CHAPTER XI.
LOVE’S SUBTLE SPELL.
At any other time Doris would have been alarmed at Jeffrey’s sudden outburst of rage, occasioned by the sight of the amiable-looking stranger in the box, but shecould think of nothing but the little white note lying hidden in the bunch of violets which Lord Cecil Neville had thrown to her.
It was the first note she had received in that way, and she felt guilty and unhappy.
If she had only told Jeffrey on the first of her acquaintance with Lord Neville! She would have taken the note to him, if she had done so; but she felt that to place it in his hands now would be to call forth one of his fierce outbursts of rage, in which it was quite possible he might seek Lord Neville and force a quarrel on him.
What should she do? The question haunted her all the way home. Should she write and tell Lord Neville that she could not meet him, and request him not to write to her again? This seemed the easiest thing to do, but she shrank from it for two reasons: One, because Jeffrey had often warned her against writing to strangers, and the other, because it seemed so stern a rebuke for so slight an offense.
For, after all, his sin was not so great. He had asked permission to call upon her, asked it respectfully and with all the deference of a gentleman addressing a lady his equal in position, and she had refused to grant him the permission. If he wanted to see her, what else could he do than write and ask her to meet him?
Once she nearly summoned up courage to tell Jeffrey everything, but, as she looked up at him as he leaned back in the corner of the fly, with bent head and folded arms, she saw so stern and moody an expression on his face that her courage failed her; he was just in the humor to consider the note an insult, and seek to avenge it.
And somehow Doris could not regard it in this way. As she read the words, she seemed to hear Lord Neville’s deep, musical voice pronouncing them, pleadingly, respectfully, with reverence rather than insult.
Doris was a great actress, but she was as ignorant of the world outside the theatre as a child; she had only her instinct to guide her, and that seemed to say that it was impossible Lord Neville could have meant to insult her!
But the result of all her thinking was this: That her acquaintance with him must cease. She must have nofriends save those of the theatre; least of all, a young nobleman who tossed her bouquets of violets, and begged her to meet him in the meadows!
Jeffrey’s mood clung to him during the remainder of the night. As a rule, after their supper, which was an exceedingly simple one, he grew cheerful and talkative; but to-night he sat with bent head and frowning brows, apparently brooding over the past.
Once or twice she saw him look up at her with a half-troubled glance; then, as his eyes met hers, he compressed his lips and sighed; and after a while he said suddenly:
“You are happy, Doris?”
She started slightly and the color rushed to her face. It almost seemed as if he knew something was troubling her.
“Happy, Jeffrey? Yes,” she said, and she went and sat at his feet and folded her hands on his knee.
He looked down into her beautiful face—not into her eyes, for they were downcast.
“Yes,” he said, moodily and absently, as if he were communing with his own thoughts rather than addressing her, “yes, you are happy; how could it be otherwise? All that I have wished for has come to pass. You are a great actress, you will be famous. The world will be at your feet—even as you are now at mine! It will hang upon your voice, watch with breathless interest your face, pour its gold into your lap. Great, famous; you are—you must be—happy!”
“Yes, Jeffrey,” she said, “and I owe it all to you.”
“To me?” he said. “Yes. But if you do, it is a debt that I myself owed. To you, to her——”
“To her?” she murmured, wonderingly.
“To Lucy, to your mother,” he said, still absently.
“To my mother?” said Doris, with bated breath.
He was silent for a moment, then he seemed as if awakening from a dream.
“Doris,” he said, gravely, and with visible emotion, “there is something I must tell you. I ought to have told you before this; but I put it off. I would put it off now—” his lips quivered—“for I hate the thought of it. But to-night my conscience has been roused. Thatman—” he stopped, and his teeth clicked. “Doris!” he exclaimed, with a catch in his breath. “Tell me, have I not been as a father to you? Could any father have striven more hardly for his daughter’s good? Could any father have loved you better, and lived for you more solely and entirely than I have done?”
“No, Jeffrey, none!” she said, in a low voice, and laying her soft, white hand upon his rugged and gnarled one soothingly.
“I call Heaven to witness that I have only had one thought, your welfare. When you lay, a little child, in my arms, I devoted my life to you. Every hour of the day I have thought of you, and planned out your future. It was not my own happiness I sought, not my own ambition, but yours—yours! I have lived and striven for one end—your success, and your happiness! And I have won! You are a great actress, Doris, and it is I—I!—who have taught and trained and made you what you are!”
