"There has not been a sound to-dayTo break the calm of Nature:Nor motion, I might almost say,Of life, or living creature,Of waving bough, or warbling bird,Or cattle faintly lowing:I could have half believed I heardThe leaves and blossoms growing."
"There has not been a sound to-dayTo break the calm of Nature:Nor motion, I might almost say,Of life, or living creature,Of waving bough, or warbling bird,Or cattle faintly lowing:I could have half believed I heardThe leaves and blossoms growing."
Indeed, no sound disturbs the sacred silence save the crisp rustle of the dead leaves, as they are trodden into the ground.
Over the meadows and into the wood goes Mona, to where a streamlet runs, that is her special joy,—being of the garrulous and babbling order, which is, perhaps, the nearest approach to divine music that nature can make. But to-day the stream is swollen, is enlarged beyond all recognition, and, being filled with pride at its own promotion, has forgotten its little loving song, and is rushing onward with a passionate roar to the ocean.
Down from the cataract in the rocks above the water comes with a mighty will, foaming, glistening, shouting a loud triumphant paen as it flings itself into the arms of the vain brook beneath, that only yesterday-eve was a stream, but to-day may well be deemed a river.
Up high the rocks are overgrown with ferns, and drooping things, all green and feathery, that hide small caves and picturesque crannies, through which the bright-eyed Naiads might peep whilst holding back with bare uplifted arms their amber hair, the better to gaze upon the unconscious earth outside.
A loose stone that has fallen from its home in the mountain-side above uprears itself in the middle of this turbulent stream. But it is too far from the edge, and Mona, standing irresolutely on the brink, pauses, as though half afraid to take the step that must either land her safely on the other side or else precipitate her into the angry little river.
As she thus ponders within herself, Spice and Allspice, the two dogs, set up a simultaneous howl, and immediately afterwards a voice says, eagerly,—
"Wait, Mrs. Rodney. Let me help you across."
Mona starts, and, looking up, sees the Australian coming quickly towards her.
"You are very kind. The river is greatly swollen," she says, to gain time. Geoffrey, perhaps, will not like her to accept any civility at the hands of this common enemy.
"Not so much so that I cannot help you to cross over in safety, if you will only trust yourself to me," replies he.
Still she hesitates, and he is not slow to notice the eloquent pause.
"Is it worth so much thought?" he says, bitterly. "It surely will not injure you fatally to lay your hand in mine for one instant."
"You mistake me," says Mona, shocked at her own want of courtesy; and then she extends to him her hand, and, setting her foot upon the huge stone, springs lightly to his side.
Once there she has to go with him down the narrow woodland path, there being no other, and so paces on, silently, and sorely against her will.
"Sir Nicholas has sent me an invitation for the 19th," he says, presently, when the silence has become unendurable.
"Yes," says Mona, devoutly hoping he is going to say he means to refuse it. But such devout hope is wasted.
"I shall go," he says, doggedly, as though divining her secret wish.
"I am sure we shall all be very glad," she says, faintly, feeling herself bound to make some remark.
"Thanks!" returns he, with an ironical laugh. "How excellently your tone agrees with your words?"
Another pause. Mona is on thorns. Will the branching path, that may give her a chance of escaping a furthertete-a-tetewith him, never be reached?
"So Warden failed you?" he says, presently, alluding to old Elspeth's nephew.
"Yes,—so far," returns she, coldly.
"It was a feeble effort," declares he, contemptuously striking with his cane the trunks of the trees as he goes by them.
"Yet I think Warden knows more than he cares to tell," says Mona, at a venture. Why, she herself hardly knows.
He turns, as though by an irrepressible impulse, to look keenly at her. His scrutiny endures only for an instant. Then he says, with admirable indifference,—
"You have grounds for saying so, of course?"
"Perhaps I have. Do you deny I am in the right?" asks she, returning his gaze undauntedly.
He drops his eyes, and the low, sneering laugh she has learned to know and to hate so much comes again to his lips.
"It would be rude to deny that," he says, with a slight shrug. "I am sure you are always in the right."
"If I am, Warden surely knows more about the will than he has sworn to."
"It is very probable,—if there ever was such a will. How should I know? I have not cross-examined Warden on this or any other subject. He is an overseer over my estate, a mere servant, nothing more."
"Has he the will?" asks Mona, foolishly, but impulsively.
"He may have, and a stocking full of gold, and the roc's egg, or anything else, for aught I know. I never saw it. They tell me there was an iniquitous and most unjust will drawn up some years ago by old Sir George: that is all I know."
"By your grandfather!" corrects Mona, in a peculiar tone.
"Well, by my grandfather, if you so prefer it," repeats he, with much unconcern. "It got itself, if it ever existed, irretrievably lost, and that is all any one knows about it."
Mona is watching him intently.
"Yet I feel sure—I know," she says, tremulously, "you are hiding something from me. Why do you not look at me when you answer my questions?"
At this his dark face flames, and his eyes instinctively, yet almost against his will, seek hers.
