Lady Audleys Secret | Page 9

as governess in a rich
Australian family, I persuaded him to let me accept it, so that I might
leave him free and unfettered to win his way in the world, while I saved
a little money to help us when we began life together. I never meant to
stay away so long, but things have gone badly with him in England.
That is my story, and you can understand my fears. They need not
influence you. Mine is an exceptional case."
"So is mine," said George, impatiently. "I tell you that mine is an
exceptional case: although I swear to you that until this moment, I have
never known a fear as to the result of my voyage home. But you are
right; your terrors have nothing to do with me. You have been away
fifteen years; all kinds of things may happen in fifteen years. Now it is
only three years and a half this very month since I left England. What
can have happened in such a short time as that?"
Miss Morley looked at him with a mournful smile, but did not speak.
His feverish ardor, the freshness and impatience of his nature were so
strange and new to her, that she looked at him half in admiration, half
in pity.
"My pretty little wife! My gentle, innocent, loving little wife! Do you
know, Miss Morley," he said, with all his old hopefulness of manner,
"that I left my little girl asleep, with her baby in her arms, and with
nothing but a few blotted lines to tell her why her faithful husband had
deserted her?"
"Deserted her!" exclaimed the governess.
"Yes. I was an ensign in a cavalry regiment when I first met my little
darling. We were quartered at a stupid seaport town, where my pet
lived with her shabby old father, a half-pay naval officer; a regular old
humbug, as poor as Job, and with an eye for nothing but the main

chance. I saw through all his shallow tricks to catch one of us for his
pretty daughter. I saw all the pitiable, contemptible, palpable traps he
set for us big dragoons to walk into. I saw through his shabby-genteel
dinners and public-house port; his fine talk of the grandeur of his
family; his sham pride and independence, and the sham tears of his
bleared old eyes when he talked of his only child. He was a drunken old
hypocrite, and he was ready to sell my poor, little girl to the highest
bidder. Luckily for me, I happened just then to be the highest bidder;
for my father, is a rich man, Miss Morley, and as it was love at first
sight on both sides, my darling and I made a match of it. No sooner,
however, did my father hear that I had married a penniless little girl, the
daughter of a tipsy old half-pay lieutenant, than he wrote me a furious
letter, telling me he would never again hold any communication with
me, and that my yearly allowance would stop from my wedding-day.
"As there was no remaining in such a regiment as mine, with nothing
but my pay to live on, and my pretty little wife to keep, I sold out,
thinking that before the money was exhausted, I should be sure to drop
into something. I took my darling to Italy, and we lived there in
splendid style as long as my two thousand pounds lasted; but when that
began to dwindle down to a couple of hundred or so, we came back to
England, and as my darling had a fancy for being near that tiresome old
father of hers, we settled at the watering-place where he lived. Well, as
soon as the old man heard that I had a couple of hundred pounds left,
he expressed a wonderful degree of affection for us, and insisted on our
boarding in his house. We consented, still to please my darling, who
had just then a peculiar right to have every whim and fancy of her
innocent heart indulged. We did board with him, and finally he fleeced
us; but when I spoke of it to my little wife, she only shrugged her
shoulders, and said she did not like to be unkind to her 'poor papa.' So
poor papa made away with our little stock of money in no time; and as
I felt that it was now becoming necessary to look about for something, I
ran up to London, and tried to get a situation as a clerk in a merchant's
office, or as accountant, or book-keeper, or something of that kind. But
I suppose there was the stamp of a heavy dragoon about me, for do
what I would I couldn't get anybody to believe in