Volume 3 — CHAPTER XIX. ANOTHER ESCAPE.

“A gentleman, please, miss, as wants to see you.”

Such was the announcement, on the morning succeeding Honor’s instalment in her new abode, of the fastidious Arthur Vavasour’s visit to that very untempting “bower of beauty.”

It was nearly noon, an early hour for him to be abroad; but to Honor—who had passed a sleepless night, and who had been up and about for ages, as it seemed to her—the day appeared to be already well-nigh spent; while as regarded him, and her chance of seeing him in her wretched home, she had begun almost to despair of any such blissful, and now apparently improbable, event. When he did appear therefore, when her hand was clasped in his, and when his kind voice whispered softly, “I could not come before, dear; and now I am come, what a place I find you in!” her heart went forth with grateful joy to meet him, for she felt no longer unprotected and alone.

“And so they have been ill-using you, you poor little thing?” he went on softly, her hand still in his, as they sat side by side on what Mrs. Casey called the couch. “I guessed how it would be; I did not like the way he looked when he took you away that night.”

“O, but it isn’t John—indeed it isn’t!” Honor said eagerly, her sense of justice roused to defend her husband; “it was his mother, as I told you, who behaved so to me. It was she that made me go. I know it was wrong; but what could I do?”

“What indeed?” stroking tenderly the little hand he held in his. “But, Honor, it will never do for you to remain here. The place is not respectable—I am certain it is not; and the woman looks like an ogress. I think I can manage something better for you than this. There is an old servant of my father’s—a Swiss—an excellent man, with one of the cleanest and most cheerful of little wives; and if he happens to have room in his house, I am sure he will be only too delighted to devote himself to making you comfortable. Really, the nicest of old men. I will go there this afternoon, and try to make arrangements for the change.”

“Thank you—how good you are!” Honor said fervently; “they certainly do not seem like nice people here; but I stopped at the first place where I saw a bill up. I believe I was afraid to meet my father. What I fear most now is his seeing me; for he would perhaps tell John—John would go to him first, you know, and—”

“Your father! Why, Honor, haven’t you heard? But I don’t know how you should. Your father is—has—” and then he stopped, feeling it scarcely decent to disclose to Honor the facts that proclaimed her father to be a villain.

But his companion, who was quoad curiosity a true daughter of Eve, refused on this occasion to allow her filial feelings to be spared. She insisted (and as a natural consequence not only of that insistence, but of the wronged man’s easily-to-be-comprehended satisfaction in giving at least words to his sorrow) on hearing all that Arthur could tell her of her father. In breathless silence she listened to a detail of his villany; and deep indeed and painful was her regret at the injury which had been done to the man who had so blindly trusted him.

As Arthur noted the quivering lip, the turbulent heaving of the pitying breast, he could not but feel he was in one respect a gainer by his loss; for Honor could hardly be hard and distant to the friend who had fallen a victim to the machinations of her father. Arthur felt that he had claim on, an actual right to, her sympathy and kindness now, and therefore did not hesitate to make the very most of the injuries, the losses, and the embarrassments which the Colonel’s baseness had entailed upon him.

“I am so sorry—so very grieved. Is there nothing that I could do? Perhaps if I were to see my father, I might—”

Arthur interrupted her with a laugh. “See him?” he said; “why, it would require the best detective in London, I suspect, to find him out; and if we did, there is nothing, not even your persuasions, which would be likely to work up such a man as Fred Norcott to his duty. But we have wasted time enough over him, dear Honor: and as I am not my own master just now—since Sophy’s confinement, I mean—”

“Since that? O, Mr. Vavasour, why did you not tell me before? You knew I should care so much to hear it! Think of your having a dear little child!” and she sighed involuntarily, a faint but very mournful sigh (which Arthur fancied in his folly that he comprehended), and then added, with an attempt at playfulness, “Perhaps I may be thought clever enough to teach your children some day; but I must learn a great deal myself first. The Miss Vavasours will want all sorts of accomplishments that a humble nursery governess knows nothing about; and that reminds me—” speaking very quick, as she noted a crimson flush that mounted to her companion’s brow, and a something in his eyes which her woman’s instinct taught her was alarming—“that reminds me that I have no time to lose in looking for the means of providing for myself. I have a good deal of money” (there were exactly seven pounds in her portemonnaie), “but still I want to begin. It will be no trouble to me to teach and take care of children. I love them so dearly; and the little things always take to me.”

“It would be strange, I think, if they did not,” Arthur ventured to say, as he gazed with such passionate fondness on her face, that Honor was forced to veil her eyes with their white lids for very shame.

“O no, it isn’t that,” she said hastily, and hardly knowing what words were falling from her lips. “You see, I have been so used to them, and—and I cannot bear to be idle. If I have nothing to do, I begin to think—to think of poor John—”

Arthur, at this unexpected mention (a very mal à propos one in his opinion) of an absent husband’s name, rose abruptly from his place by Honor’s side. He was very young, very little conversant in the ways and means of defence of such women as Honor, or he would have seen through this simple ruse. He would have understood that this beautiful and defenceless creature, with an instinctive dread of her pursuer, had thrown up this rampart against attack, and would have drawn, through that very alarm, good augury for eventual success.

It was fortunate for Honor that no such ideas as these entered at that moment the mind of the man who was gradually coming near enough to be—there is no medium course, let women believe in its existence if they will—either accepted or denied. It was well, too, that Arthur, roused by his own movement from the dream of passion in which he had been indulging, once more began to have some thought and memory for outward things, and especially for the lapse of time since he had left his home.

Looking hastily at his watch, he perceived to his dismay that it was four o’clock, so swiftly had time passed—is it not ever so?—while he had been occupied by talking about himself, and been busied with his own sentimental interests.

“Four o’clock already!” he exclaimed, “and I have so much to do for you, Honor! It is impossible for you to remain here. I could not answer for the consequences. I only wish that I had met you at the Waterloo station, and prevented your coming here at all. However, I am off now to see about old Schmidt, and directly I have settled anything, I will return. In the mean time, do not leave the house, and if you can, avoid seeing the woman that it belongs to.”

“I can hardly help seeing her,” Honor said with a smile; for she was both amused and flattered by his solicitude on her behalf. “She will bring in the few things that I want herself, and—”

“Your poor little dinner solitary among the rest, I suppose?” said Arthur pityingly. “O Honor!” he continued—and how at that moment he longed for the hundredth time to take her in his arms and whisper to her his love, the object of that love was happily never destined to know—“O Honor!” he said, “my love, my darling! how unfitted you are to do battle for yourself in this rough, wicked world! It is so hard to leave you, so hard to think of you, in this sordid miserable place, alone, unprotected, and—God help both you and me!—so very, very beautiful!”

He drew a long, almost a gasping breath, as the last passionate words burst from his white quivering lips, and, almost before Honor could even look her surprise at the utterly unexpected outburst, the door had closed upon his retreating figure, and Honor once more found herself alone.