In the drawing room of her mansion on Grosvenor Square, Lady Alice Mordaunt was pouring tea, and talking as usual the same trifling commonplaces that had on a previous occasion excited her cousin's disdain. Opposite her sat her mother, Lady Fletcher, a perfect model of the well-bred English matron, while Opal Ledoux, in the daintiest and fluffiest of summer costumes, was curled up like a kitten in a corner of the window-seat, apparently engrossed in a book, but in reality watching the passers-by.
From her childhood up she had lived in a Castle of Dreams, which she had peopled with the sort of men and women that suited her own fanciful romantic ideas, and where she herself was supposed to lie asleep until her ideal knight, the Prince Charming of the story, came across land and sea to storm the Castle and wake her with a kiss.
It was made up of moonbeams and rays of sunshine and rainbow-gleams—this dream—woven by fairy fingers into so fragile a cobweb that it seemed absurd to think it could stand the winds and torrents of Grown-Up Land; but Opal, in spite of her eighteen years, was still awaiting the coming of her ideal knight, though the stage setting of the drama, and her picture of just how the Prince Charming of her dreams was to look, and what he would say, had changed materially with the passing of the years.
If sometimes she wove strange lines of tragedy throughout the dreams, out of the threads of shadow that flitted across the sunshine of her life, she did not reject them. She felt they belonged there and did not shrink, even when her young face paled at the curious self-pity the passing of the thought invoked.
Hers was a strange mixture, made up of an unusual intermingling of many bloods. Born in New Orleans, of a father who was a direct descendant of the early French settlers of Louisiana, and of a Creole mother, who might have traced her ancestry back to one of the old grandees of Spain, she yet clung with a jealous affection to the land of her birth and called herself defiantly "a thorough-bred American!" Her mother had died in giving her birth, and her father, while she was still too young to remember, had married a fair Englishwoman who had tried hard to be a mother to the strange little creature whose blood leaped and danced within her veins with all the fire and romance of foreign suns. Gay and pleasure-mad as she usually appeared, there was always the shadow of a heartache in her eye, and one felt the possibility of a tragedy in her nature. In fact one felt intuitively sorry—almost afraid—for her lest her daring, adventurous spirit should lead her too close to the precipice along the rocky pathway of life.
She was thinking many strange thoughts as she sat looking out of the window. Her English cousins, related to her only through her stepmother, yet called kin for courtesy's sake, had given up trying to understand her complexities, as she had likewise given up trying to explain herself. If they were pleased forever to consider her in the light of a conundrum, she thought, why—let them!
After a while the ladies at the tea-table began to chat in more confidential tones. Opal was not too oblivious to her surroundings to notice, nor to grasp the fact that they were discussing her, but that knowledge did not interest her. She was so used to being considered a curiosity that it had ceased to have any special concern for her. She only hoped that they would sometime succeed in understanding her better than she had yet learned to understand herself. It might have interested her, however, had she overheard this particular conversation, for it shed a great light upon certain shades of character she had discovered in herself and often wondered about, but had never had explained to her.
But she did not hear.
"I am greatly concerned about Opal," Lady Alice was saying. "She is the most difficult creature, Mamma—you've no idea how peculiar—with the most dangerous, positivelyimmoralideas. I do wish she were safely married, for then—well, there is really no knowing what might happen to a girl who thinks and talks as she does. I used to think it might be a sort of American pose—put on for startling effect, you know—but I begin to think she actually means it!"
"Yes, she means it," replied Lady Fletcher, lowering her voice discreetly, till it was little more than a whisper. "She has always had just such notions. It gives Amy a great deal of trouble and worry to keep her straight. You know—or perhaps you didn't know, for we don't talk of these things often, especially when they are in one's family—but there is a bad strain in her blood and they are always looking for it to crop out somewhere. Her mother married happily—and escaped the curse—but for several generations back the women of her family have been of peculiar temperament and—they've usually gone wrong sometime in their lives. It seems to be in the blood. They can't help it. Mr. Ledoux told Amy all about it at the time of their marriage, and that is the reason they have tried to keep Opal as secluded as possible from the usual free-and-easy associations of American girls, and are so anxious to marry her off wisely."
"And speedily," put in Alice—"the sooner the better!"
"Yes, yes—speedily!"
Lady Fletcher gave an uneasy glance in Opal's direction before she continued.
