Henry Dunbar by Mary Elizabeth Braddon (top 20 books to read txt) 📖

never heard anything but words of love and tenderness. Her lips quivered, and the tears came into her eyes.

"Come away, Pluto," she said to the dog; "papa does not want us."

She took the great flapping ears of the animal in her two hands, and led him out of the room. The dog went with his young mistress submissively enough: but he looked back at the last moment to growl at Mr. Dunbar.

Laura left the Newfoundland on the landing-place, and went back to her father. She flung herself for the second time into the banker's arms.

"Darling papa," she cried, impetuously; "my dog shall never growl at you again. Dear papa, tell me you are glad to come home to your poor girl. You _would_ tell me so, if you knew how dearly I love you."

She lifted up her lips and kissed Henry Dunbar's impassible face. But she recoiled from him for the second time with a shudder and a long-drawn shivering sigh. The lips of the millionaire were as cold as ice.

"Papa," she cried, "how cold you are! I'm afraid that you are ill!"

He was ill. Arthur Lovell, who stood quietly watching the meeting between the father and daughter, saw a change come over his client's face, and wheeled forward an arm-chair just in time for Henry Dunbar to fall into it as heavily as a log of wood.

The banker had fainted. For the second time since the murder in the grove near St. Cross he had betrayed violent and sudden emotion. This time the emotion was stronger than his will, and altogether overcame him.

Arthur Lovell laid the insensible man flat upon his back on the carpet. Laura rushed to fetch water and aromatic vinegar from her dressing-room: and in five minutes Mr. Dunbar opened his eyes, and looked about him with a wild half-terrified expression in his face. For a moment he glared fiercely at the anxious countenance of Laura, who knelt beside him: then his whole frame was shaken by a convulsive trembling, and his teeth chattered violently. But this lasted only for a few moments. He overcame it: grinding his teeth, and clenching his strong hands: and then staggered heavily to his feet.

"I am subject to these fainting fits," he said, with a wan, sickly smile upon his white face; "and I dreaded this interview on that account: I knew that it would be too much for me."

He seated himself upon the low sofa which Laura had pushed towards him, resting his elbows on his knees, and hiding his face in his hands. Miss Dunbar placed herself beside her father, and wound her arm about his neck.

"Poor papa," she murmured, softly; "I am so sorry our meeting has agitated you like this: and to think that I should have fancied you cold and unkind to me, at the very time when your silent emotion was an evidence of your love!"

Arthur Lovell had gone through the open window into the conservatory: but he could hear the girl talking to her father. His face was very grave: and the same shadow that had clouded it once during the course of the coroner's inquest rested upon it now.

"An evidence of his love! Heaven grant this may be love," he thought to himself; "but to me it seems a great deal more like fear!"


CHAPTER XVII.


THE BROKEN PICTURE.

Arthur Lovell stopped at Portland Place for the rest of the day, and dined with the banker and his daughter in the evening. The dinner-party was a very cheerful one, as far as Mr. Dunbar and his daughter were concerned: for Laura was in very high spirits on account of her father's return, and Dora Macmahon joined pleasantly in the conversation. The banker had welcomed his dead wife's elder daughter with a speech which, if a little studied in its tone, was at any rate very kind in its meaning.

"I shall always be glad to see you with my poor motherless girl," he said; "and if you can make your home altogether with us, you shall never have cause to remember that you are less nearly allied to me than Laura herself."

When he met Arthur and the two girls at the dinner-table, Henry Dunbar had quite recovered from the agitation of the morning, and talked gaily of the future. He alluded now and then to his Indian reminiscences, but did not dwell long upon this subject. His mind seemed full of plans for his future life. He would do this, that, and the other, at Maudesley Abbey, in Yorkshire, and in Portland Place. He had the air of a man who fully appreciates the power of wealth; and is prepared to enjoy all that wealth can give him. He drank a good deal of wine during the course of the dinner, and his spirits rose with every glass.

But in spite of his host's gaiety, Arthur Lovell was ill at ease. Do what he would, he could not shake off the memory of the meeting between the father and daughter. Henry Dunbar's deadly pallor--that wild, scared look in his eyes, as they slowly reopened and glared upon Laura's anxious face--were ever present to the young lawyer's mind.

Why was this man frightened of his beautiful child?--for that it was fear, and not love, which had blanched Henry Dunbar's face, the lawyer felt positive. Why was this father frightened of his own daughter, unless----?

Unless what?

Only one horrible and ghastly suggestion presented itself to Arthur Lovell's mind. Henry Dunbar was the murderer of his old valet: and the consciousness of guilt had paralyzed him at the first touch of his daughter's innocent lips.

But, oh, how terrible if this were true--how terrible to think that Laura Dunbar was henceforth to live in daily and hourly association with a traitor and an assassin!

