Alice, or the Mysteries — Book 06

								

and under the eye of that sly old curate, I can effect nothing with her.
There, she is entirely removed from my influence: not so abroad; not so
under your roof.  Listen to me still further.  In this country, and
especially in the seclusion and shelter of Brook-Green, I have no scope
for any of those means which I shall be compelled to resort to, in
failure of all else."
"What can you intend?" said Caroline, with a slight shudder.
"I don't know what I intend yet.  But this, at least, I can tell
you,--that Miss Cameron's fortune I must and will have.  I am a desperate
man; and I can play a desperate game, if need be."
"And do you think that I will aid, will abet?"
"Hush, not so loud!  Yes, Caroline, you will, and you must aid and abet
me in any project I may form."
"Must!  Lord Vargrave?"
"Ay," said Lumley, with a smile, and sinking his voice into a
whisper,--"ay! you are in my power!"
"Traitor!--you cannot dare! you cannot mean--"
"I mean nothing more than to remind you of the ties that exist between
us,--ties which ought to render us the firmest and most confidential of
friends.  Come, Caroline, recollect all the benefit must not lie on one
side.  I have obtained for you rank and wealth; I have procured you a
husband,--you must help me to a wife!"
Caroline sank back, and covered her face with her hands.
"I allow," continued Vargrave, coldly,--"I allow that your beauty and
talent were sufficient of themselves to charm a wiser man than Doltimore;
but had I not suppressed jealousy, sacrificed love, had I dropped a hint
to your liege lord,--nay, had I not fed his lap-dog vanity by all the
cream and sugar of flattering falsehoods,--you would be Caroline Merton
still!"
"Oh, would that I were!  Oh that I were anything but your tool, your
victim!  Fool that I was! wretch that I am!  I am rightly punished!"
"Forgive me, forgive me, dearest," said Vargrave, soothingly; "I was to
blame, forgive me: but you irritated, you maddened me, by your seeming
indifference to my prosperity, my fate.  I tell you again and again,
pride of my soul, I tell you, that you are the only being I love! and if
you will allow me, if you will rise superior, as I once fondly hoped, to
all the cant and prejudice of convention and education, the only woman I
could ever respect, as well as love.  Oh, hereafter, when you see me at
that height to which I feel that I am born to climb, let me think that to
your generosity, your affection, your zeal, I owed the ascent.  At
present I am on the precipice; without your hand I fall forever.  My own
fortune is gone; the miserable forfeit due to me, if Evelyn continues to
reject my suit, when she has arrived at the age of eighteen, is deeply
mortgaged.  I am engaged in vast and daring schemes, in which I may
either rise to the highest station or lose that which I now hold.  In
either case, how necessary to me is wealth: in the one instance, to