"You are too young to have heard the story, Alice, but her grandmother—a black-eyed Spanish lady of high rank—was made quite unpleasantly notorious by her associations with a brother of Lady Henrietta Verdayne. He was an unprincipled roué—this Lord Hubert Aldringham—a libertine who openly boasted of the conquests he had made abroad. Being appointed to many foreign posts in the diplomatic service, he was naturally on intimate terms with people of rank and royalty. They say he was very fascinating, with the devil's own eye, and ten times as devilish a heart—"
"Why, Mamma!"
Alice was shocked.
"I am only repeating what they said, child," apologized the elder woman meekly. "Women will be fools, you know, over a handsome face and a tender voice—some women, I mean—and that's what Opal has to fight against."
"Poor Opal," murmured Alice, "I did not know!"
"Some even go so far as to say—"
Again Lady Fletcher looked up apprehensively, but Opal was still absorbed in her dreams.
"To say—what, Mother?"
"Well, of course it's only talk—nobody can actuallyknow,I suppose, and I wouldn't, of course, be quoted as saying anything for the world, dear knows; but they say that it is more than probable that Opal's mother was ...Lord Hubert's own daughter!"
"Oh, Mother! If it is true—if itcouldbe true—what a fight for her!"
"Yes, and the worst of it is with Opal, she won't fight. She has been rigidly trained in the principles of virtue and propriety from her very birth, and yet she horrifies every one at times by shocking ideas—that no one knows where she gets, nor, worse yet, where they may lead!"
"But she is good, Mother. She has the noblest ideas of charity and kindness and altruism, of the advancement of all that's good and true in the world, of the attainment of knowledge, of the beauties and consolation of religion. It's fine to hear her talk when she's inspired—not a bit preachy, you know—she's certainly far enough from that—but more like reading some beautiful poem you can but half understand, or listening to music that makes you wish you were better, whether you take in its full meaning or not."
This was a long speech for Lady Alice. Her mother looked at her in amazement. There certainly must be something out of the ordinary in this peculiar American cousin to wake Alice from her customary languor.
Alice smiled at her mother's surprise.
"Strange, isn't it, Mother?" she asked, half ashamed of her unusual enthusiasm. "But it's true. She'd help some good man to be a power in the world. I feel it so often when she talks. I didn't know women ever thought such things as she does. I-I-I believe we can trust her, Mother, to steer clear of everything!"
"I hope so, Alice; I am sure I hope so, but—I don't know. I am afraid it was a mistake to keep her so much alone. It gives her more unreal ideas of life than actual contact with the world would have done."
Opal Ledoux left the window and sauntered down the long drawing-room toward the table where the speakers were sitting.
"What are you talking about?—me?"
The cousins were surprised and showed it by blushing guiltily.
Opal laughed merrily.
"Dreary subject for a dreary day! I hope you found it more interesting than I have!" And she stretched her small figure to its utmost height, which was not a bit above five foot, and shrugged her shoulders lazily.
"What are you reading, Opal?" asked Lady Fletcher, in an effort to change the subject, looking with some interest at the volume that the girl carried.
"Don't ask me—all twaddle and moonshine! I ought not to waste my valuable time with such trash. There isn't a real character in the book, not one. When I write a book, and I presume I shall some time, if I live long enough, I shall put people into it who have real flesh and blood in them and who do startling things. But I'll have to live it all first!"
"Live the startling things, Opal? God forbid!"
"Surely! Why not?"
And Opal dropped listlessly into a chair, tossed the offending book on a table, and taking a cup of tea from the hand of her cousin, began to sip it with an air of languid indifference, which sat strangely on her youthful, almost childlike figure.
"By the way, Alice," she asked carelessly, "who was the young man who stared at us so rudely last night as we drove away from the theatre?"
"I saw no young man staring, Opal. Where was he?"
"Why, he stood on the pavement, waiting, I suppose, for his carriage, and as we drove away he looked at me as though he thought I had no right to live, and still less to laugh—I believe I was laughing—and as we turned the corner I peeped back through the curtain, and he still stood there in the full glare of the light, staring. It's impolite, cousins—very! Gentlemendon't stare at girls in America!"
"What did he look like, Opal?" asked Lady Fletcher.
"Like a Greek god!" answered the girl, without a second's hesitation.
"What!"
Both women gasped, simultaneously. They were dismayed.
"Oh, don't be shocked! He had the full panoply of society war-paint on. He was certainly properly clothed, but as to his being in his right mind, I have my doubts—serious doubts! He stared!"
