very kind and considerate to wards me, and I am grateful to him. I will try to make him as happy as I can." " I am sure you will, darling, and you will begin by being perfectly frank with him now." " If I must — but this is hard, aunty, harder than you think." " Do not make it harder by suffering your imagination to dwell upon it. Find him at once, and have it over." Violet shuddered — " I believe he is at present in mama's room with Sir George.

After dinner I will try to see him alone." But her good intentions were frustrated by hearing that Horace was to start for town immediately, in obedience to a wish of Mrs. Milner's that the marriage should take place on the following day. She knew, she said, that her end was nearer than they any of them believed, ancl when the wedding was once over she could have her daughter all to herself for the few hours or days she might still be spared. ' Dear Horace ' would not grudge his wife's attentions and society to the poor dying mother, whose last earthly effort had been to secure this precious wife for him. And of course dear Horace smiled softly and gratefully, as he embraced the thin, white hand of his future mother in law, and expressed his joyful readiness to set off at once for London, to sign the marriage settlements, and procure a special license for the following day.

" God for ever bless you, my darling, my precious child ! " exclaimed poor Mrs. Milner in a weak, faltering voice, as Violet, simply dressed for the ceremony that was to take place at home, came into her mother's room the next morning — " Had I been up, and even as well as I was before you went to London," she continued plaintively, " you should have made a gayer bride than this, dearest. Ah, how often I have amused myself in picturing my sweet Violet, arrayed in pure, flowing white, with orange wreath and veil, such as I wore at my own wedding, and now, here you are in a plain morning silk, no wreath, no veil, and a white, sad face that would better suit a funeral than a bridal. It is very, very melancholy and unfortunate." "Dear mama," replied Violet, with a wintry smile that she sought to cover by the tenderest caresses, " the only unfortunate part of it is your illness.

What does it matter how one is dressed for so very brief a ceremony ? In half an hour my fate for life will be sealed, and you wull be comforted, dearest mama, will you not, to know that it is so ? I hope it will bs a real comfort to you." Mrs. Milner did not appear to notice the excitement of her daughter's manner, but then she had passed a restless night, and was very faint and languid this morning. " My darling," she replied, " can you for a moment doubt it ! What mother on a death bed would not be comforted by seeing a tenderly beloved child united to a good, kind, affectionate husband, occupying a position like Horace Seymour's ? He will take such care of you, my dear one ; he will surround you with all the elegancies and refinements of life ; he will watch over your happiness, he will love — " "Yes, yes, dear mama," Violet interrupted rather hastily, "I am sure he will do all that he engages to do — you need have no fears or anxieties henceforth concerning: me : but you are talking more then is good for you, and I think Horace would like to see you for a minute or two before — before the clergyman arrives."

" Certainly, my dear, and I too should wish it. Horace has always been most attentive and affectionate towards me. Yrou remember, Violet, we took to each other from the first. Oh, by all means let dear Horace come in." So dear Horace was promptly summoned, and Violet went down stairs to say a few words to her Guardian, who had not once had an opportunity of speaking to her alone since their meeting two days ago at the Rosery. " My dear girl," he said as she came in softly and stood beside him, " I had hoped that the day on which I welcomed you into MARRYING F)J£ MONEY. my family, would have been a far brighter and happier one than this, but we can none of us tell what an hour will bring forth, and your dear mother's state of health has long been precarious. I am truly and deeply grieved on her account — it cuts me to the heart to see my poor Rosamond in this extremity, and I am scarcely less grieved, my child, because of its saddening and almost crushing effect upon you.

What a very snowdrop of a bride you look, Violet, yet sweeter and fairer than any bride I could have found for my son. He may well be proud of the queenly little lady he has succeeded in winning. But it will be a dismal ceremony after all, not a single bridesmaid for my peerless bride, (as dear Aunt Lucy thinks herself too old to assume so juvenile an office) no bright young faces of any kind to surround you, and make a little sunshine in your path — only three sober grey heads, whose time for gracing weddings, or other festive scenes, has long gone by. Even my boy Frank, and Ann Graham, would have been welcome additions to our party, but these sad, sad circumstances prohibit all stranger guests, and we can only hope, my pretty Violet, that this gloomy and unpropitious commence ment of your matron life will have a bright and happy sequence.

God grant it, my child, for indeed I love you very, very fondly." He kissed her as he finished speaking, and put a morocco case into her hands. " This is only a trifle, dear child, and nothing worthy of thanks. Some day you will wear them for your old guardian's sake. Come now, and sit for a few minutes beside me, and assure me that but for your poor mother's sickness, this would be a happy day to you." Violet semed to shrink a little from the arm that was clasped around her. " I must at least look at your present, Sir George," she said, with a faint smile, and hoping to evade the necessity of replying to his question ; " you forget that as a woman I am subject to my sex's weakness for orna ments of all kinds." " Let me unclasp the case for you, then ?" The dear man was deceived and gratified at the same time.

