Denis Donne. A novel

Chapter I. Mademoiselle Is Late

! It was nine o'clock. The letters had just been delivered, distributed, and were iioav in process of being eagerly conned by their respective recipients. * * Only one for Miss Conway this morn ing/' the mistress of the house said. And as she said it, she laid the epistle doAvn upon the table Avith an air of disappoint ment which she was powerless to disguise from various pairs of lynx eyes that were watching her and the results of her labours A"OL. I. — these latter consisting of a keen and womanful, so to say, inspection of the utterly illegible monogram. Mrs Pridham, in common with many of her kind, cherished the fond belief that it was possible to discern something of the nature of the contents in the form and initials of the guarding seal. She failed in deciphering these initials, therefore it was that disappointment clouded her perceptive brow as she placed the baffling letter on an empty plate. ■■Mademoiselle is late!" a young- Frenchman, commonly called " the Count " by the other inhabitants of the boarding house, observed.

"She desolates us by remaining away." "You can still eat, I perceive," a testy old maid who had come six months later than Miss Conway to the establishment, and had never forgiven the latter for being helped before herself at dinner, said AA'ith the sort of severe snappishness for which the genus is celebrated. "And no wonder if MademoiseUe is late," she continued, looking round for general sympathy, --for she disturbed me during the greater part of the night by tearing up and doAvn her room like a wild cat. I wish she'd remember that there are other people in the house." "What does Mees Smeeth say?" The question was asked by the uni versally respected, but terribly boring, deaf, kind-hearted, madly-musical old Baron von Arnsfalt. A man whose good qualities were entirely thrown into the shade by the awful habit he had of putting up his trumpet whenever any one looked at him, on the mistaken supposition that that person had something of importance to utter for his special behoof immediately.

Talking to the Baron was not regarded as a delectable treat, and indeed was rather pointedly avoided by every one in the establishment save the mistress of it. Miss Smith's remarks on Miss Conway's nocturnal pedestrian predilections being repeated in a loud, firm, steady voice by Mrs Pridham, general attention was called to the perpetrator of the crime of disturb ing the rest of one of the heaA'iest-headed, most irascible old women in Christendom. An old naval officer, a post captain on half-pay, who had only joined the select circle at the boarding-house in Pitzhugh Square the day before, asked avIio the young lady was ? and how she came to be there alone ? She came there two years ago, Mrs Pridham told them, with her grandmamma, an old lady, who, after being violently disagreeable in the house for three months, had put the finishing stroke to her unpleasantness by dying there, leaving her grand-daughter, it was opined, well off, since the young lady had con tinued to pay a large sum for her share of the elegancies and comforts of Mrs Prid ham's well-organized establishment.

Fur ther, she had been known to refuse two most eligible offers of marriage. "And she ahvays dresses, ah! ravish ingly," Mr Goubaud broke in with all his country's hearty appreciation of the fact : " she is not, she cannot be, all English — for she is always well gloved, and wears not twelve colours." " She is not all English, I believe, but she has no French blood in her veins, Mr Goubaud ; she has only spoken once about her parents to me. Then she told me that her father during the Peninsular war married her mother, a Spaniard." "Ah!" Miss Smith said, looking Avith complacency at the reflection of her oavu pale ringlets and fair lymphatic com plexion, "it's the Spanish blood gives her that nasty dark tinge, I've no doubt, and her restless quick ways." "Restless! quick!" muttered the young Frenchman, " call it animation, esprit, anything but quick, that means like a pert soubrette — that does not apply to a charming young lady like Miss Conway.

You have no Avords in your language to describe her, you must go to my mother tongue to seek for epithets that should be applied to la belle Comvay. Ah! she comes," he continued, rising as he spoke, and every other man at the table foUowed his exam ple as the door opened and a young lady advanced into the room. Surely Miss Smith had made some mis take ? That brilliant young creature Avho came forward bowing to them all with a matchless easy grace, could have kept no anxious vigil through the previous night. She took her place at the table and toyed with some toast and tea, and put her letter DEMS DONNE. away in her pocket with a laughing re mark about its unimportance. Then she smiled at the Baron, and further fascinated the young Frenchman by telling him a " little dream she had had about him," through which a scarcely distinguishable A*ein of flattery ran.

