Chapter V: Sibyl Faunthorpe’s Diary

Lowther Street, _November 14, 186_--. I suppose to keep a diary is about as foolish a thing as any one can do--waste of time in the present, and self-abasement in the future. I dare say I shall hate myself when I read over these pages in years to come, and see what a stupid creature I was at nineteen years of age. However, I am driven to scribble about myself and my feelings for want of anything better to do in the long, lonely evenings, when the children are gone to bed, and Mrs. Hazleton is out, and I have the dreary schoolroom all to myself. I used to read any novel I could find lying about downstairs, and bring up here for an evening, till Mrs. Hazleton found me out and forbade it. ‘Novels, my dear Miss Faunthorpe,’ she preached, ‘are the worst possible reading for a young woman in your position--enervating the mind, weakening the logical faculty, which in your brain I regret to say is sorely deficient.’ I felt inclined to ask her why she reads novels if they are so injurious. She has a knack of reading one’s thoughts, and answered my objection before I could give it expression. ‘For the head of a household, who must always have some portion of care and anxiety, novel-reading is an innocent relaxation; but the instructor of youth should employ her leisure in widening her circle of knowledge. The books in the study bookcase are quite at your service, Miss Faunthorpe, whenever you like to avail yourself of them,’ and then she sailed out of the room to go to a dinner party, dressed in maroon velvet and old Brussels lace, and looking very handsome--for an old woman. She must be five-and-forty at the least.

Perhaps I ought not to complain of my bondage, for I might be worse off than I am. Mrs. Hazleton is fond of preaching, but she is not unkind to me. She has no grown-up daughters, and whenever she has company I am asked down to the drawing-room to play and sing and make myself generally useful; and as she has a good deal of company, this happens tolerably often. Luckily, music is my strong point. When Mrs. Hazleton is in a good humour she takes me for a drive in the park, and I see the world and hear what is going on. I go to a fashionable church with the children on Sundays and Saints’ days, and am altogether much better off than in my uncle Robert’s poverty-stricken household, in dull old Redcastle, where I knew no one worth knowing, and where life is only another name for vegetation. I am sure the cabbages in uncle’s wretched kitchen-garden had quite as much enjoyment of life as Marion and I--more indeed, for they had sunshine and perpetual idleness, and bees and butterflies buzzing and skimming about them, while we had old house-linen to patch and darn, and the tradesmen’s books to puzzle over, and Jenny to teach, and mend for, and scold, and puddings to make, and buttons to sew on from January to December. I think there never was such a man as uncle Robert for wrenching the buttons off his shirts, and pushing his toes through his socks.

So, at the worst, though I have to grind French, Italian, and German verbs in a mill all the week through, and listen to those wretched children strumming Kalkbrenner’s exercises three hours a day, I am better off than Marion. I have forty pounds a year to spend upon clothes, and I see a great many nice people. Mrs. Hazleton boasts that she only knows the best people. ‘I am no tuft-hunter, my dear,’ she tells me when she is in one of her expansive moods. ‘You will see very few titles in my card-basket; but the people I know belong to some of the best families in England.’

_December 3._--Such a tiresome, dreary week. Mrs. Hazleton has dined out four evenings out of six, and now on the fifth she has taken off the children to see the new actor at the Haymarket. ‘I am sorry there won’t be room for you in the box, Miss Faunthorpe,’ she said, with her chilly politeness, after I had been toiling for an hour helping Moyson, the children’s maid, to tie Lucinda’s ribbons, and brush Laura’s hair, and sew on a tucker for Magdalen. So here I am at half-past seven o’clock, my hearth swept, and my fire made up, as solitary as an old maid with a small annuity.