"Why?" he says, with suppressed passion. "Because, each time I do, I know myself to be—what I am! Your truthful eyes are mirrors in which my heart lies bare." With an effort he recovers himself, and, drawing his breath quickly, grows calm again. "If I were to gaze at you as often as I should desire, you would probably deem me impertinent," he says, with a lapse into his former half-insolent tone.
"Answer me," persists Mona, not heeding—nay, scarcely hearing—his last speech. "You said once it would be difficult to lie to me. Do you know anything of this missing will?"
"A great deal. I should. I have heard of almost nothing else since my arrival in England," replies he, slowly.
"Ah! Then you refuse to answer me," says Mona, hastily, if somewhat wearily.
He makes no reply. And for a full minute no word is spoken between them.
Then Mona goes on quietly,—
"That night at Chetwoode you made use of some words that I have never forgotten since."
He is plainly surprised. He is indeed glad. His face changes, as if by magic, from sullen gloom to pleasurable anticipation.
"You have remembered something that I said, for eleven days?" he says, quickly.
"Yes. When talking then of supplanting Sir Nicholas at the Towers, you spoke of your project as a 'splendid scheme.' What did you mean by it? I cannot get the words out of my head since. Is 'scheme' an honest word?"
Her tone is only too significant. His face has grown black again. A heavy frown sits on his brow.
"You are not perhaps aware of it, but your tone is insulting," he begins, huskily. "Were you a man I could give you an answer, now, here; but as it is I am of course tied hand and foot. You can say to me what you please. And I shall bear it. Think as badly of me as you will. I am a schemer, a swindler, what you will!"
"Even in my thoughts I never applied those words to you," says Mona, earnestly. "Yet some feeling here"—laying her hand upon her heart—"compels me to believe you are not dealing fairly by us." To her there is untruth in every line of his face, in every tone of his voice.
"You condemn me without a hearing, swayed by the influence of a carefully educated dislike," retorts he:
"'Alas for the rarityOf Christian charityUnder the sun!'
"'Alas for the rarityOf Christian charityUnder the sun!'
But I blame the people you have fallen among,—not you."
"Blame no one," says Mona. "But if there is anything in your own heart to condemn you, then pause before you go further in this matter of the Towers."
"I wonderyouare not afraid of going too far," he puts in, warningly, his dark eyes flashing.
"I am afraid of nothing," says Mona, simply. "I am not half so much afraid as you were a few moments since, when you could not let your eyes meet mine, and when you shrank from answering me a simple question. In my turn I tell you to pause before going too far."
"Your advice is excellent," says he, sneeringly. Then suddenly he stops short before her, and breaks out vehemently,——
"Were I to fling up this whole business and resign my chance, and leave these people in possession, what would I gain by it?" demands he. "They have treated me from the beginning with ignominy and contempt. You alone have treated me with common civility; and even you they have tutored to regard me with averted eyes."
"You are wrong," says Mona, coldly. "They seldom trouble themselves to speak of you at all." This is crueller than she knows.
"Why don't I hate you?" he says, with some emotion. "How bitterly unkind even the softest, sweetest women can be! Yet there is something about you that subdues me and renders hatred impossible. If I had never met you, I should be a happier man."
"How can you be happy with a weight upon your heart?" says Mona, following out her own thoughts irrespective of his. "Give up this project, and peace will return to you."
"No, I shall pursue it to its end," returns, he, with slow malice, that makes her heart grow cold, "until the day comes that shall enable me to plant my heel upon these aristocrats and crush them out of recognition."
"And after that what will remain to you?" asks she, pale but collected. "It is bare comfort when hatred alone reigns in the heart. With such thoughts in your breast what can you hope for?—what can life give you?"
"Something," replies he, with a short laugh. "I shall at least see you again on the 19th."
He raises his hat, and, turning abruptly away, is soon lost to sight round a curve in the winding pathway. He walks steadily and with an unflinching air, but when the curve has hidden him from her eyes he stops short, and sighs heavily.
"To love such a woman as that, and be beloved by her, how it would change a man's whole nature, no matter how low he may have sunk," he says, slowly. "It would mean salvation! But as it is—No, I cannot draw back now: it is too late."
Meantime Mona has gone quickly back to the Towers her mind disturbed and unsettled. Has she misjudged him? is it possible that his claim is a just one after all, and that she has been wrong in deeming him one who might defraud his neighbor?
She is sad and depressed before she reaches the hall door, where she is unfortunate enough to find a carriage just arrived, well filled with occupants eager to obtain admission.
They are the Carsons, mustered in force, and, if anything, a trifle more noisy and oppressive than usual.
"How d'ye do, Mrs. Rodney? Is Lady Rodney at home? I hope so," says Mrs. Carson, a fat, florid, smiling, impossible person of fifty.
Now, Lady Rodneyisat home, but, having given strict orders to the servants to say she is anywhere else they like,—that is, to tell as many lies as will save her from intrusion,—is just now reposing calmly in the small drawing-room, sleeping the sleep of the just, unmindful of coming evil.
