A fortnight later Lucy was returning from a rather lengthy ramble. She had a companion, one of the school-girls, this being the universal holiday, Saturday afternoon, and they both carried a basket full of roots and leaves; for whenever Lucy went out she managed to bring home something for planting in the little garden of which she and Leslie were so fond and proud.
"I hope you're not getting tired, Jenny," she said to the girl who tripped on proudly beside her.
"Oh, no, Miss Lucy."
"Well, I'm glad you are not," remarked Lucy; "for we are a long way from home yet."
"And it is going to rain," added Jenny, with that placid indifference to the weather which distinguishes country children.
"What; and I have brought no umbrella, and you have only that thin cloak, Jenny. But perhaps you are wrong. I always notice that when people say it is going to rain, it invariably turns out fine, perhaps for weeks."
"It's going to rain now, Miss Lucy," repeated Jenny, still more confidently; and a moment or two afterward she added, "There!"
Lucy felt a spot on her face and seized the girl's basket.
"You must let me carry this, Jenny, because we shall have to hurry all we know. It will never do to go in wet through. What would Miss Leslie say?"
This formula, which she found of great service when admonishing the children, lent speed to Jenny's small feet, and Lucy and she hurried along the road. But quickly as they went the rain caught them up, and presently it came down in a torrent.
Jenny laughed, and Lucy, being rather careful of her clothes, and inclined to take matters seriously, was constrained to laugh too.
"We must get under a tree," she said. "There, squeeze up against the trunk, and I will stand in front of you and shelter you as well as I can. Oh, what would I give for an umbrella!"
Jenny leaned against the tree and amused herself by twisting a spray of brown ivy leaves into a wreath, and looking up at the weather now and again; and Lucy was rapidly sinking into that semi-indifferent, semi-despairing condition which such circumstances produce, when she heard the rattle of a cart coming along the road.
"Jenny, there is a cart, and I believe it is going to Newfold," she said, with a sudden hopefulness. "Perhaps it is someone we know—one of the tradespeople. If so, we will ask them to give us a lift."
"They won't wait to be asked, Miss Lucy," said Jenny, shrewdly, and indeed truthfully, for the two school-teachers were already favorites in Newfold.
"Here it is now," said Lucy; then she sighed disappointedly. "It is a dog cart—a gentleman's dog-cart," she said. "Bother!"
It came abreast of them and was spinning past, when suddenly the gentleman who was driving seemed to see them, and after a moment's hesitation he pulled up the horse.
"You mustn't stand under that tree," he called out.
Lucy colored and started for two reasons; one, because she had been brought up in habits of obedience, and generally did what she was told, no matter who told her, and especially if the order was issued in a commanding voice, and this was a commanding voice. The other reason was that she recognized the voice itself. It was the gentleman she had met in the lane, and to whom she had given the fern root.
"Come away," he said, gravely; then he appeared to recognise her, for he jumped down and, still holding the reins, cameforward and raised his hat, Jenny laughing to see the rain pour off the brim.
"I beg your pardon," he said. "I did not see who it was for a moment, the rain is pelting so. But all the same you really must not stand there. There is thunder in the air, and it is dangerous standing under a tree—lightning you know!"
Lucy uttered a little cry, then laughed and blushed.
"Of course. How foolish of me not to think of it! But when you called out I was afraid I was doing some injury to the tree by trespassing."
He laughed—a grave, short kind of laugh, which, however, seemed to Lucy to suit him somehow.
"How wet you are!" he said. "Have you been standing here long?"
"Ever since it began," replied Lucy with a little shrug of her shoulders—a trick she had unconsciously caught from Leslie. "And we are waiting till it stops."
"I am afraid you will have to wait a long time," he remarked. "It has set for a wet evening. May I ask where you are going?"
"To Newfold," said Lucy.
"Newfold? Ah, yes! Will you let me offer you a lift? I am going there, or, at any rate, very near there—as far as the London road goes."
"Oh, no, thank you," said Lucy, flushing. He looked disappointed; then he glanced at Jenny.
"The little girl is getting very wet. She will take a chill," he said, gravely.
"Oh, do you think so?" exclaimed Lucy, with instant alarm. "Oh, dear! And I am afraid she is not very strong. It doesn't in the least matter so far as I am concerned, for I never take cold. I am used to the country and rough weather; but Jenny——."
Jenny grinned at the idea of her being in any danger from an autumn storm, but she was too wise to make any remark, for she was dying for a ride in the handsome dog-cart.
"I think you had better let me take her—and you," he said; and seeing that she still hesitated, he cut the Gordian knot by lifting Jenny into the cart and holding out his hand for Lucy.
Then when she was seated he got out a big carriage umbrella and put it up for them, and quickly slipping off his waterproof, arranged it on the seat behind so that it completely covered them.
"Oh, but you will get wet!" remonstrated Lucy, much distressed; but he laughed and made light of the business.
"We Londoners like getting wet sometimes," he said. "It is a change, you see. In London we take as much care of ourselves as if a spot of rain would kill us."
"Oh, I know," said Lucy, with shy pride. "I have lived in London for some time."
"I thought you said you were used to the country?" he remarked.
"So I am—I was born in the country," Lucy explained, in her frank, simple manner—a manner, by the way, which possesses a greater charm for some, indeed most, men, than all the cultivated artificialities.
"I have lived all my life," she said—"all my life"—as if she were at least ninety—"in the country until I went up to London to cram for my exam."
"Your exam.?" he said, invitingly, and yet not obtrusively, and there was nothing in the interest displayed in his face which indicated presumptuous or idle curiosity.
"Yes," said Lucy, blushing faintly; "I am a teacher."
"A governess?" he said.
"No, a teacher," corrected Lucy, with fine emphasis. "I am one of the teachers at the village school. There are only two—I mean teachers. I am the second."
