CHAPTER XXIII.
THE EXPRESS TO LONDON.
“What messages are we to leave for Captain Desfrayne, my dear?” asked Lady Quaintree of Lois.
They had both left his name to the last, each loath to be the one to recall it.
Her ladyship noted, while apparently trying to master a refractory button on her glove, that the rose tint on Lois’ cheeks deepened, and then flowed over the rest of her face, while the long, dark lashes drooped.
“Dear madam,” said the young girl, “that is a question I should rather have asked you, who know so much better than I do the proper things to be said.”
“Proper, my love,” repeated the old lady, smiling. “It is not a matter of saying ‘proper’ or ‘civil’ things. What do you wish to say?”
The color faded from Lois’ face, and then flowed back again in a roseate glow.
“I am sure Miss Dormer and I are both most grateful to Captain Desfrayne for his kindness——” began Lois.
Blanche put her hands on Lois’ waist, and gave her a gentle shake, and a glance of reproach.
“‘Miss Dormer!’ You unkind Lois!” she said. “I thought I had asked you to call me Blanche.”
Lois felt as if she must say things worthy of smiling rebuke, whether she willed it or not.
“Come, we must leave some message, in case the captain should happen to call,” said Lady Quaintree.
“Mrs. Ormsby,” she continued, turning to the housekeeper, who was following to attend them to their carriage, “if Captain Desfrayne—the gentleman who dined here yesterday—should come during the day, will you be good enough to inform him that we were unexpectedly summoned to London on the most urgent affairs?”
“I will do so, my lady,” replied Mrs. Ormsby.
The carriage drove off, containing the three ladies,Justine and the one or two other servants immediately attending them. There was no time to send for Blanche’s maid; but it was agreed that she should be sent for at once on their arrival at Lowndes Square.
Lois gazed at the stately Hall and its lovely grounds, with strange, mingled feelings, as the carriage bore her swiftly away. An uncomfortable sensation rose in her throat, as if tears of regret were stealing from their hiding-place, as she reflected that she was in all likelihood losing a chance of seeing Paul Desfrayne, and hearing his promised explanation.
“He will come to-day; and I shall not be here,” she thought.
His face and form haunted her, try as she would to banish the recollection. A dangerous longing, inexplicable to herself, rose in her heart, just to see him once more. A wicked longing, she knew, if he belonged to another. And the impediment which hindered him from addressing her was evidently an insuperable one. His words, although mystifying, left no doubt.
“I wish I had never seen or heard of him,” she said to herself. “Yet why should I let myself think of him in this foolish, weak way. My pride, if nothing else, should forbid my wishing even to see him. It is enough that he has assured me he can never think of me. Why do I think about him, except as a harassing care forced on me? I have known him but a few days; he is a stranger, an absolute stranger to me, and yet I continue to brood over his words, and my resentment against him seems gone.”
The drive to the station was even pleasanter than the drive of the day before. As yet the day was tolerably cool, and snow-white clouds flecked a sky of purest blue.
Lady Quaintree was not sorry to be rid of the handsome claimant to her protégée’s hand, heart, and desirable fortune, if it were only for a while. She could not, for all her maternal pride, be blind to the fact that Paul Desfrayne would be a formidable rival to her Gerald, unless the latter could secure a very firm interest in the affections of the young lady who might be addressed by both.
A polite guard chose a convenient compartment for the ladies. A smile, a hasty uplifting of the finger to his cap as Lady Quaintree’s delicate pearl-gray glove approached his brown palm, and then he closed the door respectfully.
But at the last moment, and just as the guard blew his whistle, a gentleman came rushing on the platform.
“Going by the express, sir? Here you are, sir—here you are. Not a minute to be lost,” cried the guard.
The good fellow had intended that the ladies should have their compartment all to themselves; but he had no time to move from the spot where he stood. The train began to draw its snakelike body to move out from the station. He threw open the door, and the gentleman sprang lightly on the step, steadied himself for an instant, and then entered.
The three ladies turned their gaze simultaneously on their fellow passengers, and the same exclamation escaped their lips at the same moment:
“Captain Desfrayne!”
Truly, Captain Desfrayne on his way to London to consult Frank Amberley. He recognized the ladies as he balanced himself on the step of the carriage.
Had it been possible, he would have drawn back, and gone anywhere rather than continue this journey in Lois’ company. For a second his eyes met hers. New hope, clouded by pain and uncertainty, beamed in his; fear, timid reproach, inquiry, doubt, glanced from hers.
Blanche could not help exchanging a look of amazement with Lois, nor could it escape her notice that the telltale crimson mounted to Miss Turquand’s cheeks, just now so pale.