"Ah, what exquisite pearls! and you call this a trifle ! Do you know, Sir George, that I have never possessed an ornament more valuable than a simple brooch in all my life ? you are very, very good to me — far too good. I shall wear these with such pleasure for your sake, as well as for then own beauty. Was that a ring at the front door?" " My child, how white it has made you ! Yes, it is eleven o'clock. I thought our curate would have been here earlier. What a pity that admirable Mr. Hargrave is away just now. Dear Violet, compose yourself — the ceremony is not in the least formidable, and your mother will be so glad when it is over. By the bye, I was about to tell you that I wrote yesterday to one of the first physicians in London, begging him to come down by the earliest train to-morrow morning:.

I am not half satisfied with this Jones, who is your only resource here — " He wras interrupted by the entrance of the bridegroom carrying a rare bouquet of pure white flowers surrounded by one rim of purple violets, for his bride. " They are all waiting for us in the library," he said ; and Sir George, taking the trembling hand of his ward, led her into the room set apart for the ceremony, and then took his own place as father, for the nonce, to the fair but not blushing bride. The two spinster aunts sat in a kind of so lemn and dreary state (for Miss Martha thought it indispensable that they should both be dressed in their very gayest attire) at a short distance behind the principal group, and all being ready, the grave curate opened his book, adjusted his spectacles (for he too was old), and read in a slow, monotonous voice the appointed formula for uniting two persons iu the holy bands of matrimony.

VOL. III. c As Violet had truly said, it was such a brief ceremony, that which sealed her destiny for life-, and closed the page of her girlhood's freedom and hopefulness for ever. A few formal questions and answers, a few as formal prayers, an exhortation, and a slipping on of a golden circlet, and it was all over. " They who knelt down together, arise up as one." Sir George was the first to kiss and congra tulate his new daughter, and then the aunts pressed forward to do the same. Miss Martha delivered rather a long speech, which had every appearance of having been learnt by heart for the occasion, but Miss Lucy only said in a low voice, " God bless you, dear," and left a tear on the cheek she had embraced so fondly. Last of all (he had been really a model of patience), the husband claimed his right, and stooping down — for he was a tall man — im printed one silent kiss upon the pale lips of his young wife.

Then, for the first time during all that morn ing, a burning, crimson flush overspread the whole of Violet's face, and for a moment the " queenly brow " contracted as if under the influence of some sharp, sudden pain. Nobody noticed it, however, and the next minute she had regained her former almost chilling calm, and was replying to her husband's question as to whether they ought not to go together at once to Mrs. Milner' s room. The next day the London physician arrived, and, after seeing the sick woman, immediately pronounced her new symptoms to be only one of the eccentric forms which nervous maladies are apt to take. There was no more danger now than there had been six months ago, — she would probably suffer a good deal, especially in the winter, but might live to a good old age notwithstanding, and the less nursing and codling she had the better.

Under these chcumstances, Horace Seymour, who in spite of his kindly feelings and constant c expressions of regard towards Mrs. Milner, was growing very weary of the Rosery and its unamusing inmates, asserted his right to his wife's society, and carried her off to Paris.

Chapter III

" I say, Violet, ain't you pretty well sick of this?" exclaimed Horace, suddenly starting up from his lounging attitude on one of the most luxurious of French couches, and throw ing into the blazing wood fire the end of a cigar he had been smoking — " because I am, I know." " Sick of what ?" asked Violet, looking up, a little impatiently, from a book she was read ing. " Why of Paris, and sight seeing, and the cold weather, and living at a French hotel, and everything, in short — you must know what I mean." " /am not sick of either of the things you mention," she replied quietly, " but if you are, pray don't consider me. Let us go else where." " Well, that's very good natured of you now," he continued languidly, and sitting down again rather nearer to his wife, " but if you like Paris so very much, Y'iolet, we'll stay another week — we've been here three already."

" Thank you, I do like it very much in deed, but I could not enjoy it at the expense of your comfort, Horace. Yret it seems strange that you should so soon tire of everything." " It's my nature, I suppose," he said rather uneasily, " and then I haven't your taste for the arts. Those picture galleries fag me to death, and I don't understand this French gibberish well enough to enjoy the theatres, and I havn't got my horses or my dogs, and I hate frost and sncw, and wood fires — and the evenings are so long, and you are always reading." Violet closed her book immediately, and tried to look good tempered in doing so. " Poor Horace !" she said with a half smile, " you have certainly made out a very pitiable case indeed ! What can I do now to amuse you ? shall we take a walk before dinner ?" " A walk with all that snow upon the ground, and an east wind blowing !