Chapter I: FORGOT to say a note came from Christopher by this morning’s

post--it made me laugh when I read it, then it went out of my head, but when Lady Merrenden returned for me, and we were more or less sane again--Robert and I--I thought of it; so apparently did he.

“Did you by chance hear from Christopher whether he got your note last night or no?” he said.

I went and fetched it from my bedroom when I put on my hat. Robert read it aloud:

“TRAVELLERS’ CLUB,

“_Sunday night_.

“_Souvent femme varie, fol qui se fie!_”

Hope you found your variation worth while.

“C. C.”

“What dam cheek!” he said in his old way; he hasn’t used any “ornaments to conversation” since we have been--oh! I want to say it--engaged!

Then his eyes flashed. “Christopher had better be careful of himself. He will have to be answerable to me now!”

“Do be prudent, Evangeline, dear!” Lady Merrenden said gaily, “or you will have Robert breaking the head of every man in the street who even glances at you! He is frantically jealous!”

“Yes, I know I am,” said Robert, rearranging the tie on my blouse with that air of _sans gêne_ and possession that pleases me so.

I belong to him now, and if my tie isn’t as he likes, he has a perfect right to re-tie it! No matter who is there! That is his attitude, not the _least_ ceremony or stuff, everything perfectly simple and natural!

It does make things agreeable. When I was “Miss Travers” and he “Lord Robert,” he was always respectful and unfamiliar--except that one night when rage made him pinch my finger! but now that I am _his_ Evangeline, and he is _my_ Robert (thus he explained it to me in our Paradise hour) I am his queen and his darling--but at the same time his possession and belonging, just the same as his watch or his coat. I adore it, and it does not make me the least “uppish,” as one might have thought.

“Come, come, children!” Lady Merrenden said at last, “we shall all be late!”

So we started, dropping Robert at Vavasour House on our way. It is a splendid place, down one of those side streets looking on the Green Park, and has a small garden that side. I had never been down to the little square where it is before, but, of course, every one can see its splendid frontage from St. James’s Park, though I had never realized it was Vavasour House.

“Good luck!” whispered Lady Merrenden as Robert got out, and then we drove on.

Several people were lunching at Carlton House Terrace, Cabinet Ministers, and a clever novelist, and the great portrait painter, besides two or three charming women, one as pretty and smart as Lady Ver, but the others more ordinary looking, only so well mannered. No real frumps like the Montgomeries. We had a delightful lunch, and I tried to talk nicely, and do my best to please my dear hostess. When they had all left I think we both began to feel excited, and long apprehensively for the arrival of Robert. So we talked of the late guests.

“It amuses my husband to see a number of different kinds of people,” she said, “but we had nothing very exciting to-day, I must confess--though sometimes the authors and authoresses bore me--and they are often very disappointing, one does not any longer care to read their books after seeing them.”

I said I could quite believe that.

“I do not go in for budding geniuses,” she continued, “I prefer to wait until they have arrived--no matter their origin, then they have acquired a certain outside behaviour on the way up, and it does not _froissé_ one so. Merrenden is a great judge of human nature, and variety entertains him. Left to myself I fear I should be quite contented with less gifted people who were simply of one’s own world.”

In all her talk one can see her thought and consideration for Lord Merrenden and his wishes and tastes.

“I always feel it is so cruel for him our having no children,” she said; “the Earldom becomes extinct, so I must make him as happy as I can.”

What a dear and just woman!

At last we spoke of Robert, and she told me stories of his boyhood, amusing Eton scrapes, and later feats. And how brave and splendid he had been in the war; and how the people all adored him at Torquilstone; and of his popularity and influence with them. “You must make him go into Parliament,” she said.

Then Robert came into the room. Oh! his darling face spoke, there was no need for words! The Duke, one could see, had been obdurate.

“Well?” said Lady Merrenden.

Robert came straight over to me, and took my face in his two hands: “Darling,” he said, “before everything I want you to know I love you better than anything else in the world, and nothing will make any difference,” and he kissed me deliberately before his aunt. His voice was so moved--and we all felt a slight lump in our throats, I know; then he stood in front of us, but he held my hand.

“Torquilstone was horrid, I can see,” said Lady Merrenden. “What did he say, Robert--tell us everything? Evangeline would wish it too, I am sure, as well as I.”

Robert looked very pale and stern, one can see how firm his jaw is in reality, and how steady his dear blue eyes.

“I told him I loved Evangeline, whom I understood he had met yesterday, and that I intended to marry her----”

“And he said?” asked Lady Merrenden, breathless.

I only held tighter Robert’s hand.

“He swore like a trooper, he thumped his glass down on the table and smashed it--a disgusting exhibition of temper--I was ashamed of him. Then he said, ‘Never, as long as he lived and could prevent it--that he had heard something of my infatuation, so as I am not given that way he had made inquiries, and found the family was most unsatisfactory.’ Then he had come here yesterday on purpose to see you--darling,” turning to me--“and that he had judged for himself. The girl was a ‘devilish beauty’ (his words not mine) with the naughtiest provoking eyes, and a mouth--No! I can’t say the rest, it makes me too mad!” and Robert’s eyes flashed.

Lady Merrenden rose from her seat, and came and took my other hand. I felt as if I could not stand too tall and straight.

