Parlous Times: A Novel of Modern Diplomacy

"Dear me – let me see! That was this morning. Now who was there? Ah! – I remember. A strange lady in black, very beautiful, and Mr. Kent-Lauriston."

Miss Fitzgerald shuddered.

"Dear, dear!" cried the parson. "You're cold – the draught from the window – let me get you a wrap."

"No, no, I'm quite warm, thank you. You're sure that no one else saw the register?"

"No one – except Mr. Stanley."

"You must excuse me, Mr. Lambert," she said. "I'm not feeling very well."

"You are faint? Is there nothing I can do for you?"

"Nothing more, thank you," and she swept past him across the room, to where Lady Isabelle was seated on a sofa.

"Nothing more," murmured the little man, after she had left him; "but I hadn't begun to do anything; and she seemed quite faint. Dear, dear, she looks strong, but to be so easily upset, I fear something must be wrong – my daughter was never like that," and, shaking his head, he went to join the Dowager, who had a penchant for the clergy.

"You've heard nothing from your husband?" asked Miss Fitzgerald of Lady Isabelle, as she seated herself beside her.

"Nothing beyond a telegram telling me of his safe arrival in London."

"But surely his uncle was in extremis. He cannot live long."

"I do not know," she replied, "but it's very awkward. Oh, why won't you let me tell Mr. Stanley the truth?"

"Sh! He's coming," murmured Miss Fitzgerald, and, indeed, the Secretary was advancing deliberately towards them; a thing suggestive in itself, considering how he had striven to avoid them all day long.

"Miss Fitzgerald," he said very quietly, as he stood before them, "will you permit me to ask you a question?"

"If it's a proper question to ask, Mr. Stanley."

"It is eminently proper and fitting," he replied, coldly.

"Would you rather that I went?" suggested Lady Isabelle, half rising.

"I would rather you stayed."

"Don't be so dreadfully mysterious, Jimsy!" cried Miss Fitzgerald, with a forced laugh that grated on the ears of both her hearers. "Out with your dreadful question. What is it?"

"It is this," he replied. "Are you Jack Kingsland's wife?"

For a moment there was absolute silence. The Secretary stood looking straight in the face of the Irish girl, without moving a muscle. Lady Isabelle gave a smothered exclamation, and gripped her companion's wrist with all her force, flushing red as she did so. Miss Fitzgerald bit her lip, and stared hard at Stanley for the fraction of a minute; then, breaking into her hard metallic laugh, she cried:

"Why, you foolish boy! What can you be thinking of?"

"You've not answered my question," he replied.

"Why, what is there to answer?"

"I ask you – Are you Lieutenant Kingsland's wife?" he repeated harshly – betraying the first sign of temper he had so far evinced, which Miss Fitzgerald saw and was quick to profit by. Whatever was coming – there was, in Lady Isabelle's presence, but one course open to her – she looked her accuser boldly in the face and said:

"No, I'm not Lieutenant Kingsland's wife."

"You are quite sure of what you are saying?"

"I repeat, I am not his wife. I have not married him, put it how you please. Do you doubt my word? If you're so anxious to know whom Lieutenant Kingsland married, ask your fiancée, Lady Isabelle; perhaps she can tell you."

"It's not necessary to ask Lady Isabelle if she is Lieutenant Kingsland's wife – because – "

"Because she has already told you so," broke in Miss Fitzgerald.

"Because," continued Stanley, in the same colourless, dogged tone, "because Mr. Lambert, the one person who could have made Kingsland and Lady Isabelle man and wife, has solemnly assured me that he did not perform the marriage ceremony between them – " and he turned on his heel and left the room.

CHAPTER XXIX

IN WHICH DEATH IS A RELIEF

After Stanley had left them, Isabelle Kingsland and Isabelle Fitzgerald sat silent for a while, looking into each other's faces, the brain of each throbbing with a tumult of agitating thoughts. The Englishwoman voicing to herself a subtle suggestion of coming evil, which had been omnipresent since her marriage day, an instinctive presentiment that all was not well: the Irish girl feeling strongly irritated at this last of the many annoying contretemps of the week; and smarting under a sense of injustice that, when she had merely practised a little harmless deception for a friend's sake, that friend should leave the field and the eminently disagreeable explanations to her.

She vented her feelings by a shrug of the shoulders, which broke the tension of the silence.

"Tell me – on your honour, tell me," cried Lady Isabelle, "that he did not speak the truth; that I am married to Lieutenant Kingsland!"

"Of course you're married to Lieutenant Kingsland," replied Miss Fitzgerald, with a little sigh of resignation. "You read your licence, didn't you?"

"Yes. But – "

"But that's quite sufficient – and there's no occasion for a scene."

"It's not sufficient, not nearly sufficient – there's something that's being kept back from me, and I want to know the truth!" and Lady Isabelle rose, becoming quite queenly in her indignant agitation.

"I've been uneasy from the first about my marriage," she continued, "because it was not open as I should have wished. I knew there was some mystery about it. My husband admitted as much to me from the first, and he did not need to tell me that you were the prime mover in the affair. It is my right to know the truth."

"The assertion of people's rights is responsible for most of the wrong done in the world. Did your husband counsel you to insult his best friend?"

"He didn't wish me to speak to you on the subject, but I've determined to take matters into my own hands. In the face of Mr. Stanley's charges, I must know the truth."

"You had better obey your husband."

"I'm responsible to him for that matter, not to you, Miss Fitzgerald. Now tell me, what did Mr. Stanley mean?"

"He meant what he said."

"But how could Mr. Lambert have told him an untruth?"

"Mr. Lambert told him what he believed to be the truth; and that was, that he had not married you and Jack – Lieutenant Kingsland, I mean."

"Was that all he told him?"