“Yes, Jeffrey,” she murmured, “I know it! and I am grateful—grateful!”
“But are you happy? Are you happy, child?” he demanded, and his voice sounded almost stern in its intensity.
The color came and went in her face.
“How could I be otherwise, Jeffrey?” she said. “Yes, I am happy!”
He drew a long breath, as of relief, but went on—
“Compare your lot with others. I don’t mean the poor and commonplace; but those others, the rich, the well-born, the titled. Would you have been happier, for instance, if you had been—let me say—the daughter of a nobleman——”
She smiled at the question, earnestly as it was put.
“I don’t know any daughters of noblemen, Jeffrey,” she said; “but I don’t think I would exchange places with any of them.”
He nodded, and laid his hand upon her head.
“No, no,” he said, moodily.
“No,” she said, with a faint laugh. “I would not exchange places with the highest lady in the land! To be able to move a theatre full of people to tears or laughter,that is better than being an earl’s daughter, is it not, Jeffrey?”
He started.
“Yes, yes,” he said, eagerly; “that is what I wanted you to feel! Any one can be an earl’s daughter, but few!—how few!—the Doris Marlowe who wrought an audience to enthusiasm to-night?”
She smiled up at him.
“And what is this that you are going to tell me, Jeffrey?”
He started, and his hand fell from her head.
“I—I—” he said, uncertainly, “I don’t think I’ll tell you to-night, Doris; it will keep. I’m not certain that it would make you happier; I’m half inclined to think that it would only make you miserable. No!—I won’t tell you. Go to bed, and forget——” He stopped.
“Forget that pleasant-looking gentleman in the box, Jeffrey?” she said, with a smile.
His face darkened, and the hand that rested on the table clenched tightly.
“You saw him!—you saw him!” he said, with suppressed fury. “Remember him, Doris! He is a villain!—a scoundrel! He is your, and my, greatest enemy——”
“That smiling, fair-haired gentleman?” she said.
“One may smile, and smile, and then be a villain, Doris,” he said, quoting “Hamlet.”
“And you won’t tell me who he is and all about him, Jeffrey?”
“Not to-night,” he said, knitting his brows. “Go now, Doris. Some other time——”
She touched his forehead with her lips, and stole away from him quietly, and went upstairs.
She slept little that night. The roar of the crowded theatre seemed to force its way into the white little room, and with it mingled Jeffrey’s strange words hinting at some fraud, and the words of Lord Cecil Neville’s note.
The morning broke clear and bright, and she came down, looking rather pale and grave.
Jeffrey ate his breakfast almost in silence, and there was no trace of last night’s emotions on his broad brow. As was usual with him, he went down to the theatre directly after breakfast, and Doris was left alone.
The time had now arrived in which she must decide what she must do respecting Lord Neville’s note.
She opened her writing-case, and, after sitting before it for half-an-hour, wrote an answer in which she declined a meeting with him; and it gave her satisfaction for a few minutes, at the end of which she—tore it up!
No answer she could pen—and she tried hard—seemed satisfactory. Some were too familiar, others too stiff and haughty.
“I shall have to see him!” she murmured, at last, as if in despair—“for the last time!” A thrill of regret ran through her at the words; they sounded so sad and significant.
Trying to frame some form of words in which she could speak to him, she made her way to the meadows, and as she went the beauty of the spring morning seemed to take to itself a new and strange loveliness, and, notwithstanding her difficult task, the thought that she was going to meet him again filled her with a vague, indescribable sensation that half-pleased, half-troubled her.
All the place was silent save for the singing of the birds and the babbling of the brook, and as she seated herself on the mossy bank she looked round, as one views a place rendered familiar and pleasant by associations.
Wherever she went, whatever happened to her in the future, she thought, she should always remember Barton meadows, the clump of elms, the silver brook, and—ah, yes!—the handsome face lying so still and white in her lap.
As she was recalling the scene, dwelling on it with a singular commingling of pleasure and pain, she heard the beat of a horse’s hoofs, just as she had heard it the first morning; and Lord Neville came flying over the hedge, a little further from her this time, and still upon his horse, and not upon his head.
He pulled the animal up almost on its haunches, and, slipping from the saddle, hurried toward her.
