"The foaming wine of Southern France."
"The foaming wine of Southern France."
"Yes, I wonder how many persons who read thatin their Tennyson realize that it is champagne?" says the duke, brightly.
They seat themselves—cushions have been brought from the wagon for Leslie and the duke—and the feast begins.
"Some chicken, Miss Leslie? This is going to be a failure as a picnic; it isn't going to rain," says Yorke.
"And I rather miss the cow which usually appears on the scene and scampers over the pie," says the duke. "I suppose your grace couldn't manage a cow on a tower."
Yorke looks at him, half angrily.
"Oh, cut that!" he mutters, just loud enough to reach the duke.
Mr. Lisle looks round with his glass in his hand.
"I must find a spot for my sketch," he says.
"All right, presently," says Yorke. "Pleasure first always, as the man said when he killed the tax collector. Miss Lisle have you sworn never to drink more than one glass of champagne?"
But Leslie shakes her head, and declines the offered bottle, and her appetite is soon appeased.
"Shall we leave these gourmands, and find a particularly picturesque study for your father, Miss Lisle?" suggests Yorke; "that is if he is bent on sketch——."
He stops suddenly, for a woman's laugh has risen from the green slope beneath them. It is not an unmusical laugh, but it is unpleasantly loud and bold, and the others start slightly.
"That is the other party," says Leslie.
"It is to be hoped that they are not coming up here. If they should, you will have an opportunity of seeing how I look when I scowl, Miss Lisle," he says.
Leslie gets up and goes to the battlements.
"No; they are going round the other side," she says.
"Heaven be thanked!"
"Too soon!" she rejoins, with a laugh; "they are coming back. What a handsome girl!"
Standing talking and laughing beneath her aretwo men and a girl. The latter is handsome, as Leslie says, but there is something in the face which, like the laugh, jars upon one. She is dark, of a complexion that is almost Spanish, has dark eyes that sparkle and glitter in the sunlight, and raven hair; and if the face is not perfect in its beauty, her figure nearly approaches the acme of grace. It is lithe, slim, mobile; but it is clad too fashionably, and there is a little too much color about it.
She stands laughing loudly, unconscious of the silent spectator above her, for a moment or two; then, perhaps made aware by that mysterious sense which all of us have experienced, that she is being looked at she looks up, and the two girls' eyes meet. She turns to say something to her companions, and at that moment Yorke joins Leslie.
He looks down at the group below.
"That's the party, evidently," he begins. Then he stops suddenly; something like an oath starts from his lips, and he puts his hand none too gently on Leslie's arm.
"Come away," he says, sharply, and yet with a touch of hoarseness, or can it be fear, in his voice. "Come away, Miss Lisle!"
And Leslie, as she draws back in instant obedience, sees that his face has become white to the lips.
At the same moment, a voice—it must be that of the girl beneath, floats up to them, a lively "rollicking" voice, singing this refined and charming ditty:
"Yes, after dark is the time to lark,Although we sleep all day;To pass the wine, and don't repine,For we're up to the time of day, dear boys,We're up to the time of day!"
"Yes, after dark is the time to lark,Although we sleep all day;To pass the wine, and don't repine,For we're up to the time of day, dear boys,We're up to the time of day!"
As the words of the music-hall song rise on the clear air, Leslie turns away. No respectable woman could have sung such a song, and she is notsurprised that her companion, and host, has bidden her "come away."
She steps down from the battlement in silence, and as she does so glances at him. His face is no longer pale, but there is a cloud upon it, which he is evidently trying to dispel. She thinks, not unreasonably, that it is caused by annoyance that she should have heard the song, and she is grateful to him.
The cloud vanishes, and his face resumes something of its usual frank light-heartedness, but not quite all.
"We'll give those folks time to get clear away before we begin our exploration, Miss Lisle," he says, casually, but with the faintest tone of uneasiness in his voice. "That is the worst of these show places, one is never sure of one's company. 'Arriet and 'Arry are everywhere, nowadays."
"Why should they not be?" says Leslie, with a smile. "The world is not entirely made for nice people."
"No, I suppose not," he assents; "and I suppose you are going to say that they had better be here than in some other places, and that it might do 'em good; that's the sort of thing that's talked now. I'm not much of a philanthropist, but that's the kind of thing that good people always say."
"They seemed very happy," says Leslie.
"Who?" he asks, almost sharply. "Oh, those people? Yes; Mr. Lisle ought to get a good sketch somewhere hereabouts," and he leads her back to the duke and Mr. Lisle.
The duke looks up. Grey has made a "back" for him with the cushions and the hampers, and he's smoking in most unwonted contentment.
"Back already!" he says. "I thought you had gone to prospect?"
"So we had," responds Yorke, "but we were alarmed by savages from a neighboring island." He lights a cigar as he speaks. "We are going to give them time to get away in their canoes, as Robinson Crusoe did, you know. By the way, MissLisle, if you will sit down, I will reconnoiter and report."
Leslie sinks down beside her father, and Yorke strolls leisurely to the steps leading from the tower.
He pauses there a moment or two, listening, then goes down. At the foot of the steps on the grassy slope he stops again, and the cloud comes on his face darker than before.
"It must be a mistake," he mutters. "It couldn't be she, and yet——."
He walks on a few paces, and at the foot of the tower comes upon traces of the "savages"—a champagne bottle, empty, of course, and a newspaper.
He takes the latter up mechanically, then unfolds it and turns to the column of theatrical advertisements, and sees the following:
"Diadem Theater Royal. Notice. In consequence of serious indisposition, Miss Finetta will not play this evening."
With an exclamation which is very near an oath, he flings the paper from him and walks on, and as he goes round the base of the tower he is almost run into by one of the gentlemen whom Leslie saw with the dark young lady of the song.
They both stop short and start, then the new-comer exclaims, with a laugh:
"Hello, Auchester! Well, I'm——."
"Hush! Be quiet!" says Yorke, almost sternly, and with an upward glance.
"Eh?" says the other, "what's the matter? Who the duse would have expected to see you here?"
"I might say the same," retorts Yorke, with about as mirthless a smile as it is possible to imagine.
"How did you come here?"
"Why, by boat," responds the other. "Didn't I tell you so? What have you done with my nags?"
"They are all right," says Yorke. "Come this way, will you? Keep close to the tower, if you don't mind."
The young fellow follows him, with a half-amused, half-puzzled air.
"What's it all mean? Why this mystery, my dear boy?" he asks.
Yorke, having got him out of sight and hearing of the three on the tower, faces him, and instead of replying to his question, asks another.
