At last the admiral, finding her dull and listless, said, “Why don't you go and talk to the Sister? She amuses you. I'll join you when I have smoked this cigar.”
The obedient Bella rose, and went toward the Sister as if compelled. But when she got to her her whole manner changed. She took her warmly by the hand, and said, trembling and blushing, and all on fire, “I have brought you the anonymous letter.”
The elder actress took it and ran her eye over it—an eye that now sparkled like a diamond. “Humph!” said she, and flung off all the dulcet tones of her assumed character with mighty little ceremony. “This hand is disguised a little, but I think I know it. I am sure I do! The dirty little rascal!”
“Madam!” cried Bella, aghast with surprise at this language.
“I tell you I know the writer and his rascally motive. You must lend me this for a day or two.”
“Must I?” said Bella. “Excuse me! Papa would be so angry.”
“Very likely; but you will lend it to me for all that; for with this I can clear Miss Bruce's lover and defeat his enemies.”
Bella uttered a faint cry, and trembled, and her bosom heaved violently. She looked this way and that, like a frightened deer. “But papa? His eye is on us.”
“Never deceive your father!” said the Sister, almost sternly; “but,” darting her gray eyes right into those dove-like orbs, “give me five minutes' start—IF YOU REALLY LOVE SIR CHARLES BASSETT.”
With these words she carried off the letter; and Bella ran, blushing, panting, trembling, to her father, and clung to him.
He questioned her, but could get nothing from her very intelligible until the Sister was out of sight, and then she told him all without reserve.
“I was unworthy of him to doubt him. An anonymous slander. I'll never trust appearances again. Poor Charles! Oh, my darling! what he must have suffered if he loves like me.” Then came a shower of happy tears; then a shower of happy kisses.
The admiral groaned, but for a long time he could not get a word in. When he did it was chilling. “My poor girl,” said he, “this unhappy love blinds you. What, don't you see the woman is no nun, but some sly hussy that man has sent to throw dust in your eyes?”
Nothing she could say prevailed to turn him from this view, and he acted upon it with resolution: he confined her excursions to a little garden at the back of the house, and forbade her, on any pretense, to cross the threshold.
Miss Somerset came to the square in another disguise, armed with important information. But no Bella Bruce appeared to meet her.
All this time Richard Bassett was happy as a prince.
So besotted was he with egotism, and so blinded by imaginary wrongs, that he rejoiced in the lovers' separation, rejoiced in his cousin's attack.
Polly, who now regarded him almost as a lover, told him all about it; and already in anticipation he saw himself and his line once more lords of the two manors—Bassett and Huntercombe—on the demise of Sir Charles Bassett, Bart., deceased without issue.
And, in fact, Sir Charles was utterly defeated. He lay torpid.
But there was a tough opponent in the way—all the more dangerous that she was not feared.
One fine day Miss Somerset electrified her groom by ordering her pony carriage to the door at ten A. M.
She took the reins on the pavement, like a man, jumped in light as a feather, and away rattled the carriage into the City. The ponies were all alive, the driver's eye keen as a bird's; her courage and her judgment equal. She wound in and out among the huge vehicles with perfect composure; and on those occasions when, the traffic being interrupted, the oratorical powers were useful to fill up the time, she shone with singular brilliance. The West End is too often in debt to the City, but, in the matter of chaff, it was not so this day; for whenever she took a peck she returned a bushel; and so she rattled to the door of Solomon Oldfield, solicitor, Old Jewry.
She penetrated into the inner office of that worthy, and told him he must come with her that minute to Portman Square.
“Impossible, madam!” And, as they say in the law reports, gave his reasons.
“Certain, sir!” And gave no reasons.
He still resisted.
Thereupon she told him she should sit there all day and chaff his clients one after another, and that his connection with the Bassett and Huntercombe estates should end.
Then he saw he had to do with a termagant, and consented, with a sigh.
She drove him westward, wincing every now and then at her close driving, and told him all, and showed him what she was pleased to call her little game. He told her it was too romantic. Said he, “You ladies read nothing but novels; but the real world is quite different from the world of novels.” Having delivered this remonstrance—which was tolerably just, for she never read anything but novels and sermons—he submitted like a lamb, and received her instructions.
She drove as fast as she talked, so that by this time they were at Admiral Bruce's door.
Now Mr. Oldfield took the lead, as per instructions. “Mr. Oldfield, solicitor, and a lady—on business.”
The porter delivered this to the footman with the accuracy which all who send verbal messages deserve and may count on. “Mr. Oldfield and lady.”
The footman, who represented the next step in oral tradition, without which form of history the Heathen world would never have known that Hannibal softened the rocks with vinegar, nor the Christian world that eleven thousand virgins dwelt in a German town the size of Putney, announced the pair as “Mr. and Mrs. Hautville.”
“I don't know them, I think. Well, I will see them.”
They entered, and the admiral stared a little, and wondered how this couple came together—the keen but plain old man, with clothes hanging on him, and the dashing beauty, with her dress in the height of the fashion, and her gauntleted hands. However, he bowed ceremoniously, and begged his visitors to be seated.
Now the folding-doors were ajar, and the soi-disant Mrs. Oldfield peeped. She saw Bella Bruce at some distance, seated by the fire, in a reverie.
Judge that young lady's astonishment when she looked up and observed a large white, well-shaped hand, sparkling with diamonds and rubies, beckoning her furtively.
The owner of that sparkling hand soon heard a soft rustle of silk come toward the door; the very rustle, somehow, was eloquent, and betrayed love and timidity, and something innocent yet subtle. The jeweled hand went in again directly.
CHAPTER VIII.
MEANTIME Mr. Oldfield began to tell the admiral who he was, and that he was come to remove a false impression about a client of his, Sir Charles Bassett.
“That, sir,” said the admiral, sternly, “is a name we never mention here.”
He rose and went to the folding-doors, and deliberately closed them.
The Somerset, thus defeated, bit her lip, and sat all of a heap, like a cat about to spring, looking sulky and vicious.
Mr. Oldfield persisted, and, as he took the admiral's hint and lowered his voice, he was interrupted no more, but made a simple statement of those facts which are known to the reader.
Admiral Bruce heard them, and admitted that the case was not quite so bad as he had thought.
Then Mr. Oldfield proposed that Sir Charles should