In the second that she raised her eyes, she took in, as if by a species of mental photography, the handsome face with its clear and now eager eyes, the gracefulfigure, in its suit of gray cords that seemed to be part and parcel of the wearer, and the air—distinguished, patrician, it is so difficult to describe it, which is the birthright of the gentleman—the air which the parvenu, though he count his gold by the million, cannot purchase.
“You have come!” he said, raising his hat. “I am so glad, so grateful, Miss Marlowe.”
“You would not be, Lord Neville, if you knew how sorry I am to be here,” she said, and her wonderful eyes met his ardent gaze steadily and with a gravity that lent a subtle and altogether new charm to her face.
His face fell.
“Sorry?” he said, regretfully.
“Yes,” she said; “very, very sorry. Lord Neville, you should not have written me that note; it was wrong.”
“Let me tell you,” he said, eagerly, pleadingly; “I feared you would say this——”
“I did not intend to come,” she said, as if he had not spoken. “I meant to pass the note by unanswered. But it seemed—well, yes, unkind. And I tried to write, but——” her brows came together, “I could not please myself. It is so hard to write such a letter for the first time in one’s life, and at last I decided to meet you, that I might tell you how wrong you were, and that your note showed me—ah! so plainly—that we must not meet again—that, in short, Lord Neville, our acquaintance must cease!”
She actually half rose, as if she were about to leave him then and there; but he put out his hand pleadingly, without daring to touch her, and implored her to wait.
“Don’t go—for a moment, only a moment!” he pleaded. “Let me speak in my defense. Do listen to me! I only ask you to listen to me!”
She sank down again slowly, reluctantly, as it seemed, and he threw himself beside her, bending forward, his eyes fixed upon her face, all alight with the ardent desire to turn aside her anger, to melt her coldness.
“Why did you write that note?” she said.
“Why—I was mad!” he said. “Stop—I was mad; I wrote it while I was in the theatre. It was wrong, I know, of course; but I’m not sorry that I wrote it!”
She turned her eyes with surprise and reproach upon him.
“No, I’m not sorry!” he said, almost defiantly. “I wrote it during theentr’acte; I’d been watching you and listening to you until—well, until I had lost myself, I suppose. Anyhow, I got the piece of paper and wrote on it, and put it among the violets, all in a moment, as it were. I felt that I must see you again—wait, ah, wait and hear me out!” for she had made a movement that seemed to threaten her departure. “I don’t know how long I may be here; I may go at any moment—from Barton, I mean; and then, as I thought that I might not see you again for weeks, for months, perhaps——” he stopped, not because he had no words, but for breath, and to regain his composure. “I knew you would be angry, but—what was I to do? You had forbidden me—well, you hadn’t given me permission to call on you——”
She caught her under-lip in her teeth; he was using the argument in his defense which she had used for him in the morning.
—“And I thought I would write it. Miss Marlowe, you shall blame me for sending that note to you, for asking you to meet me here. It was wrong, impertinent, whatever you like to call it, but I had a distinct object——”
She did not start, but looked at him for a moment with faint surprise, then looked at the brook.
“I wanted to tell you something,” he said, not so smoothly or glowing now, but with a sudden gravity in his voice, an intensity in the expression of his eyes that ought to have warned her; but it did not, for she looked at him with calm surprise.
“It will sound sudden to you, sudden and abrupt, I daresay,” he said. “I—I can’t help it! It seems sudden to me, and yet sometimes I feel as if I had known you for years—all my life. Miss Marlowe, when a man finds that the face and the voice of a girl are haunting him day and night, that he cannot drive them out of his head for half a minute, when he is only happy when he is near her and altogether wretched when he is away from her, there is only one explanation: He is in love with that girl. I am in love with you!”
The blood rushed to Doris’s face, then left it white to the lips.
She drew her eyes away from his slowly and sat mute and motionless.
“I love you!” he said, bending a little nearer to her, the words fraught with the intensity—and the truth—of a man’s passion. “I love you with all my heart and soul!” He drew a long breath. “That is why I wrote to you, that is what I had to say to you—wait a moment, I know what you are going to say—perhaps you are going to laugh. For Heaven’s sake, don’t, for this is a serious business for me!”
She made a slight gesture of negation.