"And do you like being a teacher?" he asked. His voice was as grave as ever, but the expression of interest seemed increasing; the pleasant face looked so pretty and innocent and girlish under the shadow of the big umbrella; the clear, low voice rang so true and sweet. It seemed to the weary city man as if he had stopped to pick up one of the wild flowers from the hedge-row.
"Oh, yes," said Lucy, promptly.
"I thought so by the way you spoke," he said, with a smile; and Lucy laughed and blushed again.
"I like it very much," she said. "But, then, ours is such a nice school, and the girls are all such good girls, aren't they, Jenny?"
"Yes, Miss Lucy," assented Jenny, from under the wrap into which she had nestled.
"Self-praise, eh?" he said.
"Oh, but she is really a very good girl," said Lucy, in a confidential whisper, which seemed to make them more intimate. "They are all good, and so we are both as happy as we can be."
"We both?" he said.
"I mean my fellow-teacher; my principal," said Lucy, "Miss—" She was about to tell him the name, but stopped, remembering that he was a stranger and that Leslie might not like to be so confidential, about herself, at any rate.
"I am very glad you are so happy," he said. "Do you know, I had been on the point of visiting your school."
"You?" said Lucy, opening her eyes with surprise; and, as he noticed, with something else—a faint but unmistakable pleasure.
"Yes," he said. "It belongs to a lady who is a friend of mine. She is kind enough to let me see to some of her business matters."
"The kindness seems to be on the other side," said Lucy, laughing.
Ralph Duncombe colored and found himself laughing too.
"Well," he said, "let us say we are both kind. I was going to explain that she had asked me to do something in connection with the school. I forget what it was now."
"Perhaps it was the roof," said Lucy, eagerly. "It is rather bad in one or two places, and the other morning two or three spots of water came through. Oh, I hope it was the roof!"
"It must have been," he said, with due gravity; "and I will see that it is put right at once. Is there anything else that wants doing, Miss—Miss Lucy, I think you said your name was?"
"Yes, Lucy Somes," she said, thinking hard, and trying to remember if there was anything else wrong at her beloved school. "N-o, I don't think there is anything else the matter, excepting the roof."
"Perhaps I had better come and see for myself, he said, in a matter-of-fact way.
"Are you—an architect?" Lucy inquired, rather timidly.
Ralph Duncombe smiled.
"No; I am nothing nearly so clever. I am only an ordinary business man, very hard worked and very glad to run away from the city and into the fresh air."
"Ah, yes; how you must enjoy it!" said Lucy, with a sympathetic little sigh, "to get away from the crowd and the heat and the smoke."
So they talked, and as Ralph Duncombe listened to the sweet young voice it seemed to him as if there was a power in it to soothe his weary, restless spirit; and when Lucy suddenly exclaimed, as if she were quite surprised that they should have reached the spot so soon, "Why, here is the corner!" he pulled the horse up with evident reluctance.
"I'll drive you around to the school," he said; but Lucy declined, and so earnestly that he could not persist.
He lifted them down, and cut short Lucy's blushing thanks.
"It is I who ought to be, and am very much, obliged to you, Miss Somes," he said, "for you have made one part of my lonely drive very pleasant. I hope you won't be any the worse for your wetting."
"Oh, but I am as dry as a bone—and so is Jenny," said Lucy, blushing still more. "Good-by—and you will not forget the roof?"
"No, no," he said; "but I must come and see it myself."
He sat bolt upright in the cart, watching them as they ran along the road shining with the rain, and a strange feeling took possession of him. How lonely he had been before he saw them! How lonely all his life was! He was rich, fearfully rich, and yet there was not a streak of sunshine in his life. His love for Leslie Lisle had clouded it over as with a pall. Oh! why had the fates dealt with him so unkindly? Why had henot given his heart to some girl like the one who had just left him—one who would have returned his love, and borne for him the sweet name of—wife?
For the first time in his life Ralph Duncombe found himself thinking tenderly and wistfully of some other woman than Leslie Lisle.
He thought of her several times the next day. Her sweet girlish face came between him and a most important letter he was writing; and once during the morning his chief clerk came in and found him—the great city man—sitting with his head leaning on his hands and his eyes fixed vacantly on the window.
When Saturday came around again he remembered that he must go round to White Place to see Lady Eleanor. He had the horse harnessed, and drove along the road, light now with the autumn sunshine, and every inch of the way he thought of Lucy. When, in the afternoon, he reached the corner where he had set her and Jenny down, he pulled up, stared straight in front of him for a moment, then suddenly turned the corner and drove to the school, and his heart beat as it had not beaten since he said good-by to Leslie as he saw Lucy's girlish figure in the garden. She wore a plain cotton frock; a big sun hat, much battered and sunburned, was on her head, and the prettiest and most useless of rakes in her hand. She almost dropped this apology for a tool when she saw him, and the color ran up her cheeks as she came to the gate.
"You have come to see the roof!" she said. "That is kind of you."
"Yes, I have come to see the roof!" he said.
He had forgotten all about it; but he could scarcely say he had come to see her.
"I am so sorry," said Lucy; "but my friend—the principal, you know—is out. She does not often leave the house and garden, even for an hour, excepting to go to church; but I persuaded her to go down to the village this afternoon. I am so very sorry!"
"So am I," responded Ralph, with mendacious politeness. "May I come in?"
"Oh, yes, please!" said Lucy. "But the horse?"
"He will stand till this day week," said Ralph. "But I'll hitch the reins over the palings all the same."
"This way," said Lucy, eagerly; and she led him to the school-room. He stared up at the very small hole in the roof with the deepest gravity apparently; but in reality he was thinking how sweetly pretty the face beside him looked as she upturned to gaze aloft.
"All right," he said, with a laugh. "I'll see that it is put straight. You are sure there is nothing else?"