"Was that Finetta with you just now, Vinson?"
"Yes," says Lord Vinson, at once; "of course it was. Didn't you see her, know her?"
Yorke nods curtly.
"Yes. What is she doing here? How did she come here with you?"
"The simplest thing in the world," replies Lord Vinson. "After you'd left me this morning, I was wondering who I should hunt up to come for a sail, when I saw her coming down the street. You might have knocked me down with a feather."
"I dare say. Well?"
Lord Vinson looks rather aggrieved at being cut so short, but goes on good-temperedly enough.
"She spotted me at once, and the first question she asked was, had I seen you?"
"Well?" demands Yorke, as curtly as before.
"Well, I didn't know what to say for the moment, because I thought perhaps you wouldn't care for her to know."
A faint expression of relief flits across Yorke's face, but it disappears at Vinson's next words.
"She saw me hesitate, and of course knew that I had seen you. 'It's no use your playing it low down on me, my dear boy,' she said, laughing—you know her way. 'You couldn't deceive a two-months-old calf, if you tried. You've seen him, and he's here somewhere.' It was no use trying to deceive her, as she said, and I had to own up that I had seen you this morning, and—that you borrowed my rig."
Yorke bit his lip, and nodded impatiently.
"She took it very well, she did indeed. She only laughed and said that she knew you had left town for some fishing; and, being sick of London herself, she had sent a certificate to say she was down with low or high, or some kind of fever, I forget which, and had to run down here for a bit of a holidaywith her brother—or her uncle, I don't know which it is."
Yorke looks round with ill-concealed anxiety.
"Oh, it's all right," says Lord Vinson; "they've gone on to the inn. I came back for my stick. There it is. Well, I thought the best thing I could do was to ask them to come for a sail, and it took her ladyship's fancy, and here we are, don't you know."
Yorke stands with downcast, overclouded face, and the young viscount, after regarding him attentively, says:
"Look here, Auchester, I know what it is, you don't want to run against her just now. Got friends up there, eh?" and he nods his head in the direction of the tower.
"No, I do not want to see her, and I certainly don't want her to see me," assents Yorke. "If you can manage to take her away, Vinson!"
He lays his hand on the young fellow's shoulder, and Vinson, who is never so delighted as when doing a service for his friend, nods intelligently.
"I see. All right, you leave it to me." He pulls out his watch. "I'll get her away at once; in fact, it's time we started. Don't you be uneasy."
"Thanks," says Yorke, and his brow lifts a little. "When does she go back?"
"To-night; she plays to-morrow."
Yorke's brow clears completely, and he smiles.
"Off with you, then," he says. "I'm awfully obliged to you, Vinson. You are right; I don't want the—the people I am with to see her."
Vinson looks up at the tower curiously, and rather wistfully.
"No, my dear boy, I'm not going to introduce you," says Yorke, with a smile. "I'm too anxious to be rid of you—and her. See them safe on board the train to-night, and if anything occurs to prevent them going, send me a message to-morrow morning. I'll give you the address——." He stops. "No, never mind. Make them go to-night. Tell her she'll lose her engagement, anything, but see that she goes."
Vinson grins.
"I'll tell her you've gone back to town," he says.
Yorke colors.
"Woodman, spare the lie," he says, with forced levity. "No need to tell her that."
"No, it wouldn't do, come to think of it. She'd find out I'd sold her when she'd got back, and then——." He whistled, significantly. "I like Finetta with her claws in, don't you know. I think you're the only man that's not afraid of her."
Yorke smiles again.
"Well, do what you like," he says. "But go now, there's a good fellow; and for Heaven's sake, don't let her come this way again. We heard her singing!"
Vinson laughs.
"Yes, if you were within a mile of her you couldn't help doing that," he says, dryly. "Well, good-by, old chap. Don't trouble about the nags."
"They are all right," says Yorke. "I'll bring them back safe and sound——."
"When the coast's clear," finishes the young fellow; and with a smile and a nod, he picks up his stick, and goes off.
Yorke Auchester stands where his friend has left him, and looks out to sea, with a troubled countenance; stares so long, and so lost in thought that it would seem as if he had forgotten his own party. It is not often that the young man has a moody fit, but he has it now, and very badly.
But presently there comes down to him the faint sound of Leslie Lisle's soft, musical laugh—how striking a contrast to that of the young lady whom he has just got rid of! and he wakes from his unpleasant reverie and climbs up to the tower.
The duke is leaning back with an amused and interested smile on his face, which is turned towards Leslie, and it is evident that he is happier and more contented than usual.
"Miss Lisle has just been giving me a description of the Portmaris folks. You have missed something, Yorke," he says, with a laugh. "Have the savages disappeared?"
"Quite," says Yorke; "and if Miss Lisle and her father would like to look round, the coast is now clear."
"You go, papa," says Leslie, with her usual unselfishness; "and I will stay with Mr. Temple."
The duke glances at her.
"You will do nothing of the kind," he says. "I am not going to impose upon your good nature, Miss Lisle. Besides, I dare say, I shall take forty winks."
Leslie hesitates a moment, then she gets up and goes for the easel; but Yorke is too quick for her.
"Come along, Mr. Lisle," he says, touching him on the arm, while he stands looking from the edge of the tower absently, and the three descend.
"Now, this strikes me as a good place," says Yorke, setting up the easel. "Don't know much about it you know, but it seems to me that the outline and the——."
"Excellent; yes, very good," assents the artist, eagerly getting out his drawing paper. "Yes, I can make a picture of this. You need not wait," he adds. "You will want to talk and——."
"I see," says Yorke. "Come along, Miss Lisle; we're evidently not wanted."
They stroll away side by side, and slowly descend the grassy slope, which gradually becomes broken by rock, which kindly nature, who has always an eye to effect, has clothed with ferns and moss and lichen.
"I suppose I ought to show you the hermit's cell?" says Leslie. "Everybody sees it."
"By all means," he assents, but rather absently—the loud laugh of Finetta, the music-hall song are still echoing hideously in his ears. "Which hermit?"
"Didn't you know?" she says, lightly stepping from stone to stone. "There was a hermit here once ever so long ago. Here is his cell," and she stops before a cavity in the rocks, a deliciously shady nook, overhung with honeysuckle and wild clematis which perfume the air.
Yorke looks in. Somebody since the hermit's time, had been kind enough to fix a comfortableseat in the little cell, from which a delightful view of the sea and the cliff can be obtained.
"Let us sit down while you tell me about him," he says.