“The long and short of it is, he has absolutely refused to have anything to do with the matter; says I need expect nothing further from him, and we have parted for good and all!”

“Oh, Robert!” it was almost a cry from Lady Merrenden.

Robert put his arms round me, and his face changed to radiance.

“Well, I don’t care--what does it matter! A few places and thousands in the dim future--the loss of them is nothing to me if I have only my Evangeline now.”

“But, Robert, dearest,” Lady Merrenden said, “you can’t possibly live without what he allows you, what have you of your own? About eighteen hundred a year, I suppose, and you know, darling boy, you are often in debt. Why he paid five thousand for you as lately as last Easter. Oh, what is to be done!” and she clasped her hands.

I felt as if turned to stone. Was all this divine happiness going to slip from my grasp? Yes, it looked like it, for I could never drag Robert into poverty, and spoil his great future.

“He can’t leave away Torquilstone, and those thousands of profitless acres,” Lady Merrenden went on, “but unfortunately the London property is at his disposition. Oh! I must go and talk to him!”

“No!” said Robert. “It would not be the least use, and would look as if we were pleading. His face had fallen to intense sadness as Lady Merrenden spoke of his money.

“Darling,” he said, in a broken voice. “No, it is true it would not be fair to make you a beggar. I should be a cad to ask you. We must think of some way of softening my brother after all!”

Then I spoke.

“Robert,” I said, “if you were only John Smith I would say I would willingly go and live with you in a cottage, or even in a slum--but you are not, and I would not for _anything in the world_ drag you down out of what is your position in life--that would be a poor sort of love. Oh! my dear,” and I clasped tight his hand--“if everything fails, then we must part, and you must forget me.”

He folded me in his arms, and we heard the door shut. Lady Merrenden had left us alone. Oh! it was anguish and divine bliss at the same time the next half hour.

“I will never forget you, and never in this world will I take another woman, I swear to God,” he said at the end of it. “If we must part, then life is finished for me of all joy.”

“And for me, too, Robert!”

We said the most passionate vows of love to one another, but I will not write them here, there is another locked book where I keep them--the book of my soul.

“Would it be any good if Colonel Tom Carden went and spoke to him?” I asked, presently. “He was best man at papa’s wedding, and knows all that there is to be known of poor mamma, and do you think that as mamma’s father was Lord de Brandreth, a very old barony, I believe, it is--oh! can it make any difference to the children’s actual breeding, their parents not having been through the marriage ceremony? I--I--don’t know much of those sort of things!”

“My sweet!” said Robert, and through all our sorrow he smiled and kissed me, “my sweet, sweet Evangeline.”

“But does the Duke know all the details of the history,” I asked, when I could speak--one can’t when one is being kissed.

“Every little bit, it seems. He says he will not discuss the matter of that, I must know it is quite enough, as I have always known his views, but if they were not sufficient, your wild, wicked beauty is. You would not be faithful to me for a year, he said. I could hardly keep from killing him when he hurled that at my head.”

I felt my temper rising. How frightfully unjust--how cruel. I went over and looked in the glass--a big mirror between the window--drawing Robert with me.

“Oh! tell me, tell me what is it. Am I so very bad looking? It is a curse surely that is upon me!”

“Of course you are not bad looking, my darling!” exclaimed Robert. “You are perfectly beautiful--slender, stately, exquisite tiger-lily--only--only--you don’t look cold--and it is just your red hair, and those fascinating green eyes, and your white lovely skin and black eyelashes that, that--oh! you know, you sweetheart! You don’t look like bread and butter, you are utterly desirable, and you would make any one’s heart beat!”

I thought of the night at “Carmen.”

“Yes, I am wicked,” I said, “but I never will be again--only just enough to make you always love me, because Lady Ver says security makes yawns. But even wicked people can love with a great, great love, and that can keep them good. Oh! if he only knew how utterly I love you, Robert, I am sure, sure, he would be kind to us!”

“Well, how shall we tell him?”

Then a thought came to me, and I felt all over a desperate thrill of excitement.

“Will you do nothing until to-morrow?” I said. “I have an idea which I will tell to no one. Let us go back to Claridge’s now, and do not come and see me again until to-morrow at twelve. Then if this has failed, we will say good-bye. It is a desperate chance.”

“And you won’t tell me what it is?”

“No--please trust me--it is my life as well as yours, remember.”

“My queen!” he said. “Yes, I will do that, or anything else you wish, only _never, never_ good-bye. I am a man after all, and have numbers of influential relations. I can do something else in life but just be a Guardsman, and we shall get enough money to live quite happily on--though we might not be very grand people. I will never say good-bye--do you hear. Promise me you will never say it either.”

I was silent.

“Evangeline, darling!” he cried, in anguish, his eyebrows right up in the old way, while two big tears welled up in his beautiful eyes. “My God! won’t you answer me!”

“Yes, I will!” I said, and I threw all my reserve to the winds, and flung my arms round his neck passionately.

“I love you with my heart and soul, and pray to God we shall never say good-bye.”

When I got back to Claridge’s, for the first time in my life I felt a little faint. Lady Merrenden had driven me back herself, and left me, with every assurance of her devotion and affection for us. I had said good-bye to Robert for the day at Carlton House Terrace.

They do not yet know me, either of them--quite--or what I can and will do.

CLARIDGE’S,

_Monday night_.