Giving eArery one present the impression of life being a deliciously joyful thing so far as her ex perience of it went. And if any one found life pleasant it surely should have been one so well en dowed by nature as Panny Conway. As she sat there now she was the centre of attraction, the one on whom all eyes were fixed, and she stood the general gaze as one who knew she was well armed, fault less at all points, alone could stand it. She had a clear, rich, brunette com plexion. Her eyes were of that dark violet shade Avith which one naturally ex pects to find black lashes and hair ; but in her case expectation Avas defeated. Her hair was a bright golden broAvn, her lashes and brows were a darker golden brown, far, very far from black. Her fea tures were small and delicate, pretty but not perfect, for her nose was retrousse.

Her mouth had a nervous flutter Avhen she was excited that drew it slightly on one side. But for all these trifling defects it Avas a charming face ! " charming " not so much from its splendour of colouring, its decided prettiness of feature, as from its warm, impassioned, soul-fraught expres sion. Charming from the rare grace with which it Avas borne aloft ; charming from its brightness and j-outh and bril liancy. She had a glorious figure too, this beau tiful young lady who was so alone in the world that, with money apparently at com mand, she Avas compelled to live in the uncongenial atmosphere of a West-central boarding-house. A supple sylph-like figure, rounded, firmly erect, lithely slight in a way that proved its owner resorted to no stiff corset. Not very tall, looking shorter than she was perhaps by reason of the unusual droop of her shoulders ; with exquisite feet and hands, and a habit of making great play with the latter in a way that was as un-English as her appearance.

Had many kisses been pressed on those little hands, I wonder ? and to hoAv many burning words had those tiny shell like ears tingled ? Not few ! surely not few ! Young as she was, still the years that had passed over her head had not left her unloved and unsought. A charming young lady was Panny Conway, but Made moiselle still, though she was three or four and twenty. She had a sympathetic sentence for every one at the table — even for the stran ger Captain Digby, who was forthwith enchanted with her to the degree of pulling a letter, he had received that morning, out of his pocket again, and imparting some of its contents to her. " Here," he said, " here is a pretty commission to give a poor old felloAv like me, who never goes near news paper offices, or anywhere else in fact, but to his club.

I'm to go and insert this ad vertisement in the Times and one or two other papers, as if they could not have sent it direct to the different places." He poised the slip of paper between his fingers as if he wanted to be asked about it ; so Fanny Conway asked him, " What is it for, a groom or a governess?" Then she put her little white hand out, took it from him, and read that a governess was wanted immediately for a little girl of eight, who must teach everything under the sun in the way of accomplishments, but of whom - nothing menial would be required.' " Ah ! that saving clause at the end," she laughed, "how deliciously unsophisticated any one AA'ould be who would accept the situation believing in it, and imagining it would be acted upon." "It would in this case," Captain Digby ansAvered seriously ; " it's for the daughter of a friend of mine (the finest fellow in the world) that the governess is wanted.

He has just married a young wife — foolish to do that, very ! a pretty little girl, no older than you ; but in other respects he's the finest fellow in the world, and any lady who goes to his house will meet with the treatment of a gentlewoman." Captain Digby extended his hand for the advertisement, Miss Conway gave it to him with a little bow and smile, and an expression of interest in the success of the undertaking which he had been asked to forward that induced him to continue the subject. " My friend Donne married when he was quite a lad, you may think how young Avhen I tell you that he has a son seven and-twenty, and that he's not fifty himself. He was the handsomest fellow I ever saw, I think, and he married one of the prettiest girls I ever knew. Poor thing ! poor thing ! such an attached couple.

She died three years ago ; about six months since, I was surprised to get cards from him, and to find that he has married a second time, a sprightly young lady of tAvo or three and twenty. She doesn't like the trouble of his little daughter, I fancy, and Donne would never let a girl go to school, so that's how the sudden want for a 2*0 verness has arisen." " Would you favour me Avith the ad dress?" Fanny Conway asked quietly ; "I am tired of doing nothing, it sounds nice ; I shall apply for this situation of governess in Mr Donne's family." " You ! ! " was uttered by every one at the table, in every possible intonation ex pressive of astonishment and doubt. " Yes, I," she replied; "is it so won derful a thing that I should think that I might possibly make myself useful ? You all who know me so well," she continued, turning bewildering glances on the young- Frenchman particularly, " avUI give Cap tain Digby an unfavourable impression of me by seeming so astounded ; he will think me giddy, frivolous, vain, un fitted to be the guide and preceptress of youth."

