The Face in the Glass: The Gothic Tales of Mary Elizabeth Braddon (British Library Tales of the Weird Book 7) by Braddon Mary Elizabeth

Author:Braddon, Mary Elizabeth [Braddon, Mary Elizabeth]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: British Library Publishing
Published: 2019-01-31T16:00:00+00:00

‌ His Oldest Friends

I

M axime de St Vallier was no longer a young man when he succeeded to the family estate of St Vallier le Roi, which had belonged to his race from the time of the Fronde, when a certain Hector St Vallier commanded a regiment of light cavalry in Condé’s army, and in the course of an adventurous career, including two wealthy marriages, managed to accumulate a considerable fortune, and to leave behind him the château and lands of St Vallier de Roi, adjoining the insignificant Bourg of that name, which lies ten miles from a station on the Lyons railway and in the heart of a richly wooded district. There is no more beautiful château in France of its size than this of St Vallier, with its four tall towers under steep conical roofs, its carved balconies and oriel windows, its decorated gables and floriated ironwork; a château planted on a knoll that lifts the dainty edifice just high enough above the rolling woods and fertile valley to make it a picturesque point in the landscape.

Maxime inherited the estate and a handsome fortune in stocks and shares from an eccentric bachelor to whom he was but distantly related, but who had been passionately in love with his mother before her marriage, and who had been refused by her in favour of a much poorer man. It may be that Maxime de St Vallier’s early manhood would have taken a different and a better course had he known all about this good fortune which was waiting for him in the future; if he had known that at nine-and-thirty years of age, he would be rich in wealth and lands, and endowed with all that weight and respectability which dignify the possessor of a fine estate.

‘I should have tried to educate myself up to my fortune,’ he said, ‘and instead of wasting my nights in singing-cellars and dancing-gardens I should have been studying scientific agriculture and the landed interest. But the old fellow never took any notice of me, and I thought no more of him than of the Lama of Thibet or the Khan of Tartary.’

Yes, he would have shaped his life differently, and might have shaped it better had he but known. The vision of a sweet pale face and pathetic violet eyes rose before him in the first hour of his new and unexpected fortune. That lovely face had vanished for ever, as he thought, from Maxime St Vallier’s adoring gaze, even years before the coming of his inheritance. He had loved the only daughter of one of Napoleon the Third’s generals, had modestly offered himself and the possibilities of a journalistic career, which had been full of golden opportunities, all flung to the winds. He had enlarged upon the great things he might and would do in literature and politics if he were but urged by the noblest incentive to labour, the responsibilities of a husband who idolised his wife.

General Leroux listened to his fervid

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