“No, forgive me; I was wrong! You would not laugh! But I know what you will say—that I have only seen you a few times, that I have only spoken to you on two occasions. Well, I know. Do you think I haven’t told myself all that? I have, a hundred times; but it doesn’t alter the fact. I do love you. I know that, and that’s about all I know of it.” His deep, musical voice was tremulous for a moment, but he mastered it. “And I don’t wonder at it! Where is the man with half-a-heart in his bosom who wouldn’t love you! I have never seen any one so beautiful—half so beautiful!”
She moved her hand as if to silence him, but he went on.
“And I’ve sat for hours, fascinated—feeling my heart drawn out of me by your face, your voice! Why, look how you move the rest of the people at the theatre, and think what it must mean to me, who loved you the very first time I saw you! Ah, Miss Marlowe—Doris—let me call you Doris for once!—if I could only tell you how dearly and truly and passionately I love you! But I can’t. I know it’s no use. Who am I that you should feel anything but amusement——”
“Do not say that,” she said, in a low voice, almost inaudible, indeed.
“You are as beautiful as an angel, and as clever—why, you are famous already, and I”—he laughed with self-scorn—“I’m just an ordinary fool of a fellow. Of course, there is no hope for me, and yet somehow I felt that I must tell you. You won’t laugh, I know. You’ll tell methat I’m very foolish, and that we mustn’t meet again—and—and all that”—he rose, but sank down again, and touched her arm reverently—“and you’ll send me away and—and—perhaps forget all about me in a week or two. While I—well—” he pushed the short, crisp hair from his brow with an impatient gesture—“well, I shall get over it in time. No!” he said, simply, passionately, “I shall never forget you. If I live to be a hundred I shall never forget the other day when I opened my eyes and saw you bending over me, or those next two nights when I looked at you in the theatre! I shall never forget, nor cease to love you! I know it as surely as I stand here!”
He rose and thrust his hands in his pockets, and looked down at her, his handsome face set hard, his eyes dwelling upon her with the hungry look of the man who loves and yet does not hope.
“And now, I’ve told you,” he said, with a short breath, “and now I suppose it’s ‘good-by, Lord Neville, I hope you will be happy and——’” His voice broke, and he knelt beside her and caught her hand. “Miss Marlowe! Doris! If—if there is the slightest chance for me! If there is the least bit of hope in the world, give it to me! I’m—I’m like a man pleading for his life! For his life? For more than that—his happiness——” He stopped sudden, smitten silent, for the hand that was free had gone up to her face and covered her eyes, and she was trembling.
She had heard love made to her on the stage, and it had meant—just her “cue,” no more; this was the first time the accents of a real, genuine passion had ever smote upon her ear, and its tones thrilled to her heart.
She trembled with joy, with fear, with doubt, with the almost irrepressible longing to hide her burning face upon his breast, and give words to the cry that rang in her heart, “I love you! I love you!”
“Doris!” he said; “Doris!” and there was truth in his voice. “For Heaven’s sake, don’t cry! I’m not worth it; I am not, indeed! Are you crying? Don’t! I’ll—I’ll go——”
She put out her hand and laid it gently on his arm as gently as a butterfly alights upon a flower.
He caught it and drew nearer to her.
“Doris! Is it possible? Do you—may I hope? Doris! Oh, my darling, my darling!” and his strong arms wound round her, and his kisses fell like hot rain upon her hair and eyelids.
For a moment she surrendered herself to the storm of passion, as a tree bends before the whirlwind; then she put her hands palm-wise upon his breast, and gently kept him from her.
“Oh, wait, wait!” she murmured. “I don’t know——”
“Don’t know! Don’t know whether you love me, you mean?” he said, kneeling beside her, and gazing hungrily in her face, ready to swoop down upon her with renewed caresses.
“Yes,” she said, and her voice came in a whisper. “It is all so—so sudden! I don’t know——”
“My darling!” he whispered. “Let me ask you! I know what love means, for I learned it from my love for you. Look at me, Doris!”
She raised her eyes—they seemed weighted with lead—and let them rest upon his ardent, glowing face.
“Let me ask you,” he said, “would you like me to be unhappy? Would you like me to leave you, to go away from you, not for an hour, or a day, but forever?”
A faint shudder shook her, and the hands touching his breast half-closed on him.
“Would you be happy if I were miles away, and there were no chance of ever seeing me again? Doris, answer me; shall I go? Will you say ‘good-by?’”
He drew back from her in a feint of leaving her, and her small, soft hands closed upon him.
“No, no!”