Leslie seats herself, and looks out at the greenery at her feet and wide-stretching blue of sea and sky beyond; and he takes his place beside her, but looks at her instead of the view. "The proper study of mankind is—woman."
"There really was a hermit here ever so long ago," she says, dreamily. "They talk of him at Portmaris even now. He was a very great man in his time, but I am afraid not a very good one. It is said that he killed his best friend in a duel, and, that smitten with remorse for his crime and his foolish life, he vowed that he would never set eyes on mortal man again. So he came and lived in this cell, which he dug out with his own hands, and spent the rest of his life in prayer and meditation. Every day the village folks, and sometimes the pilgrims who visited his shrine, placed food on the ledge of the little window; but though they could hear his voice in prayer or singing hymns, no one ever saw his face, nor did he ever look out upon those who came to visit him."
"He must have been fearfully unhappy," says Yorke, in a low voice, for the soft, subdued tones seem to cast a spell over him.
"No, they say not; for he was often heard, especially after he had been living here for some years, to be singing cheerfully; but that was after he had received his sign."
"His sign?" he asks.
"Yes. He prayed that if Heaven forgave him his sins, and accepted his penitence, it would render the birds tame enough to come at his call."
"And did they?"
"Yes. The pilgrims to the shrine often saw a thin hand thrust through the window with a hedge sparrow or thrush perched upon it, and the rabbits, there were numbers of them, here, would come when he called, and let him feed them with the remains of his frugal fare. One day the village peoplereceived no answer when they called to him, not even thePax Vobiscum, which amply repaid them for their pious charity. They waited two days, and then they entered the cell, and found him lying dead on his stone pallet, and a wild dove was resting on his breast. It flew away as they entered, but it was seen hovering about the cell for years afterward, and the Portmaris people say that a dove is always near here, even now."
If Yorke had read the story of the Hermit of St. Martin in a book—he didn't read many books, unfortunately—it would not have affected him at all, but told by this lovely girl, in a voice hushed with sympathetic awe and reverence, it moves him strangely.
"It's a pity there are not more hermits," he says, "a pity a man can't leave the world in which he has made himself such a nuisance, and have a little time to be quiet and repent."
"Yes, your grace," assents Leslie.
He looks at her quickly, and then away to the sea again.
"I wonder whether you'd be offended if I asked a favor of you, Miss Lisle."
"What is it?" she says, lightly. "In the old times the proper reply was, 'Yea, unto half my kingdom,' but I haven't any kingdom."
"Oh, it isn't much," he says. "I was only going to ask you if you would be kind enough not to address me as 'your grace.'"
Leslie looks at him with her slow smile, and a faint blush.
"Is it wrong?" she asks, apologetically. "I didn't know. You see, I have not met many dukes."
He strikes at the sandy pebbles which form the floor of the good hermit's cave, with his stick.
"Oh—oh, it's right enough to call a duke 'your grace,'" he says, hurriedly, "but I'd rather you didn't call me so."
"I'm glad it was right," she rejoins, with an air of relief. "I thought that perhaps I'd committed some awful blunder."
"No, no," he says. "But don't, please. I have adecided objection to it. You see I'm rather a republican than otherwise—everybody is a republican nowadays, don't you know." Oh, Yorke, Yorke! "There will be no dukes or any other titles presently."
"But until that time arrives what should one call you?" asks Leslie, not unreasonably. "Is 'my lord' right?"
"It's better," he admits, "but I don't care much about that from friends, you know. I'm afraid you think it's rather presumptuous of me to call you a friend."
"'An enemy' would sound rude and ungrateful after your and Mr. Temple's kindness," she says, as lightly as before.
"My name is Yorke—one of 'em, and it's the name I like best. I dare say that you have noticed that Mr.—Mr. Temple calls me by it?"
"Yes," says Leslie.
"So it sounds more familiar to me, and—and nicer. I suppose a man has a right to be called what he likes."
"I imagine so," says Leslie.
"Then that's a bargain," he says, cheerfully, as if the matter were disposed of. "This place," he goes on, as if anxious to get away from the subject, "reminds me of Scotland a little bit. You only want a salmon river. I've spent many a day fishing and shooting in a solitude as complete as the hermit's. You get scared at last by the stillness and the silence, and begin to think that all creation has gone to sleep, and are afraid to move lest you should wake it; and then while you stand quite still beside the stream, something comes flitting down the mountain side—something with great antlers and big mournful eyes, and it steps into the water close beside you, and takes a drink, looking round watchfully. Then up you jump and give a shout, and away the stag goes, and all creation's awake again."
It is Leslie's turn to listen now, and she does so with half-parted lips.
"Then at night you go out with a gun, and youlie down flat amongst the bracken, and keep your eyes open, and after a while when you are just feeling tired of it, and thinking what an idiot you are not to be in bed, or at any rate, beside a cozy fire with a pipe, you hear a flap, flap in the air, and a couple of heron come sailing between you and the moon, and you raise your gun carefully and quietly—awfully sharp chap the heron—and down comes one of 'em, and perhaps, if you have any luck, the other with the second barrel. Then you load up again and wait, and after a time, if your luck holds good, a flush of wild duck come flipperty, flopperty, above your head and you bring one or two of them down. And all the time the stream ripples and babbles on, and the soft wind plays through the pines, and——." He stops with a laugh and that peculiar look which expresses shyness in a man. "I beg your pardon, I forgot; I mean, I must be boring you to death."
"No, you were not," says Leslie, quietly, and with a little sigh.
"I forgot that ladies don't care for sport, except hunting, some of them. They like to hear about London, and all the gossip there."
Leslie shakes her head.
"I'm afraid I'm very singular, then," she says. "For I would rather hear about fishing and shooting, if it is all like that you have been telling me of."
"But it isn't," he says, with a laugh. "Sometimes the birds don't come, and the fish won't rise, and instead of catching any you catch a cold. And then you go back to London, and swear that's it's the best place after all; but after a little while you get sick of it again, and think if you could only get on to a Scotch moor, you'd be happy."
"Man never is, but always to be blest," says Leslie.
"Yes, because men are such fools that they spoil their lives before they know where they are," he says. "I once saw a man try to swim across the Thames, for a wager, with a ten-pound weight round his neck. He would have been drowned, if they hadn't picked him up pretty smartly. It's the same in life——." He stops suddenly and laughsrather shortly. "We'll get on to a more cheerful topic. There's a hawk, see?" and he points to a bird circling in the vault of blue.
"I was wondering what it was," says Leslie. "You must have good eyes. Do you know all the birds when you see them?"