"I hope you didn't stare at him, Opal!"
"Well, I did! What could he expect? And I laughed at him, too! But I don't believe he saw me at all, more's the pity. I am quite sure he would have fallen in love with me if he had!"
"Opal!"
Opal was thoroughly enjoying herself now. She did enjoy shocking people who were so delightfully shockable!
"Why,'Opal'?"and her mimicry was irresistible. "Don't you think I'm a bit lovable, cousin?—not a bit? You discourage me! I'm doomed to be a spinster, I suppose! Ah, me! And I'd far rather be the spinster's cat! Cats aren't worried about the conventions and all that sort of thing. Happy animals! While we poor two-footed ones they call human—only we aren't really more than half so—have to keep our claws well hidden and purr hypocritically, no matter how roughly the world rubs our fur the wrong way, nor how wild we are to scratch and spit and bristle! Wouldn't you like to be a cat, Alice?"
"Goodness, child! What an idea! I am very well contented, Opal, with the sphere of life into which I have been placed!"
"Happy, happy Alice! May that state of mind endure forever! But come! Haven't you an idea, either of you, who my Knight of the Stare can be?"
"You didn't describe him, Opal."
Opal opened her eyes in wide surprise.
"Didn't I? Why, I thought I did, graphically! A Greek god, dresseden règle. What more do you want? I am sure anyone ought to recognize him by that."
Her listeners looked at her in real consternation, which she was quick to see. Her eyes danced.
"Well, if you insist upon details, I can supply a few, I guess, if I try. I am really dying of curiosity to know who he is and why he stared. Of course I didn't look at him very closely. It wouldn't have been—er—what do you call it?—proper. And of course I could not see clearly at night, anyway. But I did notice he was about six feet tall. Imagine me, poor little me, looking up to six feet! With broad shoulders; an athletic, muscular figure, like a young Hercules; a well-shaped head, like Apollo's, covered with curls of fair hair; a smooth, clear skin, with the tint of the rose in his cheek that deepened to blood-red when his blue eyes, in which the skies of all the world seemed to be mirrored, stared with an expression like that of a man upon whom the splendor of some glorious Paradise was just dawning. He looked like an Englishman, yet something in his attitude and general appearance made me think that he was not. His hands—"
"Opal! Opal! What do you mean? How could you see so much of a young man in so short a time? And at night, too?"
Opal pouted.
"You wanted a detailed description. I was trying to give it to you. As I told you at the start, I couldn't see much. But anyway, he stared!"
"And I dare say he wasn't the only one who stared!" put in Lady Alice in dry tones of reprehension. "I can't imagine who it could be, can you, mother?"
"Not unless it was that strange young Monsieur Zalenska—PaulZalenska, I believe he calls himself—Paul Verdayne's guest. I rather think, from the description, that it must have been he!"
"Zalenska? What a name! I wonder if he won't let me call him 'Paul!'" said the incorrigible Opal, musingly. "I shall ask him the first time I see him. Paul's a pretty name! I like that—but I'll never, never be able to twist my tongue around the other. He'd get out of hearing before I could call him and that would never do at all! But 'Monsieur,' you say? Why 'Monsieur'? He certainly doesn't look at all like a Frenchman!"
"No one knows what he is, Opal; nor who. That is, no one but the Verdaynes. He has always made a mystery of himself."
Opal clapped her small hands childishly.
"Charming! My ideal knight in the flesh! But how shall I attract him?"
She knitted her brows and pondered as seriously as though the fate of nations depended upon her decision.
"Shall I send him my card, Alice, and ask him to call? Or would it be better to make an appointment with him for the Park? Perhaps a 'personal' in theNewswould answer my purpose—do you think he reads theNews, or would theTimesbe better? Come, cousins, what do you think? I am so young, you know! Please advise me."
She clasped her hands in a charming gesture of helpless appeal and the ladies looked at one another in horrified silence. What unheard of thing would this impossible girl propose next! They would be thankful when they saw her once more safely embarked for the "land of the free," and out from under their chaperonage, they hoped, forever. They realized that she was quite beyond their restraining powers. Had she no sense of decency at all?
The door opened, callers were announced, and the day was saved.
Opal straightened up, put on what she called her "best dignity" and comported herself in so very well-bred and amiable a manner that her cousins quite forgave all her past delinquencies and smiled approval upon the charming courtesy she extended to their guests. She could besucha lady when she would! No one could resist her! And yet they felt themselves sitting upon the crater of a volcano liable to erupt at any moment. One never felt quite safe with Opal.
