Under False Pretences A Novel

Excerpt

In Two Parts.

It was in the year 1854 that an English gentleman named Edward Luttrell took up his abode in a white-walled, green-shuttered villa on the slopes of the western Apennines. He was accompanied by his wife (a Scotchwoman and an heiress), his son (a fine little fellow, five years old), and a couple of English servants. The party had been travelling in Italy for some months, and it was the heat of the approaching summer, as well as the delicate state of health in which Mrs. Luttrell found herself, that induced Mr. Luttrell to seek out some pleasant house amongst the hills where his wife and child might enjoy cool breezes and perfect repose. For he had lately had reason to be seriously concerned about Mrs. Luttrell's health.

The husband and wife were as unlike each other as they well could be. Edward Luttrell was a broad-shouldered, genial, hearty man, warmly affectionate, hasty in word, generous in deed. Mrs. Luttrell was a woman of peculiarly cold manners; but she was capable, as many members of her household knew, of violent fits of temper and also of implacable resentment. She was not an easy woman to get on with, and if her husband had not been a man of very sweet and pliable nature, he might not have lived with her on such peaceful terms as was generally the case. She had inherited a great Scotch estate from her father, and Edward Luttrell was almost entirely dependent upon her; but it was not a dependence which seemed to gall him in the very least. Perhaps he would have been unreasonable if it had done so; for his wife, in spite of all her faults, was tenderly attached to him, and never loved him better than when he asserted his authority over her and her possessions.

Mr. and Mrs. Luttrell had not been at their pretty white villa for more than two months when a second son was born to them. He was baptized almost immediately by an English clergyman then passing through the place, and received the name of Brian. He was a delicate-looking baby, but seemed likely to live and do well. Mrs. Luttrell's recovery was unusually rapid; the soft Italian air suited her constitution, and she declared her intention of nursing the child herself.

Edward Luttrell was in high spirits. He had been decidedly nervous before the event took place, but now that it was safely over he was like a boy in his joyous sense of security. He romped with his little son, he talked patois with the inhabitants of the neighbouring village of San Stefano, he gossiped with the monks of the Benedictine foundation, whose settlement occupied a delightful site on the hillside, and no premonition of coming evil disturbed his heart. He thought himself the most fortunate of men. He adored his wife; he worshipped the baby. His whole heart was bound up in his handsome little Dick, who, at five years old, was as nearly the image of his father as a child could be. What had he left to wish for?

There had been a good deal of fever at San Stefano throughout the summer. When the little Brian was barely six weeks old, it became only too evident that Mrs....