"Nearly all, I think," he replies. "Horses, and dogs, and birds, I know a little about, but I don't know anything else. I think I should have made a decent gamekeeper or horse breaker; I'm not fit for anything else. But sometimes I console myself with something I read in the paper the other day; the fellow said that there were far too many clever people in the world, and that very soon it would be quite a distinction not to have painted a picture, or written a book, or done something in the scientific way. I'm on the safe road to distinction, Miss Lisle. There isn't a bigger dunce in Portmaris than I am."
So they talk. It is not much. It is neither witty nor wise; it is just the pleasant, aimless chatter of two young people who are almost strangers; and yet so absorbed and interested are they, that they do not note how time flies, that the sun is sinking in the west, and that the shadows are stealing over hill and dale.
Leslie is perfectly at her ease. She has almost forgotten, quite forgotten for the time, indeed, that the young man sitting beside her with his arms folded behind his head, and talking of his fishing and his shooting, and of the strange beasts and birds and fishes he has seen, killed, or captured, is a duke; and he, Yorke, always ready to be happy, to meet the sweet goddess Happiness, half-way, is filled with a strange feeling of peace, that yet is not peace, which at times almost startles him.
In all his life he has not met with a girl like this; so simple, yet so sweetly wise; so good, and yet so bright and winsome. He is beginning to know some of the multitudinous expressions of the beautiful face, to lay traps for the slow heart-winning smile, to set snares for drawing the clear, darkly gray eyes toward his, that he may look into theirdepths. Her voice makes sweet melody in his ears, and stirs his heart with a vague thrill which will trouble him presently, trouble him very much. It seems to him one moment that he has known her for years, the next that she has just lighted from the clouds, or risen from the depths of the blue sea, and that he shall never know her or get any nearer to her.
And under the influence of these sensations, which summed up as a whole, are as a potent spell, he forgets the dark girl whom he has persuaded Vinson to take away out of sight, forgets the compact that he has made with the duke, forgets that he is sailing under false colors and is deceiving the girl beside him—forgets, in short, everything, save that she is beside him, and that he has the delight of looking at, and talking to, and, ah, best of all, of listening to her.
He would be content to sit there—so that she were by his side—till the end of the world, but a shadow falling across the entrance to the hut rouses Leslie to a sense of the flight of the common enemy.
"Why, it must be late," she says, with the air of one making a great discovery.
"Is it?" he says. "Must we really go? It is very jolly here—it is as jolly as it was last night on the water."
But he gets up and follows her, and they make their way back. As they emerge on the hill-side, they find that the wind has dropped, and is sighing across the downs rather plaintively; and Yorke, looking up, sees a cloud, which, though it is not much bigger than a man's hand, is full of warning.
"Did you happen to bring an umbrella with you?" he asks, with affected carelessness.
Leslie laughs.
"Not even a sunshade. Why?"
"Nothing," he says, inwardly calling himself opprobrious names for not providing the Englishman's traveling companion.
"Do you think it is going to rain?" she asks. "Oh, no, it isn't possible."
"Everything is possible in this charming climateof ours," he says. "Well, Mr. Lisle, how are you getting on?" he asks, as they go up to the artist, still hard at work.
He looks up with a start. To him they have only been absent, say, a quarter of an hour.
"It is difficult," he says. "Very. One needs time—time."
"We'd better come another day," says Yorke. "Oh, you have got on famously," and he keeps his countenance capitally as he looks at the sketch. "I'll carry your easel," and he folds it up, and puts it over his shoulder.
They find the duke waiting for them at the bottom of the tower, and seeing them all together, he does not suspect that the two young people have been spending the whole afternoontete-a-tete.
"I was just going off without you," he says, addressing all three, but looking at Leslie's face, which wears a rapt and dreamy expression.
"It's well you didn't," retorts Yorke. "You and Grey would never have reached home alive. Miss Leslie and I are the only persons who can manage these nags. But come on," and he glances upward—that cloud has grown considerably since they left the hermit's hut—and leads the way to the inn.
"Now, ma'am," he says to the landlady, in his frank, and genial way. "Got the kettle boiling? Right! Let us have some tea while the horses are being put to."
Then he goes round to the stable, inspects the horses, and is back in time to hand Leslie a cup of the beverage, which be the hour what it may, is always welcomed by fair women.
"Now up you get," he says, after surreptitiously tipping everybody—landlord, hostler, rosy-cheeked maid, all round. "Miss Leslie, we can't get on without you in front, you know," he remarks, as Leslie is about to go inside; and he helps her to the box.
The horses are fresh and eager for work, and for a time he drives, but presently he puts the reins in her hands.
"According to promise," he says. "Hold 'emtight while I," and he bends down and searches for something under the box seat.
"Oh, how beautifully they go," she says, half to herself. "What is it you are looking for, your gra—Lord Yorke?"
"Never you mind," he says. "You look after your horses."
Leslie laughs, and laughs again as he comes up, red in the face, and with a Scotch wrap in his hand.
"Are you so cold?" she asks.
"Very," he responds. "It's going to snow, I fancy."
"Why, it is quite close," she says, removing her eyes for a moment from the horses to glance at him with smiling surprise. "It seems hotter than it has been all day."
As she speaks, a low rumbling rolls over their heads and a flash of light cuts across the sky.
"That is lightning," she exclaims.
"It was rather like it," he admits, dryly.
"Did you bring any gamps?" asks the duke.
"Nary one," replies Yorke, grimly. "Slang away, I can bear it—and I deserve it," he mutters, glancing at the girlish figure beside him.
Mr. Lisle looks round absently.
"I'm afraid—it—it is going to rain," he says.
In another minute it is raining. Yorke takes the rug in both hands, and deftly wraps it round Leslie.
"Oh, no, please," she says, and she glances behind her. "Give it to him—Mr. Temple."
"It would be more than my life is worth," he says. "I dare not offer it to him. Please let me fasten it. How shall I? Give me a hairpin!"
"You must hold the horses, then," she says.
"I can see one sticking out," he says.
"Well, take it," she responds, innocently and all unconsciously, for she is thinking of her driving far more than the rain or the rug or anything else.
He looks at her intent and absorbed face, and puts up his hand and draws the hairpin from its soft and silken nest, and she, unheeding, does notknow that his hand trembles, actually trembles, as he fastens the rug round her.
"Now give me the reins," he says, "and keep your head down; we are in for a regular storm."
As he speaks, the rain comes down with a whiz, as if it meant to wash them off the box.
