第158章

"First, because of the state of excitement you must have been in;and next, because I doubt the wine that was left in your room. The count no doubt knew enough of drugs to put a few ghostly horrors into the decanter. But poor Miss Cameron! The horrors he has put into her mind and life! It is a sad fate--all but a sentence of insanity."Hugh sprang to his feet.

"By heaven!" he cried, "I will strangle the knave.""Stop, stop!" said Falconer. "No revenge! Leave him to the sleeping divinity within him, which will awake one day, and complete the hell that he is now building for himself--for the very fire of hell is the divine in it. Your work is to set Euphra free. If you did strangle him, how do you know if that would free her from him?""Horrible!--Have you no news of him?"

"None whatever."

"What, then, can I do for her?"

"You must teach her to foil him."

"How am I to do that? Even if I knew how, I cannot see her, Icannot speak to her."

"I have a great faith in opportunity."

"But how should she foil him?"

"She must pray to God to redeem her fettered will--to strengthen her will to redeem herself. She must resist the count, should he again claim her submission (as, for her sake, I hope he will), as she would the devil himself. She must overcome. Then she will be free--not before. This will be very hard to do. His power has been excessive and peculiar, and her submission long and complete. Even if he left her alone, she would not therefore be free. She must defy him; break his bonds; oppose his will; assert her freedom; and defeat him utterly.""Oh! who will help her? I have no power. Even if I were with her, I could not help her in such a struggle. I wish David were not dead. He was the man.--You could now, Mr. Falconer.""No. Except I knew her, had known her for some time, and had a strong hold of all her nature, I could not, would not try to help her. If Providence brought this about, I would do my best; but otherwise I would not interfere. But if she pray to God, he will give her whatever help she needs, and in the best way, too.""I think it would be some comfort to her if we could find the ring--the crystal, I mean.""It would be more, I think, if we could find the diamond.""How can we find either?"

"We must find the count first. I have not given that up, of course.

I will tell you what I should like to do, if I knew the lady.""What?"

"Get her to come to London, and make herself as public as possible: go to operas and balls, and theatres; be presented at court; take a stall at every bazaar, and sell charity puff-balls--get as much into the papers as possible. 'The lovely, accomplished, fascinating Miss Cameron, &c., &c.'""What do you mean?"

"I will tell you what I mean. The count has forsaken her now; but as soon as he heard that she was somebody, that she was followed and admired, his vanity would be roused, his old sense of property in her would revive, and he would begin once more to draw her into his toils. What the result would be, it is impossible to foretell; but it would at least give us a chance of catching him, and her a chance of resisting him.""I don't think, however, that she would venture on that course herself. I should not dare to propose it to her.""No, no. It was only an invention, to deceive myself with the fancy that I was doing something. There would be many objections to such a plan, even if it were practicable. I must still try to find him, and if fresh endeavours should fail, devise fresher still.""Thank you a thousand times," said Hugh. "It is too good of you to take so much trouble.""It is my business," answered Falconer. "Is there not a soul in trouble?"Hugh went home, full of his new friend. With the clue he had given him, he was able to follow all the windings of Euphra's behaviour, and to account for almost everything that had taken place. It was quite painful to him to feel that he could be of no immediate service to her; but he could hardly doubt that, before long, Falconer would, in his wisdom and experience, excogitate some mode of procedure in which he might be able to take a part.

He sat down to his novel, which had been making but little progress for some time; for it is hard to write a novel when one is living in the midst of a romance. But the romance, at this time, was not very close to him. It had a past and a possible future, but no present.

That same future, however, might at any moment dawn into the present.

In the meantime, teaching the Latin grammar and the English alphabet to young aspirants after the honours of the ministry, was not work inimical to invention, from either the exhaustion of its excitement or the absorption of its interest.