"Are you going out this evening, Stewart?" asked Harriet Routh of her husband, as they sat together, after their dinner--which had not been a particularly lively meal--was removed. She did not look at him as she put the question, but gazed out of the window, holding back the curtain, while she spoke. Stewart Routh was examining the contents of a heap of letters which lay on the table before him, and did not answer for a moment. She repeated the question:
"Are you going out anywhere this evening, Stewart?"
"Of course I am going out," he answered impatiently. "Why do you ask? I am not going to be mewed up here in this stifling room all the evening."
"No, of course not," she answered very gently and without an inflection in her voice to betray that she perceived the irritation of his tone. "Of course not. You go out every evening, as every one else does here. I only asked because I think of going with you."
"You, Harry?" he said, with real embarrassment, but with feigned cordiality. "That is a sudden start. Why, you have never been out in the evening since we've been here but once, and then you seemed to dislike the place very much. Have you not been out to-day?"
"Yes, I have. I walked a long way to-day. But I have a fancy to go to the Kursaal this evening. George Dallas tells me a number of new people have come, and I have a fancy to see them."
Stewart Routh frowned. He disliked this fancy of his wife's; he did not understand it. Harriet had always shrunk from strangers and crowds, and had gone to Homburg very unwillingly. On their first arrival, when he would have been tolerably willing to take her about with him, though he felt a growing repugnance to her society, she would not go out except to drink the waters early in the day, and now, on an occasion when it was particularly inconvenient to him, she took a fancy to go out. Besides, he hated the mention of George Dallas's name. There was a tacit sympathy between him and Harriet on this point. True, she bore the pain of his daily visits, but then she was accustomed to bearing pain. But she rarely spoke of him, and she knew his intercourse with Routh was very slight and casual. Harriet possessed even more than the ordinary feminine power of divination in such matters, and she felt instinctively that Mr. Felton both disliked and distrusted her husband.
"It is fortunate we do not want to use Dallas for our purpose any longer," Harriet had said to herself on only the second occasion of her seeing the uncle and nephew together--"very fortunate; for Mr. Felton would be a decided and a dangerous antagonist. Weak and wavering as George is, his uncle could rule him, I am sure, and would do so, contrary to us." This impression had been confirmed since Harriet had watched, as she was in the habit of doing, the proceedings of Mr. Felton and George at Homburg. When George visited her, he rarely mentioned Routh, and she knew they had not dined together ever since they had been there. Assisted, insensibly, by his uncle's opinion and influence, George had emancipated himself, as all his reflections had dictated, but all his resolutions had failed to accomplish. So Harriet ceased to mention George to Routh, and thus it was that her speech jarred unpleasantly upon his ear.
"Indeed," he said. "I should think Dallas a very poor judge of what is or is not likely to amuse you. However, I'm sorry I can't take you out this evening. I have an engagement."
Still she kept her head turned from him and looked out of the window. He glanced at her uneasily, cleared his throat, and went on:
"I promised to meet Hunt and Kirkland at the tables to-night and try our luck. I'm sorry for it, Harry, and I'll keep to-morrow evening quite free. That will do for you, won't it?"
"Yes," she replied; "that will do."
She did not look round, and he did not approach her. He fidgeted about the room a little, sorted his letters, tied them up in a bundle, locked them into his travelling desk, and finally, with another uneasy glance at her, he left the room. Harriet sat quite still, her hand upon the curtain, her face towards the window. So she sat for several minutes after he had left the house, in evening dress, with a loose paletot on, and she had seen him go down the street towards the Kursaal. Then she wrote a few lines to George Dallas, and, having sent her note, once more seated herself by the window. The room was darkening in the quick coming night, and her figure was indistinct in its motionless attitude by the window, when George came gaily into her presence.
"Here I am, Mrs. Routh. What are your commands? Nothing wrong with you, I hope? I can't see you plainly in the dusk. Where's Routh?"
"He has gone out. He had an engagement, and I have a particular fancy to go out this evening, to see the world; in fact, at the Kursaal, in particular. You are always so kind and obliging, I thought, as Stewart could not take me, if your mother did not particularly want you this evening, you might give me your escort for an hour."
"Too delighted," said George, with genuine pleasure. "I am quite free. Mr. Carruthers is with my mother, and my uncle is writing letters for the American mail."