Of all this Mona is unaware; though even were it otherwise I doubt if a lie could come trippingly to her lips, or a nice evasion be balanced there at a moment's notice. Such foul things as untruths are unknown to her, and have no refuge in her heart. It is indeed fortunate that on this occasion she knows no reason why her reply should differ from the truth, because in that case I think she would stand still, and stammer sadly, and grow uncomfortably red, and otherwise betray the fact that she would lie if she knew how.
As things are, however, she is able to smile pleasantly at Mrs. Carson, and tell her in her soft voice that Lady Rodney is at home.
"How fortunate!" says that fat woman, with her broad expansive grin that leaves her all mouth, with no eyes or nose to speak of. "We hardly dared hope for such good luck this charming day."
She doesn't put anyginto her "charming," which, however, is neither here or there, and is perhaps a shabby thing to take notice of at all.
Then she and her two daughters quit the "coach," as Carsonpereinsist on calling the landau, and flutter through the halls, and across the corridors, after Mona, until they reach the room that contains Lady Rodney.
Mona throws open the door, and the visitors sail in, all open-eyed and smiling, with their very best company manners hung out for the day.
But almost on the threshold they come to a full stop to gaze irresolutely at one another, and then over their shoulders at Mona. She, marking their surprise, comes hastily to the front, and so makes herself acquainted with the cause of their delay.
Overcome by the heat of the fire, her luncheon, and the blessed certainty that for this one day at least no one is to be admitted to her presence, Lady Rodney has given herself up a willing victim to the child Somnus. Her book—that amiable assistant of all those that court siestas—has fallen to the ground. Her cap is somewhat awry. Her mouth is partly open, and a snore—gentle, indeed, but distinct and unmistakable—comes from her patrician throat.
It is a moment never to be forgotten!
Mona, horror-stricken, goes quickly over to her, and touches her lightly on the shoulder.
"Mrs. Carson has come to see you," she says, in an agony of fear, giving her a little shake.
"Eh? What?" asks Lady Rodney, in a dazed fashion, yet coming back to life with amazing rapidity. She sits up. Then in an instant the situation explains itself to her; she collects herself, bestows one glance of passionate anger upon Mona, and then rises to welcome Mrs. Carson with her usual suave manner and bland smile, throwing into the former an air meant to convey the flattering idea that for the past week she has been living on the hope of seeing her soon again.
She excuses her unwonted drowsiness with a little laugh, natural and friendly, and begs them "not to betray her." Clothed in all this sweetness she drops a word or two meant to crush Mona; but that hapless young woman hears her not, being bent on explaining to Mrs. Carson that, as a rule, the Irish peasantry do not go about dressed only in glass beads, like the gay and festive Zulus, and that petticoats and breeches are not utterly unknown.
This is tough work, and takes her all her time, as Mrs. Carson, having made up her mind to the beads, accepts it rather badly being undeceived, and goes nearly so far as telling Mona that she knows little or nothing about her own people.
Then Violet and Doatie drop in, and conversation becomes general, and presently the visit comes to an end, and the Carsons fade away, and Mona is left to be bear the brunt of Lady Rodney's anger, which has been steadily growing, instead of decreasing, during the past half-hour.
"Are there no servants in my house," demands she, in a terrible tone, addressing Mona a steely light coming into her blue eyes that Mona knows and hates so well, "that you must feel it your duty to guide my visitors to my presence?"
"If I made a mistake I am sorry for it."
"It was unfortunate Mona should have met them at the hall door,—Edith Carson told me about it,—but it could not be helped," says Violet calmly.
"No, it couldn't be helped," says little Doatie. But their intervention only appears to add fuel to the fire of Lady Rodney's wrath.
"Itshallbe helped," she says, in a low, but condensed tone. "For the future I forbid any one in my house to take it upon them to say whether I am in or out. I am the one to decide that. On what principle did you show them in here?" she asks, turning to Mona, her anger increasing as she remembers the rakish cap: "why did you not say, when you were unlucky enough to find yourself face to face with them, that I was not at home?"
"Because you were at home," replies Mona, quietly, though in deep distress.
"That doesn't matter," says Lady Rodney: "it is a mere formula. If it suited your purpose you could have said so—I don't doubt—readily enough."
"I regret that I met them," says Mona, who will not say she regrets she told the truth.
"And to usher them in here! Into one of my most private rooms! Unlikely people, like the Carsons, whom you have heard me speak of in disparaging terms a hundred times! I don't know what you could have been thinking about. Perhaps next time you will be kind enough to bring them to my bedroom."
"You misunderstand me," says Mona, with tears in her eyes.
"I hardly think so. You can refuse to see people yourself when it suits you. Only yesterday, when Mr. Boer, our rector, called, and I sent for you, you would not come."
"I don't like Mr. Boer," says Mona, "and it was not me he came to see."
"Still, there was no necessity to insult him with such a message as you sent. Perhaps," with unpleasant meaning, "you do not understand that to say you are busy is rather more a rudeness than an excuse for one's non-appearance."
"It was true," says Mona: "I was writing letters for Geoffrey."
"Nevertheless, you might have waived that fact, and sent down word you had a headache."