"N-o," said Lucy, "nothing. Oh, yes! the gate to the meadow is so very old that that the donkey in the next field pushes it open, and—"
"Let us go in and see it," said Ralph, promptly. "We may as well do everything that wants doing at once."
They went to the meadow, and he examined the gate and admired the view across the fields, and on Lucy telling him it was much better from the edge of the wood, he wandered off in that direction, and, somehow or other, they found themselves sitting on the stile that led into the plantation and talking, as Lucy put it afterward, "like old friends"—so much so, indeed, that it was with quite a start that Lucy heard the clock strike five.
"Oh, I have not offered you any tea!" she exclaimed, remorsefully. "Please come into the school-house. My friend will be back by this time, and she will be quite angry at my want of hospitality."
Ralph, picturing to himself a middle-aged school-mistress as the 'principal,' glanced at his watch hesitatingly; but seeing a look of disappointment beginning to cloud Lucy's face, rose promptly.
Why should he not go in to tea with her? It was the last time he would see her, having an opportunity of listening to the sweet young voice; and at the thought a sudden pang shot through his heart. He had spent his life following a will-o'-the-wisp. Leslie Lisle, even if he found her, could never be his. Why should he not ask this pretty, innocent-eyed girl—
"Lucy," he said, suddenly, and yet gently.
She started at the sound of the Christian name, and turned her eyes upon him questioningly.
"Don't be frightened," he said, still more gently, but with an earnest gravity that thrilled her. "And yet I am afraid I shall frighten you. Do you know what it is I am going to ask you? No, you cannot guess. Lucy, since last Saturday I have been thinking of you every day!"
"Of me?" The words left her lips in a whisper, and the color deepened in her cheeks.
"Of you!" he said, fervently. "I love you, Lucy. Will you be my wife?"
She stepped back, her eyes opening wide, her parted lips tremulous. But when he took her hand she did not shrink back further, and she did not attempt to take the hand away.
They wandered hand in hand about the lanes for an hour, while the horse contentedly nibbled at the grass at the bottom of the garden hedge, and during that hour Ralph told her who and what he was—told her everything, indeed, excepting his love for Leslie Lisle—and Lucy was still in 'love's amaze' as they made their way back to the house.
"You must come in, if only for a moment," she said as he was unfastening the reins. "I want to tell her—my fellow-teacher—to—to—to show you to her." Her eyes sunk and her voice trembled. "I know she will be so glad! Besides, I—I couldn't tell her about it all by myself. It is so sudden—sodreadfully sudden—that I should die of shame!" and her face grew crimson as she laughed.
"All right," he said; "I will come in; but it must be only for a moment, Lucy."
She opened the gate, and as she did so something glittering on the path caught her eye.
She stooped and picked it up.
"Why, it's a ring!" she exclaimed—"a gentleman's ring! You must have dropped it as you came in—Ralph."
"Not I!" he said, shaking his head.
He had not worn a ring since—since he had given his to Leslie.
"But you must have done," she said, with charming persistence. "No gentleman has passed this gate excepting you, sir."
He laughed.
"Let me see," he said.
He took the ring, looked at it, and the smile fled from his face, which suddenly went pale. It was the ring he had given Leslie! He stood, dumb with amazement.
"Well?" she said, linking her arm in his, and so intent on the ring that she did not notice his pallor and constraint.
"Yes," he said, and his voice rang out with a strange doubt and trouble—"yes, it is my ring!"
Ralph Duncombe stood looking at the ring as a man looks upon some trinket he has happened on that belonged to some dearly loved friend long since dead. The ring he had given to Leslie! Back in a flash came the memory of that morning he had given it to her. The sea, the beach, the lovely face floated before his eyes and made him giddy. He had just asked this sweet, innocent girl to be his wife; he had no right, no wish to think of Leslie as a lover, and yet—ah, well, in the heart, as in heaven, there are many manoeuvres, and for the moment the old love filled the biggest place in Ralph Duncombe's heart.
"What is the matter?" asked Lucy, with faint wonder at his silence and stillness. "Is it so very precious a ring? Let me look at it. Would you have been very sorry if you had lost it?"
"Very," he said, scarcely knowing what he said.
"How glad I am that I found it! You must have dropped it as you came in. How careless of you!"
"No," he said, bravely; he could no more prevaricate before that sweet innocence than lie outright. "No, Lucy, I did not drop it just now. I parted with it a long while ago, and I have not seen it since until now."
Lucy gazed up at him open-eyed.
"Then how did it come here?" she asked, in an awestruck whisper. "To whom did you give it? A gentleman, of course?"
"No," he said, after a moment's hesitation. "It was to——."
Before he could add 'a woman,' a voice low and clear, a voice which thrilled him and awoke the echo—thank God, for Lucy's sake—only the echo—of his old passion, was heard in the doorway.
"Lucy, are you there?"
It was Leslie's voice! Ralph Duncombe started, and in the shock of surprise seized Lucy's arm.
"Who is that?" he breathed, in a hushed whisper, his eyes fixed on the doorway.
"Why, how nervous you are!" she said, laughing softly, but a little timidly, for she had seen him start, and felt the pressure of his hand. "Who should it be but my friend, Miss Lisle?"
"Miss—Lisle!" he repeated.
Something in his voice startled Lucy, and she shrank from him the slightest bit in the world. But he noticed it, and he put his arm round her.
"Your—your fellow teacher is called Leslie Lisle?" he said.
"I didn't say 'Leslie,'" said Lucy, half-frightened; "but it is Leslie."
As she spoke, a tall, slim figure in a white dress appeared against the dim background of the open doorway, then came towards them, then stopped.
"Is that you, Lucy? You are not alone——." As she stopped her eyes glanced quickly from one to the other, dilating as she looked; then her face grew crimson, and she spoke his name: "Ralph!"
