Alice, or the Mysteries — Book 07

								

favour,--no man's, my lord!"
"You amaze me!  I always heard my poor uncle speak of you in the highest
terms."
"Oh, well, it don't signify; pray say no more of it.  Can I offer your
lordship a glass of wine?"
"No, I am much obliged to you; but we really must set this little matter
right.  You know that after his marriage my uncle never revisited C-----;
and that shortly before his death he sold the greater part of his
interest in this city.  His young wife, I suppose, liked the
neighbourhood of London; and when elderly gentlemen do marry, you know
they are no longer their own masters; but if you had ever come to
Fulham--ah! then, indeed, my uncle would have rejoiced to see his old
friend."
"Your lordship thinks so," said Mr. Winsley with a sardonic smile.  "You
are mistaken; I did call at Fulham; and though I sent in my card, Lord
Vargrave's servant (he was then My Lord) brought back word that his
lordship was not at home."
"But that must have been true; he was out, you may depend on it."
"I saw him at the window, my lord," said Mr. Winsley, taking a pinch of
snuff.
"Oh, the deuce!  I'm in for it," thought Lumley.--"Very strange, indeed!
but how can you account for it?  Ah, perhaps the health of Lady
Vargrave--she was so very delicate then, and my poor uncle lived for
her--you know that he left all his fortune to Miss Cameron?"
"Miss Cameron!  Who is she, my lord?"
"Why, his daughter-in-law; Lady Vargrave was a widow,--a Mrs. Cameron."
"Mrs. Cam--I remember now,--they put Cameron in the newspapers; but I
thought it was a mistake.  But, perhaps" (added Winsley, with a sneer of
peculiar malignity),--"perhaps, when your worthy uncle thought of being a
peer, he did not like to have it known that he married so much beneath
him."
"You quite mistake, my dear sir; my uncle never denied that Mrs. Cameron
was a lady of no fortune or connections,--widow to some poor Scotch
gentleman, who died I think in India."
"He left her very ill off, poor thing; but she had a great deal of merit,
and worked hard; she taught my girls to play--"
"Your girls! did Mrs. Cameron ever reside in C-----?"
"To be sure; but she was then called Mrs. Butler--just as pretty a name
to my fancy."
"You must make a mistake: my uncle married this lady in Devonshire."
"Very possibly," quoth the brewer, doggedly.  "Mrs. Butler left the town
with her little girl some time before Mr. Templeton married."
"Well, you are wiser than I am," said Lumley, forcing a smile.  "But how
can you be sure that Mrs. Butler and Mrs. Cameron are one and the same
person?  You did not go into the house, you could not have seen Lady
Vargrave" (and here Lumley shrewdly guessed--if the tale were true--at
the cause of his uncle's exclusion of his old acquaintance).
"No! but I saw her ladyship on the lawn," said Mr. Winsley, with another
sardonic smile; "and I asked the porter at the lodge as I went out if
that was Lady Vargrave, and he said, 'yes.' However, my lord, bygones are