When Perdita was about six years old, a mysterious calamity occurred. Society wondered, guessed, and speculated, but never found out the whole truth of the affair. All that was certain was, that Charles Grantley suddenly disappeared from London, leaving his wife and daughter behind him. There was a rumor that he had also left behind him a letter, addressed to Sir Francis Bendibow, begging him to look after the welfare of his family, whom he could not ask to share with him his exile and disgrace. What, then, was this disgrace? Sir Francis, when interrogated on the subject, preserved a melancholy and dignified silence. It was surmised that he would not accuse his friend, and he could not defend him. But had Charles Grantley, whom all the world had taken to be at least the soul of honesty and honor—could he have been guilty of a dishonest or dishonorable action? Well, human nature is weak, and the best and strongest of men have their unaccountable moments of frailty. Grantley, no doubt, had been exposed to temptation. He had for some time past been admitted a full partner in the firm; and it was known that he had latterly been building and furnishing an expensive house. Moreover, he was believed to be a member of more than one secret society; and he had perhaps been induced or compelled to advance large contributions toward their support. The coffers of the bank were open to him. … Why rehearse again a story so often told? Enough that Charles Grantley vanished from the world that knew him, and that no news ever came to tell whither he had gone. It was only charitable to suppose that he did not long survive the disgrace into which he had plunged himself.
His wife died some years after his disappearance; not of a broken heart—for she had never cherished any very vital affection for her husband, and always seemed angry rather than grieved at the calamity—but from an acute attack of bilious fever. She was a beautiful and talented woman, but probably was not without certain blemishes of head or heart. Perdita was thus left—so far as could be known—an orphan. Sir Francis Bendibow, amidst general applause, formally adopted her. Certainly, to accept as your own the daughter of the man who has defrauded you, especially when that man happens to be your brother-in-law, shows a rare magnanimity. Perdita was brought up as befitted a young lady liable to hold a good position in society. For obvious reasons she was allowed to forget her unhappy father, and encouraged to regard herself as the actual offspring of her benevolent guardian. The girl throve passing well—more than fulfilling her early promise of beauty and grace. She, moreover, gave signs of possessing a strongly-marked character, hard, subtle and persistent; but, as the crudity of girlhood passed away, those harsher lineaments ceased to obtrude themselves—the young lady’s own sense of harmony doubtless prompting her to disguise them beneath a soft and seductive exterior; and she was by nature luxurious, and had the instinct of equipping herself cap-a-pie from the mystic arsenal of voluptuous artifice to which only such women have the key. Her debut in society was very effective, and she took all the other women’s admirers away from them. But her own heart seemed to remain unimpaired; and, on the other hand, there was a lack of really desirable offers of marriage; for it was thought, not unreasonably, that Perdita ought to make a great match—say an earl at the least. But the earls hung back; perhaps it was the still lingering shadow of her unfortunate parent that disqualified her. Here, however, fortune who, save for that one ill turn, was in love with Perdita almost to the end of her career, brought into the field an elderly and extremely wealthy foreign personage, who succumbed to the young lady’s fascinations at their first interview, made her an offer of his cordial and worldly effects on the following week, and was made the happiest of men in making her his wife by the end of the month. Perdita, for some unexplained reason, received little more than a bare outfit from her affectionate uncle and foster-father; but there were unexceptionable settlements on the part of her husband; and she accompanied the latter to the continent with éclat and a brilliant future before her—being still in her nineteenth year, while her husband was at least sixty, with an impaired constitution. Whether the issue of the affair was as prosperous as it bade fair to be Sir Francis Bendibow was not informed; for his adopted daughter had never since her departure troubled him with any letters or messages. For all he knew, she might be in the New World, or even in the next. The worthy baronet consoled himself for this neglect as best he might by lavishing attention upon the rearing and education of his only bona-fide child, a sickly and rather unpromising son. The result of the education was, that the young gentleman was allowed pretty much his own way; and, like other men before him who have steered in the same direction, he arrived at nothing particularly edifying. Sir Francis spoilt him, in short; and the youth was not one of those who can stand much spoiling. He could fight a cock, throw a main, hunt a rat, drive a horse, and upon occasion—as we have seen—could upset a coach. Perhaps, when the time came, he would be able to carry on the business of the great house of Bendibow Brothers; but it must be confessed that just at present probabilities looked the other way. It was not merely that young Mr. Thomas Bendibow had no practical knowledge of business; but that he had no brothers, nor even any cousins; that he was in fact the last of his family; and looked, at twenty, as if he hardly had pith in him to outlive his father, who was sixty-two; so that good Sir Francis, sitting day after day in his little private room at the rear of the banking premises, may be supposed to have found some elements of concern and anxiety mingling with the general complacency of his reflections. Surely he did not deserve to be the prey of such solicitude. He had long since forgotten the follies and vanities of his golden youth, and had settled down to be one of the handsomest, kindliest, courtliest, most immaculate elderly baronets imaginable.
CHAPTER VIII.
THE first week of May had passed by, and Sir Francis Bendibow was sitting in his private