Phantom Fortune.

Otago Witness, Issue 1654, 4 August 1883, Page 24

Phantom Fortune.

BY MISS BRADDON.

AutW o! v Lady Audley's Secret," " Taken at the flood," " A Strange World," " Dead Men's Shoes," " Weavers and Weft," " Just as I Am," &c, &c.

Chapter XVI. Lady M<tulevrier'a Letter-bag. LTHOUGH Maulevrier had assured his grandmother that John ; Hammond would take flight at 1 the first warning of Lesbia's return, Lady Maulevrier's dread of any meeting between her granddaughter and that ineligible lover, determined her in making such arrangements as should banish Lesbia from Fellside, so long as there seemed the slightest danger of such a meeting. She knew that Lesbia nad loved her fortuneless lover ; and she £id not know that the wound was cured, even by a season in the little-great world of Cannes. Now that she, the ruler of that household, was & helpless captive in her own apartments, she felt that Lesbia afc Fellside would be her own mistress, and hemmed round with the dangers fchafc beset richly-dowered beauty and inexperienced youth. Mr Hammond might be playing a very deep game, perhaps assisted by Maulevrier. He might ostensibly leave FKllside before Lesbia'e return, yet lurk in the neighbourhood, and contrive to meet her evety day. If Maulovrier encouraged this folly, they might be married and over the border, before her ladyship — fettered, impotent, as Hhe was — could interfere. Lady Maulevrier felfc that Georgie Kirkbank was her strong rock. So long as Lesbia was under that astute veteran's wing there could be no danger. In that embodied essence of worldlines3 and diplomacy, there was an everpresent defence from all temptations that spring from romance and youthful impulses. It was a bitter thing perhaps to steep a young and pure soul in such an atmosphere, to harden a free young nature in the fiery crucible of fashionable life ; but Lady Maulevrier believed that the ■uid would justify the meaus. Losbia, once married to a worthy man — such a man as Lord Harfctield, for instance — would soon ri&e to a higher level than that Belgravian swamp over which the malarian vapours of falbeh<?od, and slander, and self-seeking, and prurient imaginings, hang dense and thick. She would rise to the loftier table-land of that leally great world which governs and admonishes the rock of mankind by examples of noble deeds and noble thoughts ; the world of statesmen, and soldiers, and thinkers, and reformers, tho salt wherewithal society is salted. But while Lesbia was treading the tortuous mazes of fashion, it was well for her to be guided and guarded by such an old campaigner

as Lady Kirkbank, a woman, who in the language of her friends, "knew the ropes." Lesbia's la3t letter had been to the effect that she was to go back to London with the Kirkbanks directly after Easter, and that directly they arrived she would set off with her maid for Fellside, to spend a week or a fortnight with her dearest grandmother, before going back to Arlington street for the May campaign. " And then, dearest, I hope you will make up your mind to spend the season in London," wrote Lesbia. "I shall expect to hear that you have secured Lord Bolingbroke's house. How dreadfully slow your poor dear hand is to recover. lam afraid Horton is not treating the case cleverly. Why do you not send for Mr Ericsen ? It is a shock to my nerves every time I receive a letter in Mary's masculine hand, instead of in your lovely Italian penmanship. Strange, isn't it, how much better the women of past generations write than the girls of the present ? Lady Kirkbank receives letters from stylish girls that would disgrace a housemaid."

Lady Maulevrier allowed a post to go by before she answered this letter, while she deliberated upon tho beat and wisest manner of arranging her granddaughter's future. It was an agony to her not to be able to write with her own 'hand, to be obliged to so shape every sentence that Mary might learn nothing which she ought not to know. It was impossible with such an amanuensis to write confidentially to Lady Kirkbank. The letters to Lesbia were of less consequence; for Lesbia, albeit so intensely beloved, was not in her grandmother's confidence, least of all about thoso schemes and dreams which concerned her own fate.