Leslie laughs.
"After all, it is a proper picnic," she says.
But the next instant her laugh dies away, for the heavens seem to open before them, a peal of thunder roars like the discharge of a park of artillery just above their heads, and the horses, startled and frightened, stop dead short, then rear up on end.
The carriage sways, and for a moment it seems as if it were going over, and Leslie is forced up close against Yorke.
He holds the terrified horses with one strong hand, against him.
"All right," he says, in a low voice. "Don't be afraid, Leslie!" His arm holds her, supports her, presses her to him, perhaps unconsciously. "You are quite safe, dearest, dearest."
Low as his voice is, Leslie hears him, or—she asks herself—is it only fancy?
For a moment, one brief moment, she cowers, nestling to him, her face hidden against his shoulder; then with a start, she draws away, and with her face red and white by turns, looks straight before her.
And through the roar of thunder, and the hissing of the rain, she hears those words re-echoing, "Leslie, dearest—dearest!"
The great changes of our lives come suddenly. Swift as the lightning's flash is the revelation to Yorke that he loves the girl who sits beside him.
Half-unconsciously he had uttered the wordswhich are still ringing in her ears, but he knows that his heart has been saying "dearest" all day long.
He knows now what that strange, peaceful happiness meant which made him feel as if he would be content to pass the rest of his life by her side in the hermit's cell.
And he knows that this is no transient passion which will have its day, and pass, leaving not a wreck behind, as so many passions alas! have passed with him. To every one of the sons of men, it is said, comes once in his life, the great all-absorbing love which wipes out all others, and which shall make of all his days an endless misery or a surpassing happiness; and this love has come to Yorke.
In an instant, as it were, it seems to have wrought a change in him. Gay, reckless, thoughtless, an hour ago, he is serious enough now.
His heart is beating quickly, furiously; his strong hands tremble as he holds the terrified horses, and urges them on with whip and voice; and yet, though apparently engrossed with them, thinking more of the silent girl beside him.
She is so silent! She scarcely seems to move, but sits, with the rug concealing her face, her head bent down.
"What have I said?" he asks himself; in truth he scarcely knows. It is as if his heart had suddenly become the master of his voice and actions, and had made a helpless slave of him.
If she would only speak! He longs past all description to hear her voice, even though it should be in anger and indignation; but she does not speak. He lifts his face to the sweeping rain and almost welcomes it. The storm is in harmony with the tempest of awakened passion which rages in his breast. He does not dare to speak to her, scarcely ventures to look her way, and he sits as silent as herself, while the horses dash along the streaming road and up the Portmaris street.
"We might have come by boat, there is water enough," says the duke, dryly. "Miss Lisle, I amafraid you are wet through. Pray get in at once, or you will catch cold."
She stands up on the box, and Yorke goes to unfasten the wrap, but she is too quick for him, and, taking out the hairpin, lets the rug fall, and stands before his eyes, her slim, graceful figure swayed a little away from him as if she did not want him to touch her.
He gets down, and offers her his hand, but she springs from the box lightly, stands a moment, then with a low-voiced "Good-night—and thank you," follows her father into the house.
The duke looks after her.
"The poor child is wet through and chilled," he says, sympathetically. "It's a pity you didn't think of a mackintosh, Yorke. What are you going to do with the rig and horses?"
Yorke looks down at him as if he scarcely heard or understood, for a moment; then he says, absently, like a man only half recovered from a stunning blow:
"The horses—oh, I'll find a place for them."
"You might take them to the station, your grace; they could put them up there in the good stable," suggests Grey.
"Yes, yes; and look sharp," says the duke. "We'll have some dinner by the time you are back. Will you have a glass of whisky and water before you go?"
But Yorke shakes his head almost impatiently.
"I'm all right," he says, curtly, and he drives off.
He sees the horses made comfortable in the stable at the station, and helps to rub them down and litter them; then he turns back.
But at the top of the street he pauses. He cannot face the duke just yet. There is that in his face, in his voice, he knows, which will reveal his secret.
He turns off to the right, and makes his way along a little used road toward the sea.
He is wet through, but he does not notice it; he scarcely knows where he is going until he stands on the edge of the sea.
"I love her!" he murmurs. "Yes, I love her.There is no woman in all the world like her! So good, so gentle, so beautiful."
He thinks of all the girls he has seen, talked with, danced with, and flirted with; but there is none like Leslie.
"I am a lost man if I do not get her!" he says to himself. "And how can I get her?" He groans, and pushes his hat off his brow, that is hot and burning. "She cares nothing for me; why should she? If I was to ask her to be my wife—my wife! How can I?" And he shudders as if some black thought had swept down upon him, and crushed the hope out of him. "How can I? Oh, what a mad, senseless fool I have been! How we chuck our lives away to find out, when it is too late, what it is we've lost. If I had met her a year ago——." He breaks off, and sighs, as he tramps up and down in the rain. "If I could only wipe out that year! But I can't, I can't, though I'd give ten years of the life that's left in me to be able to do it! What would she think—say—if she knew, if I told her? With all her sweet, childlike ways, and all her innocence and purity, she is a woman, and the very goodness for which I love her would fight against me! She looked and spoke like an angel when she was telling me that story about the hermit. An angel! I'm a nice kind of man to fall in love with an angel, and want to marry her! I might as well fall in love with one of those stars." And he looks up despairingly at the diamond lights that are peering through the rift in the clouds.
"Besides," he mutters, "even if—if that other woman weren't in the question," and he sets his teeth, "how could I ask her to marry me? Even if she'd have me—and why should I dare to think that I could win her love? I'm a pauper and worse. And she thinks me a duke! That's another thing! I forgot that idiotic business! Oh, I've tied myself up in every way, and haven't a chance! And yet I love her—I love her! Leslie!" he repeats the name, as Romeo might have repeated Juliet's, finding a torturing joy in its music. "No, there's no hope! Yorke, my boy, you are badly hit. You'velaughed at this kind of thing often enough, but your turn has come. And as there is no hope for you, you have got to bear it. The best thing you can do is to clear out in the morning, and blot Portmaris out of the map of England. I mustn't see her again—never again!"
All his nature protests against this resolve, and his heart aches badly, very badly; but he squares his shoulders and sets his teeth hard.
"Yes, that's the only thing to do; to cut and run. There's one comfort, she won't mind. She won't miss me. God knows what I said when I felt her face against my breast; but whatever it was, I've offended her past forgiveness. She wouldn't see me again, I dare say, if I stayed, and so——." He heaves a sigh, which is very much like a groan, and turns homeward.
