The Coquette's Victim eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 86 pages of information about The Coquette's Victim.

The Coquette's Victim eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 86 pages of information about The Coquette's Victim.

He was eager, ardent, impetuous, longing, as is the fashion of young men, to do brave deeds, to be a great hero, and not in the least knowing what to do.

He was just twenty when they returned home, at the commencement of the year; Lady Carruthers, worn out with travel and excitement, longing for rest.  There was more to be done—­her son had been presented at most of the courts of Europe; he must attend the first levees held in London this season.

The Carruthers had a magnificent mansion in Belgravia.  Miss Hautville begged for one year more of seclusion and privacy, so that Lady Hildegarde and her son went to London alone.  She remained there for a week, and then, finding her son afloat in London society, she returned to Ulverston.

And Basil Carruthers, the dreamy, ardent, romantic boy, remained in London alone.

CHAPTER VII.

A Modern Bayard.

Perhaps Lady Carruthers never did a more unwise thing than when she left her son, with his peculiar temperament and notions, to go through a London season alone.  She honestly believed herself to be doing right.  She was ill and unable to bear the whirl of fashion and gaiety.  She could not withdraw him from town to spend the gayest month of the year in seclusion.

“Leave him to me, Hildegarde,” said her cousin, Colonel Mostyn.  “I will pilot him safely through the rocks and deep waters; nothing makes a man as self-reliant as feeling that he is trusted entirely.”

And knowing that Colonel Mostyn was an elderly man, who knew about as much as there was to know of life in all its phases, Lady Hildegarde had no scruples.

The colonel and the young squire were most luxuriously established at Roche House, the Carruthers’ family mansion in Belgravia.  Lady Hildegarde made every arrangement for keeping up the establishment in all bachelor’s comforts.  There was an excellent housekeeper, one who had been at Ulverston Priory for many years.

“You will be able to give some good dinner-parties,” she said to her son; “bachelor dinners—­bien entender—­for Mrs. Richards is an excellent housekeeper.”

Assured and satisfied that all would go well, she left London.  She hesitated as to whether she should give her son any warning about love or marriage, then decided that it would be quite useless.

“The boy is naturally so fastidious and refined,” she thought; “he will never love beneath him.  He will see no one so nice as Marion.”

So Lady Hildegarde Carruthers went to her stately home, little dreaming of the fatal news that was to follow her.

Basil cared little for the fashions and frivolities of the day; Colonel Mostyn tried to laugh him out of his romantic and chivalrous ideas.

“You are behind the age, Basil—­quite unfit for it,” he would say to him.  “Chevalier Bayard would not be appreciated in these times.”

Copyrights
Project Gutenberg
The Coquette's Victim from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.