"I have promised to love her for ever, though my love is hopeless, and to serve her faithfully if ever she should need of my devotion," Arthur Lovell thought, as he sat silent at the dinner-table, while Henry Dunbar and his daughter talked together gaily.

The lawyer watched his client now with intense anxiety; and it seemed to him that there was something feverish and unnatural in the banker's gaiety. Laura and her step-sister left the room soon after dinner: and the two men remained alone at the long, ponderous-looking dinner-table, on which the sparkling diamond-cut decanters and Sèvres dessert-dishes looked like tiny vases of light and colour on a dreary waste of polished mahogany.

"I shall go to Maudesley Abbey to-morrow," Henry Dunbar said. "I want rest and solitude after all this trouble and excitement: and Laura tells me that she infinitely prefers Maudesley to London. Do you think of returning to Warwickshire, Mr. Lovell?"

"Oh, yes, immediately. My father expected my return a week ago. I only came up to town to act as Miss Dunbar's escort."

"Indeed, that was very kind of you. You have known my daughter for a long time, I understand by her letters."

"Yes. We were children together. I was a great deal at the Abbey in old Mr. Dunbar's time."

"And you will still be more often there in my time, I hope," Henry Dunbar answered, courteously. "I fancy I could venture to make a pretty correct guess at a certain secret of yours, my dear Lovell. Unless I am very much mistaken, you have a more than ordinary regard for my daughter."

Arthur Lovell was silent, his heart beat violently, and he looked the banker unflinchingly in the face; but he did not speak, he only bent his head in answer to the rich man's questions.

"I have guessed rightly, then," said Mr. Dunbar.

"Yes, sir, I love Miss Dunbar as truly as ever a man loved the woman of his choice! but----"

"But what? She is the daughter of a millionaire, and you fear her father's disapproval of your pretensions, eh?"

"No, Mr. Dunbar. If your daughter loved me as truly as I love her, I would marry her in spite of you--in spite of the world; and carve my own way to fortune. But such a blessing as Laura Dunbar's love is not for me. I have spoken to her, and----"

"She has rejected you?"

"She has."

"Pshaw! girls of her age are as changeable as the winds of heaven. Do not despair, Mr. Lovell; and as far as my consent goes, you may have it to-morrow, if you like. You are young, good-looking, clever, agreeable: what more, in the name of feminine frivolity, can a girl want? You will find no stupid prejudices in me, Mr. Lovell. I should like to see you married to my daughter: for I believe you love her very sincerely. You have my good will, I assure you. There is my hand upon it."

He held out his hand as he spoke, and Arthur Lovell took it, a little reluctantly perhaps, but with as good a grace as he could.

"I thank you, sir," he said, "for your good will, and----"

He tried to say something more, but the words died away upon his lips. The horrible fear which had taken possession of his breast after the scene of the morning, weighed upon him like the burden that seems to lie upon the sleeper's breast throughout the strange agony of nightmare. Do what he would, he could not free himself from the weight of this dreadful doubt. Mr. Dunbar's words _seemed_ to emanate from the kind and generous breast of a good man: but, on the other hand, might it not be possible that the banker wished to _get rid_ of his daughter?

He had betrayed fear in her presence, that morning: and now he was eager to give her hand to the first suitor who presented himself: ineligible as that suitor was in a worldly point of view. Might it not be that the girl's innocent society was oppressive to her father, and that he wished therefore to shuffle her off upon a new protector?

"I shall be very busy this evening, Mr. Lovell," said Henry Dunbar, presently; "for I must look over some papers I have amongst the luggage that was sent on here from Southampton. When you are tired of the dining-room, you will be able to find the two girls, and amuse yourself in their society, I have no doubt."

Mr. Dunbar rang the bell. It was answered by an elderly man-servant out of livery.

"What have you done with the luggage that was sent from Southampton?" asked the banker.

"It has all been placed in old Mr. Dunbar's bed-room, sir," the man answered.

"Very well; let lights be carried there, and let the portmanteaus and packing-cases be unstrapped and opened."

He handed a bunch of keys to the servant, and followed the man out of the room. In the hall he stopped suddenly, arrested by the sound of a woman's voice.

The entrance-hall of the house in Portland Place was divided into two compartments, separated from each other by folding-doors, the upper panels of which were of ground glass. There was a porter's chair in the outer division of the hall, and a bronzed lamp hung from the domed ceiling.

The doors between the inner and outer hall were ajar, and the voice which Henry Dunbar heard was that of a woman speaking to the porter.

"I am Joseph Wilmot's daughter," the woman said. "Mr. Dunbar promised that he would see me at Winchester: he broke his word, and left Winchester without seeing me: but he _shall_ see