He finds Grey alone in the room when he enters; the dinner things are still on the table, and Grey looks at him with a rather grave and startled expression.
"I've saved some dinner, your grace," he says.
"'Your grace' be da—hanged!" says Yorke, almost fiercely.
"Yes, my lord," murmurs Grey. "The duke waited for over an hour, and he has gone to bed; I was afraid of a chill, my lord. And your lordship is wet, very wet, still——."
"All right," says Yorke, as politely as he can. "Never mind. Go and see after the duke, and dinner—oh, yes. Thanks, you need not wait."
He tries to eat, but for once his faithful appetite fails him, and he pushes his plate away and gets his pipe, that great consoler in all times of trouble; and this is the worst trouble Yorke Auchester has ever had.
It is well on into the small hours when weary, but oppressed by a ghastly wakefulness, he goes to bed, and there he lies, open-eyed and thoughtful, until the sun floods the room.
He gets up, and as he looks in the glass after his bath, he smiles grimly.
"Only one night of it!" he says. "And a greatmany similar ones lie before me before I get over this! I wonder whether she has been thinking of me? Why should she? And if she should have been they wouldn't be pleasant thoughts."
He pulls the blinds aside and looks at the house opposite, wondering which is her window; and as he does so, the lover's heart-hunger for a sight of his loved one assails him.
It has still strong possession of him when he goes down the stairs and into the street; but he fights against it. The best thing he can do is not to see Leslie Lisle, but to drive Vinson's horses back to Northcliffe, and take the train from there to London, and—stop there; stop there till in a round of the folly which has suddenly grown so senseless and worthless in his eyes, he has dulled the pain of this, his first real love.
It is early, but Portmaris is alive and very much in evidence. The fishermen are out on the beach, the women are bustling about, the children are playing in the road-way. Some with a huge slice of bread and butter or treacle in their fists; breakfast is evidently a very movable feast with the entire population.
Yorke stands a moment and looks round with a pang of regret.
"I shall think of this place," he says. "Think of it too often to be comfortable. Why couldn't I have come here—and to her—a year ago? What's that song about 'the might have been'? That's how I feel this morning. Oh, lord!"
He strides on with his head drooping, in an attitude very unlike that of Yorke Auchester's usual one; and without the last night's opera song on his lips as is ordinarily the case; and he is near the station, when he hears the laughter of children ahead of him, and looking up, sees a group that make his heart leap, and the blood rush to his face.
Under a great oak in the pretty lane stands no other than Leslie herself, with a child upheld in her arms, and two others clinging to the skirts of her pretty, simple morning dress. The child borne aloft has pulled off her hat, and the sunlight as itcomes through the trees, falls in flecks of light and shadow on her hair and upturned face. She is laughing the soft, sweet laugh, which, though he should live to be as old as the old man walking along on the other side of the road, Yorke will never forget, and—she does not see him.
Shall he turn and go back, go back and leave her forever? Better! But he cannot, simply cannot. So he goes on slowly, and it is not until he is close behind her that she hears him.
She turns, the child still held, crowing and struggling in her arms, and a startled look comes into her eyes, and the color flies to her face, and then leaves it pale.
Yorke lifts his hat.
"Good-morning," he says.
Her lips move, and her head bends over the child now lying in her arms, and staring with blue eyes up at the big man who dares to address "Miss Lethlie." Leslie's lips move; no doubt she says "good-morning," in response, though he cannot hear her.
"You are early this morning," he says, and he knows that his voice falters and sounds unnatural, as surely as he knows that his heart is beating like a steam-hammer, and that the longing to cry to her, "Leslie, I love you!" is almost irresistible.
"Yes," she says. "It is so beautiful after the rain——."
She stops, for the word has recalled that homeward drive, the storm, his words—all that she has been thinking of through the long night.
"Yes," he says, vaguely, stupidly. Then he says, suddenly, "That child is too heavy for you——."
"Oh, no; I often carry it," she falters, bending still lower over the pretty face enshrined in the yellow curls.
"But it is," he says. "Let me take it, if it must be carried."
"She would not let you," she says.
"We'll see," he rejoins, scarcely knowing what he is saying; and he holds out his arms.
The mite stares at him, turns and clutches Lesliefor a moment, then, with the fickleness of its sex, swings round and holds out its arms to him.
Yorke laughs, and holds it up above his head.
"Now what shall I do with you?" he says, hurriedly. "Take you to London with me. No?" for the child struggles. "For that is where I am going." He puts the child down, and it toddles off with the other two. "Yes, I am going to London, Miss Lisle," he goes on, trying to speak lightly, carelessly.
"Yes?" she says, with downcast eyes, and she stoops to pick up her hat. As she does so, he stoops too; they get hold of it together, and their hands meet.
But for that sudden meeting, that touch of her hand, he could have gone, and the history of Leslie Lisle would have been a very different one; but it is the link which the Fates have been wanting to make their chain complete.
"Leslie!" he cries, scarcely above his breath. "Leslie!" And he takes both her hands and holds them fast, and looks into her eyes, the dark, gray eyes which she lifts to him with a swift fear—or is it a swift joy? mirrored in their clear depths.
"Let—me—go," she falters, with trembling lips.
"No!" he says, desperately. "Not till I have told you that I love you!"
"I love you!"
Leslie draws her hands from his grasp, and stands with averted face, her bosom heaving, her breath coming with difficulty.
It is so sudden, so swift, this declaration, that she is overwhelmed. The heart of a pure-minded, innocent girl is not unlike a fortress. It withstands many an attack, and is able to repulse the besiegers until the one comes who cries "Surrender!" and at the sound of his voice, before some nameless magicin his presence, her strength goes, the gate is thrown wide open, and the conqueror marches in.
Leslie had been calm and self-possessed enough when Ralph Duncombe was pleading his passionate love, and was able to withstand his urgent prayer, but to Yorke she can find nothing to say; she can only stand with downcast eyes, her heart beating fast, and the gates beginning to open!
He takes her hand, but again she draws it from him, and sinking on to the trunk of a fallen tree, keeps her face, her eyes, from him.
"You are angry?" he says, his usually light and careless voice deep and earnest enough now. "Well, I deserve that. I—I ought not to have told you so suddenly. But——," he leans against a tree close beside her, and looks down at her—"but—well, I couldn't help it. I was going away this morning." His heart gives a little quiver. "I was going away from Portmaris—and from you. I've been thinking of you all night, and I'd decided that that was the best thing to do. It's sudden and—and startling to you, Leslie—Miss Lisle—but it doesn't seem so to me. You see, I suppose I have been getting to love you ever since I saw you on the beach; that's not long ago, I dare say you'll say, but it seems a long time to me—months, ages."