"But I hadn't a headache," says Mona, bending her large truthful eyes with embarrassing earnestness upon Lady Rodney.
"Oh, if you were determined—" returns she, with a shrug.
"I was not determined: you mistake me," exclaims Mona, miserably. "I simply hadn't a headache: I never had one in my life,—and I shouldn't know how to get one!"
At this point, Geoffrey—who has been hunting all the morning—enters the room with Captain Rodney.
"Why, what is the matter?" he says, seeing signs of the lively storm on all their faces. Doatie explains hurriedly.
"Look here," says Geoffrey. "I won't have Mona spoiled. If she hadn't a headache, she hadn't, you know, and if you were at home, why, you were, and that's all about it. Why should she tell a lie about it?"
"What do you mean, Geoffrey?" demands his mother, with suppressed indignation.
"I mean that she shall remain just as she is. The world may be 'given to lying,' as Shakspeare tells us, but I will not have Mona tutored into telling fashionable falsehoods," says this intrepid young man facing his mother without a qualm of a passing dread. "A lie of any sort is base, and a prevarication is only a mean lie. She is truthful, let her stay so. Why should she learn it is the correct thing to say she is not at home when she is, or that she is suffering from a foolish megrim when she isn't? I don't suppose there is much harm in saying either of these things, as nobody ever believes them; but—let her remain as she is."
"Is she also to learn that you are at liberty to lecture your own mother?" asks Lady Rodney, pale with anger.
"I am not lecturing anyone," replies he, looking very like her, now that his face has whitened a little and a quick fire has lit itself within his eyes. "I am merely speaking against a general practice. 'Dare to be true: nothing can need a lie,' is a line that always returns to me. And, as I love Mona better than anything on earth, I shall make it the business of my life to see she is not made unhappy by any one."
At this Mona lifts her head, and turns upon him eyes full of the tenderest love and trust. She would have dearly liked to go to him, and place her arms round his neck, and thank him with a fond caress for this dear speech, but some innate sense of breeding restrains her.
Any demonstration on her part just now may make a scene, and scenes are ever abhorrent. And might she not yet further widen the breach between mother and son by an ill-timed show of affection for the latter?
"Still, sometimes, you know, it is awkward to adhere to the very letter of the law," says Jack Rodney, easily. "Is there no compromise? I have heard of women who have made a point of running into the kitchen-garden when unwelcome visitors were announced, and so saved themselves and their principles. Couldn't Mona do that?"
This speech is made much of, and laughed at for no reason whatever except that Violet and Doatie are determined to end the unpleasant discussion by any means, even though it may be at the risk of being deemed silly. After some careful management they get Mona out of the room, and carry her away with them to a little den off the eastern hall, that is very dear to them.
"It is the most unhappy thing I ever heard of," begins Doatie, desperately. "What Lady Rodney can see to dislike in you, Mona, I can't imagine. But the fact is, she is hateful to you. Now, we," glancing at Violet, "who are not particularly amiable, are beloved by her, whilst you, who are all 'sweetness and light,' she detests most heartily."
"It is true," says Violet, evenly. "Yet, dear Mona, I wish you could try to be a little more like the rest of the world."
"I want to very much," says poor Mona, her eyes filling with tears. "But," hopelessly, "must I begin by learning to tell lies?" All this teaching is very bitter to her.
"Lies! Oh, fie!" says Doatie. "Who tells lies? Nobody, except the naughty little boys in tracts, and they always break their legs off apple-trees, or else get drowned on a Sunday morning. Now, we are not drowned, and our legs are uninjured. No, a lie is a horrid thing,—so low, and in such wretched taste. But there are little social fibs that may be uttered,—little taradiddles,—that do no harm to anybody, and that nobody believes in, but all pretend to, just for the sake of politeness."
Thus Doatie, looking preternaturally wise, but faintly puzzled at her own view of the question.
"It doesn't sound right," says Mona, shaking her head.
"She doesn't understand," puts in Violet, quickly. "Mona, are you going to see everybody that may choose to call upon you, good, bad, and indifferent, from this till you die?"
"I suppose so," says Mona lifting her brows.
"Then I can only say I pity you," says Miss Mansergh, leaning back in her chair, with the air of one who would say, "Argument here is in vain."
"I sha'n't want to see them, perhaps," says Mona, apologetically, "but how shall I avoid it?"
"Ah, now, that is more reasonable; now we are coming to it," says Doatie, briskly. "We 'return to our muttons.' As Lady Rodney, in a very rude manner, tried to explain to you, you will either say you are not at home, or that you have a headache. The latter is not so good; it carries more offence with it, but it comes in pretty well sometimes."
"But, as I said to Lady Rodney, suppose I haven't a headache," retorts Mona, triumphantly.
"Oh, you are incorrigible!" says Doatie, leaning back in her chair in turn, and tilting backward her little flower-like face, that looks as if even the most harmless falsehood must be unknown to it.
"Could you not imagine you had one?" she says, presently as a last resource.
"I could not," says Mona. "I am always quite well." She is standing before them like a culprit called to the bar of justice. "I never had a headache, or a toothache, or a nightmare, in my life."
