Produced by Dagny; and by David Widger
Corrected and updated text and HTML PG Editions of the complete11 volume set may be found at:
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/9774/9774.txt
https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/9774/pg9774-images.html
BOOK X.
"A dream!"—HOMER, I, 3.
CHAPTER I.
QUALIS ubi in lucem coluber
. . . Mala gramina pastus.*—VIRGIL.
Pars minima est ipsa puella sui.**—OVID.
* "As when a snake glides into light, having fed on pernicious pastures."
** "The girl is the least part of himself."
IT would be superfluous, and, perhaps, a sickening task, to detail atlength the mode and manner in which Vargrave coiled his snares round theunfortunate girl whom his destiny had marked out for his prey. He wasright in foreseeing that, after the first amazement caused by the letterof Maltravers, Evelyn would feel resentment crushed beneath her certaintyof his affection her incredulity at his self-accusations, and her secretconviction that some reverse, some misfortune he was unwilling she shouldshare, was the occasion of his farewell and flight. Vargrave thereforevery soon communicated to Evelyn the tale he had suggested to Maltravers.He reminded her of the habitual sorrow, the evidence of which was sovisible in Lady Vargrave; of her indifference to the pleasures of theworld; of her sensitive shrinking from all recurrence to her early fate."The secret of this," said he, "is in a youthful and most ferventattachment; your mother loved a young stranger above her in rank, who(his head being full of German romance) was then roaming about thecountry on pedestrian and adventurous excursions, under the assumed nameof Butler. By him she was most ardently beloved in return. Her father,perhaps, suspected the rank of her lover, and was fearful of her honourbeing compromised. He was a strange man, that father! and I know not hisreal character and motives; but he suddenly withdrew his daughter fromthe suit and search of her lover,—they saw each other no more; her lovermourned her as one dead. In process of time your mother was constrainedby her father to marry Mr. Cameron, and was left a widow with an onlychild,—yourself: she was poor;—very poor! and her love and anxiety foryou at last induced her to listen to the addresses of my late uncle; foryour sake she married again; again death dissolved the tie! But still,unceasingly and faithfully, she recalled that first love, the memory ofwhich darkened and embittered all her life, and still she lived upon thehope to meet with the lost again. At last, and most recently, it was myfate to discover that the object of this unconquerable affectionlived,—was still free in hand if not in heart: you behold the lover ofyour mother in Ernest Maltravers! It devolved on me (an invidious—areluctant duty) to inform Maltravers of the identity of Lady Vargravewith the Alice of his boyish passion; to prove to him her suffering,patient, unsubdued affection; to convince him that the sole hope left toher in life was that of one day or other beholding him once again. Youknow Maltravers,—his high-wrought, sensitive, noble character; herecoiled in terror from the thought of making his love to the daughterthe last and bitterest affliction to the mother he had so loved; knowingtoo how completely that mother had entwined herself round youraffections, he shuddered at the pain and self-reproach that would beyours when you should discover to whom you had been the rival, and whosethe fond hopes and dreams that your fatal be