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Elsley was a man of honour, and the promise had been kept. But now "I promised her, and therefore I will break my promise! She has broken hers, and I am free!" And he went in and bought his opium. He took a little on the spot to allay the cravings of hunger. He reserved a full dose for the railway-carriage. It would bridge over the weary gulf of time which lay between him and town.
I am your wife! your own wife! who never loved any one but you never, never, never!" "Yes, my wife, at least! Curse them, that they cannot deny!" said he, in the same abstracted voice. "Oh God! is he mad?" thought she. "Elsley, speak to me! I am your Lucia your love "
"I shall go down and bring him up myself this minute, and Mr. Vavasour shall come with me. Of course you will! You do not know what a delightful person he is, when once you can break the ice." Elsley, like most vain men, was of a jealous temper; and Valencia's eagerness to see Major Campbell jarred on him.
"I wonder if he'd fight, though, when the singing-fever was off him." He took Elsley upstairs into his bed-room, got him washed and shaved: and sent out the woman of the house for mutton chops and stout, and began himself setting out the luncheon table, while Elsley in the room within chanted to himself snatches of poetry. "The notion has taken: he's composing a war song already, I believe."
So slipped away a fortnight and more, during which Valencia was the cynosure of all eyes, and knew it also: for Claude Mellot, half to amuse her, and half to tease Elsley, made her laugh many a time by retailing little sayings and doings in her praise and dispraise, picked up from rich Manchester gentlemen, who would fain have married her without a penny, and from strong-minded Manchester ladies, who envied her beauty a little, and set her down, of course, as an empty-minded worldling, and a proud aristocrat.
"I want to scold Major Campbell," said Valencia, tripping out on the lawn in her walking dress. "Why has he not been here an hour ago? I will undertake to say that he was up at four this morning." "He waits to be invited, I suppose," said Scoutbush. "I suppose I must do it," said Elsley to himself, sighing. "Just like his primness," said Valencia.
"Come to my rooms, then, in the Adelphi, and have a wash and a shave. It will make you as fresh as a lark again, and then we'll send out for the eatables, and have a quiet chat." Elsley did not say no. Thurnall took the thing as a matter of course, and he was too weak and tired to argue with him.
Scoutbush kissed Lucia, shook hands with Elsley, hugged the children, and then settled himself in an arm-chair, and talked about the weather, exactly as if he had been running in and out of the house every week for the last three years, and so the matter was done; and for the first time a partie carrée was assembled in the dining-room.
All might have passed off, but for that careless Valencia, who had not seen the details of what had passed; and so advised herself to ask where Lucia got that beautiful plant? "Major Campbell picked it up for her from the cliff," said Elsley, drily. "Ah? at the risk of his neck, I don't doubt. He is the most matchless cavalier servente." "I shall leave Mrs.
The experience of centuries has shown that they must needs exist, wherever fathers neglect their daughters, husbands their wives; wherever the average of the women cannot respect the average of the men. Whether Campbell was altogether proof, will be seen hereafter. But one day Elsley found out that such was Campbell's influence, and did not love him the more for the discovery.
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