Monsieur de Ventadour soon shuffled up to Maltravers—his
nose longer than ever.
“Hein—hein—how d’ye
do—how d’ye do?—charmed
to see you—saw madame before me—hein—hein—I
suspect—I suspect—”
“Mr. Maltravers, will you give Madame de Ventadour
your arm?” said Lord Doningdale, as he stalked
on to the dining-room with a duchess on his own.
“And you have left Naples,” said Maltravers:
“left it for good?”
“We do not think of returning.”
“It was a charming place—how I loved
it!—how well I remember it!” Ernest
spoke calmly—it was but a general remark.
Valerie sighed gently.
During dinner, the conversation between Maltravers
and Madame de Ventadour was vague and embarrassed.
Ernest was no longer in love with her—he
had outgrown that youthful fancy. She had exercised
influence over him—the new influences that
he had created had chased away her image. Such
is life. Long absences extinguish all the false
lights, though not the true ones. The lamps
are dead in the banquet-room of yesterday; but a thousand
years hence, and the stars we look on to-night will
burn as brightly. Maltravers was no longer in
love with Valerie. But Valerie—ah,
perhaps hers had been true love!
Maltravers was surprised when he came to examine the
state of his own feelings—he was surprised
to find that his pulse did not beat quicker at the
touch of one whose very glance had once thrilled him
to the soul—he was surprised, but rejoiced.
He was no longer anxious to seek, but to shun excitement,
and he was a better and a higher being than he had
been on the shores of Naples.
“Whence that low voice, a whisper
from the heart,
That told of days long past?”—WORDSWORTH.
ERNEST stayed several days at Lord Doningdale’s,
and every day he rode out with Valerie, but it was
with a large party; and every evening he conversed
with her, but the whole world might have overheard
what they said. In fact, the sympathy that had
once existed between the young dreamer and the proud,
discontented woman had in much passed away. Awakened
to vast and grand objects, Maltravers was a dreamer
no more. Inured to the life of trifles she had
once loathed, Valerie had settled down into the usages
and thoughts of the common world—she had
no longer the superiority of earthly wisdom over Maltravers,
and his romance was sobered in its eloquence, and
her ear dulled to its tone. Still Ernest felt
a deep interest in her, and still she seemed to feel
a sensitive pride in his career.
One evening Maltravers had joined a circle in which
Madame de Ventadour, with more than her usual animation,
presided—and to which, in her pretty, womanly,
and thoroughly French way, she was lightly laying down
the law on a hundred subjects—Philosophy,
Poetry, Sevres china, and the balance of power in
Europe. Ernest listened to her, delighted, but
not enchanted. Yet Valerie was not natural that
night—she was speaking from forced spirits.