I have been down to the study, and chosen a couple of volumes, the best I could find in a dry-as-dust collection of antiquities--the ‘Citizen of the World’ and a volume of the _Spectator_,--but I don’t feel equal to reading either. It suits my present humour better to scribble my complaints against fortune in this ridiculous book of mine. What a lucky woman Mrs. Hazleton is! Married to a wealthy Indian judge, and left a widow six years ago with an ample fortune; too old to care about marrying again, but not too old to be admired and made much of by her friends; her children young enough to be kept in the schoolroom for the next four years. Impossible to imagine a more independent position. What a contrast between her fate and mine! I have never known what it is to have my own way, and yet, when I was a child, I thought I had only to be ‘grown up’ in order to taste all the sweets of life. Perhaps that was because of the nonsense people talked about my good looks. I can fancy no greater misfortune for a girl in my position than to be brought up with the idea of being a beauty. When I was a little thing people were always drawing comparisons between Marion and me to Marion’s disadvantage; and before I was twelve I knew quite well that I was the pretty Miss Faunthorpe. Even old Hester, who never had a civil word for me at the best of times, used to feed my vanity with her taunts about my pretty face and my uselessness. ‘Handsome is that handsome does,’ she used to say, by which I knew very well that she thought me handsome. Then came school, and I was set up as a beauty, and courted and petted by one-half of the girls, and detested by the other half, and nagged at by Marion, who was set against me by the disagreeable comparisons people were always making between us. What was the consequence of all this? I grew up with the idea that as soon as I left school, some rich young man, handsome and agreeable into the bargain, would fall in love with me at first sight, and that I should be married in grand style at the parish church--six bridesmaids and ever so many carriages and pairs--before the admiring eyes of all Redcastle. I came home to uncle Robert’s dull red house, prepared for conquest. Life would be like a fairy tale. Some fine summer morning the handsome young prince would appear, and I should be raised at once from Cinderella’s obscurity to Cinderella’s high fortune. Foolish creature that I was! I used to lie awake at night telling Marion the grand things I would do for her when I was married.

‘Where is the prince to come from, Sib?’ she asked me once, rather maliciously. ‘You know there are not above three such young men in Redcastle--young Taylor, the lawyer’s son; Mr. Lacy, the biscuit manufacturer; and George Pinsford, the coachmaker.’

‘Biscuit manufacturer!’ I exclaimed. ‘Do you suppose I would marry a low tradesman? Aren’t there the county families, stupid?’

Well, here I am, after two weary years’ home life with uncle Robert, who I must say is the dearest old thing in the world. Here I am, nearly twenty, and no nearer finding the prince of fairy lore than when I left Miss Worrie’s establishment for young ladies at Kilmorden, after three years’ experience as pupil-teacher. Here I am, a poor drudge of a governess, at just ten pounds a quarter, thankful for being asked down to the drawing-room, where my beauty goes for very little. All Mrs. Hazleton’s friends have found out by this time that I am ‘only the governess,’ and have left off asking one another who I am, as they used to do at first with some show of interest. I sing, or play, and some one who has been chattering the whole time says languidly, ‘Very nice, really. _Thank_ you, Miss Faunthorpe.’ And I sit in the angle between the back drawing-room fireplace and the window-curtain for the rest of the evening, watching and listening, with no more part in what is going on than if I were at a theatre.

Let me look in the glass and see what this lauded beauty is which has brought me so little luck. A small straight nose very sharply cut, a short upper lip, under lip a thought too full, teeth good, chin round and dimpled, face a perfect oval, eyes darkest brown; the sort of eyes which, I believe, are usually called black. Hair dark brown, with a tinge of gold where it ripples--the colour usually called chestnut. Present expression discontent and a tendency to ill temper.

I have given up that foolish notion of a rich husband, but I sometimes indulge in another day-dream, perhaps just as foolish. What if my rich uncle, Stephen Trenchard, were to come home, take a fancy to me, and leave me a fortune? Such things have happened. I remember how my poor mother used to talk of her brother Stephen, the Indian merchant, and of the ship that was coming home to bring her ease and comfort, and which never came. Will the ship come home for me, I wonder, now that my poor mother has been lying ten years in her quiet grave?

_December 13._--The most wonderful thing has happened--the most unlooked-for, the most extraordinary. My heart beats so fast at the mere thought of it, that I am almost breathless as I write these lines. My hand trembles, and the letters look blurred and dim before my eyes.

I have seen the son of Philip Secretan, my uncle Stephen’s deadly enemy--the man whom he supplanted in the affections of a weak old father--for surely any father must be weak who would disinherit his son in favour of a dependant, the man from whom he received the injury that lamed him for life. How often have I heard my mother tell the story, always putting her brother’s conduct in the most favourable light! He was honest, indefatigable, steady--a favourite clerk in the firm of Secretan Brothers, Manchester merchants. He fully deserved the unexpected fortune that came to him, while Philip’s dissipation and extravagance were justly rewarded by disinheritance. Yet somehow in spite of poor mamma’s special pleading, my sympathy was always with this unfortunate Mr. Secretan, who saw his father’s wealth pass into the possession of his father’s confidential clerk.

