CHAPTER XVI.

LIFTING THE VAIL.

The following morn the sun arose and smiled his greeting on gay

Paris--methinks Old Sol weeps, when clouds come between his beams and

the gayest of cities. Lady Esmondet and Vaura enjoyed their drive

through the beautiful boulevards out into the suburbs, and to one of

the largest public conservatories; the gardens were a scene of

enchanting loveliness, laid out in the perfection of artistic taste;

the friends roamed whither their will led, revelling in the perfumed

air and beauty of colouring.

"Here," said Vaura, "one could be content to sing, 'I'd be a

butterfly,' all day long."

"Yes, but only, _ma chere_, for a summer day."

"I am afraid you are right, godmother mine, and that when winter with

the gay season came on the boards of life, I should prove faithless

and sing, Oh, for the sights and the sounds of the season for me!"

"But we cannot linger longer, Vaura; we must go to the office and

leave our order."

Having left an order that astonished the clerk, they took a reluctant

leave of this lovely floral nest. They ordered the man drive towards

the city in the immediate vicinity, of which Vaura alighted at a neat

cottage to visit a blind _protegee_, one Marie Perrault, daughter of a

one-time actor of no mean repute, who had taught elocution at the

Seminaire where Miss Vernon had finished her education. Monsieur

Perrault had assisted Vaura in the getting up of theatricals, she

having developed such excellent histrionic powers. Perrault secretly

hoped she would yet make her _debut_ from the boards of his favourite

Lyceum Theatre Francais.

Marie was overjoyed at the pleasant surprise of a visit from her

benefactress, whose face, lovely as it was, and lit up with the joy of

living, gay chit-chat, and sweet-scented blossoms she carried seemed

to brighten, as with sunbeams, her darkened life. Vaura stayed long

enough to leave her gifts of fruit, flowers, and kind words for M.

Perrault; and left for the Seminaire of Madame Rocheforte, there she

lunched, and learned that Isabel Douglas had left for England,

immediately on the arrival of Roland.

"Isabel is a sweet girl, and her brother a noble fellow," said Madame,

earnestly; "and I conclude from what she tells me that her brother

loves you with one great love. I feel for you like a mother, Vaura, so

you will understand my speaking, and I hope love will creep into your

heart for him."

"I trust you are mistaken, Madame, for it would grieve me very much,

more indeed than I can express to cause him pain."

"I hope you will change, _ma chere_; woman is fickle; and when he

pleads, as I am sure he can, you will not look on his handsome face

unmoved."

"He has made a conquest of you, _chere madame_," said Vaura, gravely

kissing her on both cheeks in adieu.

"_Oui, ma chere_, but,--for you."

"_N'importe_, madame; remember 'that men have died and worms have

eaten them, but not for love.'"

"You know better, Vaura."

And as she walked in the direction of her hotel (attended by one of

the school servants) she told herself that there was not always truth

in the words, witness dear Guy and others; poor Roland too; she hoped

he would not take it to heart. On entering the hotel her maid met her

with a message from Lady Esmondet bidding her dress at once for Mr.

Bertram's dinner. Vaura, telling Saunders to be expeditious--she would

wear her biscuit colored satin, old lace, coral ornaments--is soon

robed; her fluffy hair, almost bronze in its brightness and so

luxuriant giving her maid no trouble, is as an old time saint hath it,

'a glory to her,' while the warm tints of her rich beauty is set off

by the colour of her gown.

"You are a treasure, Saunders," said her mistress; "I find you have

dressed me so quickly I shall have time for a little reading; go tell

Lady Esmondet I now await her pleasure to leave."

"You are so easy to dress, miss; you see, Mademoiselle, your eyes and

complexion don't want doing up; now when I was maid to the Misses

Verlingham--"

"Spare me the mysteries of the _toilette_, Saunders, and do my

bidding; mysteries indeed," thought she, half-laughing, "what would

the poor men say could they see the war-paint putting on for their

slaughter," and picking up one of W. H. Mallock's novels she sank into

a cosy corner. In half an hour Saunders returned, saying that Lady

Esmondet with Capt. Trevalyon were waiting in the _salon_. Enveloped

in a carriage wrap of white wool, with the dainty hood of satin of her

gown covered with old lace, she joins her companions, with a "may I."

Capt. Trevalyon loosens the fleecy wrap and fastens with a diamond pin

some damask-roses and yellow pansies to her corsage. As they roll

speedily along, Lady Esmondet calls on Vaura to give an account of

herself in the hours of her absence.

"I was beginning to think, dear, that M. Perrault was renewing his

entreaties that you should take to the boards of the Theatre

Francais."

"I did not meet him, else doubtless he would," she answered.

