The next day but one was Thursday – an afternoon upon which Mrs. Tregonell was in the habit of staying at home to receive callers, and a day on which her small drawing-rooms were generally filled with more or less pleasant people – chiefly of the fairer sex – from four to six. The three rooms – small by degrees and beautifully less – the old-fashioned furniture and profusion of choicest flowers – lent themselves admirably to gossip and afternoon tea, and were even conducive to mild flirtation, for there was generally a sprinkling of young men of the FitzPelham type – having nothing particular to say, but always faultless in their dress, and well-meaning as to their manners.

On this afternoon – which to Christabel seemed a day of duller hue and colder atmosphere than all previous Thursdays, on account of Angus Hamleigh's absence – there were rather more callers than usual. The season was ripening towards its close. Some few came to pay their last visit, and to inform Mrs. Tregonell and her niece about their holiday movements – generally towards the Engadine or some German Spa – the one spot of earth to which their constitution could accommodate itself at this time of year.

"I am obliged to go to Pontresina before the end of July," said a ponderous middle-aged matron to Miss Courtenay. "I can't breathe any where else in August and September."

"I think you would find plenty of air at Boscastle," said Christabel, smiling at her earnestness; "but I dare say the Engadine is very nice!"

"Five thousand feet above the level of the sea," said the matron proudly.

"I like to be a little nearer the sea – to see it – and smell it – and feel its spray upon my face," answered Christabel. "Do you take your children with you?"

"Oh, no, they all go to Ramsgate with the governess and a maid."

"Poor little things! And how sad for you to know that there are all those mountain passes – a three days' journey – between you and your children."

"Yes, it is very trying!" sighed the mother; "but they are so fond of Ramsgate; and the Engadine is the only place that suits me."

"You have never been to Chagford?"

"Chagford! No; what is Chagford?"

"A village upon the edge of Dartmoor – all among the Devonshire hills. People go there for the fine bracing air. I can't help thinking it must do them almost as much good as the Engadine."

"Indeed! I have heard that Devonshire is quite too lovely," said the matron, who would have despised herself had she been familiar with her native land. "But what have you done with Mr. Hamleigh? I am quite disappointed at not seeing him this afternoon."

"He is in Scotland," said Christabel, and then went on to tell as much as was necessary about her lover's journey to the North.

"How dreadfully dull you must be without him!" said the lady, sympathetically, and several other ladies – notably a baronet's widow, who had been a friend of Mrs. Tregonell's girlhood – a woman who never said a kind word of anybody, yet was invited everywhere, and who had the reputation of giving a better dinner, on a small scale, than any other lonely woman in London. The rest were young women, mostly of the gushing type, who were prepared to worship Christabel because she was pretty, an heiress, and engaged to a man of some distinction in their particular world. They had all clustered round Mrs. Tregonell and her niece, in the airy front drawing-room, while Miss Bridgeman poured out tea at a Japanese table in the middle room, waited upon sedulously by Major Bree, Mr. FitzPelham, and another youth, a Somerset House young man, who wrote for the Society papers – or believed that he did, on the strength of having had an essay on "Tame Cats" accepted in the big gooseberry season – and gave himself to the world as a person familiar with the undercurrents of literary and dramatic life. The ladies made a circle round Mrs. Tregonell, and these three gentlemen, circulating with tea-cups, sugar-basins, and cream-pots, joined spasmodically in the conversation.

Christabel owned to finding a certain emptiness in life without her lover. She did not parade her devotion to him, but was much too unaffected to pretend indifference.

"We went to the theatre on Tuesday night," she said.

"Oh, how could you!" cried the oldest and most gushing of the three young ladies. "Without Mr. Hamleigh?"

"That was our chief reason for going. We knew we should be dull without him. We went to the Kaleidoscope, and were delighted with Psyche."

All three young ladies gushed in chorus. Stella Mayne was quite too lovely – a poem, a revelation, and so on, and so on. Lady Cumberbridge, the baronet's widow, pursed her lips and elevated her eyebrows, which, on a somewhat modified form, resembled Lord Thurlow's, but said nothing. The Somerset House young man stole a glance at FitzPelham, and smiled meaningly; but the amiable FitzPelham was only vacuous.

"Of course you have seen this play," said Mrs. Tregonell, turning to Lady Cumberbridge. "You see everything, I know?"