"Or an umbrella, you should add. I once knew a woman like that, but she was not like you," says Doatie. "Well, if you are going to be as literal as you now are, until you call for your shroud, I must say I don't envy you."
"Be virtuous and you'll be happy, but you won't have a good time," quotes Violet; "you should take to heart that latest of copy-book texts."
"Oh, fancy receiving the Boers whenever they call!" says Doatie, faintly, with a deep sigh that is almost a groan.
"I sha'n't mind it very much," says Mona, earnestly. "It will be after all, only one half hour out of my whole day."
"You don't know what you are talking about," says Doatie, vehemently. "Every one of those interminable half-hours will be a year off your life. Mr. Boer is obnoxious, but Florence is simply insupportable. Wait till she begins about the choir, and those hateful school-children, and the parish subsidies; then you perhaps will learn wisdom, and grow headaches if you have them not. Violet, what is it Jack calls Mr. Boer?"
"Better not remember it," says Violet, but she smiles as she calls to mind Jack's apt quotation.
"Why not? it just suits him: 'A little, round, fat, oily man of——'"
"Hush, Dorothy! It was very wrong of Jack," interrupts Violet. But Mona laughs for the first time for many hours—which delights Doatie.
"You and I appreciate Jack, if she doesn't, don't we, Mona?" she says, with pretty malice, echoing Mona's merriment. After which the would-be lecture comes to an end, and the three girls, clothing themselves in furs, go for a short walk before the day quite closes in.
Lights are blazing, fiddles are sounding; all the world is abroad to-night. Even still, though the ball at the Towers has been opened long since by Mona and the Duke of Lauderdale, the flickering light of carriage-lamps is making the roads bright, by casting tiny rays upon the frosted ground.
The fourth dance has come to an end; cards are full; every one is settling down to work in earnest; already the first touch of satisfaction or of carefully-suppressed disappointment is making itself felt.
Mona, who has again been dancing with the duke, stopping near where the duchess is sitting, the latter beckons her to her side by a slight wave of her fan. To the duchess "a thing of beauty is a joy forever," and to gaze on Mona's lovely face and admire her tranquil but brilliant smile gives her a strange pleasure.
"Come and sit by me. You can spare me a few minutes," she says, drawing her ample skirts to one side. Mona, taking her hand from Lauderdale's arm, drops into the proffered seat beside his mother, much to that young man's chagrin, who, having inherited the material hankering after that "delightful prejudice," as Theocritus terms beauty, is decidedlyepriswith Mrs. Geoffrey, and takes it badly being done out of histete-a-tetewith her.
"Mrs. Rodney would perhaps prefer to dance, mother," he says, with some irritation.
"Mrs. Rodney will not mind wasting a quarter of an hour on an old woman," says the duchess, equably.
"I am not so sure of that," says Mona, with admirable tact and an exquisite smile, "but I shouldn't mind spending anhourwith you."
Lauderdale makes a little face, and tells himself secretly "all women are liars," but the duchess is very pleased, and bends her friendliest glance upon the pretty creature at her side, who possesses that greatest of all charms, inability to notice the ravages of time.
Perhaps another reason for Mona's having found such favor in the eyes of "the biggest woman in our shire, sir," lies in the fact that she is in many ways so totally unlike all the other young women with whom the duchess is in the habit of associating. She isnaiveto an extraordinary degree, and says and does things that might appearoutrein others, but are so much a part of Mona that it neither startles nor offends one when she gives way to them.
Just now, for example, a pause occurring in the conversation, Mona, fastening her eyes upon her Grace's neck, says, with genuine admiration,—
"What a lovely necklace you are wearing!"
To make personal remarks, we all know, is essentially vulgar, is indeed a breach of the commonest show of good breeding; yet somehow Mrs. Geoffrey's tone does not touch on vulgarity, does not even belong to the outermost skirts of ill-breeding. She has an inborn gentleness of her own, that carries her safely over all social difficulties.
The duchess is amused.
"It is pretty, I think," she says. "The duke," with a grave look, "gave it to me just two years after my son was born."
"Did he?" says Mona. "Geoffrey gave me these pearls," pointing to a pretty string round her own white neck, "a month after we were married. It seems quite a long time ago now," with a sigh and a little smile. "But your opals are perfect. Just like the moonlight. By the by," as if it has suddenly occurred to her, "did you ever see the lake by moonlight? I mean from the mullioned window in the north gallery?"
"The lake here? No," says the duchess.
"Haven't you?" in surprise. "Why it is the most enchanting thing in the world. Oh, you must see it: you will be delighted with it. Come with me, and I will show it to you," says Mona, eagerly, rising from her seat in her impulsive fashion.
She is plainly very much in earnest, and has fixed her large expressive eyes—lovely as loving—with calm expectancy upon the duchess. She has altogether forgotten that she is a duchess (perhaps, indeed, has never quite grasped the fact), and that she is an imposing and portly person not accustomed to exercise of any description.
