# Ethel Churchill/Chapter 104

CHAPTER XXVIII.
THE LETTERS RESTORED.
Alas! he brings me back my early years, And seems to tell me what I should have been. How have I wasted God's best gifts, and turned Their use against myself! It is too late! Remorse and shame are crushing me to earth And I am desperate with my misery!
A golden bribe won at least attention from the porter; and Walter knew that Lady Marchmont had returned, for her chair was being carried away from the door as he got up to it. Still the difficulty of obtaining admittance was great, and Maynard was vainly urging the importance of his business, when ​an old domestic, who had formerly lived with Sir Jasper Meredith, entered the hall. He knew Maynard at once; but he, too, demurred about the lateness of the hour.
"I know you love your mistress," said Walter, drawing the old man aside; "it is of vital consequence to herself that I should see her alone for a very few moments!"
The old man looked at him with a sort of startled surprise; but Walter was too pale and too agitated not to be in earnest.
"Come," said he, "to my room, I will take care that you see her ladyship."
Walter followed him into one of those small dark rooms, which so forcibly contrast the general magnificence of London, marking the social distinctions which exist under the same roof. The servant lighted a dull lamp, and left his visitor to a space that, to his impatience, seemed endless.
"I have been waiting," said the old man, "till I heard Lord Marchmont go down to supper: my lady is now alone in the dressing-​closet. You see, Mr. Maynard, that I do not, for a moment, doubt but that your business justifies this unreasonable visit."
"It does, indeed!" exclaimed Walter, as he followed his guide.
"My lady is alone, for she has come in unusually early, so that Madame Cecile will not be returned these two hours, but I will wait in the antechamber."
They knocked at the door.
"Come in!" said a voice, strange and hollow.
"Madam," said the old man, "Mr. Walter Maynard says that he must see you for a moment on the most pressing business."
Lady Marchmont was still in the same attitude as when her husband left the room—half knelt, half crouched, on the floor. The mechanical restraint that we exercise over ourselves in the presence of our inferiors, made her start from her knee, and say, even calmly, "Oh, very well! shew him in." But she did not know what she was saying; and when Walter, a moment after, entered, it took her ​quite by surprise. He had often seen her in public places, but she had never seen him since the last evening passed beside the little fountain; he seemed like the ghost of her youth, suddenly risen up to reproach her. Both stood silent, gazing on each other; Walter was actually lost in admiration of Lady Marchmont's transcendent beauty. The black velvet robe, with its strange embroidery, suited so well her superb figure, and threw into such strong relief the dead fairness of her neck and arms. Her face was without a vestige of colour, but it only showed more strongly the perfect outline of her features. Pale she was, but not like a statue; it was a human paleness—passionate and painful. Masses of her rich black hair fell over her shoulders, giving that wildness to the look which the dishevelled hair always does; but the glittering snake was yet wound round the head, and the ruby crest and diamond eye of the reptile had a strange likeness to life.
Lady Marchmont's eyes were unusually large; but to-night the face itself seemed half ​eyes, so dark and dilated were the shadowy pupils. But it was the expression of misery in her countenance, that riveted the attention; rarely before had so much anguish and beauty been combined in the same face. Some instinct told Walter that she was suffering, and he was come to add to it; still, the sooner what he had to say was said, the better, and he was the first to break silence.
"Lady Marchmont," said he, "will pardon an intrusion dictated by anxiety on her account. Will she permit me to place these letters in her own keeping?"
Henrietta looked at them with a bewildered air; she knew them, at once, for they were only kept together by a riband. A terrible fear rushed across her mind; was Sir George ill?—was he engaged in a duel? The idea of some danger to him was the on]y one that presented itself.
"Did he—did Sir George Kingston," asked she, faintly, "send no message, when he sent these letters?"
​ "He did not send them!" replied her visitor.
A deep flush, for one moment, suffused her neck, arms, face—even to the very temples—as she exclaimed, "How did they come into your possession?"
"Lady Marchmont," returned Maynard, "do sit down, and listen patiently, if you can, to me for five minutes!"
Henrietta obeyed like a child, indeed she could now scarcely stand; still, there was that consciousness about her, which made her turn her face a little aside. Walter hesitated, when she turned suddenly round:—
"For mercy's sake, tell me the worst; I can bear it better than suspense! What has happened to Sir George Kingston?"
"Do not give yourself any uneasiness about one so utterly unworthy of a thought! Sir George Kingston is without one grain of either honour or real feeling! The fact is, I have, for some months past, been his secretary, and wrote for him the letters which were sent you!"
​ "You wrote them!" cried Henrietta.
"I had not the least idea to whom they were addressed. I wrote, as I do the pages of a romance; and the Henrietta to whom they were addressed, was an ideal heroine!"
"Sir George did not write them himself!"
"He rarely read them, only just taking," replied the secretary, "a brief outline, lest he should betray himself in speaking!"
"My God!" murmured Henrietta, "how I have been deceived!"
"I do not ask, I dare not hope, for your forgiveness," continued Walter; "but let me atone, as far as I can, by warning you against Sir George Kingston: he gave these very letters of yours to amuse the idle hours of his mistress!"
Henrietta gasped for breath; but she swallowed down the hysterical emotion, and signed with her hand for Walter to go on.
"I have little more to say; your secret is safe. I will answer for the young actress's ​silence; it were an impertinence to assure you of my own!"
Henrietta gazed upon him steadfastly; his presence brought back the first, the sweetest dream of her life. Her love for Sir George Kingston seemed to vanish like a shadow; deep in her heart she felt that it was a poor fanciful emotion, born of vanity, and that craving for excitement, the inevitable result of her artificial state of existence. No; he whom she had really loved, stood there before her—pale, earnest—with the same dark and eloquent eyes, as when they used to kindle with light over the fine creations of the olden poets. Loving and beloved by him, how different would her destiny have been! An utter sense of desolation came over her; a terror of the future, an overwhelming agony in the present. That he, of all others, should be the one to witness her humiliation!
"I will trespass no longer," said Walter, after a moment's pause. "Let me hope that the bitterness of this moment will be forgotten ​in scorn. Good-night, dear Lady Marchmont. God bless you!" And he pressed the hand that she extended towards him.
He started at the touch, for it burned like fire; and, even in that momentary pressure, he could feel the pulses beat!