"Yes; I make it my business to see everything – good, bad, and indifferent," answered the strong-minded dowager, in a voice which would hardly have shamed the Lord Chancellor's wig, which those Thurlow-like eyebrows so curiously suggested. "It is the sole condition upon which London life is worth living. If one only saw the good things, one would spend most of one's evening at home, and we don't leave our country places for that. I see a good deal that bores me, an immense deal that disgusts me, and a little – a very little – that I can honestly admire."

"Then I am sure you must admire 'Cupid and Psyche,'" said Christabel.

"My dear, that piece, which I am told has brought a fortune to the management, is just one of the things that I don't care to talk about before young people. I look upon it as the triumph of vice: and I wonder – yes, very much wonder – that you were allowed to see it."

There was an awfulness about the dowager's tone as she uttered these final sentences, which out-Thurlowed Thurlow. Christabel shivered, hardly knowing why, but heartily wishing there had been no such person as Lady Cumberbridge among her aunt's London acquaintance.

"But, surely there is nothing improper in the play, dear Lady Cumberbridge," exclaimed the eldest gusher, too long in society to shrink from sifting any question of that kind.

"There is a great deal that is improper," replied the dowager, sternly.

"Surely not in the language: that is too lovely?" urged the gusher. "I must be very dense, I'm afraid, for I really did not see anything objectionable."

"You must be very blind, as well as dense, if you didn't see Stella Mayne's diamonds," retorted the dowager.

"Oh, of course I saw the diamonds. One could not help seeing them."

"And do you think there is nothing improper in those diamonds, or their history?" demanded Lady Cumberbridge, glaring at the damsel from under those terrific eyebrows. "If so, you must be less experienced in the ways of the world than I gave you credit for being. But I think I said before that this is a question which I do not care to discuss before young people – even advanced as young people are in their ways and opinions now-a-days."

The maiden blushed at this reproof; and the conversation, steered judiciously by Mrs. Tregonell, glided on to safer topics. Yet calmly as that lady bore herself, and carefully as she managed to keep the talk among pleasant ways for the next half-hour, her mind was troubled not a little by the things that had been said about Stella Mayne. There had been a curious significance in the dowager's tone when she expressed surprise at Christabel having been allowed to see this play. That significant tone, in conjunction with Major Bree's marked opposition to Belle's wish upon this one matter, argued that there was some special reason why Belle should not see this actress. Mrs. Tregonell, like all quiet people, very observant, had seen the Somerset House young man's meaning smile as the play was mentioned. What was this peculiar something which all these people had in their minds? and of which she, Christabel's aunt, to whom the girl's welfare and happiness were vital, knew nothing.

She determined to take the most immediate and direct way of knowing all that was to be known, by questioning that peripatetic chronicle of fashionable scandal, Lady Cumberbridge. This popular personage knew a great deal more than the Society papers, and was not constrained like those prints to disguise her knowledge in Delphic hints and dark sayings. Lady Cumberbridge, like John Knox, never feared the face of man, and could be as plain-spoken and as coarse as she pleased.

"I should so like to have a few words with you by-and-by, if you don't mind waiting till these girls are gone," murmured Mrs. Tregonell.

"Very well, my dear; get rid of them as soon as you can, for I've some people coming to dinner, and I want an hour's sleep before I put on my gown."

The little assembly dispersed within the next quarter of an hour, and Christabel joined Jessie in the smaller drawing-room.

"You can shut the folding-doors, Belle," said Mrs. Tregonell, carelessly. "You and Jessie are sure to be chattering; and I want a quiet talk with Lady Cumberbridge."

Christabel obeyed, wondering a little what the quiet talk would be about, and whether by any chance it would touch upon the play last night. She, too, had been struck by the significance of the dowager's tone; and then it was so rarely that she found herself excluded from any conversation in which her aunt had part.

"Now," said Mrs. Tregonell, directly the doors were shut, "I want to know why Christabel should not have been allowed to see that play the other night?"

"What!" cried Lady Cumberbridge, "don't you know why?"

"Indeed no. I did not go with them, so I had no opportunity of judging as to the play."

"My dear soul," exclaimed the deep voice of the dowager, "it is not the play – the play is well enough – it is the woman! And do you really mean to tell me that you don't know?"

