A month of their visit to Cheltenham so passed, when Eleanor's attention was arrested by a new actor on the scene. She had begun to tire of her present satellites, and a young military captain, whose furlough from India had just expired, and whose pale face, somewhat melancholy expression, and very elegant figure, presented a new subject for conquest impossible to be resisted; and it was unhappily, only too easily achieved. She made no secret of her admiration, speaking of him in such terms to her intended husband as to excite anew every jealous feeling. It was easy for Captain Fortescue to discover Fitzclair was his rival; but believing himself decidedly the object of Eleanor's preference, he increased his attentions, little imagining the storm he was exciting, the more fearful from its determined suppression. Lord Delmont interfered several times, not only by reproaches to Eleanor, but by determined coldness to her new suitor. Finding at length that her encouragement actually neared a criminal extent, and after a desperately stormy interview, he solemnly declared that if she did not dismiss Captain Fortescue at once, he would shame her in the face of the whole world, by proclaiming her engagement with the young marquis. Eleanor in equal anger, declared that if he threatened, so too could she; and if he tormented her any more she would prevent all publication of her engagement, by herself snapping it asunder, and pledging her faith to Captain Fortescue. This was too much even for Lord Delmont. Declaring if she did so, a father's heaviest malediction should fall on her head, he hastily left her; and Eleanor very composedly went to prepare for an excursion on horseback with Fortescue, Fitzclair and others.
When Lord Delmont's passions were once roused, even his ordinarily slender judgment entirely forsook him, and he did that which at another time, knowing Fitzclair as he did, he would have shrunk from. He sought him, while still exasperated, upbraided him for his weakness in permitting Eleanor's unprincipled conduct, and warned him that, if he did not adopt some strong measures to prevent it, he would certainly lose her entirely.
The young man heard him without reply; but his face grew livid, and he clenched his hand till the blood started from the nails, and in this mood of concentrated passion joined the riding party. The exercise itself is, to some temperaments, unusually exciting, and the determined coldness of Eleanor to himself, and the eagerly-received devotion of Fortescue, maddened him. He demanded an interview with her on their return home, struggled to speak calmly, expostulated, and, finally, reproached. Eleanor, already irritated; and, beyond all, that her lover, in general so obsequious and humble, should dare to call her to account for mere amusement, combined with the recollection of Captain Fortescue's flattering vows and willing homage, excited her to an extent of which she was herself unconscious, inasmuch as she firmly believed, whatever she might say then, a few soft words would speedily obliterate. She told him that really his jealous temperament was beyond all endurance; that he certainly must intend her to despise and abhor him; and that the contrast he presented to Captain Fortescue was such as to make her most heartily wish to put an end to their engagement, as she felt quite sure it must only end in misery for both; and, without waiting for a reply, she haughtily brushed by him, and disappeared.
Of the extent of Fitzclair's passion Eleanor had not the least idea, and this is saying a great deal, for she generally exaggerated her own power. She believed she had inflicted pain, but not as much as he deserved; and determined that she would torment him yet more at the ball that evening. But to her extreme mortification, he did not appear, and there was a vague dread on her spirits as she retired for the night, which prevented any thing like rest. His absence had excited surprise in all, especially Lady Lascelles, who knew that to leave Eleanor entirely to the attentions of young Fortescue was so unprecedented as to bode no good. But the wildest conjectures were far from reality. The very next morning all Cheltenham was thrown into the most painful excitement by the incomprehensible and most extraordinary fact of the suicide of Lord Fitzclair; by what occasioned, plunged into such mystery that nothing but sudden aberration of mind was imagined, a belief justified by the very peculiar temperament and manners of the young nobleman during his sojourn with them. His will, a valuable present, with a few lines of regard to his faithful attendant, and a letter addressed to Arthur Hamilton, Esq., were the sole evidences that the awful deed had not been committed without some preparation; but as that was often the case with madness itself, it excited no remark.
The state of Eleanor's mind when these awful tidings were communicated to her, which they were by her father, in his agitation and anger, without the least preparation, we leave our readers to imagine. Hardened, heartless, willful as she was, she was still a woman, and a very young one, and till Captain Fortescue appeared, had loved, as far as it was in her nature, Lord Fitzclair. To believe that she had nothing to do with his miserable end was an attempt so vain and hollow, that even she shrunk from the hopeless struggle to realize it; remorse in all its torturing, unmitigated anguish took possession of her, but instead of leading her to penitence, and thence the hope of peace, it urged her to a course of action from which she imagined there was no withdrawing; and which must in time, by removing her from all painful associations, lessen her present misery.
For three days and nights she never quitted her own apartment, and then joined her usual circles without the smallest evidence of the internal agony which was still hers. It was very easy to displace paleness by artificial roses, and her gay smiles and joyous sallies were tempered only by a judiciously-expressed horror when the late event was discussed before her, supposed natural to one who had known him so intimately; but the hours of loneliness which followed this conduct in society were terrible indeed. By a strange contrariety of feeling, her better nature longed for Emmeline, and her artificial, which had, alas! only too forcibly become her natural self, felt as if she would leave the kingdom rather than encounter the mild, sorrowful glance of those penetrating eyes.
Lord Delmont was himself in a most pitiable condition; even minor evils had always been great to him, and the effect of this, the wish to take Eleanor away from Captain Fortescue's increased and annoying attentions, and yet the dread that doing so would connect her with Fitzclair's death, so distracted him as to render him really ill – information which instantly brought Mr. and Mrs. Hamilton to Cheltenham.
Some young wives and mothers might have felt it hard that their domestic enjoyment should so continually have been disturbed and annoyed from the faults of others; but Emmeline had been accustomed to trace every thing that created personal suffering to the highest source, and feel that it was good for her, or it would not be; a conviction that enabled her to bear with and still to love the erring one that was the visible cause of pain.
Eleanor was at a gay ball the night of her arrival, and Mrs. Hamilton requested she might not be informed of it till the following day. About half an hour before her usual hour of rising after such scenes, she entered her sister's room. All around her lay the ornaments of the previous evening, looking so strange, gaudy, and faded in the darkened room, and judged by the calmer feelings of the morning. A sensation of intense depression crept over Emmeline as she gazed, increasing as she looked on the face of the sleeper, which, divested of its unnatural bloom, looked so fearfully wan and haggard. Her beautiful hair lay in tangled masses on her damp brow, and as Emmeline gently tried to remove it, Eleanor started and awoke.
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