However, the letters had to be written, so Mary was told to open her desk and begin. The letter to Lesbia ran thus : —

" My Dearest Child, " This is a world iv which our brightest daydreams generally end in mere dreaming. For years past I have cherished the hope of presenting you to your sovereign, to whom I was presented six-and-forty years ago, when she was so fair and girlish a .creature that she seemed to me more like a queen in a fairy tale than the actual ruler of a great country. I have beguiled my monotonous days with thoughts of the time when I should return to the great world, full of pride and delight in showing old friends what a sweet flower I had reared in my mountain home ; but, alas, Lesbia, it may not be.

" Fate has willed otherwise. The maimed hand does not recover, although Horton is very clever, and thoroughly understands my case. I am not ill, I am not in danger, so you need feel no anxiety about me ; but I am a cripple, and I am likely to remain so for months ; so the idea of a London season this year is hopeless.

" Now, as you have in a manner made your debut at Cannes, it would never do to bury you here for another year. You complained of the dullness last summer, but you would find Fellside much duller now that you have tasted the elixir of life. No, my dear love, it will be well for you to bo presented, as Lady Kirkbank proposes, at the first drawing-room after Easter, and Lady Kirkbank will have to present you. She will be pleased to do this, I know, for her letters are full of enthusiasm about you. And after all Ido not think you will lose by the exchange. Clever as I think myself, I fear I should have been sorely at fault in the society of to day. All things are changed, opinions, manners, croeds, morals even. Acts that were crimes in my day are now venial errors — opinions that were scandalous are now the mark of ' advanced thought.' I should be too formal for this easy-going age, should be ridiculed as old-fashioned and nar-row-minded, should put you to the blush a dozen times a day by my prejudices and opinions. "It is very good of you to think of travelling all this distance to see me ; and I should love to look at your sweet face and hear you describe your new experiences ; but I could not allow you to travel with only the protection of a maid ; and there are many reasons why I think it better to defer the meeting till the end of the season, when Lady Kirkbank will bring my treasure back to me, eager to tell me the history of all the hearts she has broken."

The Dowager's letter to Lady Kirkbank was brief and businesslike. She could only hope that her old friend Georgie, whose acuteness she knew of old, would divine her feelings and her wishes without being explicitly told what they were. " My Dear Georgie, "I am too ill to leave this house ; indeed I doubt if I shall ever leave it till 1 am taken away in my coffin ; but please say nothing to alarm Lesbia. Indeed there is no ground for fear, as I am not dangerously ill, and may drag out an imprisonment of long years before the coffin comes to fetch me. There are reasons, which you will understand, why Lesbia should not come here till after the season ; so please keep her in Arlington street, and occupy her mind as much as you can with the preparations for her first campaign. I give you carte blcmehe. If Carson is still in business I should like her to make my girl's gowns, but you must please yourself in this matter, as it is quite possible that Carson is a little behind the times.

" I must ask you to present my darling, and to deal with her exactly as if she were a daughter of your own. 1 think you know all my views and hopes about her ; and I feel that I can trust to your friendship in this my day of need. The dream of my life has been to launch her myself, and direct her every step in the mazes of her life ; but that dream is over. I have kept age and infirmity at a distance — have even forgotten that the years were going by ; and now I find myself an old woman all at once, and my golden dream has vanished."

Lady Kirkbank's reply came by retaru of post, and happily this gushing epi&tle had not to be submitted to Mary's eye. " My Dearest I)i, "My heart positively bleeds for you. What is the matter with your hand, that you talk of being a life-long prisoner to your room ? Pray send for Paget or Evicsen, and have yourself put right at once. No doubt that local simpleton is making a mess of your case. Perhaps while he is dabbling with lint and lotions the real remedy is the knife. I am sure amputation would be less melancholy than the despondent state of feeling which you are now suffering. If any limb of mine went wrong I should say to the surgeon, cut it off, and patch up the atump in your best style ; I give you a fortnight, aDd at the end o£ that time I expect to be going 1 to parties again. Lilo is not long enough for dawdling surgery.