"That I don't know what?"

"Stella Mayne's history?"

"What should I know of her more than of any other actress? They are all the same to me, like pictures, which I admire or not, from the outside. I am told that some are women of fashion who go everywhere, and that it is a privilege to know them; and that some one ought hardly to speak about, though one may go to see them; while there are others – "

"Who hover like stars between two worlds," said Lady Cumberbridge. "Yes, that's all true. And nobody has told you anything about Stella Mayne?"

"No one!"

"Then I'm very sorry I mentioned her name to you. I dare say you will hate me if I tell you the truth: people always do; because, in point of fact, truth is generally hateful. We can't afford to live up to it."

"I shall be grateful to you if you will tell me all that there is to be told about this actress, who seems in some way to be concerned – "

"In your niece's happiness? Well, no, my dear, we will hope not. It is all a thing of the past. Your friends have been remarkably discreet. It is really extraordinary that you should have heard nothing about it; but, on reflection, I think it is really better you should know the fact. Stella Mayne is the young woman for whom Mr. Hamleigh nearly ruined himself three years ago."

Mrs. Tregonell turned white as death.

Her mind had not been educated to the acceptance of sin and folly as a natural element in a young man's life. In her view of mankind the good men were all Bayards – fearless, stainless; the bad were a race apart, to be shunned by all good women. To be told that her niece's future husband – the man for whose sake her whole scheme of life had been set aside, the man whom Christabel and she had so implicitly trusted – was a fashionable libertine – the lover of an actress – the talk of the town – was a revelation that changed the whole colour of life.

"Are you sure that this is true?" she asked, falteringly.

"My dear creature, do I ever say anything that isn't true? There is no need to invent things. God knows the things people do are bad enough, and wild enough, to supply conversation for everybody. But this about Hamleigh and Stella Mayne is as well known as the Albert Memorial. He was positively infatuated about her; took her off the stage: she was in the back row of the ballet at Drury Lane, salary seventeen and sixpence a week. He lived with her in Italy for a year; then they came back to England, and he gave her a house in St. John's Wood; squandered his money upon her; had her educated; worshipped her, in fact; and, I am told, would have married her, if she had only behaved herself. Fortunately, these women never do behave themselves: they show the cloven-foot too soon; our people only go wrong after marriage. But I hope, my dear, you will not allow yourself to be worried by this business. It is all a thing of the past, and Hamleigh will make just as good a husband as if it had never happened; better, perhaps, for he will be all the more able to appreciate a pure-minded girl like your niece."

Mrs. Tregonell listened with a stony visage. She was thinking of Leonard – Leonard who had never done wrong, in this way, within his mother's knowledge – who had been cheated out of his future wife by a flashy trickster – a man who talked like a poet, and who yet had given his first passionate love, and the best and brightest years of his life to a stage-dancer.

"How long is it since Mr. Hamleigh has ceased to be devoted to Miss Mayne?" she asked, in a cold, dull voice.

"I cannot say exactly: one hears so many different stories; there were paragraphs in the Society papers last season: 'A certain young sprig of fashion, a general favourite, whose infatuation for a well-known actress has been a matter of regret among the haute volée, is said to have broken his bonds. The lady keeps her diamonds, and threatens to publish his letters,' and so on, and so forth. You know the kind of thing?"

"I do not," said Mrs. Tregonell. "I have never taken any interest in such paragraphs."

"Ah! that is the consequence of vegetating at the fag-end of England: all the pungency is taken out of life for you."

Mrs. Tregonell asked no further questions. She had made up her mind that any more detailed information, which she might require, must be obtained from another channel. She did not want this battered woman of the world to know how hard she was hit. Yes – albeit there was a far-off gleam of light amidst this darkness – she was profoundly hurt by the knowledge of Angus Hamleigh's wrong-doing. He had made himself very dear to her – dear from the tender association of the past – dear for his own sake. She had believed him a man of scrupulous honour, of pure and spotless life. Perhaps she had taken all this for granted, in her rustic simplicity, seeing that all his ideas and instincts were those of a gentleman. She had made no allowance for the fact that the will-o'-the-wisp, passionate love, may lure even a gentleman into swampy ground; and that his sole superiority over profligates of coarser clay will be to behave himself like a gentleman in those morasses whither an errant fancy has beguiled him.

