Alice, or the Mysteries — Book 11

								

little prudence, a little self-control, a smiling face, when you wish us
happiness, and so forth, and all is safe.  Tush! think of it no more!
Fate has cut and shuffled the cards for you; the game is yours, unless
you revoke.  Pardon my metaphor; it is a favourite one,--I have worn it
threadbare; but human life is so like a rubber at whist.  Where is
Evelyn?"
"In her own room.  Have you no pity for her?"
"She will be very happy when she is Lady Vargrave; and for the rest, I
shall neither be a stern nor a jealous husband.  She might not have given
the same character to the magnificent Maltravers."
Here Evelyn entered; and Vargrave hastened to press her hand, to whisper
tender salutations and compliments, to draw the easy-chair to the fire,
to place the footstool,--to lavish the petits soins that are so
agreeable, when they are the small moralities of love.
Evelyn was more than usually pale,--more than usually abstracted.  There
was no lustre in her eye, no life in her step; she seemed unconscious of
the crisis to which she approached.  As the myrrh and hyssop which
drugged the malefactors of old into forgetfulness of their doom, so there
are griefs which stupefy before their last and crowning consummation!
Vargrave conversed lightly on the weather, the news, the last book.
Evelyn answered but in monosyllables; and Caroline, with a hand-screen
before her face, preserved an unbroken silence.  Thus gloomy and joyless
were two of the party, thus gay and animated the third, when the clock on
the mantelpiece struck ten; and as the last stroke died, and Evelyn
sighed heavily,--for it was an hour nearer to the fatal day,--the door
was suddenly thrown open, and pushing aside the servant, two gentlemen
entered the room.
Caroline, the first to perceive them, started from her seat with a faint
exclamation of surprise.  Vargrave turned abruptly, and saw before him
the stern countenance of Maltravers.
"My child! my Evelyn!" exclaimed a familiar voice; and Evelyn had already
flown into the arms of Aubrey.
The sight of the curate in company with Maltravers explained all at once
to Vargrave.  He saw that the mask was torn from his face, the prize
snatched from his grasp, his falsehood known, his plot counterworked, his
villany baffled!  He struggled in vain for self-composure; all his
resources of courage and craft seemed drained and exhausted.  Livid,
speechless, almost trembling, he cowered beneath the eyes of Maltravers.
Evelyn, not as yet aware of the presence of her former lover, was the
first to break the silence.  She lifted her face in alarm from the bosom
of the good curate.  "My mother--she is well--she lives--what brings you
hither?"
"Your mother is well, my child.  I have come hither at her earnest
request to save you from a marriage with that unworthy man!"
Lord Vargrave smiled a ghastly smile, but made no answer.
"Lord Vargrave," said Maltravers, "you will feel at once that you have no