CHAPTER XXI .-GEORGETTE FRANKLIN.

CHAPTER XXI .-GEORGETTE FRANKLIN.

Had Estelle recognised me? If so, what might she--nay, what must she--think, and how misconstrue the whole situation? Should I ride after the carriage, or write at all risks, and explain the matter, or commit the event to fate? That might be perilous. She may not have recognised me, I thought: the twilight, the shade, the place might have concealed my identity; but if not, they were all the more against me. I was now in greater and more horrible perplexity than ever, and I wished the unhappy little woman, the cause of all, in a very warm climate indeed.

Thus, while longing with all the energies of my life to see Estelle, to be seen by her there, at a time so liable to misconception if left unexplained, might be death to my dearest hopes, and destruction to the success I had achieved.

"Why were you so agitated by the sight of Lady Naseby's carriage?" I asked, with an annoyance of tone that I cared not to conceal.

"Giddiness, perhaps; but was I agitated?"

"Of course you were--nearly fell; would have fallen flat, indeed, but for me."

"I thank you, sir," was the gentle reply; for my asperity of manner was either unnoticed or unheeded by her; "but you seemed scarcely less so."

"I, madam!--why the deuce should I have been agitated?"

"Unless I greatly err, you were, and are so still."

"Indeed!"

"Do you know the ladies?"

"Were there two?" asked I, with increased annoyance.

"The Countess and her daughter."

"I saw but one."

"And--O, pardon my curiosity, dear sir--you know them?"

"Intimately;--and what then?" I asked, with growing irritation.

"Intimately!" she repeated, with surprise.

"There is nothing very singular in that, I suppose?"

"And, sir, you visit them?"

"I have not as yet, but hope to do soon. We were all together in the same house in North Wales."

"Ah! at Craigaderyn Court?"

"Yes; Sir Madoc Lloyd's. Do you know Sir Madoc?"

"I have not that pleasure."

"Who, then, that you are acquainted with knows him?"

"My husband."

"Your husband!" said I, glancing at the plain hoop on the delicate little hand, which she was now gloving nervously.

"He was there with you; must have been conversing with you often. I saw you all at church together one Sunday afternoon, and frequently on the terraces and on the lawn; while!"--she covered her face with her hands--"while I loitered and lurked like an outcast!"

"Your husband, madam?" I queried again.

"Mr. Hawkesby Guilfoyle."

Whew! Here was a discovery: it quite took my breath away, and I looked with deeper interest on the sweet and pale and patient little face.

I now remembered the letter I had picked up and returned to him; his confusion about it, and the horse he alleged to have lost by at a race that had not come off; his irritation, the postal marks, and the name of Georgette.

After such a termination to his visit to Craigaderyn, I could fancy that his situation as a guest or visitor at Walcot Park, even after he found the ladies there were ignorant of the nature of Sir Madoc's curt note to him, must be far from enviable, for such as he must live in hourly dread of insult, slight, or exposure; but how was I now situated with regard to her I loved?

Deemed, perhaps, guilty in her eyes, and without a crime; and if aware of the situation, the malevolent Guilfoyle would be sure to avail himself of it to the fullest extent.

"Lady Estelle is very lovely, as I could see," said my companion.

"Very; but you saw her--when?"

"In Craigaderyn church, most fully and favourably."

And now I recalled the pale-faced little woman in black, who had been pointed out to me by Winifred Lloyd, and who had been found in a swoon among the gravestones by old Farmer Rhuddlan.

In all this there was some mystery, which I felt curious enough to probe, as Guilfoyle had never by word or hint at any time given those among whom he moved reason to believe he was aught else than a bachelor, and a very eligible one, too; for if my once rival, as I believed him to be, was not a creditable, he was certainly a plausible, one; and here lay with me the means of an exposé beyond even that which had taken place at Craigaderyn Court.

"You are his wife, madam, and yet--does he, for purposes of his own, disavow you?" said I, after a pause, not knowing very well how to put my leading question.

"It is so, sir--for infamous purposes of his own."

"But you have him in your power; you have all the air of a lady of birth and education--why not come forward and assert your position?"

The woman's soft gray eyes were usually filled by an expression of great and deep sadness; but there were times when, as she spoke, they flashed with fire, and there were others, when her whole face seemed to glitter with "the white light of passion" as she thought of her wrongs. Restraining her emotion, she replied,

"To assert my claims; that is exactly what I cannot do--now at least."

"Why?"