"Leslie!" he answered, and made a movement towards her; then, as if suddenly remembering the wondering, frightened girl on his arm, stopped.
"You—you know one another!" said Lucy, at last, in a kind of gasp. "Oh, what does it mean?"
Ralph Duncombe, the ever ready, self-possessed city man, the man whose clerks regarded him as of iron rather than flesh and blood, stood biting his lip, and staring at the white figure motionless and dumb.
But the gods made women quick, and that glance from one to the other had told Leslie all their story. Trembling a little, but outwardly calm, she glided towards them.
"Yes," she said, slowly, distinctly, "Mr. Duncombe and I know each other. We are old, very old friends——."
"Friends?" fell from Lucy's quivering lips, and spoke doubtfully in her wide-open eyes.
"Yes, dear," said Leslie, softly, "great friends—nothing more." The last two words were breathed rather than spoken, and Lucy's lips opened with a deep sigh of relief, and the hand that had been gradually slipping, slipping from Ralph's arm, tightened again.
"This—this is a surprise, Les—Miss Lisle," he said at last,and his voice sounded almost harsh from his emotion. "Where have you been? What has happened?" he glanced at the black scarf, at the black ribbons on her sleeves, and his voice faltered.
Leslie's head drooped for a moment, then she raised it bravely.
"Yes!" she said, answering his unspoken question. "Months ago. I will tell you about it—presently. Will you both go in? You have something to tell me, I see," and she smiled. "I will come directly. I have lost something——."
Lucy took Ralph's hand and held it up.
"It is found," she said, and pointed to the ring solemnly. "It was to you he gave it, was it not, Leslie?" and a dark, a terrible fear, a pang almost of jealousy shook her heart.
Leslie motioned to Ralph to be silent, and taking Lucy's hand drew her towards her.
"Yes, Lucy," she said, in a low voice, every word thrilling intensely. "The ring was given to me by Mr. Duncombe. It was given to me as a pledge of friendship. It was a farewell gift. Given without requital; a pledge and a token that if ever I needed the donor's help I had but to send it as a message to find that help. Since the day he gave it to me I have not seen Mr. Duncombe, but I have not forgotten him nor ceased to cherish my ring. And yet," a sad little smile curved her lip. "I have lost it twice——."
Somehow, these last few words went farther to reassure Lucy than anything else could go. Lovers do not lose their love tokens! If Leslie had cared for Ralph, she would have taken better care of her ring.
"I—I don't understand—ah, yes, I do! I see it all!" she said, with a little sob, and looking from one to the other. "I understand it all! It is very natural," her voice choked a little. "Who could see you, know you, without loving you——."
"Hush, hush!" whispered Leslie in her ear. "That was so long ago that he has forgotten it. There is only one woman in the world he loves, and she is here!" and she drew Lucy's face against her bosom with a loving pressure.
Ralph Duncombe stood, as a man in such a situation must stand, silent and awkward. It seemed as if both had clean forgotten him, but suddenly Leslie held out her hand to him.
"We have not shaken hands yet," she said, with a little laugh, "and we are keeping you outside in the most inhospitable fashion. Pray come in!" and she went in, still holding Lucy to her.
"Now let me turn up the lamp; how the evenings draw in, do they not? Supper is ready, and——." Then she broke down, and sinking into a chair, leant her head in her hands.
Lucy knelt beside her and soothed her.
"It is her father she is thinking of," she whispered to Ralph with womanly instinct; she knew that Leslie would have died rather than weep over a lost lover before that lover and the woman who had won him. "It is of her father; the sight ofyou has brought it all back to her! Oh, how wonderful it all is! To think that you——."
"I'd better go!" said Ralph, with a man's aptitude at doing the wrong thing.
"No, no! wait till she has got over it. She will be all right in a moment; you don't know how brave she is."
Indeed, almost in a moment Leslie had dried her tears.
"Forgive me!" she murmured penitently. "How selfish you must think me! and I am so full of happiness at her happiness too! And it was to this gentleman—this old friend of mine—you gave the fern root, and it was he who drove you and Jenny home in the rain!"
"Yes! isn't it like a fairy story, Leslie? And you are really glad?" she asked wistfully.
Leslie took the upturned face in her hand.
"Gladder than I have ever been in my life—than I have been for, ah! so long!" she corrected herself. "If I could have chosen your future for you I would have chosen just this that fate has planned. You will make each other very, very happy, I know! Now sit down, Mr. Duncombe. I will promise not to—not to cry again. Lucy, cut some bread. I will be back in a moment."
As she left the room, Lucy stole half timidly up to Ralph.
"Oh, how could you think of me after—after loving her!" she whispered.
He bent his head and kissed her.
"Say no more, Lucy," he said gravely. "Let the past bury its dead. Yes I—I loved her; but she—I was no more to her, never could have been more to her, than just a friend. I know it now; are you satisfied, dearest?"
She looked into his eyes for a moment, a look which seemed to sink into his soul; then she let her head fall on his breast with a sigh of peace. When Leslie came down there were no tears in her eyes, and presently, of her own accord, she spoke of her father's death, and told Ralph Duncombe how she had met with Lucy, and how they had passed their exams and obtained the school. But not one word did she say of Yorke. Ralph noticed this.
"And why did you not send to me?" he said reproachfully.
Leslie shook her head.
"You were too proud!" he said.
"Yes, that was it," she admitted quietly. "I was too proud."
"And it would have given me much pleasure to have helped you!" he said. "Is there nothing I can do now? Can you think of nothing?"
Leslie shook her head with a faint smile.
"We have everything we want, have we not, Lucy?" she said.
Lucy blushed. She certainly had.
"No, there is nothing," continued Leslie, then she stopped and he looked up quickly.
"There is something you have thought of?" he said.
