"Yes, I heard him," said Miss Vance. "Poor Pauline! Her career was always a mystery to me. I was at school with her, and she was the most generous, lovable girl! Yet she came to a wretched end," turning to her flock, her tone growing didactic. "One is never safe, you see. One must always be on guard."
"Oh, my dear!" cried Frances impatiently. "You surely don't mean to class these girls and me with Pauline Felix! Come, come!"
"None of us is safe," repeated Clara stiffly. "Somebody says there is a possible vice in the purest soul, and it may lie perdu there until old age. But it will break out some day."
Mrs. Waldeaux looked, laughing, at the eager, blushing faces around her. "It is not likely to break out in us, girls, eh! Really, Clara," she said, in a lower tone, "that seems to me like wasted morality. Women of our class are in no more danger of temptation to commit great crimes than they are of finding tigers in their drawing-rooms. Pauline Felix was born vicious. No woman could fall as she did, who was not rotten to the core."
A sudden shrill laugh burst from the French woman, who had been looking at Mrs. Waldeaux with insolent, bold eyes. But as she laughed, her head fell forward and she swung from side to side.
"It is nothing," she cried, "I am only a little faint. I must go below."
The ship was now crossing short, choppy waves. The passengers scattered rapidly. George took his mother to her stateroom, and there she stayed until land was sighted on the Irish coast. Clara and her companions also were forced to keep to their berths.
During the speechless misery of the first days Mrs. Waldeaux was conscious that George was hanging over her, tender as a mother with a baby. She commanded him to stay on deck, for each day she saw that he, too, grew more haggard. "Let me fight it out alone," she would beg of him. "My worst trouble is that I cannot take care of you."
He obeyed her at last, and would come down but once during the day, and then for only a few hurried minutes. His mother was alarmed at the ghastliness of his face and the expression of anxious wretchedness new to it. "His eye avoids mine craftily, like that of an insane man," she told herself, and when the doctor came, she asked him whether sea-sickness affected the brain.
On the last day of the voyage the breeze was from land, and with the first breath of it Frances found her vigor suddenly return. She rose and dressed herself. George had not been near her that day. "He must be very ill," she thought, and hurried out. "Is Mr. Waldeaux in his stateroom?" she asked the steward.
"No, madam. He is on deck. All the passengers are on deck," the man added, smiling. "Land is in sight."
Land! And George had not come to tell her! He must be desperately ill!
She groped up the steps, holding by the brass rail. "I will give him a fine surprise!" she said to herself. "I can take care of him, now. To-night we shall be on shore and this misery all over. And then the great joy will begin!"
She came out on deck. The sunshine and cold pure wind met her. She looked along the crowded deck for her invalid. Every-body was in holiday clothes, every-body was smiling and talking at once. Ah! there he was!
He was leaning over Frances' steamer chair, on which a woman lay indolently. He was in rude health, laughing, his face flushed, his eyes sparkling.
Looking up, he saw his mother and came hastily to meet her. The laugh was gone. "So you came up?" he said impatiently. "I would have called you in time. I– Mother!" He caught her by the arm. "Wait, I must see you alone for a minute." Urged by the amazed fright in her face, he went on desperately, "I have something to tell you. I intended to break it to you. I don't want to hurt you, God knows. But I have not been idle in these days. I have found your daughter. She is here."
He led her up to the chair. The girl's head was wrapped in a veil and turned from her.
Mrs. Waldeaux held out her hands. "Lucy! Lucy Dunbar!" she heard herself say.
"Mais non! Cest moi!" said a shrill voice, and Mlle. Arpent, turning her head lazily, looked at her, smiling.
CHAPTER II
Clara Vance had her faults, but nobody could deny that, in this crisis, she acted with feeling and tact. She ignored mademoiselle and her lover, whose bliss was in evidence on deck all day, and took possession of Mrs. Waldeaux, caring for her as tenderly as if she had been some poor wretch sentenced to death. "She has no intellect left except her ideas about George," she told herself, "and if he turns his back on her for life in this way– She never was too sane!" shaking her head ominously.
She thought it best to talk frankly of the matter to little Lucy Dunbar, and was relieved to find her ready to joke and laugh at it. "No bruise in that tender heart!" thought Clara, who was anxious as a mother for her girls.
"We all worshipped Mr. George," said Lucy saucily. "I, most of all. He is so cold, so exalted and ah—h, so good-looking! Like a Greek god. But he never gave a look to poor little me! The fraulein came on deck as soon as we all went down with sea-sickness, and bewitched him with her eyes. It must have been her eyes; they are yellow—witch's eyes. Or maybe that cheap smell about her is a love-philter! Or was it just soul calling to soul? I should have said the fraulein had the soul of a milliner. She put great ideas into the hat that she altered for me," Lucy added, with an unsteady laugh.
"I care nothing for them or their souls," said Miss Vance crossly. "It is his mother that I think of."
"But really," said Lucy, "mademoiselle is quite raw material. No ideas—no manners whatever. Mrs. Waldeaux may mould her into something good and fine."
"She will not try. She will never accept that creature as a daughter."
"She seems to me to be indifferent," said Lucy. "She does not see how terrible it is. She was leaning over the bulwark just now, laughing at the queer gossoons selling their shillalahs."
"Oh, she will laugh at Death himself when he comes to fetch her, and see something 'queer'in him," said Clara.
But her little confidence with Lucy had relieved her. The child cared nothing for George, that was plain.
Mademoiselle, watching Mrs. Waldeaux closely all day, was not deceived by her laugh. "The old lady, your mother," she said to George, "is what you men call 'game.' She has blood and breeding. More than you, monsieur. That keeps her up. I did not count on that," said the young woman thoughtfully.
George took off his glasses and rubbed them nervously as he talked. "I don't understand my mother at all! She has always been very considerate and kind. I never thought that she would receive my wife, when I brought her to her, with calm civility. Not a kiss nor a blessing!"
"A kiss? A blessing for me?" Lisa laughed and nodded meaningly to the sea and world at large. "She could hardly have blessed a woman lolling full length in her chair," she thought. "It IS her chair. And I have unseated her for life curling herself up in the rugs."
Yet she had a twinge of pity for the old lady. Even the wild boar has its affections and moments of gentleness. A week ago Lisa could have trampled the life out of this woman who had slandered her dead mother, with the fury of any wild beast. For she was Pauline Felix's daughter. It was her mother's name that Mrs. Waldeaux had said could not be spoken by any decent woman. Lisa had been but a child, but she had held her mother's head close to her stout little heart as she lay dying—that awful mysterious death of which the young man had tried to make a telling story. The girl crossed herself now and closed her tired eyes as she thought of it. She had been a wicked child and a wicked woman, but she knew certainly that the Virgin and her Son had come near to her that day, and had helped her.
George, who was poring fondly on her face, exclaimed: "Your eyes are wet. You are in trouble!"
"I was thinking of my mother," she said gently, holding out her hand to him.
He took it and said presently, "Will you not talk to me about her, Lisa? You have not told me any thing of your people, my darling. Nor of yourself. Why, I don't even know whether you are French or German."
"Oh, you shall hear the whole story when we are married," she replied softly, a wicked glitter in her eyes. "Some of the noblest blood in Europe is in my veins. I