I once asked mamma what kind of a man this Philip Secretan was. She told me that she had only seen him once in her life, but that he impressed her as being remarkably handsome and a perfect gentleman.

And now I have seen his son, Captain Secretan. He was at Mrs. Hazleton’s party last night. I had no idea who he was till afterwards. He was standing before the fireplace in the back drawing-room when I went back to my corner after singing ‘Porghi Amor,’ standing with his back to the fire talking to old Colonel Syceman. He is tall and strong-looking, and has, to my mind, a most beautiful countenance. I never called a man beautiful before, and I dare say I shall laugh at the expression when I read over this stupid diary some day; but I cannot call his face less than beautiful. It is such a noble face, with just the grand look I could fancy in Achilles. I was reading Pope’s ‘Iliad’ to the children this afternoon, and I thought of Captain Secretan every time Achilles spoke. It seemed to me almost as if I could see him standing up before me, confronting Agamemnon. He is dark, with boldly cut features, a good-humoured expression about the mouth, and a somewhat dreamy look in the dark gray eyes. I have seen handsomer faces, but none that ever interested me as deeply. He is a man I should believe in with all my soul if he were my friend; a man I should lean upon as on a rock of defence if he were of my kindred. But he is nothing to me, and I am hardly likely to see him again.

Mrs. Hazleton spoke of him at luncheon to-day as a foolish young fellow who has sold his commission, and whose future career must be disastrous unless some distant relations were to die and leave him their property. As a rule, distant relations are not so obliging. She spoke with her reverential tone of his family, which is one of the oldest in Hampshire, although his grandfather was a Manchester merchant; and she informed me that his first cousin, once removed, is a baronet, Sir Douglas Secretan, with a large estate in somewhere or other.

I wonder whether I shall ever see him again.

_December 30._--I have seen him again, three, four, five, six, seven times. Three times in Mrs. Hazleton’s drawing-room, three times in the park, when I was out walking with the children; and once in Desmond Street when I had gone out alone to post a letter.

I dare say it was very wrong, and that I shall be ashamed of myself when I read over this dreadful diary, but when Captain Secretan asked me whether I ever walked in the park with the children, I said yes; and when he asked me what time, I said between three and five; and after that, when he asked me if I ever went out alone, I told him yes, sometimes, just before half-past five, to post my home letter.

How kind he is! how clever! how interesting! and how well we seem to know each other, though we have only met seven times! There is evidently no association for him in the name of Faunthorpe. This is only natural, as my mother did not marry till some years after her brother’s quarrel with Philip Secretan. How much I regret, now, that I did not learn the exact particulars of that quarrel! I have only a vague idea of the circumstances; but from what my mother told me, I know that, although Philip Secretan was the sufferer, my uncle Stephen was as vindictive as if he also had been injured.

Perhaps the injurer is sometimes more angry than the injured.

My mother always declared that her brother was innocent of guile or wrong-doing from first to last, but now that I know Mr. Secretan’s son I feel still more inclined to side with my uncle’s enemy.

He, Captain Secretan, has told me the history of his life, his careless happy youth spent abroad, with a father and mother whom he idolized. He was educated at Heidelberg, came from Heidelberg to Woolwich, to an army tutor, joined his regiment at twenty, and sold out after five years’ service, a few months ago. He has now all the world before him, he says, and has only to choose a career. He is energetic and clever, and can hardly miss success in anything he may attempt.

How changed our walks seem, now that there is always the chance of meeting him! As I see him coming to meet us along the wintry avenue, the familiar scene seems to grow beautiful, the sun shines brighter, the birds break out into singing. They may have been singing before, perhaps, and I too absorbed to hear them; but it seems as if they began a glad chorus at his coming. I did not think that winter afternoons could be so beautiful; the calm still air, the blue-gray sky, the black tracery of the tall elm trees against the yellow sunset.

He told me yesterday that his father would have been a rich man, but for the treachery of a friend whom he had loved and trusted. A cold sick feeling came over me, just as if the treachery had been mine, and I had suddenly come face to face with my victim.