Leslie's head drooped thoughtfully.
"Yes, there is something," she said. Lucy got up as if to leave the room; but Leslie put out a hand and stayed her. "No, dear, it is no secret; besides, if it were, you must not keep secrets from each other. Wait a moment."
Lucy and Ralph exchanged glances.
"Do you know anything?" he asked.
Lucy shook her head.
"No," she replied in an awed whisper, "she has told me nothing of her past—nothing. We love each other like sisters, and I think there is no one in the world half so good or sweet as Leslie, but I should not dare—yes, that is the word—to ask for her confidence."
Leslie came back into the room. She had a small packet in her hand, and she laid it on the table before Ralph Duncombe.
"I am going to ask you to do something for me," she said with a smile that flickered sadly, as if it were very near tears. "I wish you to give this to the person to whom it is addressed."
Ralph Duncombe took up the packet.
"The Duke of Rothbury!" he said aloud.
Lucy opened her eyes.
"You may open it," said Leslie in a low voice. "It is of value—great value, I believe. If it had not been I would have sent it by post. Yes, open it."
Ralph Duncombe opened the packet and stared amazed.
"It is of great value," he said gravely; "and—and I am to give it to the Duke of Rothbury?"
"Yes," said Leslie, her lips quivering. The sight of the sorrow which she was trying to hide stirred him past repression.
"He gave you this?" he said.
"Yes, but—but do not ask me any questions, please," she faltered.
Her color came and went.
"It is not necessary," he said. "You have suffered, and at his hands——."
"No—no——."
"But it is yes, yes!" he said, with restrained passion, and with a strange perplexity. Great heaven, what a mistake Lady Eleanor had made! It was not Lord Auchester then, but the Duke of Rothbury Leslie had been going to marry.
"I will give it him," he said sternly.
Leslie looked up with a sudden glance of apprehension.
"Give it to him; but that is all!" she said meaningly. "There is nothing to be said—or done."
"You mean that if—if he has injured you, you have forgiven him?" he said.
"Long, long ago!" she breathed. "You may say that, if—if there should be occasion, but no more."
He bowed his head.
"It shall be as you wish," he said; "your word is a law to me."
"I knew you would do it for me," she said in a low voice; "would understand."
Then, as if she wished the subject to be closed, she began to talk of his and Lucy's strange meeting, and their future.
"It is the greatest pity in the world that you should have happened to be passing the day Lucy was frightened by the wild horseman, for the Government will lose one of its best teachers."
"And I shall gain one of the best of wives!" he murmured. They talked for half an hour, and Leslie seemed as light-hearted as they, but presently she stole out of the room, looking over her shoulder in the doorway with a "good-night."
"Do you understand it?" whispered Lucy, as he took her in his arms to say farewell. "Does it mean that Leslie might have been a duchess?"
"Yes, I think so," he said. "I don't quite understand it; I feel as if I were groping in the dark with just a glimmer of light. But, anyhow, I know, I am sure that the fault, if there was any, was his, and I wish that she had left me free to tell him so and exact reparation."
"Ah, but that is just what you must not do!" said Lucy sternly. "It is just what Leslie does not want. You are to give him back the diamonds and say nothing excepting that she forgives him!"
He nodded with a sigh.
"Poor Leslie! How she must have suffered!"
"Yes, you can see that by her face, even now; and it is ever so much happier and brighter than when I saw it first. Ah, Ralph, I wish she were as happy as we are!"
Ralph Duncombe, as he drove along the road to White Place with the diamond pendant in his pocket, felt like a man struggling with a tremendous enigma. Lady Eleanor had evidently made a terrible and unaccountable blunder in stating and believing that it was Yorke Auchester whom Leslie was going to marry. How could she have made such a mistake? And what had happened to break off the marriage? Had the duke jilted Leslie? At the thought—though he was in love with Lucy now—his face grew red with anger and he felt that, duke or no duke, he would have called him to account but for Leslie's injunction.
When he reached White Place he found Lady Eleanor pacing up and down the room with an open letter in her hand, and she turned to greet him with a smile on her flushed face.
"You have good news?" he said.
"Yes." She nodded twice with a joyous light in her eyes. "I have heard from Lord Auchester. He is coming back the day after to-morrow. He and the Duke of Rothbury——."
Ralph started, and his face darkened.
"The Duke of Rothbury?" he said. "I am glad of that, Lady Eleanor, for I wish to see him. And, Lady Eleanor, I have something to tell you—something you will be glad to hear. There has been a strange and awkward mistake. It was notLord Auchester who was going to marry Miss—Miss Lisle, but the Duke of Rothbury."
Lady Eleanor's face paled, and she caught her breath.
"Not—Yorke! The duke! Ah, no, no! That cannot be!"
"Pardon me, but I am right," he said, rather sternly.
She shook her head.
"No, no; I saw—" She stopped, and the color flew to her face. "I saw him buying the—the wedding ring."
Ralph stared at her, then he smiled grimly.
"He may have bought a ring, but not for himself," he said. "It may have been for the duke, for it was the duke she was going to marry, Lady Eleanor."
"How—how do you know?"
"Miss Lisle herself told me."
She started.
"She! Where—where is she?"
"She is the teacher at the school at Newfold."
Lady Eleanor sank into a chair, and looked up at him with frightened eyes.
"Here—so near? Oh, let me think!" and she clasped her hands over her eyes.
"That is what I have been doing; thinking," he said grimly. "It has been a terrible blunder. I do not know all the circumstances—scarcely any, indeed—of the case; I only know that it was the duke to whom she was engaged."
"Was? Then it is broken off?"
"Yes," he said gravely. "By Miss Lisle—for good and sufficient reasons, I am certain."
She looked at him keenly.
"You know her—you have known her all along." She saw him color, and added in a breath—"Ah, I understand!"