She looked so piquantly pretty, such an oasis in the desert of boarding-house life, as she spoke, that Goubaud could only shrug his shoulders and feel that he would be desolated indeed should she persist in going. " But it is caprice," he said presently ; " you a governess in a starched cap ! Helas ! it must not be." Fanny Conway looked at him for a minute or two abstractedly. He had often made these sort of speeches to her, often, by the fervour of his manner, tried to lead her to suppose tbat the adoration he ex pressed in words came from the heart. She looked at him and seemed to be buried in romantic thought; in reality, she was doing a very keen little bit of calculation. And while she gazed at him abstractedly, "the Count " gazed earnestly and passion ately at her. At last she spoke.

" Mrs Pridham, I may come here, I suppose, when they Avon't have me any longer at Mr Donne's ? — you see I speak as if it were already settled that I should go there, for I have proposed to myself to do it, and I always do what I propose." " Certainly, my dear Miss Conway, but I hope that it won't come to your leavino* us in reality till you leave us to get mar ried," Mrs Pridham replied Avith the vulgar cordiality that is meant so very kindly, and is so very offensive. Miss Conway laughed. " So you looked upon me as a fixture, did you ? well, au revoir, I'll tell you at dinner whether I've acted on my ' caprice ' or not." She rose as she spoke, with an almost childish but most perfectly graceful animation, and left the room. As she was ascending the stairs the Frenchman overtook her. " One Avord," he said, " one moment in the drawing room," and he pushed the drawing room door open, and sought to make her enter.

" I have not a moment to spare," she said; but she relinquished her hand to him, and he conveyed it to his moustache, and pressed the latter upon it passionately. " You must hear me, Mademoiselle," he cried. " I am poor, 'tis true, but I am noble, or my ancestors were. I love you ! you have accepted my attentions, you have compromised — " He could not finish his sentence, for the girl's eyes flashed. She shook off the clasj) he was bestoAving on her hand. " Compromised myself by being fool ishly tolerant to the pretentious absurd ities of a man who was weak enough to think that his Leicester Square nobility imposed upon me. Let me pass, Mr Gou baud, let there be an end of this non sense." She SAvept past him away up to her own room, and he stood looking at her till the last bit of the hem of her garment was conveyed out of sight.

Then he turned away to his own room, and got rid of some of the worst effects of his baffled passion in a thoroughly characteristic and national manner. He cursed her and himself, and his folly and her perfidy. Then he curled his moustache, and (it being the height of the season) dressed himself as little like a tiger as a Frenchman can ever succeed in doing, and went out after a time for his morning lounge in the park. And she ! the young lady who sought hard labour and refused possible Counts through - caprice,' what did she do ? She went up to her room, and first took off her dress, for it was a Swiss cambric of the most delicate blue in the world, and it was trimmed, this peignoir, with a wealth of unmistakeable Valenciennes lace, therefore it would easily crease and crumple, and lose its pristine fairness.

When she had done this (haA'ing locked her door), she flung herself on her bed, and began to sob and cry convulsively. " To haA^e carried on the war for such an end as this," she said to herself; " to have choked back every thought that could bring a look of care to my brow before people ; always ready with my part, and my A'OL.I. part has paid me so poorly. Bah ! fate's a bad manager — I should have been cast for something different before now." There was something terrible in this young creature's total abandonment to grief. The bed shook with her sobs, with her angry, vehement, restless turnings and writhings ; the pillow Avas saturated with her passionate torrent of tears. AVhen she rose after at least two hours' indulgence of a bitterness of spirit that not one in that house, that not one person in the Avorld, supposed she could suffer from, or deemed it probable that she could have any cause to suffer from, — Avhen she rose at last, her face was crimson and swollen with excess of weeping.

She glanced in the glass, and a smile flashed over her eyes and died out in a dimple at the corner of her mouth. " I must alter all this before I go out," she said. " My hair too has come out of its wave." As she spoke she pulled doAvn her golden broAvn tresses and commenced plaiting them up tightly in order to ensure that wavy appearance which all the inhabit ants of that boarding-house in Fitzhugh Square believed was due to nature. "Not a penny left in the world," she muttered as she went on with nimble fingers ; " and when grandmamma died and left me with five hundred pounds, I thought it would last me gloriously till I married well ; now I'm at the end of it, and as far from being married as ever." She went to a drawer and took out three or four little cases containing rings and bracelets.

After looking through them carefully she selected one, a broad gold band studded with emeralds, which she put in her pocket. " This will pay the trifle I owe Mrs Pridham, and take me down capitally equipped for the campaign at the Donnes ; they shall never think it's necessity drove me to it ; they shall believe it an amiable ■ caprice ' also, as my last unsatisfactory suitor calls it." By one o'clock Fanny Conway was ready to submit to the keenest inspection again. She went down to luncheon dressed in the most perfect taste for a young lady who was going to adventure out alone in the streets of our uncivilized metropolis, the state of which is significantly testified to by the al most undisguised reprehension with which the statement of a lady that she eA*er does go out alone is received.