‘The only lesson my father ever taught me was to revile that man’s name, and to carry my hatred of him with me to the grave. An evil lesson for a kind-hearted man to teach, you’ll say; but for all that, I don’t believe there ever beat a kinder heart than my father’s.’

I can easily believe this. Kindness and sweet temper are Captain Secretan’s chief characteristics; a bright good humour which cheers one like sunshine. A way of looking at life on the pleasantest side which would inspire hopefulness in the most dismal mind. I know how low-spirited, discontented, and wretched I was growing just before I knew him, and how changed and brightened life seems to me now.

The children doat upon him, and are as pleased as I am to meet him in our walks. He talks to them about all their small pleasures, and is able to interest himself in their ideas much better than I, who spend my life with them. Sometimes he paces up and down the broad walk with the three girls hanging about him, telling them one of the fairy tales we all know so well, and he has a way of giving a new charm and interest to the old stories, while his little touches of modern slang come in here and there with the funniest effect, and set us off laughing till the tree-tops seem to shake with our laughter.

‘How odd that we should meet you again to-day, Captain Secretan!’ cried Magdalen the day before yesterday, when we found him at the entrance of the broad walk.

‘Not at all odd, if you insist on coming this way, little one,’ he said. ‘This is my afternoon constitutional. But if you very much object I’ll take the other side of the park.’

‘Oh, no, no, please come always,’ shouted the three; and then they asked for Cinderella, Captain Secretan’s modernized Cinderella, whose ball dress was made in New Bond Street, and whose cruel step-mother had a box on the second tier at Covent Garden.

It was yesterday afternoon that I met him in Desmond Street, a dreary drizzling afternoon, which made me think the sooner the year came to an end the better. I had been feeling rather depressed and disheartened all the morning. The children had all gone to a morning performance of the pantomime at Drury Lane, and I had the day to myself, as Mrs. Hazleton graciously informed me. I don’t think leisure is an unalloyed good for those who have few pleasant thoughts to brighten their solitude. I sat mending my clothes, and thinking about Captain Secretan. My thoughts were not happy ones. I was shocked to find what a hold this stranger had taken upon my mind, and how difficult it was for me to think of any one else, or to imagine my life without him. Yet I knew that he was nothing, and never could be anything to me. Poor, but proud, and of good birth, moving in what Mrs. Hazleton calls the best society, he will naturally select a woman of fortune for his wife. He is handsome, agreeable, has many gifts which distinguish him from the common run of young men, and will have no difficulty in making an advantageous marriage. Of an obscure little pauper like me he would never think seriously for a moment, unless his thoughts were dishonourable; and I know him and trust him well enough already to wager my life against that. What has he to do with me, then, or I with him? Absolutely nothing. We are only fooling each other by this friendship, which is so sweet to me, and which must needs have some charm for him, since he takes the trouble to cultivate it. Better for both of us that we should see each other no more, or only upon the public stage of Mrs. Hazleton’s drawing-room. I will tell him so seriously and honestly the next time we are alone together for a minute or two, while the three girls march on before us. This doesn’t often happen, for I think Lucinda is more deeply in love with the captain than----! What was I going to write? Than a girl of twelve ought to be. This is the lecture which I read myself yesterday while I worked at that tiresome mending. All my Christmas quarter’s salary will go for a black silk dress, as I must have one good and fashionably made gown to wear downstairs. I wanted so much to have sent uncle Robert a little present, and I should have liked to buy Marion a winter hat; but that is out of the question. Shall I have my dress made with flounces, or a trained skirt?

It was dark when I went out to post my letter; dark, and wet, and uncomfortable, and there was nothing farther from my thoughts than the idea of meeting Captain Secretan between Lowther Street and the post office, though I am bound to confess that the captain himself was not very far from my thoughts. I had posted my letter, and was coming away from the office, when a tall man, looking very big in a great rough overcoat, crossed the road and came towards me. I knew him in a moment, but a strange shy feeling came over me, and I walked on ever so fast, pretending not to know him. The street is quiet and lonely, and I heard his footsteps hurrying after me.

‘Do you always walk like a sporting pedestrian when you are alone, Miss Faunthorpe?’ he asked, coming by my side.

I started a little at the sound of his voice, although I knew so well that he was there. Yesterday was one of my nervous days, I suppose. I said something about its being such a disagreeable evening.