But, much to their surprise and relief, everything went beautifully, and the guests departed, delighted with Lady Alice's "charming American cousin, so sweet, so dainty, so witty, so brilliant, and altogether lovely—really quite a dear, you know!"
But for all that, Lady Alice Mordaunt and Lady Fletcher were far from feeling easy over their guest, and ardently wished that the girl's father would cut short his visit to France and return to take her back with him to America. And while these two worthy ladies worried and fretted, Opal Ledoux laughed and dreamed.
And in a big mansion over in Berkeley Square Monsieur Paul Zalenska wondered—and listened.
It was a whole two weeks after the Boy's experience at the theatre, and though the echoes of that mysterious voice still rang through all his dreams at night, and most of his waking hours, he had not heard its lilt again.
Paul Verdayne smiled to himself to note the youngster's sudden interest in society. He had not—strange as it may seem—been told a word of the experience, but he was not curious. He certainly knew the world, if anyone knew it, and though he was sure he recognized the symptoms, he had too much tact to ask, "Who is the girl?"
"Let the Boy have his little secrets," he thought, remembering his own callow days. "They will do him good."
And though the Boy felt an undue sense of guilt, he continued to keep his lips closed and his eyes and ears open, though it often seemed so utterly useless to do so. Sometimes he wondered if he had dropped to sleep, there behind the hawthorn hedge that afternoon, and dreamed it all.
Verdayne and the Boy were sitting at luncheon at the Savoy. Sir Charles and Lady Henrietta had gone down to Verdayne Place for a week, and the two men were spending most of their time away from the lonely house in Berkeley Square.
That day they were discussing the Boy's matrimonial prospects as proposed by the Grand Duke Peter—indeed, they were usually discussing them. The Boy had written, signifying his acceptance and approval of the arrangements as made. Nothing else was expected of him for the present, but his nature had not ceased its revolt against the decree of Fate, and Paul Verdayne shared his feeling of repugnance to the utmost. Perhaps Verdayne felt it even more acutely than the young Prince himself, for he knew so much better all that the Boy was sacrificing. But he also knew, as did the poor royal victim himself, that it was inevitable.
"I don't wonder at the court escapades that occasionally scandalize all Europe," said the Boy. "I don't wonder at all! The real wonder is that more of the poor slaves to royalty do not snap the chains that bind them, and bolt for freedom. It would be like me,—very like me!"
And Verdayne could say nothing. He knew of more reasons than one why it would be very like the Boy to do such a thing, and he sighed as he thought that some time, perhaps, he might do it. And yet he could not blame him!
"Father Paul," went on the Boy, his thoughts taking a new turn, "you are a bachelor—a hopeless old bachelor—and you have never told me why. Of course there's a woman or two in it! We have talked about everything else under the sun, I think—you and I—but, curiously enough, we have never talked of love! Yet I feel sure that you believe in it. Don't you, Father Paul? Come now, confess! I am in a mood for sentiment to-day, and I want to hear what drove you to a life of single blessedness—what made my romantic old pal such a confirmed old celibate! I don't believe that you object to matrimony on general principles. Tell me your love-story, please, Father Paul."
"What makes you so certain that I have had one, Boy?"
"Oh, I don't know just why, but I am certain! It's there in your lips when you smile, in your eyes when you are moved, in your voice when you allow yourself to become reminiscent. You are full of memories that you have never spoken of to me. And now, Father Paul—now is the accepted time!"
For a moment Verdayne was nonplussed. What could he reply? There was only one love-story in his life, and that one would end only with his own existence, but he could not tell that story to the Boy—yet! Suddenly, however, an old, half-forgotten memory flashed across his mind. Of course he had a love-story. He would tell the Boy the story of Isabella Waring.
So, as they sat together over their coffee and cigarettes, Verdayne told his young guest about the Curate's daughter, who had all unconsciously wielded such an influence over the events of his past life. He told of the girl's kindness to him when he had broken his collarbone; of her assistance so freely offered to his mother; of her jolly, lively spirits, her amiable disposition and general gay good-fellowship; and then of the unlucky kiss that had aroused the suspicion and august displeasure of Lady Henrietta, and had sent her erring son a wanderer over the face of Europe—to forget!
He painted his sadness at leaving home—and Isabella—in pathetic colors. Indeed, he became quite affecting when he pictured his parting with Isabella, and when in repeating his parting words, he managed to get just the right suspicion of a tremble into his voice, he really felt quite proud of his ability as a story-teller.