" I am going to Regent Street to buy some dresses," she said to Miss Smith, who abominated her partly on account of her be ing always so well dressed. " I want to get a light sUk or two, and another like this." * This' was a black silk cut en train, and sin gularly void of trimming for these over trimmed days. Over it she wore a black velvet paletot with big buttons and cuffs of guipure. Her bonnet was a favourite aversion of Miss Smith's; "such an affectation to wear such a thing," she said, "when every body else wore spoon-shaped brims." Fan ny's was a black lace bonnet depressed in front something after the fashion of theMaria Stuart coif. Just resting on the parting, seeming to nestle away in the rich soft ful ness of her golden brown hair, there was a white moss rose. Outside, coquettishly poised on the top of the brim, there were more moss roses and some fragilefern leaves.

As usual, her gloves Avere perfect ; she had a passion for the palest silver grey, and she gratified her passion, as the man who served her at the " Tower of Babel " could testify. " Mourning is very unbecoming," Miss Smith observed sharply, when Fanny Con way at last rose and buttoned her gloves and prepared to start. ' - 1 wonder at your wear ing anything so dowdy, Miss Conway." Miss Conway laughed, she could afford to be good-natured as far as her appearance AA'ent. She caught a glimpse of herself in the glass as Miss Smith was speaking, and she knew that if she were placed in a carriage and driven once or twice up and down the " ladies' mile," all the habitues of the place would be looking at her. " Some day I may have it," she thought as she walked along ; " I hope to Heaven I shall, for life is not life in these middle-class shades."

She had read her letter before leaving the house. When she had disposed of her bracelet in Regent Street, she walked along hastily westward, for the hour was approaching at which the writer of it had besought her to meet him in the park.

Chapter II. The Tell-tale Ticket

It was nearly two o'clock when Fanny turned into the park, and the row was thinning fast. " Inconsiderate of him," she muttered, " not to be up at this end in order that I might be assured at once whether he is here or not, and I am tired already, the delectable region I live in being so far from civilization." For a moment her annoyance over came her, as she glanced hastily along the ride, and evidently saw not the one whom she had come to see. Her brows lowered and took a squarer shape, her little glittering teeth were pressed with sudden savage firmness on her ruddy pouting lip. Then she remembered that she Avas not alone, and that she had no veil on. In an instant the look of annoyance was gone, and she Avas gazing around her Avith amiable well-bred insouciance. Holding her grey moire pink-lined parasol at that exact angle where it would catch a ray of sunshine and send it with a subdued gloAV on her already glowing lovely face, Fanny Conway swept across the corner of the row with the air of one who had just. descended from her brougham and who walked the earth by preference, instead of with the fatigued gait of a young lady who had walked sorely against her will, in haste, under the glaring July sun, from Fitzhugh Square, Tottenham Court Road.

She SAvept across the corner of the row and deposited herself upon a chair some couple of dozen yards from thc end of it, and disposed her w*ealth of drapery about her to the best effect, Avith out seeming to give a thought to the matter. When she had done this she sat there a sort of embodiment of a southern summer day, bright, beautiful, and warm, golden, pure, and cloudless ; waiting ! A neat bay hack, with good but not showy action, ridden by a fair handsome young man, came in sight, and the rider was looking anxiously along the promenade line. Her eyelashes flickered, but that was the only sign she gave that the one she was waiting for had come, — and that he could not see. All that he could see Avas the grace ful outline of a figure he knew well, and a length of black silk trailing along on the ground that seemed someway to be pe culiar to Miss Fanny Conway.

" Good morning ! " he said, with the slight drawl that we tolerate, and even affect to find pleasing when indulged in by men of whom we know that, for all their affectation of laziness in speech and man ner, they can in time of need be full of a fiery energy and a dauntless daring. As he said it, he pulled up at the railings opposite to her chair, and took off his hat, exposing to \*icw, as he did so, a head hand some as a statue's, covered by carved curls of a bright golden tawny colour, that lay round his head in rich masses like those of the young Antinous. She moved her intercepting parasol away and gaA*e him a good-tempered, courteous little bow. " Good morning, Captain Denny ; how you've heated the Knight of Gwynne to-day." " No wonder," he replied. Then his groom rode up, and Captain Denny dismounted and joined his fair friend, walking with that special kind of stiff leggedness soldiers have affected ever since the Crimean war.

