Bigamy -- Fiction; Domestic fiction; England -- Fiction; Married women -- Fiction
The name was doubly known to him. Not long since, he had heard it from
his father’s lips, at his father’s bedside. Lord Holchester had charged
him, had earnestly charged him, to bear that name in mind, and to help
the woman who bore it, if the woman ever applied to him in time to come.
Again, he had heard the name, more lately, associated scandalously with
the name of his brother. On the receipt of the first of the anonymous
letters sent to her, Mrs. Glenarm had not only summoned Geoffrey himself
to refute the aspersion cast upon him, but had forwarded a private copy
of the letter to his relatives at Swanhaven. Geoffrey’s defense had not
entirely satisfied Julius that his brother was free from blame. As
he now looked at Anne Silvester, the doubt returned upon him
strengthened--almost confirmed. Was this woman--so modest, so gentle, so
simply and unaffectedly refined--the shameless adventuress denounced
by Geoffrey, as claiming him on the strength of a foolish flirtation;
knowing herself, at the time, to be privately married to another man?
Was this woman--with the voice of a lady, the look of a lady, the manner
of a lady--in league (as Geoffrey had declared) with the illiterate
vagabond who was attempting to extort money anonymously from Mrs.
Glenarm? Impossible! Making every allowance for the proverbial
deceitfulness of appearances, impossible!
“Your name has been mentioned to me,” said Julius, answering her after
a momentary pause. His instincts, as a gentleman, made him shrink from
referring to the association of her name with the name of his brother.
“My father mentioned you,” he added, considerately explaining his
knowledge of her in _that_ way, “when I last saw him in London.”
“Your father!” She came a step nearer, with a look of distrust as
well as a look of astonishment in her face. “Your father is Lord
Holchester--is he not?”
“Yes.”
“What made him speak of _me?_”
“He was ill at the time,” Julius answered. “And he had been thinking of
events in his past life with which I am entirely unacquainted. He said
he had known your father and mother. He desired me, if you were ever in
want of any assistance, to place my services at your disposal. When he
expressed that wish, he spoke very earnestly--he gave me the impression
that there was a feeling of regret associated with the recollections on
which he had been dwelling.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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