The Boy was plainly touched.
"What foolishness to think that such a love as yours could be cured merely by sending you abroad!" he said.
"Just what I thought, Boy—utter folly!"
"Of course it didn't cure you, Father Paul. You didn't learn to forget, did you? Oh, it was cruel to send you away when you loved her like that! I didn't think it of Aunt Henrietta—I didn't indeed!"
"Oh, you mustn't blame mother, Boy. She meant it for the best, just as your Uncle Peter now means it for the best for you and yours. She thought I would forget."
"Was she very, very beautiful, Father Paul? But of course she was, ifyouloved her!"
"She was pretty, Boy—at least I thought so."
"Big or little?"
"Tall—very tall."
"I like tall, magnificent women. There's something majestic about them. I hope the Princess Elodie"—and the Boy made a wry face—"will be quite six foot tall. I could never love a woman small either in body or mind. I am sure I should have liked your Isabella, Father Paul. Majestic women of majestic minds for me, for there you have the royal stamp of nature that makes some women born to the purple. Yes, I am sure I should have liked Isabella. Tell me more."
Paul Verdayne smiled. He should hardly have considered Isabella Waring in any degree "majestic"—but he did not say so.
"She was charmingly healthy and robust—athletic, you know, and all that—with light fluffy hair. I believe she used to wear it in a net. Blue eyes, of course—thoroughly English, you know—and a fine comrade. Liked everything that I liked, as most girls at that age didn't, naturally. Of course, mother couldn't appreciate her. She wasn't her style at all. And she naturally thought—mother did, I mean—that when she sent me away 'for my health'"—the Boy smiled—"that I'd forget all about her."
Verdayne began to think he wasn't telling it well after all. He looked out of the window. It was getting hard to meet the frank look in the Boy's blue eyes.
"Forget!" and there was a fine scorn in the tones of the young enthusiast. "But you didn't! you didn't! I'm sure you didn't!"
The romantic story appealed strongly to the Boy's mood.
"But why didn't you marry her when you came back, Father Paul? Did she die?"
"No, she didn't die. She is still living, I believe."
"Then why didn't you marry her, Father Paul? Did they still oppose it? Surely when you came home and they saw you had not forgotten, it was different. Tell me how it was when you came home."
And Paul Verdayne, in a voice he tried his best to make very sad and heart-broken, replied with downcast eyes, "When I came home, Boy, I found Isabella Waring ready to marry a curate, and happy over the prospect of an early wedding. So, you see, my share in her life was over."
The Boy's face fell. He had not anticipated this ending to the romance. How could any woman ever have proved faithless to his Father Paul! And how could he, poor man, still keep his firm, dauntless belief in the goodness and truth of human nature after so bitter an experience as this! It shocked his sense of right and justice—this story. He wished he had not asked to hear it.
"Thank you for telling me, Father Paul. It was kind of you to open your past life to me like this, and very unkind of me to ask what I should have known would cost you such pain to tell. I am truly sorry for it all, Father Paul. Thank you again—and forgive me!"
"It's a relief to open one's heart, sometimes, to one who can sympathize," replied Verdayne, with a deep sigh. But he felt like a miserable hypocrite.
Poor Isabella Waring! He had hardly given her a passing thought in twenty years. And now he had vilified her to help himself out of a tight corner. Well, she was always a good sort. She wouldn't mind being used—or even misused—to help out her "old pal" this way. Still it made him feel mean, and he was glad when the Boy dropped the subject and turned again to his own difficulties.
But the mind of the young prince was restive, that day. Nothing held his attention long. It seemed, like his eye, to be roving hither and thither, seeking something it never could find.
"You have been to America, Father Paul, haven't you?" he asked.
America? Yes, Verdayne had been to America. It was in America that he had passed one season of keenest anguish. He had good reason to remember it—such good reason that in all their wanderings about the world he had never seen fit to take the Boy there.
But something had aroused the young fellow's passing interest, and now nothing would satisfy him save that he must hear all about America; and so, for a full hour, as best he could, Verdayne described the country of the far West as he remembered it.