"I hope you will not let this influence your feelings towards Mr. Hamleigh," said Lady Cumberbridge; "if you did so, I should really feel sorry for having told you. But you must inevitably have heard the story from somebody else before long."

"No doubt. I suppose everybody knows it."

"Why yes, it was tolerably notorious. They used to be seen everywhere together. Mr. Hamleigh seemed proud of his infatuation, and there were plenty of men in his own set to encourage him. Modern society has adopted Danton's motto, don't you know? —de l'audace, encore de l'audace et toujours de l'audace! And now I must go and get my siesta, or I shall be as stupid as an owl all the evening. Good-bye."

Mrs. Tregonell sat like a statue, absorbed in thought, for a considerable time after Lady Cumberbridge's departure. What was she to do? This horrid story was true, no doubt. Major Bree would be able to confirm it presently, when he came back to dinner, as he had promised to come. What was she to do? Allow the engagement to go on? – allow an innocent and pure-minded girl to marry a man whose infatuation for an actress had been town talk; who had come to Mount Royal fresh from that evil association – wounded to the core, perhaps, by the base creature's infidelity – and seeking consolation wherever it might offer; bringing his second-hand feelings, with all the bloom worn off them, to the shrine of innocent young beauty! – dedicating the mere ashes of burned-out fires to the woman who was to be his wife; perhaps even making scornful comparisons between her simple rustic charms and the educated fascinations of the actress; bringing her the leavings of a life – the mere dregs of youth's wine-cup! Was Christabel to be permitted to continue under this shameful delusion – to believe that she was receiving all when she was getting nothing? No! – ten thousand times, no! It was womanhood's stern duty to come to the rescue of guileless, too-trusting girlhood. Bitter as the ordeal must needs be for both, Christabel must be told the whole cruel truth. Then it would be for her own heart to decide. She would still be a free agent. But surely her own purity of feeling would teach her to decide rightly – to renounce the lover who had so fooled and cheated her – and, perhaps, later to reward the devotion of that other adorer who had loved her from boyhood upwards with a steady unwavering affection – chiefly demonstrated by the calm self-assured manner in which he had written of Christabel – in his letters to his mother – as his future wife, the possibility of her rejection of that honour never having occurred to his rustic intelligence.

Christabel peeped in through the half-opened door.

"Well, Aunt Di, is your conference over? Has her ladyship gone?"

"Yes, dear; I am trying to coax myself to sleep," answered Mrs. Tregonell from the depths of her armchair.

"Then I'll go and dress for dinner. Ah, how I only wish there were a chance of Angus coming back to-night!" sighed Christabel, softly closing the door.

Major Bree came in ten minutes afterwards.

"Come here, and sit by my side," said Mrs. Tregonell. "I want to talk to you seriously."

The Major complied, feeling far from easy in his mind.

"How pale you look!" he said; "is there anything wrong?"

"Yes – everything is wrong! You have treated me very badly. You have been false to me and to Christabel!"

"That is rather a wide accusation," said the Major, calmly. He knew perfectly what was coming, and that he should require all his patience – all that sweetness of temper which had been his distinction through life – in order to leaven the widow's wrath against the absent. "Perhaps, you won't think it too much trouble to explain the exact nature of my offence?"

Mrs. Tregonell told him Lady Cumberbridge's story.

"Did you, or did you not, know this last October?" she asked.

"I had heard something about it when I was in London two years before."

"And you did not consider it your duty to tell me?"

"Certainly not. I told you at the time, when I came back from town, that your young protégé's life had been a trifle wild. Miss Bridgeman remembered the fact, and spoke of it the night Hamleigh came to Mount Royal. When I saw how matters were going with Belle and Hamleigh, I made it my business to question him, considering myself Belle's next friend; and he assured me, as between man and man, that the affair with Stella Mayne was over – that he had broken with her formally and finally. From first to last I believe he acted wonderfully well in the business."

"Acted well! – acted well, to be the avowed lover of such a woman! – to advertise his devotion to her – associate his name with hers irrevocably – for you know that the world never forgets these alliances – and then to come to Mount Royal, and practise upon our provincial ignorance, and offer his battered life to my niece! Was that well?"

"You could hardly wish him to have told your niece the whole story. Besides, it is a thing of the past. No man can go through life with the burden of his youthful follies hanging round his neck, and strangling him."