It is almost as if her own heart were speaking, it is just as she has felt. She listens in a kind of amazement at the subtle sympathy between them.
"I have thought of nothing else but you since I saw you. I know that I shall be the happiest man in the world if—if you'll let me go on loving you, and try to love me a little in return, and the most wretched beggar in existence if—if you can't."
He waits a moment, for a strange sensation comes in his throat and stops his speech, usually so fluent and so free. Then, she still remaining silent, he goes on with the same grave, earnest tone, and with the same half-eager, half-hesitating tremor in his voice.
"I've never seen any one like you; I know plenty of women, but none like you, Leslie—I beg your pardon! You see, I always think of you asLeslie. If I were to try and tell you how I feel, I should make a mess of it. I can only say that I love you, I love you!"
With all his ignorance and lack of eloquence he is wise. "I love you," sums up all a woman wants or cares to hear.
"Of course," he goes on in a lower voice, daunted by her silence, her motionless, downcast face, her hidden eyes. "Of course, I can't expect, don't expect you to understand or—or to care for me even a little. You haven't known me long enough or—or—anything about me. All I want is a little hope. If you don't dislike me, right down dislike me, I'll be glad enough, and I'll try and get you to love me a little. You can't love me as I love you; that isn't to be thought of!"
"Is it not?" she thinks, but she says nothing.
Up above their heads a thrush is singing melodiously, and the liquid notes seem to say quite plainly, "I love you." The sun, as it shines between the leaves of the old oak, and touches Yorke's brave, and eager face, is surely smiling, "He loves you!" The stream rippling in a hollow behind them, as it runs laughing down to the sea, is as certainly murmuring, "Love, love, love!"
"You are angry and—and offended," he says, after a pause, during which she has been listening to this harmony of nature's voices. "Well, I deserve it! I ought to have waited until you knew more of me—but you see, as I said, I could not keep it. I had been thinking of you, dreaming of you, all night, and then I saw you suddenly, and I felt as if I must speak, happen what might. If I hadn't seen you, I dare say I could have found heart enough to clear out, and—and hold my tongue; but when I saw you with that little one in your arms, looking so beautiful and so good, just the Leslie I love so dearly, the words rushed out almost before I knew it—and—and——," he squares his broad chest, and tilts his hat back with a gesture which, unlike most gestures, fits him like a glove, "there it is!"
She does not lift her face, does not open the lipsthat are trembling—if he could only see it; and he waits a moment before he says, sadly, with the lover's despairing note audible through an affected cheerfulness:
"I'm—I'm sorry that I've made a nuisance of myself, and—and worried you. Don't be upset and think anything of it. I ought not to have spoken. I couldn't help loving you, but I might have had the sense to hold my tongue, and taken myself off without distressing you. Don't—don't think any more of it. I'm not worthy of you, not worth a thought from such as you, and—well, I'll say good-by, Miss Lisle."
He puts his hat straight, and braces himself together, so to speak, for the parting; then he bends down and takes her hand, the hand that lies in the lap of the pretty morning frock like a white flower.
She does not draw it away now, and as he holds it, the passion which raises men to a level with the gods, takes possession of him.
"Leslie!" he says, almost hoarsely. "I can't let you go! I love you too much. Look at me, speak to me! Unless you hate me, I must stay and try and make you love me! I can't lose you! You are the only woman I have ever seen or known that I wanted badly! And I do want you! I can't live without you! I can't leave you, knowing that I may never see you again. I can't. Look up, Leslie—dearest—dearest! Tell me straight, once and for all—I will never come back to worry you—once and for all, will you try and love me?"
He takes her other hand—he has got both now, and lifts her, actually lifts her from the tree. She does not resist him, but lets her hands, trembling, remain willing prisoners, and when her face is on a level with his, she raises her eyes and looks at him.
There must be something in the dark gray eyes, something under the shadow of the black lashes, which contains a potent magic; for at sight of it his heart leaps and the blood rushes to his face, then leaves it pale with the intensity of a supreme emotion, an incredible joy, an amazed delight.
"Leslie!" breaks from him, "Leslie!"
Her eyes meet his, steadily, yet shyly, o'er-brimming with the secret which a maiden keeps, hugs closely, while she can. A secret which she is loth to part with, but which the loved one's eyes read so quickly.
"Leslie—do you—ah, dearest, dearest, you do love me!"
She tries to withstand him, to draw away from him, even now; but his passion is too much for her, and the next instant she is folded in his arms and her head lies on his breast.
Sing on happy thrush; but no music even your velvet throat can make shall compare with the music ringing through these two human hearts. A music which shall not die though these same hearts may be torn apart and wrung with anguish; a music which for joy or pain, weal or woe, shall echo through their lives till Death comes with its great silence.
But it is of life and love and joy, and not death or parting, that they are thinking now.
He draws her arm within his as if she had belonged to him for years, or rather as if he wanted to assure himself that she belonged to him, and they pace slowly along the meadow in the shadow of the trees; her hat swings on her hand, her eyes lift, heavy with love, to his face, as he bends down to her his own, eloquent with the devotion and adoration which fill his heart to overflowing. And yet through all the storm of passion that tosses in his breast, he has sense enough to notice how beautiful she is, how lightly and gracefully she walks by his side, how delicious is the pose of the slender neck, the half averted face. This flower that he has found and plucked to wear in his breast is no common weed, but a rare blossom of which an emperor might be proud.
And she—well, she scarcely realizes yet what this is that has happened to her; she only knows that a supreme happiness, a novel joy, so intense as to be almost pain, is thrilling through her; that at one moment she feels inclined to cry and the nextto laugh. He is hers! She is to be his wife!—his wife! Oh, what a singular dream! Shall she wake soon? Wake to find that he has gone, and that all that is now happening is but a phantasy, a vision that will fade and leave her desolate.
She starts presently and looks up at him.
"Papa! He—will miss me—wonder where I have gone," she says. "How long have we been here?" and she looks round as if she expected to see the shades of night falling.
He laughs softly, the laugh of a man so completely happy that time has ceased to be of consequence.
"I don't know. What does it matter? Your father will know you are all right. He will think you have gone to the beach, that you are playing with the children—how fond you are of children, dearest."
"Yes, yes," she murmurs.