"Yes," he said, "I have known Miss Lisle a long time. I had hoped once to induce her to become my wife, but——."
"And now?"
"I am engaged to another lady," he said, rather stiffly. "Miss Lisle refused me. That is all that need be said on that point, Lady Eleanor."
She inclined her head.
"It has been a terrible blunder," she said thoughtfully. "But—ah, what a load your news has removed from my heart! Not Lord Auchester, but the duke!"
She closed her eyes and drew a long breath. Yorke was all her own now!
"Can you tell me the duke's address. Lady Eleanor?" he asked after a pause.
"His London house is in Grosvenor Square. He will go there, and not to Rothbury, on his return to England. Do you want to see him?" she added. "Why?"
"I have a small matter of business with his grace," he replied.
Lady Eleanor looked at his grave face apprehensively.
"You will not——."
"Tell him anything that has occurred? Scarcely, Lady Eleanor," he said. "That which you and I did in regard to these bills and Lord Auchester's money affairs must forever remain secret. Erase it from your memory."
"Ah, if I could!" she murmured. "When I think of the possibility of his knowing——."
"It is not likely that he will ever know," he said. "The secret is yours and mine alone. You say that Lord Auchester is returning the day after to-morrow?"
"Yes."
"In that case, Lady Eleanor, my visits to White Place must cease. You will not need any help of mine in the future—I need not say that I should be as ready and willing to be of assistance to you as I have ever been—but it will be better that all communication between us should cease. You will not misunderstand me?"
"No, no! I understand," she said. "I am very grateful for all you have done. But for you I should not be as happy as I am."
"I am glad to have helped you to that happiness, however slightly," he said. "And I trust that you may be happier still in the future. Good-by, Lady Eleanor."
He held her hand for a moment or two, then left her. He had no desire to see her again. If he could have done so, he would have wiped from his memory the plot in which he had been concerned with her to drive Lord Auchester into her arms; indeed, as he drove through the silent night he felt heartily ashamed of it. He thought of Leslie and Lucy throughout the journey with a strange sense of confusion. He loved the gentle girl who had given him her heart, but he would remain Leslie's friend and champion. That the Duke of Rothbury had in some way behaved badly to her he felt assured, and but for his promise to Leslie he would have called him to account. As it was, he had bound himself to the simple return of the diamond pendant.
He carried it in his breast pocket for the two following days, and on the third went to Grosvenor Square.
"Yes, sir; his grace is at home, but I do not know whether he can see you. I will ask his gentleman."
Grey came into the hall, and shook his head as Ralph Duncombe preferred a request for an interview.
"His grace only returned yesterday, and is very tired, sir," he said. "I am afraid he cannot see you."
Ralph Duncombe wrote on the back of his card, "From Miss Lisle," and enclosed it in an envelope.
"Give that to his grace," he said.
Grey came back after a few minutes.
"His grace will see you, sir. Follow me, if you please," and he led the way to the study at the back of the hall.
The duke was lying on the adjustable couch, and the sight of his wasted form and deathlike face startled Ralph Duncombe and drove all the anger from his heart.
The duke signed to Grey to withdraw, then raised himself on his elbow and looked at Ralph Duncombe keenly.
"You wish to see me?" he said.
"Yes," said Ralph, and unconsciously he lowered his voice.
"And you come from—Miss Lisle?" A faint, very faint color tinged the transparent face.
"I do, your grace. I am charged with a simple mission. Miss Lisle bids me return this to your grace," and he held out the packet.
The duke took it and opened it, and gazed at the pendant as it flashed in the palm of his hand.
"She told you to return it to me? I did not give——." He stopped.
"I was to return it to the Duke of Rothbury," said Ralph, rather sternly.
"To—the—Duke of Rothbury; yes, yes," said the duke in a low voice, and the color deepened in his face. "You have come from Miss Lisle? You know where she is; may I ask her address?"
"I cannot give it to your grace," said Ralph.
The duke flashed his eyes—they glittered in their dark rings—then he let them fall, and sighed.
"I understand. At least you will tell me whether she is well and—and happy?"
Ralph Duncombe's wrath smouldered.
"She is well now, and I trust happy," he said.
"Now? Has she been ill?"
"Ill and in great trouble. Her father is dead——."
The duke raised himself to an upright position, then sank back.
"Poor girl, poor girl!" he murmured.
Ralph Duncombe flushed.
"Miss Lisle neither asks nor would accept your pity, your grace," he said, sternly. "I am ignorant of the events connected with that gift or its return. I do not wish to know anything about it, but of this I am assured—that Miss Lisle desires to hold no further communication with you."
The duke was silent for a moment.
"Very good," he said at last. "I understand. But I think if she knew how much I desire her forgiveness for the deceit I practised upon her, and how near I am to that land which forgiveness cannot reach, she would not refuse to forgive me."
"I have discharged my mission," said Ralph coldly. He could not bring himself to convey Leslie's forgiveness.
The duke touched an electric bell.
"I wish you good day, sir," he said, and sank back with a sigh. But, after Ralph Duncombe had gone, he opened his hand and looked at the diamond pendant, which still lay in his palm.
"Yorke had given her this," he said musingly. "But why did she send it to me? Why? What shall I do with it? Give it to him? Dare I do so just now? Will it be safe to call upsleeping memories? Had I not better wait until—until after the wedding?"
He decided that he would do so, and carefully placing the pendant in the drawer of a cabinet that stood near his elbow, he sank back again and closed his eyes. But his lips moved long afterwards, and "Poor girl, poor girl!" came from them, as if he were still thinking of her.
