A Terrible Temptation | Page 8

crying for? Run and get a basin of water, and fling it all over her; that will bring her to in a minute."
The page departed swiftly on this benevolent errand.
Then the lady gave a deep sigh, and ceased to struggle.
Next she stared in all their faces, and seemed to return to consciousness.
Next she spoke, but very feebly. "Help me up," she sighed.
Sir Charles and Polly raised her, and now there was a marvelous change. The vigorous vixen was utterly weak, and limp as a wet towel--a woman of jelly. As such they handled her, and deposited her gingerly on the sofa.
Now the page ran in hastily with the water. Up jumps the poor lax sufferer, with flashing eyes: "You dare come near me with it!" Then to the female servants: "Call yourselves women, and water my lilac silk, not two hours old?" Then to the housekeeper: "You old monster, you wanted it for your Polly. Get out of my sight, _the lot!"_
Then, suddenly remembering how feeble she was, she sank instantly down, and turned piteously and languidly to Sir Charles. "They eat my bread, and rob me, and hate me," said she, faintly. "I have but one friend on earth." She leaned tenderly toward Sir Charles as that friend; but before she quite reached him she started back, her eyes filled with sudden horror. "And he forsakes me!" she cried; and so turned away from him despairingly, and began to cry bitterly, with head averted over the sofa, and one hand hanging by her side for Sir Charles to take and comfort her. He tried to take it. It resisted; and, under cover of that little disturbance, the other hand dexterously whipped two pins out of her hair. The long brown tresses--all her own--fell over her eyes and down to her waist, and the picture of distressed beauty was complete.
Even so did the women of antiquity conquer male pity--_"solutis crinibus."_
The females interchanged a meaning glance, and retired; then the boy followed them with his basin, sore perplexed, but learning life in this admirable school.
Sir Charles then, with the utmost kindness, endeavored to reconcile the weeping and disheveled fair to that separation which circumstances rendered necessary. But she was inconsolable, and he left the house, perplexed and grieved; not but what it gratified his vanity a little to find himself beloved all in a moment, and the Somerset unvixened. He could not help thinking how wide must be the circle of his charms, which had won the affections of two beautiful women so opposite in character as Bella Bruce and La Somerset.
The passion of this latter seemed to grow. She wrote to him every day, and begged him to call on her.
She called on him--she who had never called on a man before.
She raged with jealousy; she melted with grief. She played on him with all a woman's artillery; and at last actually wrung from him what she called a reprieve.
Richard Bassett called on her, but she would not receive him; so then he wrote to her, urging co-operation, and she replied, frankly, that she took no interest in his affairs; but that she was devoted to Sir Charles, and should keep him for herself. Vanity tempted her to add that he (Sir Charles) was with her every day, and the wedding postponed.
This last seemed too good to be true, so Richard Bassett set his servant to talk to the servants in Portman Square. He learned that the wedding was now to be on the 15th of June, instead of the 31st of May.
Convinced that this postponement was only a blind, and that the marriage would never be, he breathed more freely at the news.
But the fact is, although Sir Charles had yielded so far to dread of scandal, he was ashamed of himself, and his shame became remorse when he detected a furtive tear in the dove-like eyes of her he really loved and esteemed.
He went and told his trouble to Mr. Oldfield. "I am afraid she will do something desperate," he said.
Mr. Oldfield heard him out, and then asked him had he told Miss Somerset what he was going to settle on her.
"Not I. She is not in a condition to be influenced by that, at present."
"Let me try her. The draft is ready. I'll call on her to-morrow." He did call, and was told she did not know him.
"You tell her I am a lawyer, and it is very much to her interest to see me," said Mr. Oldfield to the page.
He was admitted, but not to a _tete-a-tete._ Polly was kept in the room. The Somerset had peeped, and Oldfield was an old fellow, with white hair; if he had been a young fellow, with black hair, she might have thought that precaution less necessary.
"First, madam," said