A Terrible Temptation: A Story of To-Day
down;” and that done, she carried the glass to her lips with the same
admirable firmness of hand she showed in driving. Her lofty manner,
coupled with her beautiful but rather haughty features, smacked of
imperial origin. Yet she was the writer to “jorge,” and four years ago
a shrimp-girl, running into the sea with legs as brown as a berry.
So swiftly does merit rise in this world which, nevertheless, some
morose folk pretend is a wicked one.
I ought to explain, however, that this haughty reception was partly
caused by a breach of propriety. Vandeleur ought first to have written
to her and asked permission to present Richard Bassett. He had no
business to send the man and the introduction together. This law a
Parliament of Sirens had passed, and the slightest breach of it was a
bitter offense Equilibrium governs the world. These ladies were bound
to be overstrict in something or other, being just a little lax in
certain things where other ladies are strict.
Now Bassett had pondered well what he should say, but he was
disconcerted by her superb presence and demeanor and her large gray
eyes, that rested steadily upon his face.
However, he began to murmur mellifluously. Said he had often seen her
in public, and admired her, and desired to make her acquaintance, etc.,
etc.
“Then why did you not ask Sir Charles to bring you here?” said Miss
Somerset, abruptly, and searching him with her eyes, that were not to
say bold, but singularly brave, and examiners pointblank.
“I am not on good terms with Sir Charles. He holds the estates that
ought to be mine; and now he has robbed me of my love. He is the last
man in the world I would ask a favor of.”
“You came here to abuse him behind his back, eh?” asked the lady with
undisguised contempt.
Bassett winced, but kept his temper. “No, Miss Somerset; but you seem
to think I ought to have come to you through Sir Charles. I would not
enter your house if I did not feel sure I shall not meet him here.”
Miss Somerset looked rather puzzled. “Sir Charles does not come here
every day, but he comes now and then, and he is always welcome.”
“You surprise me.”
“Thank you. Now some of my gentlemen friends think it is a wonder he
does not come every minute.”
“You mistake me. What surprises me is that you are such good friends
under the circumstances.”
“Circumstances! what circumstances?”
“Oh, you know. You are in his confidence, I presume?”--this rather
satirically. So the lady answered, defiantly:
“Yes, I am; he knows I can hold my tongue, so he tells me things he
tells nobody else.”
“Then, if you are in his confidence, you know he is about to be
married.”
“Married! Sir Charles married!”
“In three weeks.”
“It's a lie! You get out of my house this moment!”
Mr. Bassett colored at this insult. He rose from his seat with some
little dignity, made her a low bow, and retired. But her blood was up:
she made a wonderful rush, sweeping down a chair with her dress as she
went, and caught him at the door, clutched him by the shoulder and half
dragged him back, and made him sit down again, while she stood opposite
him, with the knuckles of one hand resting on the table.
“Now,” said she, panting, “you look me in the face and say that again.”
“Excuse me; you punish me too severely for telling the truth.”
“Well, I beg your pardon--there. Now tell me--this instant. Can't you
speak, man?” And her knuckles drummed the table.
“He is to be married in three weeks.”
“Oh! Who to?”
“A young lady I love.”
“Her name?”
“Miss Arabella Bruce.”
“Where does she live?”
“Portman Square.”
“I'll stop that marriage.”
“How?” asked Richard, eagerly.
“I don't know; that I'll think over. But he shall not marry
her--never!”
Bassett sat and looked up with almost as much awe as complacency at the
fury he had evoked; for this woman was really at times a poetic
impersonation of that fiery passion she was so apt to indulge. She
stood before him, her cheek pale, her eyes glittering and roving
savagely, and her nostrils literally expanding, while her tall body
quivered with wrath, and her clinched knuckles pattered on the table.
“He shall not marry her. I'll kill him first!”
CHAPTER III.
RICHARD BASSETT eagerly offered his services to break off the obnoxious
match. But Miss Somerset was beginning to be mortified at having shown
so much passion before a stranger.
“What have you to do with it?” said she, sharply.
“Everything. I love Miss Bruce.”
“Oh, yes; I forgot that. Anything else? There is, now. I see it in your
eye. What is it?”
“Sir Charles's estates are mine by right, and they will return to my
line if he does not marry and have issue.”
“Oh, I see. That is so like a man. It's always love, and something more
important, with you. Well, give me your address. I'll write if I want
you.”
“Highly flattered,” said Bassett, ironically-wrote his address and left
her.
Miss Somerset then sat down and wrote:
“DEAR SIR CHARLES--please call here, I want to speak to you.
yours respecfuly,
“RHODA SOMERSET.”
Sir Charles obeyed this missive, and the lady received him with a
gracious and smiling manner, all put on and catlike. She talked with
him of indifferent things for more than an hour, still watching to see
if he would tell her of his own accord.
When she was quite sure he would not, she said,
“Do you know there's a ridiculous report about that you are going to be
married?”
“Indeed!”
“They even tell her name--Miss Bruce. Do you know the girl?”
“Yes.”
“Is she pretty?”
“Very.”
“Modest?”
“As an angel.”
“And are you going to marry her?”
“Yes.”
“Then you are a villain.”
“The deuce I am!”
“You are, to abandon a woman who has sacrificed all for you.”