The weeks rolled on, and the wedding morn of Yorke and Eleanor Dallas stood but three days off. It was to be a quiet wedding, in consequence of the death of Lord Eustace and his two sons; but the heir to the great dukedom of Rothbury could not be married without some slight fuss, and the society papers contained interesting little paragraphs concerning the event. The happy young people were to be married at a little church in Newfold, a picturesque village near Lady Eleanor Dallas's seat, White Place. There were to be only two bridesmaids, cousins of the bride, and the great Duke of Rothbury himself was to be the bridegroom's best man, provided that the duke should be well enough, the paragraphist went on to say, adding that, as was well known, the duke had been in bad health of late. After the ceremony the young couple were to start for the South of France, and on their return it had been arranged that they should go to Rothbury Castle, the seat of the duke, who intended handing over the management of the vast estate to his heir.
Lady Eleanor read these and similar paragraphs until she had got them by heart. To her the days seemed to drag along with forty-eight hours to each, and they had appeared all the longer in consequence of Yorke's absence, for on the plea of having to make his preparations, and business for the duke, he had not paid many visits to White Place since his return from Italy. But though Eleanor felt his absence acutely she was too wise to complain.
"I shall have him altogether presently," was the thought that consoled her. "All my own, my own with no fear of anything or anybody coming between us."
But she was terribly restless, and wandered about the grounds, and from room to room, 'where bridal array was littered all around,' as if she were possessed of some uneasy spirit.
"If one could only send you into a mesmeric sleep and wake you just before the ceremony, my dear Nell, it would be a delightful arrangement for all concerned," said Lady Denby. "It is the man who is generally supposed to be the nervous party in the business, but I'll be bound Yorke is as cool as a cucumber."
If not exactly as cool as that much abused vegetable, Yorke certainly showed very little excitement, and as he walked into the duke's study on the evening of the third day before that appointed for the wedding, the duke, glancing at him keenly, remarked on his placidity.
"You take things easily, Yorke," he said.
"As how?" said Yorke, dropping into a chair, and poking the fire.
"Well, you don't look as flurried as a nearly married man is supposed to look."
"I am not flurried," he said. "Why should I be?" and he looked round with the poker in his hand. "Fleming has seen about the clothes, the banns have been put up, and the tickets taken. There is nothing more to be done on my side, I imagine. No, I am not at all flurried."
"But you look tired," said the duke. "Is everything all right at Rothbury?" Yorke had just come from there.
"Yes," he replied listlessly. "I saw Lang about those leases and arranged about the timber, and I told them to have everything ready for you. I am glad you are going to winter there, Dolph. You will be as comfortable, now that the whole place is warmed by that hot water arrangement, as if you were at Nice, and will have the satisfaction, in addition, of knowing that you are benefitting the people around. They complained sadly of the place being shut up so much."
"Well, you can alter that," said the duke. "You like the place and can live there five or six months out of the year. I believe it is supposed to be one of the nicest places in the kingdom."
Yorke nodded and leant back, his eyes fixed on the fire.
"You dine here to-night?" asked the duke after a pause.
Yorke nodded again.
"Thanks, yes. I'll take my dinner in here with you, if you don't mind."
"No, I don't mind," said the duke with a smile of gratitude and affection lighting up his wan face. "I wish you were going to dine in here with me for the rest of my life; but that's rather selfish, isn't it? Don't be longer away than you can help, Yorke. It may happen that Eleanor will get tired of the Continent; if she should, come home at once."
"Very well," said Yorke. "I am in her hands, of course."
"Of course, and you couldn't be in better or sweeter."
"No," assented Yorke absently. "Did you send back that draft of the leases I posted to you?"
"Eh?" The duke thought a moment. "No, I didn't. I forgot all about them."
Yorke smiled.
"You see that it is time I handed in my checks and allowed a better man to take the berth," said the duke cheerfully. "I'm very sorry, especially as you have taken so much trouble about the business. Let me see, where did I put them? I'm ashamed to say I've forgotten. Look in that bureau drawer, will you?"
Yorke got up and sauntered across the room. He looked very tall and thin in his dark mourning suit of black serge, and the duke noticed that he was paler than when he had seen him last, paler and more tired looking.
"Never mind," he said. "Let the lawyers make out fresh ones."
"Oh, I'll find 'em," said Yorke. "You have stuffed them in somewhere," and he opened drawer after drawer, in the free and easy manner in which a favorite son opens the drawers and cupboards of a father. "I'll back you for carefully mislaying things, especially papers, against any man in England—excepting myself."
"Grey always sees to them. He has spoilt me," remarked the duke apologetically.
"That's what I tell my man Fleming," said Yorke. "I should mislay my head if he didn't put it on straight every morning when he brushed my hair."
The duke laughed.
"They are a pattern pair," he said. "Don't trouble. Ring for Grey."
But Yorke in an absent mechanical fashion still sauntered round the room searching for the missing drafts, and presently he opened the drawer of the small cabinet which generally stood beside the duke's couch, but which this evening was immediately behind him.
Yorke opened the drawer and turned over the things, and was closing it again when his eyes caught the glitter of diamonds.
"You keep a choice collection of things in these drawers of yours, Dolph," he said.
"What is it?" asked the duke.
Yorke pulled out the pendant.
"Only diamonds," he said, "and very handsome ones, too. Where on earth did you get them, and who are they for? Perhaps I'd better not go poking about any longer, or I shall come upon some secret——." He stopped suddenly. He had been speaking in a tone of lazy badinage, scarcely heeding what he was saying, until suddenly he recognized the pendant.
"Oh, I've no secrets," said the duke. "What is it you have found! Ah!" He had swung himself round by the lever and saw Yorke gazing at the pendant lying in his hand.
"Where did you get this?" demanded Yorke. The duke looked at his face as he asked the question. It was grave, with curiosity and surprise; but the duke was glad to see that it showed no keener emotion, and told himself that Yorke was forgetting Leslie.
"Do you recognize it?" he asked.