For a moment her Grace hesitates, then is lost. It is to her a new sensation to be taken about by a young woman to see things. Up to this, it has been she who has taken the young women about to see things. But Mona is so openly and genuinely anxious to bestow a favor upon her to do her, in fact, a good turn, that she is subdued, sweetened, nay, almost flattered, by this artless desire to please her for "love's sake" alone.
She too rises, lays her hand on Mona's arm, and walks through the long room, and past the county generally, to "see the lake by moonlight." Yet it is not for the sake of gazing upon almost unrivalled scenery she goes, but to please this Irish girl, whom so very few can resist.
"Where has Mona taken the duchess?" asks Lady Rodney of Sir Nicholas half an hour later.
"She took her to see the lake. Mona, you know, raves about it, when the moon lights it up.
"She is very absurd, and more troublesome and unpleasant than anybody I ever had in my house. Of course the duchess did not want to see the water. She was talking to old Lord Dering about the drainage question, and seemed quite happy, when that girl interfered. Common courtesy compelled her, I suppose, to say yes to—Mona's—proposition."
"I hardly think the duchess is the sort of woman to say yes when she meant no," says Nicholas, with a half smile. "She went because it so pleased her, and for no other reason. I begin to think, indeed, that Lilian Chetwoode is rather out of it, and that Mona is the first favorite at present. She has evidently taken the duchess by storm."
"Why not say the duke too?" says his mother, with a cold glance, to whom praise of Mona is anything but "cakes and ale." "Her flirtation with him is very apparent. It is disgraceful. Every one is noticing and talking about it. Geoffrey alone seems determined to see nothing! Like all under-bred people, she cannot know satisfaction unless perched upon the topmost rung of the ladder."
"You are slightly nonsensical when on the subject of Mona," says Sir Nicholas, with a shrug. "Intrigue and she could not exist in the same atmosphere. She is to Lauderdale what she is to everyone else,—gay, bright, and utterly wanting in self-conceit. I cannot understand how it is that you alone refuse to acknowledge her charms. To me she is like a little soft sunbeam floating here and there and falling into the hearts of those around her, carrying light, and joy, and laughter, and merry music with her as she goes."
"You speak like a lover," says Lady Rodney, with an artificial laugh. "Do you repeat all this to Dorothy? She must find it very interesting."
"Dorothy and I are quite agreed about Mona," replies he, calmly. "She likes her as much as I do. As to what you say about her encouraging Lauderdale's attentions, it is absurd. No such evil thought could enter her head."
At this instant a soft ringing laugh, that once heard is not easily forgotten, comes from an inner room, that is carefully curtained and delicately lighted, and smites upon their ears.
It is Mona's laugh. Raising their eyes, both mother and son turn their heads hastily (and quite involuntarily) and gaze upon the scene beyond. They are so situated that they can see into the curtained chamber and mark the picture it contains. The duke is bending over Mona in a manner that might perhaps be termed by an outsider slightlyempresse, and Mona is looking up at him, and both are laughing gayly,—Mona with all the freshness of unchecked youth, the duke with such a thorough and wholesome sense of enjoyment as he has not known for years.
Then Mona rises, and they both come to the entrance of the small room, and stand where Lady Rodney can overhear what they are saying.
"Oh! so you can ride, then," says Lauderdale, alluding probably to the cause of his late merriment.
"Sure of course," says Mona. "Why, I used to ride the colts barebacked at home."
Lady Rodney shudders.
"Sometimes I long again for a mad, wild gallop straight across country, where nobody can see me,—such as I used to have," goes on Mona, half regretfully.
"And who allowed you to risk your life like that?" asks the duke, with simple amazement. His sister before she married was not permitted to cross the threshold without a guardian at her side. This girl is a revelation.
"No one," says Mona. "I had no need to ask permission for anything. I was free to do what I wished."
She looks up at him again with some fire in her eyes and a flush upon her cheeks. Perhaps some of the natural lawlessness of her kindred is making her blood warm. So standing, however, she is the very embodiment of youth and love and sweetness, and so the duke admits.
"Have you any sisters?" he asks, vaguely.
"No. Nor brothers. Only myself.
"'I am all the daughters of my father's house,And all the brothers too!'"
"'I am all the daughters of my father's house,And all the brothers too!'"
She nods her head gayly as she says this, being pleased at her apt quotation from the one book she has studied very closely.
The duke loses his head a little.
"Do you know," he says, slowly, staring at her the while, "you are the most beautiful woman I ever saw?"
"Ah! so Geoffrey says," returns she, with a perfectly unembarrassed and pleased little laugh, while a great gleam of tender love comes into her eyes as she makes mention of her husband's name. "But I really am not you know."
This answer, being so full of thorough unconsciousness and childishnaivete, has the effect of reducing the duke to common sense once more, and of making him very properly ashamed of himself. He feels, however, rather out of it for a minute or two, which feeling renders him silent and somewhatdistrait. So Mona, flung upon her own resources, looks round the room seeking for inspiration, and presently finds it.
"What a disagreeable-looking man that is over there!" she says: "the man with the shaggy beard, I mean, and the long hair."
She doesn't want in the very least to know who he is, but thinks it her duty to say something, as the silence being protracted grows embarrassing.
