wards, on my return at a late hour from St. Germains, where I had been spending the day, I found Benoit missing, and the concièrge informed me he had gone to the wedding of Monsieur Vilvorde’s coachman, with the other servants, and that none of them had returned. I felt angry with the fellow; but the next morning he appeared and accounted for himself as follows. He said that this being the day fixed for the marriage of Auguste with Mamselle Fifine, the Blanchisseuse en fin, he had invited the other servants, including Benoit, with whom he had formed a sort of acquaintance, to the wedding festivity, at a little guingette in the Champs Elysées. They feasted and danced, as is usual on such occasions, but towards the close of the evening, as ill-luck would have it, a pretty grisette, on whom the courier, Rosetti, had fixed his affections, exhibited such an evident preference for the attentions of Pierre, the valet, that Rosetti lost his temper; and Pierre, willing to exhibit his spirit before the fair subject of their rivalry, having too recklessly provoked the anger of the Italian, a quarrel had ensued, in which the latter had attempted to stab his antagonist with a knife he had snatched off the table. Of course, the never-failing gensdarmes were at hand, who immediately broke up the company, closed the guingette, and conducted the whole of the party to the police office, where they had been detained all night, but had been released in the morning. Benoit added that he was not surprised; that he always thought the courier harboured a desire for revenge, but that certainly Pierre, who was un fier gaillard, avait promené his advantages in a somewhat irritating manner before his discomfited rival.
I read a short notice of this affair in one of the papers the next morning, in which it described the family as English. This, I thought, was an error; but in the course of the afternoon I heard some of my countrymen at the club alluding to the circumstance, in connection with the name of Wellwood. “Yes,” they said, “the French call them Vilvorde, and it was so printed in the ‘Journaux,’ but it is, in fact, Sir Ralph Wellwood’s valet that is wounded. He had accused the courier of stealing a casket, and the courier bore him a spite, they say.”
What a fatality! Here were the very people I had been warned against, and that I had inquired for in every city on the continent, living under the same roof with me, and I not to find it out all this while! Well, I resolved to make their acquaintance without delay. Why should I adopt my father’s quarrels? I had no sympathy with him or his resentments; and so eager I was to do it, that I went home immediately, rang at the bell au premier, and sent in my card. Sir Ralph was absent, but I was received by a middle-aged lady, and a very pretty young one, both in deep mourning, whom I immediately concluded to be Lady Wellwood and my old friend Clara. As Elfdale was on my card, I had no occasion to explain who I was. The elder lady was very polite. She inquired how my father was, and whether he was in Paris, and then turned the conversation on my travels, and the accident that had brought us acquainted, without making the slightest allusion to the family feud.
When I asked Clara if she recollected the love passages of our childhood, she laughed and blushed, and owned that she did; whilst I privately resolved that, as far as it depended on me, our courtship should not terminate with those early flirtations, but be resumed now in real earnest.
I was exceedingly struck with her. She was the first woman—I may, now that I am an old man, add—the only woman, that ever made a serious impression on my heart; and the circumstance that she was the very one of all others that my father would object to as my wife, gave—shall I confess it?—an additional zest to the prospect of making her so.
But was she free? She was very pretty—beautiful in my eyes; two-and-twenty, and well dowered. My heart sank, and I actually turned pale; for I was standing opposite the mirror in my dressing-room, contemplating my own person, and calculating the chances of success, when the idea struck me that she might be engaged—perhaps on the very eve of marriage. I would have given the world to go and ask herself or Lady Wellwood immediately, but as that could not be, I went back to the club, thinking I might learn something amongst the English there; but though the family were slightly known to some, they could probably not have resolved my distressing doubt, even had I ventured to make inquiries on the subject, which, for fear of betraying myself, I did not.
The next day Benoit told me, when I came home to dress, that a jeune seigneur had called, and I found Sir Ralph Wellwood’s card on my table.
“Il est jeune, ce monsieur?” said I, with surprise.
“Oui, monsieur; il est jeune.”
The Sir Ralph, then, of whom I had a faint recollection, must be dead, and this must be his son. I did not know even that he had a son. The short time I was at Elfdale, after leaving Mr. Carter’s, I was aware that Staughton was shut up, and I was told that the family had been abroad for years. I believe they had gone away before I went to school, and the son was probably born after that period; though, indeed, he might have been born before, and I not hear of it, as the very name of Wellwood was never uttered in my presence.
However, I returned the visit, and found him a youth of seventeen or eighteen, apparently; and on making a remark to him about my foregone acquaintance with his sister, I was surprised to hear him say, “But you know Clara is not my sister; she is my cousin. I have no sister or brother either.”
“Indeed!” I said; “but I think I remember she was called Clara Wellwood at the time of our infantine flirtation?”
“Oh, yes,” said he; “she is the daughter of a younger brother of my father’s, who was killed in the American war, at the taking of some place—I forget what, I’m sure—but my father always considered Clara as his child; and as she is called Miss Wellwood, almost everybody supposes she is my sister, and, indeed, we seldom take the trouble of contradicting it. But I should have thought you must have known it.”
“No,” said I; “I did not. To say the truth,