"Nothing in America appealed to me so strongly as the gigantic prairies," he said at last. "You were so deeply moved by our trip to Africa, Boy, that you must remember the impression of vastness and infinity the great desert made upon us. Well, in the glorious West of America it is as if the desert had sprung to life, and from every grain of sand had been born a blade of grass, waving and fluttering with the joy of new birth. Oh, it is truly wonderful, Paul! Once I went there with the soil of my heart scorched as dry and lifeless as the burning sands of Sahara, but in that revelation of a new creation, some pulse within me sprang mysteriously into being again. It could never be the same heart that it once was, but it would now know the semblance of a new existence. And I took up the burden of life again—albeit a strange, new life—and came home to fight it out. The prairies did all that for me, Boy!" He paused for a moment, and then spoke in a sadder tone. "It was soon after that, Paul, that I first found you."
Paul Zalenska thought that he understood. That, of course, was after Isabella Waring had wrecked his life. Cruel, heartless Isabella! He had never even heard her name before to-day, but he hated her, wherever she might be!
"There is a legend they tell out there that is very pretty and appropriate," went on Verdayne, dreamily. "They say that when the Creator made the world, He had indiscriminately strewn continents and valleys, mountains and seas, islands and lakes, until He came to the western part of America, and despite His omnipotence, was puzzled to know what new glories He could possibly contrive for this corner of the earth. Something majestic and mighty it must be, He thought, and yet of an altogether different beauty from that in the rest of the universe—something individual, distinctive. The seas still overflowed the land, as they had through past eternities, awaiting His touch to call into form and being the elements still sleeping beneath the water—the living representation of His thought. Suddenly stretching out His rod, He bade the waters recede—and they did so, leaving a vast extent of grassy land where the majestic waves had so lately rolled and tossed. And it is said that the land retains to this day the memory of the sea it then was, while the grasses wave with a subtle suggestion of the ocean's ebb and flow beneath the influence of a wind that is like no other wind in the world so much as an ocean breeze; while the gulls, having so well learned their course, fly back and forth as they did before the mystic change from water into earth. Indeed, the first impression one receives of the prairie is that of a vast sea of growing vegetation!"
The Boy's eyes sparkled. This was the fanciful Father Paul that he loved best of all.
"Some time we must go there, Father Paul. Is it not so?"
"Yes, Boy, some time!"
Rebellious thoughts were flitting through the brain of Paul Zalenska as he rode forth the next morning, tender and fanciful ones, too, as he watched the sun's kisses fall on leaf and flower and tree, drying with their soft, insistent warmth the tears left by the dew of night, and wooing all Nature to awake—to look up with glorious smiles, for the world, after all, is beautiful and full of love and laughter.
Why shouldnotPaul be happy? Was he not twenty, and handsome, and rich, and popular, and destined for great things? Was there a want in the world that he could not easily have satisfied, had he so desired? And was he not officially betrothed to the Princess Elodie of Austria—
"Damn the Princess Elodie!" he thought, with more emphasis than reverence, and he rode along silently, slowly, a frown clouding his fresh, boyish brow, face to face with the prose of the existence he would fain have had all romance and poetry.
It had all been arranged for him by well-meaning minds—minds that could never see how the blessing they had intended to bestow might by any chance become a curse.
The Boy came of age in February next—February nineteenth—but it had been the strongly expressed wish of his mother that his coronation should not take place until May.
For was it not in May that she had met her Paul?
She had felt, from the birth of the young Prince, a presentiment of her own early death, and had formed many plans and voiced many preferences for his future. No one knew what personal reasons the Imperatorskoye had for the wish, but she had so definitely and unmistakably made the desire known to all her councillors that none dreamed of disobeying the mandate of their deceased and ever-to-be-lamented Queen. Her slightest wish had always been to them an Unassailable law.
So the coronation ceremonies were to take place in the May following the Prince's birthday, and the Regent had arranged that the marriage should also be celebrated at that time. Of course, the Boy had acquiesced. He saw no reason to put it off any longer. It was always best to swallow your bitterest pill first, he thought, and get the worst over and the taste out of your mouth as soon as possible.
Until that eventful time, the Prince was free to go where he pleased, and to do whatever he wished. He had insisted upon this liberty, and the Regent, finding him in all other respects so amenable to his leading, gladly made the concession. This left him a year—that is, nearly a year, for it was June now—of care-free bachelorhood; a year for one, who was yet only a dreamy boy, to acquire the proper spirit for a happy bridegroom; a year of Father Paul!
He rode along aimlessly for a short distance, scarcely guiding his horse, and only responding to the greetings of acquaintances he chanced to meet with absent-minded, though still irreproachable, courtesy. He was hardly thinking at all, now—at least consciously. He was simply glad to be alive, as Youth is glad—in spite of any possible, or impossible, environment.