On Lady Esmondet's remark, she thought (in the flickering light) a

cloud came to Trevalyon's brow, and now that a converse sweet, broken

and changeful was taking place between Vaura and he; Lady Esmondet

gave herself up to thoughts of the past engendered by the cloud on the

brow of her friend, usually so calmly careless, and she thought he

naturally would dread one so lovely and gifted living the life of

theatres, if it were only that in his interest in her, she would drift

away from them; and home life in the fascinations of an actress

existence. And a divorce suit of some thirty years ago, which as a

very young girl of fourteen, she remembered--all now came again to her

memory,--in which the principal actors were Lionel's father, Hugh

Trevalyon and his beautiful wife Nora. Both were passionate lovers of

the drama; the Trevalyons frequently wintered at Paris, where they

made the acquaintance of one of the principal actors of the day. He

was a handsome man with a charm of manner none could resist, and as

fate would have it, living at the same hotel, he so ingratiated

himself into favour with both, who in their admiration of his talents

almost deified him, that he was the recipient of an invitation in his

idle days to the Towers; while there, an overwhelming passion for his

beautiful hostess completely mastered him. She, always fascinated by

his seductive manner, when he pleaded, gave way, feeling that she had

met her master; accustomed to worship his talents, she simply felt she

was his if he willed; finally at the close of a night of revelry, ball

and theatricals at the Towers she gave up, consenting, nay willing, to

elope at his wish, with only a passing thought to her little boy and

once loved husband; she was his; he was her god, and she never dreamed

of the man she had taken for better or for worse; her husband sued for

and obtained a divorce, the actor marrying his love at once, but she

only lived for two short years passing in her beauty and frailty from

the judgment of society to the judgment of high heaven. "Poor fool,"

said many a fair dame with a contemptuous shrug of shoulders, "why was

she so verdant as to elope? with a husband as adoring she might easily

have kept her place in society and her actor too." And so when they

met they passed her by, she not having the wisdom of the world. And

Lady Esmondet from the corner of the carriage thought on; of how

Lionel's father on his wife's desertion of him had gone to the dogs,

rushing into all kinds of mad dissipation up to the time of his wife's

death, when he became a confirmed misanthrope, living in absolute

seclusion until his own death some two years agone; while going to

destruction for distraction's sake, poor man, he had reduced his

income to about L8,000 per annum. Before his death he had imbued

Lionel with a distrust of women, endeavouring to extract an oath of

celibacy from the son whom he loved, and who loved him. "Never trust

one of the frail sex with your name and honor, my son," he would never

tire of saying. Lionel did not make an oath as his father prayed, but

said wearily, "Never fear, father, I shall trust none of the gay

butterflies further than I can see the brightness of their wings; much

less give them, any one of them, the chance to sully our escutcheon

with another blot," and continuing he would woo his poor father to

quiet by saying, "No, I know them too well; our motto is theirs, they

are "always the same, always. _Toedet tandem, eadem fecisse_," and

again he would woo him to quiet by "No, do not grieve for me, father,

I shall not wed unless an angel descends for my benefit; but did she,

she would be then a fallen angel," and the poor, broken-hearted man

died in his son's arms, contented in his wish. But even now, Lionel

feels that as the child Vaura had a charm for him, so the fair woman

opposite him has, and that if he but yields to it, it may master him;

for his race are "always the same, always" in one thing which is, a

love lasting as time for one woman; though having many _affaires de

coeur_; they feel one _grande passion_, one wedded love, never

marrying a second time. And the _carrosse_ rolls along, and Lionel

with an irresistible craving, even if he comes to grief, which he

tells himself there is no fear of, feels the pulse, as it were, of

Vaura's heart, to see if the world has left unspoiled the tender,

sympathetic, true and loving nature of the child he knew so well. "You

are right, Capt. Trevalyon, sympathy, true, soul-felt, and earnest,

never dies; it is the _root_ of wedded happiness; alas, how many lives

are wrecked through the absence of it," she says sadly, but he feels,

and not without a heartache, that she is oblivious almost of his

presence; her lovely face in its frame-work of lace is turned from

him, as she thinks, "and yet, pity is divine! yet; knowing this, what

have I shown poor Guy." The erratic life poor Lionel led, and which

had been almost compulsory, the weary cynicism which was the outcome

of the life enforced upon him, by his mother's frailty and his

father's lasting grief thereat, often palled upon his real nature. But

as he never expected to meet a woman who could hold him, he frequently

gave himself, epicurean-like, to the pleasure of the hour.

After leaving the army, and when the glittering wings of butterflies

and their surroundings wearied him, he would leave the gay cities, and

travel much in foreign lands, in cold bleak northern latitudes, or

sunny climes, studying human nature, and giving some thought to its

many phases, with the different creeds men hold at times on seeing the

self sacrificing lives of the sisters of charity, on witnessing noble

deeds which should be written in characters of gold, but which they

did in the most humble self abnegation. When he looked upon these and

knew them to be the outcome of the Roman Catholic Church he would

think surely the Church that gives birth to such lives must be the

Church for the saving of men. But then some glaring inconsistency of

those within her pale would recur to his memory, and he would turn

with a sigh from some pictured Christ, or the peaceful beauty of the

madonna. Well might Lionel exclaim, "In this age of seeming, what is

truth! for what grade of society has not its shams! in what church are

there not hypocrites as saints! in what government is there not

imperfection! in what political campaign is there not a bribe given!

in what age were there so many Churches." In what age was religion so

fashionable! Yes, to-day, it is not charity which covers the multitude

of sins, it is the cloak of religion, and yet 'tis not the fault of

creeds, 'tis _errare est humanum_. Ah me! we gay nineteenth century

butterflies are a favoured generation; we are so respectable you know;

we give the Church her innings, and that ancient firm of Bacchus and

Comus have their innings also. Such thoughts as the above often came

to Lionel, in his lonely wanderings far away from the gay cities, a

life which he adorned with such gay abandon when one of them.

And now lady Esmondet awakes to the present with a start (as the

carriage stops,) and from her silent thoughts on the past, as she had

gathered it from Eric Haughton and from Lionel himself.