He asked for no more. With a cry of joy he drew her to him and kissed her, all unrebuked this time.
“My darling!—my beautiful!” he murmured. “Oh, Doris, is it true—can it be true? Tell me, dearest; I can’t believe it otherwise. Tell me, do you love me just a little?” and he looked into her downcast eyes as if he would read her soul.
She put her hand upon his arm and raised her eyes to his slowly, and let them rest there.
“Yes!” she said, as if the effort cost her much; “I do love you!”
A linnet, perched upon a branch of the tree above them, burst into song; a lamb, that had been regarding them curiously, drew near and bleated; the brook babbled over the stones; all nature in its happy springtide seemed to take up the harmony of these two souls bound in Love’s subtle spell, and to find voice; but they were silent.
At last he spoke.
“It is like a dream!” he said, removing his eyes from her face for a moment and looking round like a man awaking from sleep. “Like a dream! Tell me once more, Doris; just once more!”
“Is it so difficult to believe? Well, then—I love you!” she murmured, and a smile—the first fruit of love—beamed from her eyes.
“Difficult to believe!” he said; “well, I should think so! Great Heaven! what on earth do you see in me to love?”
“Quite enough,” she said, the smile growing sunnier, as she looked at his handsome face and ardent eyes.
“It’s wonderful!” he said. “Just look at the difference between us: you, so beautiful, so clever, such a genius; oh, I know! Why, you will be famous—are famous already, I daresay—and I!” he laughed with self-scorn. “It is wonderful!” and he drew her hand to his lips and kissed it.
“Isn’t it?” she said, slowly, with loving mockery.
“Yes, it is,” he asseverated. “Simply wonderful! And to think that you belong to me! You, you, you!” and his eyes flashed upon her lovely, bewitching face. “By Jove, I shall wake up presently, and find that it really is only a dream.”
She started, and would have withdrawn her hand if it had not been so tightly clasped in his.
“It is only a dream,” she murmured.
“Only a dream?” he repeated.
“Yes,” she said. “A—a—very pleasant dream——”
“Thank you!”
“But a dream still, Lord Neville——”
“My name is Cecil, I’d have you to know!”
“Lord Cecil——”
“Cecil, without the ‘lord,’ if you please.”
“It is only a dream! We must wake now! I—and you—have forgotten!”
“Forgotten what, dearest?” he said.
“Forgotten who you are, and what I am.”
“You are an angel!” he remarked, seating himself beside her, and stealing his arm round her waist.
“I am an actress, and you are a viscount,” she said.
“I believe I am,” he said, smilingly. “But, all the same, you are an angel! Every moment I expect to see you spread your wings, and fly from me.”
“So I shall directly,” she said, with a smile that was half-sorrowful. “I am an actress—one of the people! One who has no status, no standing in the world; and you are a nobleman! You will be a marquis some day, will you not?”
“I daresay,” he assented, carelessly, trying to decide whether she was more beautiful, grave or smiling.
“There is a gulf between you and me, Lord Neville!”
“Cecil, if you please!”
“A gulf——”
“Which love can stride across,” he said. “That is, if you are going to draw up a list of comparisons! As if there could be any comparison between Doris Marlowe, the great actress, and Cecil Neville, the stupid dragoon!”
“And future marquis!” she said. “Ah, I know! Yes, there’s a gulf!”
“Look here, Doris,” he said, taking her hand, which she had withdrawn, and kissing each finger separately; “don’t talk nonsense. I’m a future marquis. All right. I don’t deny it.”
“You cannot.”
“Just so—I cannot. But I’m not a marquis at present. I’m simply Cecil Neville! I’m not even a dragoon, for—confound him!—the marquis made me retire! I’m simply nothing, while you—you!” he emphasized the pronoun by raising the edge of her dress and kissing it, “you are a great and famous actress——”
“And outside the pale of society,” she said, with sudden wisdom.
“Society!” he exclaimed, “what do I care for that? I never cared very much for it; at this moment I care less. You are society enough for me!”
No woman could have been otherwise than touched by his devotion; she allowed him to retain her hand.
“If you only knew what a sacrifice you are making, my darling!” he said, smilingly. “Why, presently you will appear in London, and will find the world at your feet; and they will all be in love with you, peasants—only there are no peasants in London—and peers! I daresay you would have an offer from a duke! Think of that! And you have pledged your troth to a simple viscount!”
“I am satisfied,” she said, with a smile.
