Alice, or the Mysteries — Book 10

								


Produced by Dagny; and by David Widger

Corrected and updated text and HTML PG Editions of the complete
11 volume set may be found at:
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/9774/9774.txt
https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/9774/pg9774-images.html

BOOK X.


"A dream!"--HOMER, I, 3.

CHAPTER I.


QUALIS ubi in lucem coluber
.  .  .  Mala gramina pastus.*--VIRGIL.


Pars minima est ipsa puella sui.**--OVID.


* "As when a snake glides into light, having fed on pernicious

    pastures."


** "The girl is the least part of himself."
IT would be superfluous, and, perhaps, a sickening task, to detail at
length the mode and manner in which Vargrave coiled his snares round the
unfortunate girl whom his destiny had marked out for his prey.  He was
right in foreseeing that, after the first amazement caused by the letter
of Maltravers, Evelyn would feel resentment crushed beneath her certainty
of his affection her incredulity at his self-accusations, and her secret
conviction that some reverse, some misfortune he was unwilling she should
share, was the occasion of his farewell and flight.  Vargrave therefore
very soon communicated to Evelyn the tale he had suggested to Maltravers.
He reminded her of the habitual sorrow, the evidence of which was so
visible in Lady Vargrave; of her indifference to the pleasures of the
world; of her sensitive shrinking from all recurrence to her early fate.
"The secret of this," said he, "is in a youthful and most fervent
attachment; your mother loved a young stranger above her in rank, who
(his head being full of German romance) was then roaming about the
country on pedestrian and adventurous excursions, under the assumed name
of Butler.  By him she was most ardently beloved in return.  Her father,
perhaps, suspected the rank of her lover, and was fearful of her honour
being compromised.  He was a strange man, that father! and I know not his
real character and motives; but he suddenly withdrew his daughter from
the suit and search of her lover,--they saw each other no more; her lover
mourned her as one dead.  In process of time your mother was constrained
by her father to marry Mr. Cameron, and was left a widow with an only
child,--yourself: she was poor;--very poor! and her love and anxiety for
you at last induced her to listen to the addresses of my late uncle; for
your sake she married again; again death dissolved the tie!  But still,
unceasingly and faithfully, she recalled that first love, the memory of
which darkened and embittered all her life, and still she lived upon the
hope to meet with the lost again.  At last, and most recently, it was my
fate to discover that the object of this unconquerable affection
lived,--was still free in hand if not in heart: you behold the lover of
your mother in Ernest Maltravers!  It devolved on me (an invidious--a
reluctant duty) to inform Maltravers of the identity of Lady Vargrave
with the Alice of his boyish passion; to prove to him her suffering,