第69章

Lady Isabel was seated on one of the benches of the Petit Camp, as it is called, underneath the ramparts of the upper tower. A week or ten days had passed away since the departure of Mr. Carlyle, and in her health there was a further visible improvement.

It was still evening, cool for July; no sound was heard save the hum of the summer insects, and Lady Isabel sat in silence with her companion, her rebellious heart beating with a sense of its own happiness. But for the voice of conscience, strong within her; but for the sense of right and wrong; but for the existing things; in short, but that she was a wife, she might have been content to sit by his side forever, never to wish to move or to break the silence. Did he read her feelings? He told her, months afterward, that he did; but it may have been a vain boast, an excuse.

"Do you remember the evening, Lady Isabel, just such a one as this, that we all passed at Richmond?" he suddenly asked. "Your father, Mrs. Vane, you, I and others?"

"Yes, I remember it. We had spent a pleasant day; the two Miss Challoners were with us. You drove Mrs. Vane home, and I went with papa. You drove recklessly, I recollect, and Mrs. Vane said when we got home that you should never drive her again."

"Which meant, not until the next time. Of all capricious, vain, exacting women, Emma Vane was the worst; and Emma Mount Severn is no improvement upon it; she's a systematic flirt, and nothing better. I drove recklessly on purpose to put her in a fright, and pay her off."

"What had she done?"

"Put me in a rage. She had saddled herself upon me, when I wanted--I wished for another to be my companion."

"Blanche Challoner."

"Blanche Challoner!" echoed Captain Levison, in a mocking tone; "what did I care for Blanche Challoner?"

Isabel remembered that he had been supposed in those days to care a great deal for Miss Blanche Challoner--a most lovely girl of seventeen. "Mrs. Vane used to accuse you of caring too much for her," she said, aloud.

"She accused me of caring for some one else more than for Blanche Challoner," he significantly returned; "and for once her jealous surmises were not misplaced. No Lady Isabel, it was not Blanche Challoner I had wished to drive home. Could you not have given a better guess than that at the time?" he added, turning to her.

There was no mistaking the tone of his voice or the glance of his eye.

Lady Isabel felt a crimson flush rising and she turned her face away.

"The past is gone, and cannot be recalled," he continued, "but we both played our cards like simpletons. If ever two beings were formed to love each other, you and I were. I sometimes thought you read my feelings--"

Surprise had kept her silent, but she interrupted him now, haughtily enough.

"I must speak, Lady Isabel; it is but a few words, and then I am silent forever. I would have declared myself had I dared, but my uncertain position, my debts, my inability to keep a wife, weighed me down; and, instead of appealing to Sir Peter, as I ought to have done, for the means to assume a position that would justify me in asking Lord Mount Severn's daughter, I crushed my hopes within me, and suffered you to escape--"

"I will not hear this, Captain Levison," she cried, rising from her seat in anger.

He touched her arm to place her on it again.

"One single moment yet, I pray you. I have for years wished that you should know why I lost you--a loss that tells upon me yet. I have bitterly worked out my own folly since I knew not how passionately I loved you until you became the wife of another. Isabel, I love you passionately still."

"How dare you presume so to address me?"

She spoke in a cold, dignified tone of hauteur, as it was her bounden duty to speak; but, nevertheless, she was conscious of an undercurrent of feeling, whispering that, under other auspices, the avowal would have brought to her heart the most intense bliss.

"What I have said can do no hurt now," resumed Captain Levison; "the time has gone by for it; for neither you nor I are likely to forget that you are a wife. We have each chosen our path in life, and must abide by it; the gulf between us is impassable but the fault was mine.

I ought to have avowed my affection, and not have suffered you to throw yourself away upon Mr. Carlyle."

"Throw myself away!" she indignantly uttered, roused to the retort.

"Mr. Carlyle is my dear husband, esteemed, respected, and beloved. I married him of my own free choice, and I have never repented it; I have grown more attached to him day by day. Look at his noble nature, his noble form; what are /you/ by his side? You forget yourself, Francis Levison."

He bit his lip. "No, I do not."

"You are talking to me as you have no right to talk!" she exclaimed, in agitation. "Who but you, would so insult me, taking advantage of my momentarily unprotected condition. Would you dare to do it, were Mr. Carlyle within reach! I wish you good-evening, sir."

She walked away as quickly as her tired frame would permit. Captain Levison strode after her. He took forcible possession of her hand, and placed it within his arm.

"I pray you forgive and forget what has escaped me, Lady Isabel.

Suffer me to be, as before, the kind friend, the anxious brother endeavoring to be of service to you in the absence of Mr. Carlyle."

"It is what I have suffered you to be, looking upon you as, I may say, a relative," she coldly rejoined, withdrawing her hand from his contact. "Not else should I have permitted your incessant companionship; and this is how you have repaid it! My husband thanked you for your attention to me; could he have read what was in your false heart, he had offered you different sort of thanks, I fancy."