"The man with the mane? that is Griffith Blount. The most objectionable person any one could meet, but tolerated because his tongue is so awful. Do you know Colonel Graves? No! Well, he has a wife calculated to terrify the bravest man into submission, and last year when he was going abroad Blount met him, and asked him before a roomful 'if he was going for pleasure, or if he was going to take his wife with him.' Neat, wasn't it? But I don't remember hearing that Graves liked it."
"It was very unkind," says Mona; "and he has a hateful face."
"He has," says the duke. "But he has his reward, you know: nobody likes him. By the by, what horrid bad times they are having in your land!—ricks of hay burning nightly, cattle killed, everybody boycotted, and small children speared!"
"Oh, no, not that," says Mona. "Poor Ireland! Every one either laughs at her or hates her. Though I like my adopted country, still I shall always feel for old Erin what I could never feel for another land."
"And quite right too," says Lauderdale. "You remember what Scott says:
"'Breathes there the man, with soul so dead,Who never to himself hath said,This is my own, my native land!'"
"'Breathes there the man, with soul so dead,Who never to himself hath said,This is my own, my native land!'"
"Oh, yes, lots of 'em," says Mr. Darling, who has come suddenly up beside them: "for instance, I don't believe I ever said it in all my life, either to myself or to any one else. Are you engaged, Mrs. Geoffrey? And if not, may I have this dance?"
"With pleasure," says Mona.
Paul Rodney, true to his word, has put in an appearance, much to the amazement of many in the room. Almost as Mona's dance with Nolly is at an end, he makes his way to her, and asks her to give him the next. Unfortunately, she is not engaged for it, and, being unversed in polite evasions, she says yes, quietly, and is soon floating round the room with him.
After one turn she stops abruptly, near an entrance.
"Tired?" says Rodney, fixing his black, gloomy eyes upon her.
"A little," says Mona. It is perhaps the nearest approach to a falsehood she has ever made.
"Perhaps you would rather rest for a while. Do you know this is the first time I have ever been inside the Towers?" He says this as one might who is desirous of making conversation, yet there is a covert meaning in his tone. Mona is silent. To her it seems a base thing that he should have accepted the invitation at all.
"I have heard the library is a room well worth seeing," goes on the Australian, seeing she will not speak.
"Yes; every one admires it. It is very old. You know one part of the Towers is older than all the rest."
"I have heard so. I should like to see the library," says Paul, looking at her expectantly.
"You can see it now if you wish," says Mona, quickly, the thought that she may be able to entertain him in some fashion that will not require conversation is dear to her. She therefore takes his arm, and leads him out of the ballroom, and across the halls into the library, which is brilliantly lighted, but just at this moment empty.
I forget if I described it before, but it is a room quite perfect in every respect, a beautiful room, oak-panelled from floor to ceiling, with this peculiarity about it, that whereas three of the walls have their panels quite long, without a break from top to bottom, the fourth—that is, the one in which the fireplace has been inserted—has the panels of a smaller size, cut up into pieces from about one foot broad to two feet long.
The Australian seems particularly struck with this fact. He stares in a thoughtful fashion at the wall with the small panels, seeming blind to the other beauties of the room.
"Yes, it is strange why that wall should be different from the others," Mona says, rather glad that he appears interested in something besides herself. "But it is altogether quite a nice old room, is it not?"
"It is," replies he, absently. Then, below his breath, "and well worth fighting for."
But Mona does not hear this last addition; she is moving a chair a little to one side, and the faint noise it makes drowns the sound of his voice. This perhaps is as well.
She turns up one of the lamps, whilst Rodney still continues his contemplation of the wall before him. Conversation languishes, then dies. Mona, raising her hand to her lips, suppresses valiantly a yawn.
"I hope you are enjoying yourself," she says, presently, hardly knowing what else to say.
"Enjoying myself?—No, I never do that," says Rodney, with unexpected frankness.
"You can hardly mean that?" says Mona, with some surprise.
"I do. Just now," looking at her, "I am perhaps as near enjoyment as I can be. But I have not danced before to-night. Nor should I have danced at all had you been engaged. I have forgotten what it is to be light-hearted."
"But surely there must be moments when——"
"I never have such moments," interrupts he moodily.
"Dear me! what a terribly unpleasant young man!" thinks Mona, at her wits' end to know what to say next. Tapping her fingers in a perplexed fashion on the table nearest her, she wonders when he will cease his exhaustive survey of the walls and give her an opportunity of leaving the room.
"But this is very sad for you, isn't it?" she says, feeling herself in duty bound to say something.
"I dare say it is; but the fact remains. I don't know what is the matter with me. It is a barren feeling,—a longing, it may be, for something I can never obtain."
"All that is morbid," says Mona: "you should try to conquer it. It is not healthy."
"You speak like a book," says Rodney, with an unlovely laugh; "but advice seldom cures. I only know that I have learned what stagnation means. I may alter in time, of course, but just at present I feel that
'My night has no eve,And my day has no morning.'
'My night has no eve,And my day has no morning.'