"Yes," said Yorke slowly. "It is a thing I gave——." He stopped. "How did it come here? Where did you get it?"
"It was brought to me," said the duke in a low voice.
"Brought to you? Why to you?" Yorke demanded, looking up from the pendant. What memories it awakened!
"I cannot tell you."
"Who brought it?"
"A man by the name of—I forget. His card is in the drawer."
Yorke looked.
"No, it is not here."
"Then it is lost. His name—his name—yes, I remember. It was Duncombe. Ralph Duncombe."
"Ralph Duncombe?" Yorke spoke the name two or three times. He seemed to think that he had heard it before, but he could not recall it. He put the pendant in his pocket, and went and stood before the fire with his back to the duke.
"Did he give no message—no explanation?" he asked.
"No," said the duke. "He acted as if he thought I had sent the thing to her."
Yorke did not look round. Why had Finetta sent back the pendant, and why had she sent it to the duke instead of to him, Yorke?
"You don't want to talk about it?" said the duke after a pause.
"No, I don't," assented Yorke grimly. "There are some things one would prefer to forget."
"Ah, if one could, if one could!" muttered the duke.
The dinner came in soon afterwards; and the two men talked of the approaching marriage, of the plans for the winter, of the game at Rothbury, of everything but the diamond pendant. Then suddenly Yorke, who had been answering in an absent-minded kind of way, uttered an exclamation.
"What is the matter?" demanded the duke.
"Nothing," said Yorke sharply. Then he looked at his watch. "Do you mind my leaving you before the coffee?"
"Not a bit. Where are you going?"
Yorke made no reply, perhaps he did not hear. He got up, and rang for Grey to bring his hat.
"I shall not be back till late, Dolph," he said. "Don't sit up."
He had remembered suddenly where he had seen this Ralph Duncombe's name. It was the man who had hunted him down to the ruin from which Eleanor had saved him; and it was by this man Finetta had sent back the diamond pendant. There was only one conclusion to be drawn from the coincidence; it was Finetta, then, who had sought to revenge herself for his desertion of her, by planning his ruin and disgrace. It was she who had brought about this marriage of his, this marriage which would enslave him for life.
Yorke was not a bad-tempered man, nor a malignant, but at that moment he was possessed of a burning desire to confront Finetta, and charge her with her perfidy.
He went down the Strand and entered the Diadem. The stall-keeper looked at him with lively surprise and interest.
"Glad to see you back, my lord," he said, with profound respect.
Yorke took the programme and glanced at it.
"Miss Finetta appears to-night?" he asked.
"Oh, yes, my lord! She will be on in a few minutes."
Yorke sat bolt upright in his stall, glaring at the stage. There were several persons in the front of the house who knew him, but he looked neither to the left nor the right. His heart was on fire. The false-hearted woman! She had pretended to bid him farewell in peace and friendship, and had betrayed him! Yes, he would wait until the performance was over, and would go round and confront her. There should be no scene, but he would tell her that her baseness was known, and, if possible, shame her.
It was a foolish resolve, but, alas! Yorke was never celebrated for wisdom.
The orchestra played the opening to the second act, the usual chorus sang, and the usual comic man cracked the time-honored wheezes, and then the band played a few bars of an evidently well known melody, for the gallery greeted the music with an anticipatory cheer, and a moment afterwards Finetta bounded on the stage. There was a roar of delighted welcome, and amidst it she came sailing and smiling gracefully down to the footlights, her dark eyes flashing round with a half-languorous, half-defiant gleam in them of which the public was so fond.
Then suddenly she saw the well known face there in the stalls. For a second she paused in her slow, waltzing step, and looked at him with a look that he might well take for fear. The conductor of the band glanced up, surprised; it was the first time Finetta had ever missed a step. But before he could pull the band together and catch up the lost bar she had gone on dancing, and danced with her accustomed grace and precision.
Yorke watched her with a grim fury. This smiling, dancing jade had plotted to ruin him, had tried to drive him into a debtors' court—worse, had forced him to marry Eleanor Dallas! He could have sprung up there and then and accused her of her vileness; and the desire to do so was so great that he was on the point of rising to leave the theater and await her at the stage door, when suddenly he saw her falter and stumble, and the next instant—the same instant—she had disappeared, and in the spot where she had just stood was a gaping hole.
The house rose with a gasp, a sigh of horror that rose to a yell of indignation and accusation.
It was the old story: 'Someone had blundered' and left the trap door unbolted, and London's favorite dancer had danced upon it and gone down to the depths beneath.
The audience rose, yelling, shouting, pushing this way and that; the curtain was lowered, the lights turned up, and the manager, in the inevitable evening dress, appeared, with his hand upon his heart. He assured the audience that Miss Finetta was not hurt—not seriously hurt—and that though itwould not be wise for her to dance again that evening, he trusted that she would appear again to-morrow night, etc., etc.
Yorke waited till the plausible excuse was concluded, then he quietly—in a dream, as it were—went out and round to the stage door.
And one line of the Book he had, alas! read too seldom, rang in his ears as he went: "Vengeance is Mine!"
The stage door keeper knew him in a moment, but in answer to Yorke's inquiry if he could see Miss Finetta, shook his head.
"I don't know, sir! There's a rumor that she's kil——."
Yorke pushed by him and made his way to the dressing rooms. There was a crowd of chorus girls and supers surging to and fro in the corridor and clustered together in little knots; all talking in hurried whispers.
They made way for Yorke and he knocked at the door of Finetta's dressing room. The manager opened it.
"Is it the doctor—oh, it's you, my lord!" he said in a whisper. "It's an awful thing! In the middle of the season, too!"
"Is she——," began Yorke in a low voice, hoarse with agitation. But low as it was it was heard by someone within the room, for Finetta's voice, weak and hollow with pain, said:
"Is that you, Yorke? Let him come in!"