"As regards Lerbia, I car only say that I adore her. and I am enchanted at the idea that I am to run her myself. 1 intend hor to be the beauty of the season — not one of the lovdicd diibiitanies, or ,my 7ot of that kind — but just tho girl whom everybody will bo cazy about. There shall be a mob wherever t.he appears, L)i, I promise you that. Thoie is no oue in London who can work a thing of that kind better than your humble bervant. And when once the girl its the talk of the town all the rest is easy. She can choose for herself among the very best men in society, Offers

will pour in as thickly as circulars from undertakers and mourning warehouses, after a death.

"Lesbia is so cool-headed and sensible that I have not the least doubt of her success. With an impulsive or romantic girl there is always the fear of a fiasco. But this sweet child of yours has been well brought up and knows her own value. She behaved like a queen here, where I need not, tell you society is just a little mixed, though, of course, we ouly cultivate our own set. Your heart would swell with pride if you could see the way she puts down men who are not quite good styla; and the ease with which she crushes those odious American girls, with their fine complexions and coarse manners. " Be assured that I shall guard her as the apple of my eye, and that the detrimental who circumvents me will be a very Satan of schemers. " I can but smile at your mention of Carson, whose gowns used to fit us so well in our girlish days, and whose bills seem moderate compared with the exorbitant accounts I get now. " Carson has long been forgotten, my dear soul—gone with the snows of last year. A long procession of fashionable French dressmakers has passed across the stage since her time, like the phantom kings in Macbeth ; and now the last rage is to have our gowns made by an Englishwoman, who works for the Princess, or an Irishwoman who is employed by all the best actresses. It is to the latter, Kate)Jveamey, I shall entrust our sweet Lesbia's toilettes." The same post brought a loving letter from Lesbia full of regret at not being allowed to go down to Fellside, and yet full of delight at the prospect of her first season. "Lady Kirkbank and I have been discussing my court dress," she wrote, " and we have decided upon a white velvet train with a border of marabouts, over a satin" petticoat ombroidered with seed pearl. It will be dear, but we know you will not mind that. Lady Kirkbank takes the idea from the costume Buckingham wore at the Louvre the first time he met Anne of Austria. Isn't that clever of her ? she is not a deep thinker like you; is horribly ignorant of science, metaphysics, poetry even. She asked me one day who Plato was, and whether he took his name from the battle of Platosa, and she says she never could understand why people make a fuss about Shakespeare ; but she has read all the secret histories and memoirs that ever were written, and knows all the ins and cuts of court life and high life for the last three hundred years; and there is not a person in the peerage whose family history she has not at her finger's ends, except my grandfather. When I as>ked her to tell me all about Lord Maulevrier and his achievements as Governor of Madras, she had not a word to say. So, perhaps, she draws upon her invention a little in talking about other people, and felt herself restrained when she came to speak of my grandfather." This passage in Lesbia's letter affected Lady Maulevrier as if a scorpion had wriggled from underneath the sheet ol paper. She folded the letter, and laid it in the satin-lined box on her table, with a deep sigh. " Yes s'ie i 3i 3 in the world now, and she will ask questions ? I have never warned her against pronouncing her grandfather's name. There are some who will not be so kind as Georgie Kirkbank; some, perhaps, who will delight in humiliating her, and who will tell her the worst that can be told. My only hope is that she will make a great marriage, and speedily. Once the wife of a man with a high place in the world, worldlings will be too wise to wound her by telling her that hor grandfather was an unconvicted felon." The die was cast. Lady Maulevrier might dread the hazard of evil tongues, of slanderous memories ; but she could not recall her consent to Lesbia's debut. The girl was already launched; she had been seen and admired. The next stage in her career must be to be wooed and won by a worthy winner.