Sir Charles looked puzzled, and then smiled; but was too polite to give
his thoughts vent. Nor was it necessary; Miss Somerset, whose brave
eyes never left the person she was speaking to, fired up at the smile
alone, and she burst into a torrent of remonstrance, not to say
vituperation. Sir Charles endeavored once or twice to stop it, but it
was not to be stopped; so at last he quietly took up his hat, to go.
He was arrested at the door by a rustle and a fall. He turned round,
and there was Miss Somerset lying on her back, grinding her white teeth
and clutching the air.
He ran to the bell and rang it violently, then knelt down and did his
best to keep her from hurting herself; but, as generally happens in
these cases, his interference made her more violent. He had hard work
to keep her from battering her head against the floor, and her arms
worked like windmills.
Hearing the bell tugged so violently, a pretty page ran headlong into
the room--saw--and; without an instant's diminution of speed, described
a curve, and ran headlong out, screaming “Polly! Polly!”
The next moment the housekeeper, an elderly woman, trotted in at the
door, saw her mistress's condition, and stood stock-still, calling,
“Polly,” but with the most perfect tranquillity the mind can conceive.
In ran a strapping house-maid, with black eyes and brown arms, went
down on her knees, and said, firmly though respectfully, “Give her me,
sir.”
She got behind her struggling mistress, pulled her up into her own lap,
and pinned her by the wrists with a vigorous grasp.
The lady struggled, and ground her teeth audibly, and flung her arms
abroad. The maid applied all her rustic strength and harder muscle to
hold her within bounds. The four arms went to and fro in a magnificent
struggle, and neither could the maid hold the mistress still, nor the
mistress shake off the maid's grasp, nor strike anything to hurt
herself.
Sir Charles, thrust out of the play looked on with pity and anxiety,
and the little page at the door--combining art and nature--stuck
stock-still in a military attitude, and blubbered aloud.
As for the housekeeper, she remained in the middle of the room with
folded arms, and looked down on the struggle with a singular expression
of countenance. There was no agitation whatever, but a sort of
thoughtful examination, half cynical, half admiring.
However, as soon as the boy's sobs reached her ear she wakened up, and
said, tenderly, “What is the child crying for? Run and get a basin of
water, and fling it all over her; that will bring her to in a minute.”
The page departed swiftly on this benevolent errand.
Then the lady gave a deep sigh, and ceased to struggle.
Next she stared in all their faces, and seemed to return to
consciousness.
Next she spoke, but very feebly. “Help me up,” she sighed.
Sir Charles and Polly raised her, and now there was a marvelous change.
The vigorous vixen was utterly weak, and limp as a wet towel--a woman
of jelly. As such they handled her, and deposited her gingerly on the
sofa.
Now the page ran in hastily with the water. Up jumps the poor lax
sufferer, with flashing eyes: “You dare come near me with it!” Then to
the female servants: “Call yourselves women, and water my lilac silk,
not two hours old?” Then to the housekeeper: “You old monster, you
wanted it for your Polly. Get out of my sight, _the lot!”_
Then, suddenly remembering how feeble she was, she sank instantly down,
and turned piteously and languidly to Sir Charles. “They eat my bread,
and rob me, and hate me,” said she, faintly. “I have but one friend on
earth.” She leaned tenderly toward Sir Charles as that friend; but
before she quite reached him she started back, her eyes filled with
sudden horror. “And he forsakes me!” she cried; and so turned away from
him despairingly, and began to cry bitterly, with head averted over the
sofa, and one hand hanging by her side for Sir Charles to take and
comfort her. He tried to take it. It resisted; and, under cover of that
little disturbance, the other hand dexterously whipped two pins out of
her hair. The long brown tresses--all her own--fell over her eyes and
down to her waist, and the picture of distressed beauty was complete.
Even so did the women of antiquity conquer male pity--_“solutis
crinibus.”_
The females interchanged a meaning glance, and retired; then the boy
followed them with his basin, sore perplexed, but learning life in this
admirable school.
Sir Charles then, with the utmost kindness, endeavored to reconcile the
weeping and disheveled fair to that separation which circumstances
rendered necessary. But she was inconsolable, and he left the house,
perplexed and grieved; not but what it gratified his vanity a little to
find himself beloved all in a moment, and the Somerset unvixened. He
could not help thinking how wide must be the circle of his charms,
which had won the affections of two beautiful women so opposite in
character as Bella Bruce and La Somerset.
The passion of this latter seemed to grow. She wrote to him every day,
and begged him to call on her.
She called on him--she who had never called on a man before.
She raged with jealousy; she melted with grief. She played on him with
all a woman's artillery; and at last actually wrung from him what she
called a reprieve.
Richard Bassett called on her, but she would not receive him; so then
he wrote to her, urging co-operation, and she replied, frankly, that
she took no interest in his affairs; but that she was devoted to Sir
Charles, and should keep him for herself. Vanity tempted her to add
that he (Sir Charles) was with her every day, and the wedding
postponed.
This last seemed too good to be true, so Richard Bassett set his
servant to talk to the servants in Portman Square. He learned that the
wedding was now to be on the 15th of June, instead of the 31st of May.
Convinced that this postponement was only a blind, and that the
marriage would never be, he breathed more freely at the news.