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Poor child, what natural goodness there is in that heart! what pity that " He paused. Fanny looked delightedly in his face. "You were praising me you! And what is a pity, brother?" While she spoke, the sound of the joy-bells was heard near at hand. "Hark!" said Vaudemont, forgetting her question and almost gaily "Hark! I accept the omen. It is a marriage peal!"
I shall go out; but it will be alone." "Where? Has not Fanny been good? I have not been out since you left. us. And the grave brother! I sent Sarah with the flowers but " Vaudemont rose abruptly. The mention of the grave brought back his thoughts from the dreaming channel into which they had flowed.
Fanny stopped; and, as she bent over the tomb, musing, Vaudemont, willing to leave her undisturbed, and feeling bitterly how little his conscience could vindicate, though it might find palliation for, the dark man who slept not there retired a few paces. At this time the new-married pair, with their witnesses, the clergyman, &c., came from the vestry, and crossed the path.
After breakfast, however, he asked her to walk out; and her face brightened as she hastened to put on her bonnet, and take her little basket full of fresh flowers which she had already sent Sarah forth to purchase. "Fanny," said Vaudemont, as leaving the house, he saw the basket on her arm, "to-day you may place some of those flowers on another tombstone!
"Don't you think," she once whispered to Vaudemont, "that God attends to us more if we are good to those who are sick and hungry?" "Certainly we are taught to think so." "Well, I'll tell you a secret don't tell again.
And the tone of Lord Lilburne, and his loathing to the man, were too much for his temper. "Lord Lilburne," he said, and his lip curled, "if you had been born poor, you would have made a great fortune you play luckily." "How am I to take this, sir?" "As you please," answered Vaudemont, calmly, but with an eye of fire. And he turned away.
She turned her head as Vaudemont entered, and her pretty lip pouted as that of a neglected child. But he did not heed it, and the pout vanished, and tears rushed to her eyes. Vaudemont was changed. His countenance was thoughtful and overcast. His manner abstracted. He addressed a few words to Simon, and then, seating himself by the window, leant his cheek on his hand, and was soon lost in reverie.
The Duke of Montemarciano, nephew of Gregory XIV., had brought two thousand Swiss, furnished by the pontiff to the cause of the League, and the Duke of Lorraine had sent his kinsmen, the Counts Chaligny and Vaudemont, with a force of seven hundred lancers and cuirassiers.
A very few words sufficed for an explanation: Fanny's disappearance the previous night; the alarm of Sarah at her non-return; the apathy of old Simon, who did not comprehend what had happened, and quietly went to bed; the search Sarah had made during half the night; the intelligence she had picked up, that the policeman, going his rounds, had heard a female shriek near the school; but that all he could perceive through the mist was a carriage driving rapidly past him; Sarah's suspicions of Vaudemont confirmed in the morning, when, entering Fanny's room, she perceived the poor girl's unfinished letter with his own, the clue to his address that the letter gave her; all this, ere she well understood what she herself was talking about, Vaudemont's alarm seized, and the reflection of a moment construed: the carriage; Lilburne seen lurking in the neighbourhood the previous day; the former attempt; all flashed on him with an intolerable glare.
There were, indeed, many moments when Vaudemont thought that her deficiencies of intellect might have been repaired, long since, by skilful culture and habitual companionship with those of her own age; from which companionship, however, Fanny, even when at school, had shrunk aloof.
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