"I never saw any one go on with them as you do. No wonder they love you; but I suppose everything and every one does. By the way——." He stops, and a faint shadow falls on his face. "I suppose there have been ever so many fellows who've been in love with you?"
She makes a little gesture of indifference, as if the thought was too trivial to be entertained or spoken of. What does it matter who loved her, now?
"That—that letter and the ring?" he says, inquiringly.
She raises her clear eyes to his.
"Do you want me to tell you about them?" she says, in a low voice, as if he had the right to search her soul, and she were wishing that he should do so.
"No, no," he rejoins.
"But I will. He—he who wrote the letter and gave me the ring——."
His face grows cloudier.
"No, no tell me just this. He is nothing to you, you never cared——."
"Never," she says simply. "He has gone—I will tell you."
He presses her face to his to silence her, and a wave of remorse, of self-reproach, sweeps over him.
"No, no, not a word. That is enough for me. You are mine now and always and forever."
"Forever!" she breathes.
"And—and," he hurries on. "I have no right to ask you about the past—the past that did not belong to me. Besides, if I did you would have the right to ask me, and——." He stops suddenly, pale, and trembled.
She looks up at him.
"I ask nothing," she says, in a low voice. "You shall tell me all you want to tell me; just that, and no more."
"My darling, my dearest!" he says, but the trouble still rings in his voice. Shall he tell her? Now is the time. She would forgive him, love him none the less, if he told her all now. Shall he throw himself upon her great love and mercy?
For a moment Yorke's guardian angel hovers near him and whispers, "Tell her, trust her!" but he thrusts the angel aside and silences her.
"I am not worthy of you, dearest," he says; "I can tell you that much: no man is worthy of you! But the best of us couldn't love you better than I do, Leslie. Leslie! Do you know that when I heard your name it seemed to me the prettiest I had ever heard, and as if it belonged to some one I had loved for years? Have you any other name?"
She shakes her head.
"Isn't one enough?" she says, laughing, softly. "I am not big enough for more than one of two syllables. Why, see, yours is only one, or have you got more names? Tell me them? How strange; oh, how strange! I do not know rightly what you are called, and yet——."
"Yet you love me, and promise to be my wife—why don't you say it right out?" he says.
She shakes her head.
"But your names?"
"Oh," he says, carelessly. "There's a string of 'em. Yorke, Clarence, Fitzhardinge Auchester—"
"And Rothbury," she says, with sudden gravity.
He starts slightly, and colors. This foolish whim of the duke's! What is to be done about it now?
"Duke of Rothbury," she goes on, gravely, and with an almost troubled smile. "I—I had forgotten——."
"Go on forgetting!" he says, drawing her arm closer.
"Yes! I—you will not be angry?"
"At nothing you can say, unless it were, 'I do not love you!'"
"I was going to say that I wish I could—that I wish you were not a duke, and had no title of any kind!"
"So do I if you wish it," he says. "What does it matter?"
"But will it not matter?" she asks, her brows coming together. "Will not the people—your people, all those great folks who belong to you, your relations—be angry with me for—for——."
"Stooping to love such a worthless, useless creature as I? Why should they?"
"I—I don't know. Yes I do. It is not girls like me, girls with no title or anything, poor girls who know nothing of the fashionable world, and have no relations above a plain 'Mr.' who ought to marry noblemen. I know enough for that. They will be right to be angry and—and disappointed!"
"Not they!" he says, lightly, but inwardly chafing against the bonds which his promise to the duke has woven round him. "Let them mind their own business!"
"But it is their business!" she says. "What a duke, a well-known nobleman, does, must be everybody's business, and everybody will be astonished and—sorry."
"Wait until they see you!" he says, confidently.
She looks up at him with eyes dewy with gratitude.
"Do you think everybody will see me with your eyes?" she says, in a low voice.
"I think every man will envy me and wish himself in my place!" he responds, promptly.
She shakes her head.
"No no! They will say when they hear of it that you have done wrong, and say it still more decidedly when they see me. Why, I shall not know what to do." She laughs half light-heartedly, half-anxiously. "I shall not know how to begin, even, to play the great lady; I shall make all sorts of mistakes, and call persons by their wrong names and titles. Why, I did not know how to address you, your grace!" And she looks up at him, with parted lips that smile but tremble a little.
He kisses them tenderly, reassuringly.
"You are only chaffing me," he says. "I can see that. You are the last girl in the world to be frightened by anybody. You'd just take your place in any set as naturally as if you'd known it and been in it all your life. Why, do you think I don't know how proud you are?"
"Am I?" she says, self-questioningly. "Yes; I think I was yesterday—until—until now. But now my pride seems to have melted into thin air, and I am only anxious. Do you know what I should do if I were to see that you were even the least bit ashamed of me?"
"What would you do? Something terrible?"
"I should die of shame for your sake!" she says, slowly.
"If you wait till you die of that complaint you'll live to be as old as—what's his name, Methuselah!" and he laughs. "Why, I feel so proud of winning you that I'm trying all I know not to swagger."
She gives his arm just the faintest pressure.
"Oh how foolish, how foolish!" she murmurs. "To be proud of me!"
"I dare say, but I am, you see! I know I've got one of the loveliest women in the world for a wife, and I shall get beastly conceited, I expect, and perfectly unendurable. It isn't every man who wins the love of an angel."
"Ah, don't," she says. "An angel! They will not think me that, but only a commonplace girl, who knows nothing, and is not fit to be—a duchess!"
She utters the word as if he did not like it, and he colors again.
"Tell me," she says, after a moment. "Tell me whom I shall have to fear most. You see, I don't know even if you have a mother—a father. I don't know anything!"
He is silent a moment, mentally execrating the chain of circumstances which compel him, force him, to—yes, deceive her!
"They are both dead," he says, truthfully. "I haven't any near relations—no brother and sister, I mean. I've an uncle, a Lord Eustace and his two sons who's the next to the dukedom—he and they."
"After you?" she says. "I don't understand—how should I?"
"It does not matter," he says, hurriedly.
"Tell me about him then—them. Is he nice? Will he be very angry?"
He laughs.
"No, he's not very nice. He's the miser of the family—you see, and you'll have cause to be ashamed of some of us, dearest! And he won't care the snap of his fingers whom I marry, or what becomes of me."
This would sound singularly improbable to Leslie if she were worldly wise; but she is not. As she says, she simply does not understand or realize.
"I am sorry," she says. "But I don't think it is true."
"You think they are all so proud and fond of me?" he laughs, with a faint tinge of bitterness. "Well, then I've other cousins——."
"Mr. Temple?" she says.