thronging ball-rooms, to call you 'Caroline.' Tut, tut--they are only
cousins, and cousins are as brothers and sisters in the affectionate
House of Vipont; and gossips talk, and young ladies envy--finest match in
all England is the pretty-faced Lord of Montfort! And your mother, who
had said, 'Wait a year' to Guy Darrell, must have dreamed of the cousin,
and schemed for his coronet, when she said it. And I was unseen, and I
must not write; and the absent are always in the wrong--when cousins are
present! And I hear your mother speak of me--hear the soft sound of her
damaging praises. 'Another long speech from your clever admirer! Don't
fancy he frets; that kind of man thinks of nothing but blue-books and
politics.' And your cousin proposes, and you say with a sigh, 'No; I am
bound to Guy Darrell'; and your mother says to my Lord, 'Wait, and still
come--as a cousin!' And then, day by day, the sweet Mrs. Lyndsay drops
into your ear the hints that shall poison your heart. Some fable is
dressed to malign me; and you cry, "Tis not true; prove it true, or I
still keep my faith to Guy Darrell.' Then comes the kind compact--'If the
story be false, my cousin must go.' 'And if it be true, you will be my
own duteous child. Alas! your poor cousin is breaking his heart. A
lawyer of forty has a heart made of parchuient!' Aha! you were
entangled, and of course deceived! Your letter did not explain what was
the tale told to you. I care not a rush what it was. It is enough for
me to know that, if you had loved me, you would have loved me the more
for every tale that belied me. So the tale was credited, because a
relief to credit it. So the compact was kept--so the whole bargain
hurried over in elegant privacy-place of barter, an ambassador's chapel.
Bauble for bauble--a jilt's faith for a mannikin's coronet. Four days
before the year of trial expired, 'Only four days more!' I exclaimed,
drunk with rapture. The journals lie before me. Three columns to Guy
Darrell's speech last night; a column more to its effect on a senate, on
an empire; and two lines--two little lines--to the sentence that struck