‘Yes,’ he answered, with his good-tempered laugh, ‘the old year is making himself as obnoxious as he can in order that we may not regret him. It is rather unpleasant weather. You dislike this drizzling rain I dare say. I rather like it, for it reminds me of grouse-shooting in the Highlands. I was even going to ask you to take a little walk round Eccleston Square before you go back to your schoolroom.’

‘I couldn’t think of such a thing,’ I answered, sharply, feeling that the proposal was an impertinence.

‘Couldn’t you? Then it wasn’t right in me to propose it, I suppose,’ he replied, placidly. ‘And yet I should be so glad of half an hour’s quiet talk with you. It’s very nice telling the children fairy stories, but rather a hindrance to conversation. Well, we’ll postpone the walk round the square till we’ve pleasanter weather and you know me better. Do you know I have been thinking of you so much in the last few days.’

Had he? There must be something sympathetic in our thoughts then, for he has never been out of mine.

We had turned into Lowther Street by this time, and I was weak enough to be glad that it is such a long street. I would not have gone three yards out of my way with him if the happiness of my life had depended on it, but there was no harm in letting him walk as far as Mrs. Hazleton’s door with me.

‘Yes, I have been thinking about you a good deal, Miss Faunthorpe,’ he said, after a pause. ‘I have been thinking what might have happened if I had been a rich man and free to follow my own inclination.’

This was telling me plainly that he was neither rich nor free.

‘Can you guess what I fancied would have happened in that case?’

‘No, indeed.’

‘I thought it just possible that I might have been tempted to ask you to be my wife.’

He waited for my reply, but I was dumb. I felt choking, and could not find a word to answer him.

‘What would you have said in that case?’

Some diabolical counsellor suggested a flippant answer instead of a serious one.

‘Isn’t your question rather like Lord Dundreary’s?’ I asked. ‘If you had had a brother, do you think he would have liked cheese?’

‘I see,’ he said, with a disappointed tone, ‘I am not to expect a serious answer to a hypothetical question. I dare say you are right, Miss Faunthorpe. In all life’s delicate questions women are always wiser than men.’

I thought that he had taken the easiest way of telling me that his circumstances forbade him to think of marrying me.

‘In that case,’ I said to myself, ‘he has no right to waylay me as I come from the post;’ and I tried to feel very angry with him.

‘So you didn’t go home to spend your Christmas holidays?’ he said presently.

‘Home! Do you suppose I could afford to travel to Yorkshire and back for a week’s pleasure? Besides, I have no real home. My sisters and I are dependent on my uncle’s bounty, and he is only a parish doctor, who finds it a hard thing to pay his butcher and baker.’

I was determined to let him know how poor I am, and how wise he has been in coming to the conclusion that I am no wife for him.

‘Poor little thing,’ he said compassionately, and his pity did me good somehow. It did not gall, as most people’s pity does.

‘Poor little girl,’ he said again, after a few moments’ silence. ‘An orphan, and sent out into the world to bear the burden of servitude and all ill-usage “that patient merit from the unworthy takes.” One would suppose that you could hardly be worse off than you are at present?’

This was not very cheering, but I said nothing. We were near Mrs. Hazleton’s door by this time, and yet we had been walking slowly.

‘Any change would be for the better, one would think,’ he said, musingly. ‘A change that would give this poor little waif a sworn protector and defender,--a husband pledged to toil for her and cherish her. But a poor husband--a man at war with fortune--bah! I’ll tell you what it is, Miss Faunthorpe,’ he burst out suddenly, ‘with your lovely face you ought to make a brilliant marriage.’

‘So I was told when I was sixteen,’ said I, ‘but I’m almost twenty, and the fairy prince in the shape of a rich husband hasn’t appeared yet.’

‘You wouldn’t despise an eligible opportunity of exchanging Mrs. Hazleton’s schoolroom for a house in Kensington Palace Gardens, I suppose? You have a feminine inclination for fine clothes, servants with powdered heads, carriages and horses, and a box at the opera?’

‘I am human, and I don’t pretend to be superior to the weaknesses of humanity,’ I answered, feeling that I was making myself intensely disagreeable.

He provoked me, somehow, by his nonchalant manner of discussing my position and prospects. Luckily, we were quite at the door now, and I was able to beat a retreat before anything still more unpleasant had been said upon either side.

‘Good afternoon, Captain Secretan,’ I said.

