Guy left England the same evening, and descended like a thunder-clap on the joyous little _ménage_ in the Rue de la Madeleine, where Forrester and his bride were still fluttering their wings in the honeymoon-shine of post-nuptial spring.
They were miraculously happy, those two. Indeed, they seemed to have only one taste between them, and that was Charley's. If he felt inclined, which was not seldom, to utter inaction, his wife encouraged him in his laziness, sitting contentedly for hours on her footstool, with her silky hair just within reach of his indolent hand. If, after dinner, he suggested the "Italiens," or the "Bouffes," it was always precisely that theatre that she had been thinking of all the morning. She was in the seventh heaven when he won a hurdle-race in the Champ de Mars.
They made excursions into the _banlieue_, and farther afield yet, like a couple of the _Pays Latin_ in their first loves. The cabinets of Bercy and St. Cloud knew them; so did the arbors of Asnières, where, in oilskin and _vareuse_, muster for their Sabbat the ancient mariners of the Seine. Nay, it has been whispered that more than once--close veiled and clinging tightly to her husband's arm--Isabel witnessed at _Mabille_ and the _Chaumière_ the choregraphic triumphs of _Frisette_, _Pomare_, and _Mogador_.
My hand trembles while I record such enormities and backslidings. O Brougham-girls of Belgravia, who "never gave your mothers a moment's uneasiness"--stars of the Western hemisphere, who can be trusted any where without fear of your wandering from your orbits--think on this lost Pleiad, once your companion, and be warned. Men are deceivers ever, even when they mean matrimony; and the tender mercies of the Light Dragoon are cruel.
Isabel was dreadfully startled at the sudden appearance of her cousin. Her notions of his power were quite unlimited and irrational, and I believe her first thought was that he had changed his mind about the propriety of her marriage, and was come to carry her back into the house of her bondage with the strong hand.
When his curt sentences told her the facts, sorry as she was, it certainly was rather a relief to her. Charley was full of compassion too, but he only confided this to his wife. He knew better than to try condolence with Guy, and felt instantly that the case was far beyond his simple powers of healing.