"The past is as much a part of a man's life as the present. I want my niece's husband to be a man of an unstained past."

"Then you will have to wait a long time for him. My dear Mrs. Tregonell, pray be reasonable, just commonly reasonable! There is not a family in England into which Angus Hamleigh would not be received with open arms, if he offered himself as a suitor. Why should you draw a hard-and-fast line, sacrifice Belle's happiness to a chimerical idea of manly virtue? You can't have King Arthur for your niece's husband, and if you could, perhaps you wouldn't care about him. Why not be content with Lancelot, who has sinned, and is sorry for his sin; and of whom may be spoken praise almost as noble as those famous words Sir Bohort spoke over his friend's dead body."

"I shall not sacrifice Belle's happiness. If she were my daughter I should take upon myself to judge for her, and while I lived she should never see Angus Hamleigh's face again. But she is my sister's child, and I shall give her the liberty of judgment."

"You don't mean that you will tell her this story?"

"Most decidedly."

"For God's sake, don't! – you will spoil her happiness for ever. To you and me, who must have some knowledge of the world, it ought to be a small thing that a man has made a fool of himself about an actress. We ought to know for how little that kind of folly counts in a lifetime. But for a girl brought up like Christabel it will mean disenchantment – doubt – perhaps a lifetime of jealousy and self-torment. For mercy's sake, be reasonable in this matter! I am talking to you as if I were Christabel's father, remember. I suppose that old harridan, Lady Cumberbridge, told you this precious story. Such women ought to be put down by Act of Parliament. Yes, there should be a law restricting every unattached female over five-and-forty to a twenty-mile radius of her country-house. After that age their tongues are dangerous."

"My friend Lady Cumberbridge told me facts which seem to be within everybody's knowledge; and she told them at my particular request. Your rudeness about her does not make the case any better for Mr. Hamleigh, or for you."

"I think I had better go and dine at my club," said the Major, perfectly placid.

"No, stay, please. You have proved yourself a broken reed to lean upon; but still you are a reed."

"If I stay it will be to persuade you to spare Belle the knowledge of this wretched story."

"I suppose he has almost ruined himself for the creature," said Mrs. Tregonell, glancing at the subject for the first time from a practical point of view.

"He spent a good many thousands, but as he had no other vices – did not race or gamble – his fortune survived the shock. His long majority allowed for considerable accumulations, you see. He began life with a handsome capital in hand. I dare say Miss Mayne sweated that down for him!"

"I don't want to go into details – I only want to know how far he deceived us?"

"There was no deception as to his means – which are ample – nor as to the fact that he is entirely free from the entanglement we have been talking about. Every one in London knows that the affair was over and done with more than a year ago."

The two girls came down to the drawing-room, and dinner was announced. It was a very dismal dinner – the dreariest that had ever been eaten in that house, Christabel thought. Mrs. Tregonell was absorbed in her own thoughts, absent, automatic in all she said and did. The Major maintained a forced hilarity, which was more painful than silence. Jessie looked anxious.

"I'll tell you what, girls," said Major Bree, as the mournful meal languished towards its melancholy close, "we seem all very doleful without Hamleigh. I'll run round to Bond Street directly after dinner, and see if I can get three stalls for 'Lohengrin.' They are often to be had at the last moment."

"Please, don't," said Christabel, earnestly; "I would not go to a theatre again without Angus. I am sorry I went the other night. It was obstinate and foolish of me to insist upon seeing that play, and I was punished for it by that horrid old woman this afternoon."

"But you liked the play?"

"Yes – while I was seeing it; but now I have taken a dislike to Miss Mayne. I feel as if I had seen a snake – all grace and lovely colour – and had caught hold of it, only to find that it was a snake."

The Major stared and looked alarmed. Was this an example of instinct superior to reason?

"Let me try for the opera," he said. "I'm sure it would do you good to go. You will sit in the front drawing-room listening for hansoms all the evening, fancying that every pair of wheels you hear is bringing Angus back to you."

"I would rather be doing that than be sitting at the opera, thinking of him. But I'm afraid there's no chance of his coming to-night. His letter to-day told me that his aunt insists upon his staying two or three days longer, and that she is ill enough to make him anxious to oblige her."

