His Darling Sin

CHAPTER I

"That small, small, imperceptible
Small talk! that cuts like powdered glass
Ground in Tophana,—who can tell
Where lurks the power the poison has?"

There is the desolation of riches as well as the desolation of poverty—the empty splendour of a large house in which there is no going and coming of family life, no sound of light footsteps and youthful laughter—only spacious rooms and fine furniture, and one solitary figure moving silently amidst the vacant grandeur. This sense of desolation, of a melancholy silence and emptiness, came upon Lady Perivale on her return to the mansion in Grosvenor Square, which was among the numerous good things of this world that had fallen into her lap, seven years ago, when she made one of the best matches of the season.

She had not sold herself to an unloved suitor. She had been sincerely attached to Sir Hector Perivale, and had sincerely mourned him when, after two years of domestic happiness, he died suddenly, in the prime of life, from the consequences of a chill caught on his grouse moor in Argyleshire, where he and his young wife, and a few chosen pals, made life a perpetual picnic, and knew no enemy but foul weather.

This time the enemy was Death. A neglected cold turned to pneumonia, and Grace Perivale was a widow.

"It does seem hard lines," whispered Hector, when he knew that he was doomed. "We have had such a good time, Grace; and it's rough on me to leave you."

No child had been born of that happy union, and Grace found herself alone in the world at one and twenty, in full possession of her husband's fortune, which was princely, even according to the modern standard by which incomes are measured—a fortune lying chiefly underground, in Durham coalfields, secure from change as the earth itself, and only subject to temporary diminution from strikes, or bad times. She needed a steady brain to deal with such large responsibilities, for she had not been born or reared among the affluent classes. In her father's East Anglian Rectory the main philosophy of life had been to do without things.

Her husband had none but distant relations, whom he had kept at a distance; so there were no interfering brothers or sisters, no prying aunts or officious uncles to worry her with good advice. She stood alone, with a castle on the Scottish border, round whose turrets the seamews wheeled, and at whose base the German Ocean rolled in menacing grandeur, one of the finest houses in Grosvenor Square, and an income that was described by her friends and the gossiping Press at anything you like between twenty and fifty thousand a year.

So rich, so much alone, Lady Perivale was naturally capricious. One of her caprices was to hate her castle in Northumberland, and to love a hill-side villa on the Italian Riviera, two or three miles from a small seaport, little known to travellers, save as a ragged line of dilapidated white houses straggling along the sea front, past which the Mediterranean express carried them, indifferent and unobservant, on their journey between Marseilles and Genoa.

It was Lady Perivale's whim to spend her winters in a spot unknown to Rumpelmeyer and fashion—a spot where smart frocks were out of place; where royalty-worship was impossible, since not the smallest princeling had ever been heard of there; and where for the joy of life one had only the sapphire sea and the silvery grey of the olive woods, perpetual roses, a lawn carpeted with anemones, sloping banks covered with carnations, palms, and aloes, orange and lemon trees, hedges of pale pink geranium, walls tapestried with the dark crimson of the Bougainvilliers, the delicate mauve of the wistaria; and balmy winds which brought the scent of the flowers and the breath of the sea through the open windows.

Lady Perivale came back to London in April, when the flower-girls were selling bunches of purple lilac, and Bond Street seemed as full of lemon-coloured carriages and picture-hats as if it were June. It was the pleasant season after Easter, the season of warm sunshine and cold winds, when some people wore sables and others wore lace, the season of bals blancs and friendly dinners, before the May Drawing Room and the first State concert, before the great entertainments which were to be landmarks in the history of the year.

How empty the three drawing-rooms looked, in a perspective of white and gold; how black and dismal the trees in the square, as Grace Perivale stood at one of the front windows, looking out at the smooth lawns and well-kept shrubbery, in the pale English sunlight. She thought of the ineffable blue of the Mediterranean, the grey and green and gold and purple of the olive wood, and the orange and lemon grove sloping down to the sea from her verandah, where the Safrano roses hung like a curtain of pale yellow blossom over the rustic roof.

"And yet there are people who like London better than Italy," she thought.

Two footmen came in with the tables for tea.

"In the little drawing-room," she said, waving them away from the accustomed spot.

The spaciousness of the room chilled her. The Louis Seize furniture was all white and gold and silvery blue—not too much gold. An adept in the furniture art had made the scheme of colour, had chosen the pale blues and greys of the Aubusson carpet, the silvery sheen of the satin curtains and sofa-covers. It was all pale and delicate, and intensely cold.

"My letters?" she asked, when the men were retiring.

She had slept at Dover, and had come to London by an afternoon train. She liked even the hotel at Dover better than this great house in Grosvenor Square. There she had at least the sea to look at, and not this splendid loneliness.

"Well," she thought, with a long-drawn sigh, "I must plunge into the vortex again, another mill-round of lunches and dinners, theatres and dances, park and Princes', Ranelagh and Hurlingham—the same things over and over and over and over again. But, after all, I enjoy the nonsense while I am in it, enjoy it just as much as the other people do. We all go dancing round the fashionable maypole, in and out, left hand here, right hand there, smiling, smiling, smiling, and quite satisfied while it lasts. We only pretend to be bored."

The little drawing-room—twenty feet by fifteen—looked almost comfortable. There was a bright fire in the low grate, reflected dazzlingly in turquoise tiles, and the old-fashioned bow window was filled with a bank of flowers, which shut out the view of the chimneys and the great glass roof over the stable-yard.

Lady Perivale sank into one of her favourite chairs, and poured out a cup of tea.

The butler came in with her letters. Three, on a silver salver that looked much too large for them.

"These cannot possibly be all, Johnson," she said; "Mrs. Barnes must have the rest."

"Mrs. Barnes says these are all the letters, my lady."

"All! There must be some mistake. You had better ask the other servants."