“And precious little you have to be satisfied with!” he said, “for I am a poor kind of viscount. I am entirely at the mercy of the great marquis—the Marquis of Stoyle! He forced me to leave the army, where I had a chance, and he keeps me on starvation allowance. Oh! you had better have waited and hooked your duke, Doris!”
She laughed softly, but the laugh was rather a grave one.
“What will the marquis say?” she asked, looking at him, with her brows drawn, her lovely eyes half-curious.
Lord Neville smiled.
“He will be sure to say something disagreeable; he always does.”
“But tell me,” she insisted, gently. “Or shall I tell you?”
“You couldn’t,” he said. “That beautiful face of yours couldn’t manage to look like the marquis’ hard, stony one, and certainly your voice that is just like music——”
“Shall I get up and curtsey?” she put in, with a faint smile.
“You needn’t; it’s no compliment. No, you couldn’t harden your voice to anything approaching the marquis’ steely, icy tones.”
“No?” she said, absently; then suddenly she sat upright, and her face grew set and cold, and her eyes hardened with a disdainful hauteur. “So, Cecil!” she said, and her voice was stern and cuttingly scornful, “so you have made up your mind to marry—what is it?—a dairymaid—no, pardon me!—an actress! An actress, a social pariah, a person one pays one’s money to see upon the stage, to make us laugh for an hour or two, but with whom one would rather not be seen walking in the public streets; and you propose to marry this—this girl? Well, do so, but remember that in marrying her you cut yourself offfrom me and the world to which you belong, and that you sink into the mud from which she sprang, and are utterly ruined, a social suicide!”
Lord Neville sat and stared at her.
It was not the words, dramatic though they were, which amazed him, but the face, the voice.
“Why, Doris,” he said, at last, “you have seen, you know the marquis?”
She shook her head as her countenance resumed its own girlish freshness and beauty.
“No,” she said, gently. “I have never seen him.”
“No? Well, of all the extraordinary likenesses! It was my esteemed uncle the marquis—making an allowance for the difference in age and the rest—to a point!”
“You forget that I am an actress,” she said, with a little sigh. “It was easy enough, as easy to guess what he—what any one in his position would say to his nephew and heir when he told him what he proposed doing! It is something like what he would say, is it not?”
“It was a wonderful imitation of the marquis’ expression and way of talking—wonderful, darling!—but I don’t think he would have said so much. But there, what difference can it make what he says or thinks, eh, Doris?” he broke off.
“But will it make no difference?” she asked, leaning forward, her hands clasped on her knees, her eyes fixed dreamily on the ground. “I know there must be a sacrifice—let me know how great a one. What difference will it make?” and she looked at him.
Lord Neville frowned slightly as he thought of the speech his uncle had addressed to him after dinner on his first night at the Towers, and she saw the frown and sighed.
“The sacrifice would be greater even than I thought,” she said. “Is it not so? I—yes, I am so ignorant of the world. I know nothing about it, excepting what I have learned from books and plays——”
“Don’t say another word!” he broke in, almost grimly in his earnestness. “Every word you say makes me ashamed! Do you think I set anything in the scales against your love? The marquis may say and do what he pleases; he may curse or bless me, and it won’t makeany difference! All the same—I mention it for your sake, and not my own, you seem so afraid, my darling; he can’t rob me of the title, and if he could I would surrender it rather than lose you. Lose you!” he exclaimed, with his short laugh. “Look here, Doris, I’d rather be your husband, and—and sweep a crossing, than marry another woman and be the future King of England! That sounds rather high and lofty, doesn’t it? But I’m rather bad at expressing myself, and it’s as near as I can get to my meaning!”
“It is near enough,” she said, with a smile, her heart giving a little leap at his ardent, manly avowal.
“And that’s enough of the marquis,” he said. “We’ve forgotten quite as important a person, it seems to me. Your guardian, Doris!”
She started slightly.
“Jeffrey!” she murmured. “Ah, yes!”
“Yes,” said Lord Neville. “Now, I value his goodwill quite as much as I do my uncle’s, and I don’t feel at all sure that I shall get it. You see, with all deference to you, sweetheart——”
Sweetheart! She whispered the word to herself and glowed over it.
“I’m not, in all points, the very best kind of young man for a husband, and your guardian is very likely to remark it. What if he should refuse his consent?”
Her face grew faintly troubled.