Suddenly his eyes fell upon a feminine rider some paces in advance, who seemed to attract much attention, of which she was—apparently —delightfully unconscious. Paul marked the faultless proportions of her horse.
"What a magnificent animal!" he thought. Then, under his breath, he added, "and what a stunning rider!"
She was only a girl—about eighteen or nineteen, he should judge by her figure and the girlish poise of her small head—but she certainly knew how to ride. She sat her horse as though a part of him, and controlled his every motion as she would her own.
"Just that way might she manage a man," Paul thought, and then laughed aloud at the absurdity of the thought. For he had never seen the girl before.
Paul admired a good horsewoman—they are so pitifully few. And he followed her, at a safe distance, with an interest unaccountable, even to him. Finally she drew rein before one of the houses facing the Row, dismounted, and throwing the train of her habit gracefully over her arm, walked to the door with a brisk step. Paul instantly likened her to a bird, so lightly tripping over the walk that her feet scarcely seemed to touch the ground. She was a wee thing—certainly not more than five foot tall—andpetite, almost to an extreme. The Boy had expressed a preference, only a few days before, for tall, magnificent women. Now he suddenly discovered that the woman for a man to love should by all means be short and small. He wondered why it had never occurred to him in that light before, and thought of Jacques' question about Rosalind, "What stature is she of?" and Orlando's reply, "As high as my heart!"
The girl who had aroused this train of thought had reached the big stone steps by this time, and suddenly turning to look over her shoulder, just as he passed the gate, met his gaze squarely. Gad! what eyes those were!—full of mystery and magnetism, and—possibilities!
For an instant their eyes clung together in that strange mingling of glances that sometimes holds even utter strangers spellbound by its compelling force.
Then she turned and entered the house, and Paul rode on.
But that glance went with him. It tormented him, troubled him, perplexed him. He felt a mad desire to turn back, to follow her into that house, and compel her to meet his eyes again. Did she know the power of her own eyes? Did she know a look like that had almost the force of a caress?
He told himself that they were the most beautiful eyes that he had ever seen—and yet he could not have told the color of them to save his soul. He began to wonder about that. It vexed him that he could not remember.
"Eyes!" he thought, "those are not eyes! They are living magnets, drawing a fellow on and on, and he never stops to think what color they are—norcare!"
And then he pulled himself up sharply, and declared himself a madman for raving on the street in broad daylight over the mere accidental meeting with a pair of pretty eyes. He—the uncrowned king of a to-be-glorious throne! He—the affianced husband of the Princess Elodie of—Hell! He refused to think of it! And again the horse he rode and the Park trees heard a bit of Paul Zalenska's English profanity that should have made them hide in shame over the depravity of youth.
But the strangest thing of all was that the Boy, for the nonce, was not thinking of—nor listening for—the voice!
He turned as he reached the end of the Row and rode slowly back. But the horses and groom had already gone from the gate. And inwardly cursing his slowness, he started on a trot for Berkeley Square.
He was not very far from the Verdayne house, when, turning a sudden corner, he came upon the girl again, riding at a leisurely pace in the opposite direction. Startled by his unexpected appearance, she glanced back over her shoulder as she passed, surprising him—and perhaps herself, too, for girls do that sometimes—by a ringing and tantalizing laugh!
That laugh! Wonder upon wonders, it wasthe voice!
It was she—Opal!
He wheeled his horse sharply, but swift as he was, she was yet swifter and was far down the street before he was fairly started in pursuit. His one desire of the moment was to catch and conquer the sprite that tempted him.
Her veil fluttered out behind her on the breeze, like a signal of no-surrender, and once—only once—she looked back over her shoulder. She was too far ahead for him to catch the glint of her eye, but he heard the echo of that laugh—that voice—and it spurred him on and on.
Suddenly, by some turn known only to herself, she eluded him and escaped beyond his vision—and beyond his reach. He halted his panting horse at the crossing of several streets, and swore again. But though he looked searchingly in every possible direction, there was no trace of the fugitive to be seen. It was as though the earth had opened and swallowed horse and rider in one greedy gulp.
Baffled and more disappointed than he cared to own, Paul rode slowly back to Berkeley Square, his heart bounding with the excitement of the chase and yet thoroughly vexed over his failure, at himself, his horse, the girl.