‘It must be good-bye,’ he answered, ‘I am going into Norfolk to-morrow for a month’s shooting.’

I felt as if he had said that he was going to Australia, but I only answered ‘Oh, in that case, good-bye;’ and so we shook hands again, and then he lifted his hat and went away, while I gave the bell a good sharp pull that insured its being answered promptly.

I don’t quite know whether I like him or hate him; but whichever feeling it is, it must be rather strong of its kind, as I cannot get him out of my thoughts. I am inclined to think that it is hatred. What could be more disagreeable or humiliating than his way of speaking about me before my face, as if I had been miles away? ‘Poor thing, poor little waif!’

I grow hot and red when I think of it.

_Jan. 14._--The year is just a fortnight old. There has been snow, but bright clear weather, a blue sky, and sunshine. We walk in Kensington Gardens every day, and meet him every day. He makes the three girls run races with their hoops, he being umpire, and during the race he and I are able to talk without restraint. He only stopped four days in Norfolk. He told me that the shooting was very good, but that he was bored to death after the second day, and yet it was in a pleasant country house that he was staying at, according to his own account. There was to be a ball the very day after he came away, but he did not care to stay for it. Curious man!

My black silk dress has come, and is a great success. I dread to see the dressmaker’s bill, as I have only reserved a sovereign for the making, and I am afraid she will charge me something nearer three. The dress certainly fits to perfection, and is beautifully finished; the trimmings simple, but of the best quality. At home, Marion and I used to make our own dresses, but after going nearly out of my mind for a week over piping-cord and button-holes, I always felt myself a dowdy at the last.

Mrs. Hazleton has a dinner party to-morrow, Captain Secretan is coming in the evening, and I shall wear my new dress. Have I made up my mind yet whether I like him or hate him?

Yes. I do neither. I love him--love him--love him.

There, it is written at last. Foolish old diary, how I shall despise you and myself some day when I read over this wretched page!

_Jan. 16._--Such a delicious party last night! Captain Secretan was the first person I saw when I slipped quietly in at the back drawing-room door. He was watching the door, and those dark eyes brightened at sight of me. I sang to him, I played to him, I talked to him, the party was all him. The rest of the people were only the medium through which I saw him,--or they were like trees in a landscape, and he the living figure in the foreground. I know he likes to talk to me, and to hear me sing or play; but I wonder whether he loves _me_.

_Feb. 3._--It has come at last. He has asked me plainly, straightforwardly, anxiously, earnestly, to be his wife.

He has told me that he is poor, that he is living just now on the money he got for his commission. He has nothing else, but he has youth, health, and strength, some talents, and he is willing to work. With a wife whom he fondly loved he would have a motive for beginning a new career.

‘I’m such a happy-go-lucky fellow,’ he said, in his bright, cheery way, ‘that I can hardly bring myself to put my shoulder to the wheel for my own sake, but if I had you to work for, pet, I should slave like a Goliath.’

I don’t like to remind him that the Philistine soldier was more remarkable for strength than industry.

He made me say yes, and promise whatever he liked. How could I resist him, when I love him so dearly that the lightest touch of his hand makes me tremble? and there seems to me more pathos in his voice than in the tenderest phrase of Mozart’s. He is so straightforward, so candid, so noble. He wanted to take Mrs. Hazleton into his confidence immediately, so that I might be married very quietly from her house.

‘We have nothing to wait for, darling,’ he said, ‘unless we were to wait till I have made a fortune, which would mean at least half a dozen years of severance,--just the brightest, happiest years of life sacrificed to a sordid scruple, an unworthy doubt of Providence. If you love me, Sibyl, you will not talk of waiting.’

‘I should like to be wise and prudent,’ I told him, ‘but your impetuosity carries me along like a torrent.’

‘Love is a torrent,’ answered he, ‘do not oppose so poor a thing as reason against its sacred might.’

I entreated him to say nothing to Mrs. Hazleton. An idea had occurred to me which made me hesitate, even with my lover’s hand clasping mine, as to the wisdom of yielding to his prayer.

I remembered a strange fact, which had almost slipped out of my mind lately. I remembered that Alexis Secretan is the natural inheritor of his father’s hatred, the natural enemy of my rich uncle, Stephen Trenchard, the uncle from whom I have been taught to expect a fortune. If I marry Captain Secretan, I surrender all hope of favour from my uncle.