“Captain Desfrayne! An unexpected pleasure,” said Lady Quaintree, extending her hand, though secretly ill pleased.
“Quite so,” answered Captain Desfrayne, himself anything but delighted. “I had not the most distant idea you and Miss Turquand intended to quit Flore Hall so soon.”
He could not hinder his eyes from wandering to Lois’face. The young girl, filled with anger at his inconsistent conduct, averted her head, and gazed from the window. When she stole a glance at him again, he was looking from the window on his side, his face clouded by the care and trouble that seemed rarely absent.
Nobody said much during the journey; for subjects of conversation were not readily found, and even Blanche had abundant matter for mental consideration.
To Lois and Paul Desfrayne, it seemed like a dream more than reality.
The thickly clustered houses, the red-tiled roofs and chimney-pots began to give intimation that they were nearing London.
“We may not hope, then, to see much of you this week, at any rate?” Lady Quaintree observed, shaking herself out of a brief slumber.
He shook his head.
“I must go back to Holston as soon as I can,” he replied.
The express slackened speed, and at last rolled into the terminus.
Gerald was waiting for his mother on the platform. He assisted her from the carriage, leaving the care of the two young girls to Captain Desfrayne.
Lady Quaintree eagerly paused to make anxious inquiries about her husband. She had moved on a few steps, and Captain Desfrayne felt he must offer some kind of excuse to Lois for not affording her the clue to his mysterious behavior he had promised. He laid a tremulous hand on her wrist, and drew her some steps away from her friend.
“Miss Turquand,” he said eagerly, looking her full in the face, a deeply troubled, excited expression in his eyes, “I must entreat of you not to judge me harshly, but with mercy and kindness. I merit all your pity. I am a most unhappy man. It would have been well if I could have explained my position last night, as I meant to do; but this is no time or place to end the conversation then begun and interrupted. May I beseech you to suspend your judgment until I have been able to tell you how I am circumstanced?”
“I have no right to judge you,” said Lois coldly. “If you are unhappy, you have my pity.”
She felt piqued that he fixed no time for giving her the promised explanation. He left her still mystified.
“Will you give me your promise not to condemn me until you have heard my story?” urged Paul Desfrayne.
“I repeat, I have no right to judge you,” said Lois. “Those who have the care of me and my affairs have the best right to hear what you have to say.”
If her words sounded cold and repelling to her hearer, they were yet more so to herself. She felt that she spoke harshly, and with scarcely veiled bitterness, and, as she saw the young man droop his head, she hastily added, with a softened tone:
“Your language, sir, is strange and perplexing to me. You allude to some unhappy circumstances, of which, as you say, I am entirely ignorant. If you see fit to explain these circumstances to me, I think you may count on my sympathy. If you do not deem it necessary that I should be further acquainted with them, let it be forgotten that you have ever touched on them at all.”
The young girl, faint and agitated from contending feelings, put out her hands like one who does not see her way clearly. Blanche, who had drawn back, stepped hastily to her side, and gave her an arm to lean upon.
“My poor darling!” whispered Blanche tenderly.
The sympathetic accents vibrated on Lois’ heart like an electric shock. She roused herself from the momentary weakness to which she had yielded, and extended her hand to Captain Desfrayne.
“Adieu, sir,” she said.
The young man caught her hand, and involuntarily pressed the slender fingers within his own. He gazed for an instant into the dreamy eyes, so pure, so frank, so truthful, so trusting, then, loosing the little hand, turned away with a deep sigh.
As he did so, Lady Quaintree looked back, and made a signal to the girls to accompany her to the carriage, which was in waiting. She smiled in her own gracious way upon the young officer, though she really wished him at Jericho.
He advanced, and lifted his hat.
“I presume, madam, I can be of no service to you?” he said, glancing for a moment at the Honorable Gerald, who was unknown to him.
Lady Quaintree, remembering that the young men were strangers to each other, introduced them.
“If you should happen to make a longer stay in town than you count on,” she said, “we shall be very pleased to see you, either this evening, or to-morrow, or at any time it may suit you to come. I find my lord’s illness is not of so serious a nature as at first appeared.”
An interchange of civil smiles, a shake or two of the hand, some polite valedictory salutations, and the brief whirling scene was over—past as a dream.
“I think I was right,” murmured Blanche, in her friend’s ear, as they drove off in Lady Quaintree’s luxurious carriage.
Lois tightly pressed the hand that tenderly sought her own; but did not meet Blanche’s eye, which she feared for the moment.
Paul Desfrayne threw himself into a hansom.
“Alderman’s Lane,” he cried to the driver.