“Jeffrey refuse!” she said, almost to herself. “N—o. Not if——”
“Not if you wished for it very much?” he said, divining her meaning. “I see! And I’m not surprised. I can’t imagine any man stony-hearted enough to refuse you anything, even such an unwise thing as this! Look here, Doris, I’ll go back home with you and see him.”
The trouble on her face grew more marked.
“I hate suspense and delay, and, well, I want to feel sure, quite sure, that you are my very own! You don’t mind my going home with you and telling him straight out, do you?”
She was silent a moment, then she looked at him, hesitatingly.
“No, do not. I——” She stopped. “I think I wouldrather see him first. I—I could tell him. Ah, do you not see how suddenly it would come upon him? How unprepared——”
He nodded.
“You haven’t told him anything about me?”
The color rose to her face.
“No,” she said, and her eyes were downcast. “No, I have not told him; he would be so surprised and——I will see him first and tell him.”
“All right,” he said. “Then, to-morrow?”
“Yes, to-morrow,” she said, with a little sigh of relief. “I wish I could tell you all he has been to me, how tender and loving—father, mother, brother! Ah, I have had no one else but him in the world, and he has devoted all his life to me!”
“I will never forget that,” said Lord Neville, gravely, “and I will try and thank him to-morrow! Yes, I can understand how hard it will seem to him to have to lose you. But, Doris, he need not do that. He has stood in a father’s place to you; I shall not oust him from it, or separate you from him. There is room in that big heart of yours for both of us, isn’t there?”
She turned to him as if moved by an irresistible impulse, and held out her hands, and her eyes were full of tears.
“If I had not loved you until this moment, I should now,” she said, in a low voice.
Of course, he captured the little quivering hands, and they sat in silence for a minute or two. Then suddenly she started.
“The time!” she exclaimed. “I had forgotten! There is a rehearsal,” and she sprang to her feet. “No, no!” pressing her fingers on his shoulder. “You must not come—not an inch of the way. I—I want to be alone to think—to think!” She stopped, with a little, dazed air, and smiled down at him.
“Oh, if you are tired of me——” he said, with a loving mockery. “To-morrow, Doris, in the morning?”
“Yes, to-morrow—ah, what a long time!” she whispered, almost inaudibly. “Let me think. If I cannot come—there may be a rehearsal——”
He looked disappointed—man like.
“I shall be here,” he said, “and I’ll wait all day if you like.”
She laughed softly, her eyes dwelling upon him lovingly.
“Without your lunch or your dinner? That would be too much. No; if you come and I am not here, leave some message for me,” she looked round; “write me a word, and put it under this big stone by the tree there.”
“All right,” he said. “But you will come, if not in the morning, in the afternoon—sometime! Remember, I am to see your guardian to-morrow!”
“Yes,” she said. “But do you remember, too, that I am not my own master, Lord Neville—that I belong to the public.”
“Indeed, Miss Marlowe?” he said, retorting the formality upon her. “I was under the impression that you belonged to me!”
“Ah, yes,” she murmured, with sweet surrender, as he held her in his arms.
“We’ve forgotten one part of the ceremony,” he said. “People when they are engaged give each other a ring. I wasn’t conceited enough to think that you’d listen to me, or I would have brought one.”
“Have mine,” she said. Then, suddenly, she disengaged her hand, and held it up, and swiftly drew from her finger a quaint old silver ring. “See,” she said, the color stealing into her face. “Will you have that?”
“Will I?” he said, taking it, hand and all.
“What a small hand you have,” she said, laughing softly. “It is too large for your little finger; you had better give it back to me.”
“It will be a bad day for me when I do,” he said, grimly, “for I shall be limp and cold.”
“Or faithless,” she said, with a smile.
Then, before he could retort, she touched his lips with hers, murmured his name, and was gone.
He watched her until the slight, girlish figure had vanished, then went slowly to his horse, mounted, and rode slowly away.
A minute or so afterward a lady and gentleman came out from among the trees. The gentleman was Spenser Churchill, the lady—Lady Grace.
He wore his usual bland, benevolent smile, intensified, if anything, as he looked after the disappearing horseman, but Lady Grace was white almost to pallor, and stood biting her under lip, and breathing heavily.