I begged Alex--he has taught me to call him Alex--to say nothing to Mrs. Hazleton yet awhile. I wanted time to think.

After all, this hope of fortune from my uncle Stephen may be only a dream, vain as that idea of a rich husband with which I used to delude myself when I was a schoolgirl. On the other hand, I have the knowledge from my poor mother that my uncle was a very rich man twenty years ago (I have the knowledge from his last letter to my uncle Robert, enclosing a twenty-pound bank bill as a present for Marion and me); that he has never married, and has no intention of marrying; that he looks forward to returning to his native country in a few years and making the acquaintance of his nieces. Too good a chance in all this, surely, to be thrown away. It would be rather a bitter thing for me to see Marion chosen for her uncle’s heiress, while I was left a pauper.

What am I to do? How am I to choose between Alexis and the possibility of a large fortune?

Prudence suggests that I should only pledge myself to Alexis on condition that our marriage shall be deferred for some years.

We are both young. We can afford to wait a few years, and yet have a good deal of the brightness of life before us. My uncle Stephen is an old man, older no doubt at his age than men who have spent their lives in Europe. Whether I am to inherit any portion of his wealth is a question that must be decided in a few years. I must tell Alex that he must wait. If his love is real and earnest it cannot be lessened by time.

_Feb. 5._ I have told him my decision. Vain, hopeless, to talk of reason with a man whose inclination is his only law. He tells me that if I really cared for him I could not propose dreary years of separation. My statement that I have rich relatives who may leave me money if I marry to please them, and are sure to leave me nothing if I marry without their consent, fell on ears obstinately deaf to reason. Love like this is worse than a torrent--it is a maelstrom. Prudence, reason, worldly wisdom, are mere straws in the whirlpool. I must see him no more.

_Feb. 7._ I have seen him again. Poor Alex! He looks so unhappy. How sweet to know that I have such power over him!--I, to whom he seemed such a far-off creature two months ago. Is the chance of fortune worth such a love as his?

_Feb. 8._ Stephen Trenchard may live to be as old as Old Parr, and leave his money to the Asylum for Idiots, after I have sacrificed youth and love and all that is sweetest in life to the sordid hope of fortune.

_Feb. 9._ A hopelessly wet day. I have seen him walk up and down the street three times in the rain. I know his dear umbrella.

_Feb. 11._ In the Broad Walk again yesterday. It is all settled. I am to give Mrs. Hazleton a month’s notice to-morrow--our agreement is a month’s notice on either side--in the event of my proving inefficient, she said. Not in the event of my not liking the situation. Oh dear no, of course not.

I am so agitated that I can hardly write. This day month I am to have my boxes packed, and go quietly away in a cab at ten o’clock in the morning, drive to the station and deposit my luggage, and then meet Alexis, with whom I shall drive back to the quietest little church in Ecclestonia, where we are to be married. No witnesses but the pew-opener and the clerk; no announcement in the _Times_. The secret of our marriage kept from everybody who knows us, at the outset, at any rate, so that if Stephen Trenchard dies in India--a likely thing after all--I may still inherit my share of his fortune. Dear old uncle Robert is such an easy-going man, that as long as I tell him I am comfortably situated with my employer he will never put himself out of the way to know more. He has not an acquaintance in London whom he could ask to call upon me at Mrs. Hazleton’s. There is no such isolation as poverty.

I have arranged with Jane Dimond, the under housemaid, about my letters. She will receive any that come to Lowther Street for me, and post any that I send her to be posted. I have given her quite a heap of things, the weeding out of my wardrobe, and made her my friend for life.

_March 11._ To-morrow is to be my wedding day. Oh fearful day! on which hangs all my life to come. Will the future be blessed or accursed for to-morrow’s vows?

I wish Marion and uncle Robert could have been with me. It would all have seemed more real. I remember my foolish fancies--my castles in the air. The grand wedding at which I used to see myself figuring as chief performer; my white satin dress and Brussels flounces; the carriages; the favours; the crowd; Mendelssohn’s Wedding March; the joyous peal of bells. Those bells are sounding in my ears to-night.

To-morrow, to-morrow, to-morrow! Before noon to-morrow I shall have ceased to be Sibyl Faunthorpe. My name will be Sibyl Secretan--name of all others most abhorrent to my uncle, Stephen Trenchard.