The evening passed in placid dreariness. Mrs. Tregonell sat brooding in her armchair – pondering whether she should or should not tell Christabel everything – knowing but too well how the girl's happiness was dependent upon her undisturbed belief in her lover, yet repeating to herself again and again that it was right and fair that Christabel should know the truth – nay, ever so much better that she should be told it now, when she was still free to shape her own future, than that she should make the discovery later, when she was Angus Hamleigh's wife. This last consideration – the thought, that a secret which was everybody's secret must inevitably, sooner or later, become known to Christabel – weighed heavily with Mrs. Tregonell; and through all her meditations there was interwoven the thought of her absent son, and how his future welfare might depend upon the course to be taken now.

Christabel played and sang, while the Major and Jessie Bridgeman sat at bezique. The friendship of these two had been in no wise disturbed by the Major's offer, and the lady's rejection. It was the habit of both to take life pleasantly. Jessie took pains to show the Major how sincerely she valued his esteem – how completely she appreciated the fine points of his character; and he was too much a gentleman to remind her by one word or tone of his disappointment that day in the wood above Maidenhead.

The evening came to its quiet end at last. Christabel had scarcely left her piano in the dim little third room – she had sat there in the faint light, playing slow sleepy nocturnes and lieder, and musing, musing sadly, with a faint sick dread of coming sorrow. She had seen it in her aunt's face. When the old buhl clock chimed the half-hour after ten the Major got up and took his leave, bending over Mrs. Tregonell as he pressed her hand at parting to murmur: "Remember," with an accent as solemn as Charles the Martyr's when he spoke to Juxon.

Mrs. Tregonell answered never a word. She had been pondering and wavering all the evening, but had come to no fixed conclusion.

She bade the two girls good-night directly the Major was gone. She told herself that she had the long tranquil night before her for the resolution of her doubts. She would sleep upon this vexed question. But before she had been ten minutes in her room there came a gentle knock at the door, and Christabel stole softly to her side.

"Auntie, dear, I want to talk to you before you go to bed, if you are not very tired. May Dormer go for a little while?"

Dormer, gravest and most discreet of handmaids, whose name seemed to have been made on purpose for her, looked at her mistress, and receiving a little nod, took up her work and crept away. Dormer was never seen without her needlework. She complained that there was so little to do for Mrs. Tregonell that unless she had plenty of plain sewing she must expire for want of occupation, having long outlived such frivolity as sweethearts and afternoons out.

When Dormer was gone, Christabel came to her aunt's chair, and knelt down beside it just as she had done at Mount Royal, when she told her of Angus Hamleigh's offer.

"Aunt Diana, what has happened, what is wrong?" she asked, coming at the heart of the question at once. There was no shadow of doubt in her mind that something was sorely amiss.

"How do you know that there is anything wrong?"

"I have known it ever since that horrible old woman – Medusa in a bonnet all over flowers – pansies instead of snakes – talked about Cupid and Psyche. And you knew it, and made her stop to tell you all about it. There is some cruel mystery – something that involves my fate with that of the actress I saw the other night."

Mrs. Tregonell sat with her hands tightly clasped, her brows bent. She felt herself taken by storm, as it were, surprised into decision before she had time to make up her mind.

"Since you know so much, perhaps you had better know all," she said, gloomily; and then she told the story, shaping it as delicately as she could for a girl's ear.

Christabel covered her face with her clasped hands, and listened without a sigh or a tear. The pain she felt was too dull and vague as yet for the relief of tears. The horrible surprise, the sudden darkening of the dream of her young life, the clouding over of every hope, these were shapeless horrors which she could hardly realize at first. Little by little this serpent would unfold its coils; drop by drop this poison would steal through her veins, until its venom filled her heart. He, whom she had supposed all her own, with whose every thought she had fancied herself familiar, he, of whose heart she had believed herself the sole and sovereign mistress, had been one little year ago the slave of another – loving with so passionate a love that he had not shrunk from letting all the world know his idolatry. Yes, all those people who had smiled at her, and said sweet things to her, and congratulated her on her engagement, had known all the while that this lover, of whom she was so proud, was only the cast-off idolater of an actress; had come to her only when life's master-passion was worn threadbare, and had become a stale and common thing for him. At the first, womanly pride felt the blow as keenly as womanly love. To be made a mock of by the man she had so loved!