At the house he found letters from the Regent awaiting him, recalling to him his position and its unwelcome responsibilities. One of them enclosed a full-length photograph of his future bride.
Fate had certainly been kind to him by granting his one expressed wish. The Princess Elodie was what he had desired, "quite six-foot tall." Yet he pushed the portrait aside with an impatient gesture, and before his mental vision rose a little figure tripping up the steps, with a backward glance that still seemed to pierce his very soul.
He was not thinking, as he certainly should have been, of the Princess Elodie! And he had not even noticed whether she had any eyes or not!
He looked again at the picture of the Austrian princess, lying face upward upon the pile of letters. With disgust and loathing he swept the offending portrait into a drawer, and summoning Vasili, began to make a hasty toilet.
Vasili had never seen his young master in such bad humor. He was unpardonably late for luncheon, but that would not disturb him, surely not to such an extent as this!
He was greatly disturbed by something. There was no denying that.
He had found the voice, but—
It was the next morning at the breakfast table that Paul Zalenska, listlessly looking over the "Society Notes" in theTimes, came upon this significant notice:
"Mr. Gilbert Ledoux and daughter, Miss Opal Ledoux, of New Orleans, accompanied by Henri, Count de Roannes, of Paris, have taken passage on the Lusitania, which sails for New York on July 3rd."
"Mr. Gilbert Ledoux and daughter, Miss Opal Ledoux, of New Orleans, accompanied by Henri, Count de Roannes, of Paris, have taken passage on the Lusitania, which sails for New York on July 3rd."
It wasshe, of course!—who else could it be? Surely there could not be more than one Opal in America!
"Father Paul, I notice that the Lusitania is to sail for America on the third of July. Can't we make it?"
Verdayne smiled quietly at the suddenness of the proposal, but was not unduly surprised. He remembered many unaccountable impulses of his own when his life was young and his blood was hot. He remembered too with a tender gratitude how his father had humored him and—was he not "Father Paul"?
"I see no reason why not, Boy."
"You see, I have already lost a whole month out of my one free year. I am unwilling to waste a single hour of it, Father Paul—wouldn't you be? And wemustsee America together, you and I, before I go back to—prison!"
"Certainly, Boy, certainly. My time is yours—when you want it, and where you want it, the whole year through!"
"I know that, Father Paul, and—I thank you!"
It was more difficult to arrange matters with Lady Henrietta. She was not so young as she once was and she still adored her son, as only the mother of but one child can adore, and could not bear the idea of having him away from her. Old and steady as he had now become, he was still her boy, the idol of her heart. Yet she felt, as her son did, that the Boy was entitled to the few months of liberty left him, and she did not greatly object, though there was a wistful look in her eyes as they rested on her son that told how keenly she felt every separation from him.
As for Sir Charles, he had not lost the knowing twinkle of the eye. Moreover, he knew far better than his wife how real was the claim their young guest had upon their son. And he bade them go with a hearty grasp of the hand and a bluff Godspeed.
So it was settled that Verdayne and the Boy, attended only by Vasili, were to sail for America on the third of July, and passage was immediately secured on the Lusitania.
On the morning of the day appointed, Paul Zalenska from an upper deck watched the party he had been awaiting, as they mounted the gang-plank.
Gilbert Ledoux he scarcely noticed. The Count de Roannes, too, interested him no longer when, with a hasty glance, he had assured himself that the Frenchman was as old as Ledoux and not the gay young dandy in Opal's train that he had feared to find him.
He had eyes alone for the girl, and he watched her closely as she tripped up the gang-plank, clinging to her father's arm and chattering gayly in that voice he so well remembered.
She was not so small at close range as she had appeared at a distance, but possessed an exquisite roundness of figure and softness of outline well in proportion to the shortness of her stature.
He had been proud of his kingship—very proud of his royal blood and his mission to his little kingdom. But of late he had known some rebellious thoughts, quite foreign to his mental habit.
And to-day, as he looked at Opal Ledoux, he thought, "After all, how much of a real man can I ever be? What am I but a petty pawn on the chessboard of the world, moved hither and yon, to gain or to lose, by the finger of Fate!"
As Opal Ledoux passed him, she met his glance, and slightly flushed by therencontre, looked back over her shoulder at him and—smiled! Andsucha smile! She passed on, leaving him tingling in every fibre with the thrill of it.
It was Fate. He had felt it from the very first, and now he was sure of it.
How would it end? Howcouldit end?
Paul Zalenska was very young—oh, very young, indeed!