“What a charming pastoral!” he said, with his smooth, oily laugh; “Adam and Eve, or Edwin and Angelina, in Goldsmith’s poem—you know it, dear Lady Grace?—were never more poetical or touching! Really, one cannot help feeling grateful to the happy chance which enabled me to be a witness of so moving and charming a scene.”
“Chance!” she said, and her voice sounded thick and forced. “You knew that they would be here when you asked me to come!” and she shot a glance of scorn and hate at him.
“I, my dear lady! Now, how was that possible? Do you think our enamored Cecil would confide his appointments to me? And not having the inestimable privilege of knowing the lady——”
“She is the actress—the girl we saw last night!” she muttered, between her teeth; “an actress—a painted——”
“Was she painted? Yes, I daresay! I am, alas! rather near-sighted,” he said, smiling as he recalled the youthful bloom of Doris’ sweet face. “Ah! yes, I daresay! But perhaps our dear Cecil is near-sighted, too! At any rate, he seems very—ah—very far gone, does he not?”
“He is mad!” she almost hissed.
“You think, then, that he—ah—means this quite seriously? You know so much more of the world than I, dear lady!—you think he would marry this interesting young creature?”
A light of hateful hope—such a light as shamed her womanhood—flashed for a moment in Lady Grace’s eyes; then as it died out she said, moodily, scornfully:
“Oh, yes, he is mad enough for that! Oh, yes, he would—even—marry her!”
“In-deed! Really! How charming! So romantic!” pursued Spenser Churchill. “The future Marchioness of Stoyle an actress, a provincial actress! Clever, oh, certainly, and beautiful—ahem!—well, with her paint and powder, of course; but provincial, quite! And the future marchioness! Let me see, when was the marquisate created?”
His smooth, suave speech almost frenzied her.
“Why do you exasperate me?” she exclaimed, between her teeth, and turning upon him. “Why have you brought me here? To laugh at me, to mock me with this—this scandalous scene? You know he will marry her, unless——”
“Unless?” he said, softly. “Unless an accident happens. And accidents do happen—alas!—so often in this unsatisfactory, disappointing world.”
She watched his face eagerly, with a faint glimmer of hope on her face, which was still pale and eloquent of the fierce jealousy which racked and tore her.
“What do you mean?” she demanded, half-angrily, half-pleadingly.
He smiled unctuously.
“‘’Twixt the cup and the lip.’ The old, old adage, dear Lady Grace. These young people, in the full flush of their mutual passion——”
She bit her lip till two red spots showed where the white, even teeth had pressed.
“Doubtless think that their path to happiness is quite plain and smooth. Alas! I fear they will find that the road is stony and difficult. It is a pity, a thousand pities! It is so sweet to see two hearts that beat as one——”
“Cease!” she said, as if she could endure his soft, mocking voice no longer. “What will you do? What can you do? He is mad and—and headstrong. How can you prevent——” She stopped suddenly, and, stooping, picked up something from the grass.
“Ah!” he said. “Treasure-trove! What is it? A broken sixpence? No! A ring—the ring!”
She held it almost at arm’s length, as if it were some noxious reptile, then with a gesture of scorn and hate, she raised her hand as if to throw the ring from her; but instantly he seized her arm, and his soft, fat hand slid down until it had reached and secured the ring.
“Dear me, dear me!” he murmured, as he held it up. “How sorry he will be, how——” He stopped suddenly, and his eyes seemed riveted to the ring; then, as he became aware of Lady Grace’s fixed gaze, the benevolent smile returned to his face. “Actually lost it a few minutes after she had given it to him! Now, some superstitiouspersons would call that a bad omen. Are you superstitious, dear Lady Grace?”
“Give it to me; let me throw it——” she said, with malignant intensity.
He held it out of her reach, surveying her with smiling scrutiny.
“No, really you must not. Poor Cecil——” He stopped suddenly, and the expression of his face changed. His quick ears had caught the sound of a horse’s hoofs.
Touching her arm, he signed to her to follow him, and slid back behind the trees. She followed him, and, looking over her shoulder, saw Lord Cecil galloping toward them.
He cleared the hedge, and, dropping from the horse, walked quickly to the spot where they had stood, and commenced to search in the grass with anxious eagerness. He went down on his knees, and examined every inch of the spot where Doris and he had sat, groped along the bank where they had stood, and hunted every likely spot.
They could see his anxious face, hear his half-muttered ejaculations of disappointment, and Spenser Churchill, with the ring in his hand, smiled sweetly.