" No wonder," he repeated, taking the little well-gloved hand she extended to him, and pressing it softly, "for I began to fear you were not coming, and so I got excited (you're past the time I asked you to be here), and rattled the Knight up and down once or twice at a pace that astonished the old horse. Now, Fanny, tell me, why haven't you answered my letters lately ? And why are you late to-day, and not over-glad to see me now you are come ? " He had a tender voice, soft, low, and clear, with a marvellous melody about it, in fact ; and he had very tender eyes to match, blue and rather dreamy. In addition to these eyes his face was further ornamented with a yellow moustache and long wavy yellow whiskers. Au reste, he was tall and AveU set up, with an unmistake able air of good breeding and birth and cir cumstances about him.

He was admirably dressed and appointed, and we have seen that she Avas a young lady who liked and understood the external fitness of things most thoroughly. And quiet as his face looked, he had plenty of character when there was anything to call it forth. " There was nothing to answer in your letters, and the reason I am late to-day is that I have been making purchases. I am going into the country for some time." "By Jove, really?" " Really." "What shall I do without you, Fanny?" he asked, in accents of unfeigned sorrow and dismay. He had met Miss Conway at the house of a brother officer's wife, who had sojourned for a period in the Fitzhugh Square Mansion, and been fascinated, like every other sojourner there, by the fascinating young lady. And though he had never succeeded in getting an invitation to Mrs Bolton's when Miss Conway was there, since that first evening, he had seen her frequently, for Captain Denny often rode in the row, and Fanny Conway often occupied a chair outside the rail.

She had been far too clever a diplo matist ever to utter a remark about the distinguished handsome young man, Avho had been so assiduous in his attentions to her, to Mrs Bolton, so she had never gathered aught about him more than her own observation supplied her with. He told her he was in the Guards. She curbed the curiosity that prompted her to ask him what regiment. She saw that he had good horses and a well-appointed mail-phaeton, so she concluded he had plenty of money. Now for six months she had been in the habit of seeing him often, for he grew devotional, and came to the church in the west central district that she attended. He had come somehoAV or other one never can tell how these things come about— to call her Fanny. He had written to her often, his letters were very full of protestations, but he had made her no offer, and an offer was what she had been playing her dangerous game for.

Noav she was at the end of her financial re sources, this beautiful young girl who was friendless in the world, and no offer had been made. It was a dangerous game, and she had been aat ong to play it ; Avrong to give this man, whom she had only seen once in society, and then not been specially intro duced to, rendezvous in a public park in the broad light of day. That was the head and front of her offending ; she had done nothing worse than thousands of pretty girls who are * out ' do every night at crowded balls and conversazioni, Avith an air of innocent unconsciousness. But she had done an unconventional thing, and was therefore Avrong. He, the man who had prayed and implored and flattered her into doing it, thought it wrong and uncon ventional the whole time. He admired her immensely, and he told himself a dozen times a day that if he only had a few hundreds a year more, he would ask her to marry him at once; but — he had not the few hundreds a year more, so he went on not asking, till, as we have seen, Fanny Conway was at the end of her resources and unable to wait any longer for the chance of the handsome Guardsman making up his mind to rush into matrimony.

He was very nearly over the brink once or twice this morning. It was only the reflection that the possession of this charming creature would oblige him to put down his trap that made him pause. She did not tell him Avhere she was going. She only spoke as if she Avere going aAvay on a visit for an indefinite period, for she had determined that if things did not come to a climax this morning under the influence of the shock of her threatened departure, that when she left town she would have done with * all of the old.' No desultory romance should mar those plans for the future, on the perfecting and steady carry ing out of which the future depended. When she went to the Donnes she would have done with Denny ! "You will give me your address, Fanny ? " he said, when she at last rose and remarked that it was time she should go home.

" My duenna, Mrs Pridham, will be anxious if I stay out any longer," she said, with a candid air that was re freshing, considering how well she knew that Mrs Pridham was discreetly blind to the ingoings and outcomings of her boarders. " Oh ! you will, Fanny, surely ? " he repeated, as she shook her head and said, "No, no." " The people with whom I am going to stay would not understand my hearing from a gentleman, you know how country letter-bags are inspected, and their con tents commented upon at countiy breakfast tables, Captain Denny ; no you must not write." " I shall, though ; it would be death to me to lose sight of you altogether, Fanny. I shall send them to Mrs Pridham, and get her to forward my letters, or you'll be forgetting me altogether, and, by Jove ! I can't have that." . She made no reply, but walked along in a tender silence by his side till they came out into Piccadilly, his groom following with the horses.