Harriet thanked him, and left the room; but returned almost immediately, with her bonnet on, and wearing a heavy black lace veil.
"You will be smothered in that veil, Mrs. Routh," said George, as they left the house. "And you won't get the full benefit of this delightful evening air."
"I prefer it," she said; "there are some men here, friends of Stewart, whom I don't care to see."
They went on, almost in silence, for Harriet was very thoughtful, and George was wondering what made her so "low," and whether these friends of Routh's were any of the "old set." He hoped, for Harriet's sake, Routh was not playing recklessly. He was very clever, of course, but still--and with all the wisdom and the zeal of his present mental and moral condition, George shook his head at the idea of a deflection into gambling on the part of Routh.
The often-described scene at the Kursaal displayed all the customary features. Light, gilding, gaiety, the lustre and rustle of women's dress, the murmur of voices and the ring of laughter in all the rooms not devoted to play; but at the tables, silence, attention, and all the variety which attends the exhibition of the passion of gambling in all its stages. From the careless lounger, who, merely passing through the rooms, threw a few florins on the table to try what the game was like, to the men and women who lived for and in the hours during which the tables were open to them, all, with the intermediate ranks of votaries and degrees of servitude, were there.
George was so accustomed to Harriet's retiring manners, and so prepared to find the scene distasteful to her, that he did not notice her unwillingness to assume a prominent position in any of the rooms through which they passed. As they entered each, she drew him a little behind the crowd in occupation, and talked to him about the style of the apartment, its decoration, the brilliancy of its light--in short, made any commonplace remarks which occurred to her.
They were standing near the door of one of the saloons, and Harriet, though her veil was not lifted, was scanning from behind its shelter curiously, and with a rapid sharpness peculiar to her, the brilliant-dressed crowd, talking, laughing, flirting, lounging on the velvet seats, and some furtively yawning in the weariness of their hearts; when a sudden brisk general flutter and a pervading whisper attracted the attention of both. The movement was caused by the entrance of a lady, so magnificently dressed and so extremely handsome that she could not have failed to create a sensation in any resort of gaiety, fashion, and the pomp and pride of life. The voluminous folds of her blue satin dress were covered, overflowed rather, by those of a splendid mantilla of black lace, worn Spanish fashion over her head, where a brilliant scarlet flower nestled between the rich filmy fabric and the lustrous black brown hair coiled closely round it. She came in, her head held up, her bright black eyes flashing, her whole face and figure radiant with reckless beauty and assertion. Two or three gentlemen accompanied her, and her appearance had the same processional air which George had commented upon in the morning. The lady was Mrs. Ireton P. Bembridge.
"We're in luck, Mrs. Routh," said George. "Here comes my uncle's fair friend, or fair enemy, whichever she may he, in all her splendour. What a pity Mr. Felton is not here! Perhaps she will speak to me."
"Perhaps so," whispered Harriet, as she slipped her hand from under his arm, and sat down on a bench behind him. "Pray don't move, please. I particularly wish to be hidden."
At this moment, Mrs. Ireton P. Bembridge, advancing with her train, and amid the looks of the assembly, some admiring, some affecting the contemptuous, and a few not remarkably respectful, approached George. From behind him, where her head just touched the back of his elbow, Harriet's blue eyes were fixed upon her. But the triumphant beauty was quite unconscious of their gaze. She stopped for a moment, and spoke to George.
"Good evening, Mr. Dallas. Is Mr. Felton here? No? He is expecting his son, I suppose."
"He does not know, madam. He has not heard from him."
"Indeed! But Arthur is always lazy about letter-writing. However, he will be here soon, to answer for himself."
"Will he? Do you know, my uncle is very anxious--"
She interrupted him with a laugh and a slight gesture of her hand, in which the woman watching her discerned an insolent meaning, then said, as she passed on:
"He knows where to find me, if he wants to know what I can tell him. Good evening, Mr. Dallas."
"Did you hear that, Harriet?" said George, in an agitated voice, after he had watched the brilliant figure as it mingled with the crowd in the long saloon.
"I did," said Harriet. "And though I don't understand her meaning, I think there is something wrong and cruel in it. That is a bold, bad woman, George," she went on, speaking earnestly; "and though I am not exactly the person entitled to warn you against dangerous friends--"
"Yes, yes, you a............