While pretending to be the devoted friend and even abject servant of Captain Wentworth, he was seeking, in every way, and on every hand, secretly to undermine him. This effort produced in my mind only mistrust and disdain; but with others it was, unfortunately, more successful.
Soon after my arrival at Lesdernier, I found, in one of the papers that I had ordered to be sent there from my native city to the address of "Miss Harz," an atrocious advertisement, describing me personally as an escaped lunatic, and offering a reward for my apprehension. Fortunately, these papers were not objects of interest to the family in which I found myself, where periodicals of all sorts were rife, as well as books, ancient and modern, and newspapers were thick as leaves in Vallambrosa.
In the silence of my chamber I read and destroyed, or concealed this evidence of enmity, malice, and all uncharitableness. I would trust no one with my identity--none save God--until the hour should come of my majority and emancipation; then, armed with Judaic vengeance, I would return to claim my sister, my fortune, and my rights.
Soon afterward I read in the same sheet, sent weekly to Lesdernier, the notice of the marriage of Claude Bainrothe and Evelyn Erle. This was the test of truth! I bore it bravely. Not a heart-beat gave tribute to the love of other days. The fire was dead, and ashes alone remained on the deserted hearth-stone. Lower down in the columns of the same paper, however, was something that smote my soul. The Parthian dart was there, and it quivered in its target! I saw that the wedding-party had sailed for Europe on the same day of the nuptials, to be absent a year, and had taken with them my dear one!
So far away! Seas rolling between us! Foreign lands, foreign laws intervening, which might, for all I knew, deprive me of her presence forever, who was my hope, my life!
"O little sister," I groaned, "was I right, after all, in forsaking you for a season? Should I not have dared every thing, rather than have so openly yielded my authority?"
In the mean while, the sanguinary preparations went silently on. In the gray of a foggy February morning the duel was fought, and Captain Wentworth fell, as it was at first thought, mortally wounded.