"Because he has destroyed all the proofs that existed of our unhappy and most miserable marriage."

"Destroyed them! how?"

"Very simply, by putting them in the fire before my face."

"But a record--a register--must exist somewhere."

"We were married at sea, and the ship, in the chaplain's books of which the marriage I have no doubt was recorded, perished. Proofs I have none. But tell me, sir, is it true, that--that he is to be married to the daughter of Lady Naseby?"

"To Estelle Cressingham?" I exclaimed, while much of amusement mingled with the angry scorn of my manner.

"Yes," she replied, eagerly.

"No, certainly not; what on earth can have put such an idea into your head, my good woman?"

My hauteur of tone passed unheeded, as she replied:

"I saw her portrait in the Royal Academy, and heard a gentleman who stood near me say to another, that it was so rumoured; that he--Mr. Guilfoyle--had come with her from the Continent, and that he was going after her down to North Wales. He had said so at the club."

I almost ground my teeth on hearing this. That his contemptible name should have been linked with hers by empty gossips in public places like the Royal Academy and "his club," where none dared think of mine, was intolerable.

"I followed him to Wales," she continued. "I saw nothing at Craigaderyn church, or elsewhere, on her part to justify the story; when I met my husband on the lawn at the fête--for I was there, though uninvited--he laughed bitterly at the rumour, and said she was contracted to Lord Pottersleigh, who, as I might perceive, was ever by her side. He then gave me money, which I flung on the earth; ordered me on peril of my life to leave the place, lest he might give notice to the police that I had no right to be there. But though I have long since ceased to love, I cannot help hovering near him, and from Wales I followed him here; for I know that now he is at Walcot Park."

"I can assure you, for your ease, that the Lady Estelle is engaged, but to a very different person from old Lord Pottersleigh," said I, twirling the ends of my moustache with undisguised satisfaction, if not with a little superciliousness; "your husband, however, seems a man of means, Mrs. Guilfoyle."

She gave me a bitter smile, as she replied, "Yes, at times; and drawn from various resources. He laughs to scorn now my marriage ring; and yet he wears the diamond one which I gave him in the days when we were engaged lovers, and which had once been my dear father's."

The diamond which she gave him! Here, then, was another, and the most probable version of the history of that remarkable brilliant.

"Of what was it that he deprived you by force, before his horse leaped the wall?"

"A locket which I wore at my neck, suspended by a ribbon," said she, as her tears began to fall again.

"He has the family solicitor with him at Walcot Park, I understand," said I.

"They are visiting there together. Mr. Sharpus came on business, and my husband accompanied him."

"Why not appeal to this legal man?

"I have done so many times."

"And he--"

"Fears Mr. Guilfoyle and dare not move in the matter, or affects to disbelieve me."

"What power has this--your husband, over him?"

"God alone knows--I do not," she replied, clasping her hands; "but Mr. Sharpus quails like a criminal under the eye of Hawkesby Guilfoyle, who seems also to possess some strange power over Lady Naseby, I think."

Could such really be? It seemed impossible; everything appeared to forbid it; and yet I was not insensible to a conviction that the dowager countess was rather pleased with, than influenced by, him. Could he have acted in secret the part of lover to her, and so flattered her weakness by adulation? Old women and old men, too, are at times absurd enough for anything; and now the words of Caradoc, on the night he lost money to Guilfoyle at billiards, recurred to me, when in his blunt way he averred they had all some secret understanding, adding, "By Jove! I can't make it out at all." My mind was a kind of chaos as I walked onward with my new friend, and leading my horse by the bridle we entered Whitchurch together. In the dusk I left her at the inn door, promising to visit her on the morrow, and consult with her on the means for farther exposing her husband; for although her story--for all I knew to the contrary--might be an entire fabrication, I was not then in a mood of mind to view it as such. As I bade her adieu, a dog-cart, driven by a servant,--whose livery was familiar to me, passed quickly. Two women were in it, one of whom mentioned my name. I looked up and recognised Mademoiselle Babette Pompon, Lady Naseby's soubrette, who had evidently been shopping; and a natural dread that she, out of a love of gossip, or the malevolence peculiar to her class, might mention having seen me at the inn porch with a fair friend, was now added to the annoyance caused by the episode at the lane end--an episode to which the said parting would seem but an addendum or sequel; and I galloped home to my quarters in a frame of thought far from enviable, and one which neither brandy nor seltzer at the mess-house could allay.