At home—in Sydney, I mean—the life was different. It was free, unfettered, and in a degree lawless. It suited me better."
"Then why don't you go back?" suggests Mona, simply.
"Because I have work to do here," retorts he, grimly. "Yet ever since I first set foot on this soil, contentment has gone from me. Abroad a man lives, here he exists. There, he carries his life in his hand, and trusts to his revolver rather than to the most learned of counsels, but here all is on another footing."
"It is to be regretted you cannot like England, as you have made up your mind to live in it; and yet I think——" She pauses.
"Yes—you think; go on," says Rodney, gazing at her attentively.
"Well, then, I think it is onlyjustyou should be unhappy," says Mona, with some vehemence. "Those who seek to scatter misery broadcast among their fellows should learn to taste of it themselves."
"Why do you accuse me of such a desire?" asks he, paling beneath her indignation, and losing courage because of the unshed tears that are gleaming in her eyes.
"When you gain your point and find yourself master here, you will know you have made not only one, but many people miserable."
"You seem to take my success in this case as a certainty," he says, with a frown. "I may fail."
"Oh, that I could believe so!" says Mona, forgetful of manners, courtesy, everything, but the desire to see those she loves restored to peace.
"You are candor itself," returns he, with a short laugh, shrugging his shoulders. "Of course I am bound to hope your wish may be fulfilled. And yet I doubt it. I am nearer my object to-night than I have ever been before; and," with a sardonic smile, "yours has been the hand to help me forward."
Mona starts, and regards him fixedly in a puzzled, uncertain manner. What he can possibly mean is unknown to her; but yet she is aware of some inward feeling, some instinct such as animals possess, that warns her to beware of him. She shrinks from him, and in doing so a slight fold of her dress catches in the handle of a writing-table, and detains her.
Paul, dropping on his knees before her, releases her gown; the fold is in his grasp, and still holding it he looks up at her, his face pale and almost haggard.
"If I were to resign all hope of gaining the Towers, if I were to consent to leave your people still in possession," he says, passionately, but in a low tone, "should I earn one tender thought in your heart? Speak, Mona! speak!"
I am sure at even this supreme moment it never enters Mona's brain that the man is actually making love to her. A deep pity for him fills her mind. He is unhappy, justly so, no doubt, but yet unhappy. A sure passport to her heart.
"I do not think unkindly of you," she says, gently, but coldly. "And do as your conscience dictates, and you will gain not only my respect, but that of all men."
"Bah!" he says, impatiently, rising from the ground and turning away. Her answer has frozen him again, has dried up the momentary desire for her approbation above all others that only a minute ago had agitated his breast.
At this moment Geoffrey comes into the room and up to Mona. He takes no notice whatever of her companion, "Mona, will you come and sing us something?" he says, as naturally as though the room is empty. "Nolly has been telling the duchess about your voice, and she wants to hear you. Anything simple, darling,"—seeing she looks a little distressed at the idea: "you sing that sort of thing best."
"I hardly think our dance is ended yet, Mrs. Rodney," says the Australian, defiantly, coming leisurely forward, his eyes bent somewhat insolently upon Geoffrey.
"You will come, Mona, to oblige the duchess," says Geoffrey, in exactly as even a tone as if the other had never spoken. Not that he cares in the very least about the duchess; but he is determined to conquer here, and is also desirous that all the world should appreciate and admire the woman he loves.
"I will come, of course," says Mona, nervously, "but I am afraid she will be disappointed. You will excuse me, Mr. Rodney, I am sure," turning graciously to Paul, who is standing with folded arms in the background.
"Yes, I excuseyou," he says, with a curious stress upon the pronoun, and a rather strained smile. The room is filling with other people, the last dance having plainly come to an end. Geoffrey, taking Mona's arm, leads her into the hall.
"Dance no more to-night with that fellow," he says quickly, as they get outside.
"No?" Then, "Not if you dislike it of course. But Nicholas made a point of my being nice to him. I did not know you would object to my dancing with him."
"Well, you know it now. I do object," says Geoffrey, in a tone he has never used to her before. Not that it is unkind or rude, but cold and unlover-like.
"Yes, I know it now!" returns she, softly, yet with the gentle dignity that always belongs to her. Her lips quiver, but she draws herself up to her fullest height, and, throwing up her head, walks with a gait that is almost stately into the presence of the duchess.
"You wish me to sing to you," she says, gently, yet so unsmilingly that the duchess wonders what has come to the child. "It will give me pleasure if I can giveyoupleasure, but my voice is not worth thinking about."
"Nevertheless, let me hear it," says the duchess. "I cannot forget that your face is musical."
Mona, sitting down to the piano, plays a few chords in a slow, plaintive fashion, and then begins. Paul Rodney has come to the doorway, and is standing there gazing at her, though she knows it not. The ballroom is far distant, so far that the sound of the band does not break upon the silence of the room in which they are assembled. A hush falls upon the listeners as Mona's fresh, pathetic, tender voice rises into the air.
It is an old song she chooses, and simple as old, and sweet as simple. I almost forget the words now, but I know it runs in this wise: