“Not particularly. But there was no man like him for the long jump, or for running either, in spite of his size. At cricket, football, rowing, and swimming, it was the same. He wasfacile princeps. A splendid fellow, isn’t he?”
“He is certainly very big. He is not clever, then?”
“Well, there are different sorts of cleverness. He doesn’t care very much for reading if there’s a good horse to be had. And by the way, he himself has a beauty—‘Black Bess,’ a long-neck, powerful creature, who carries him as though he were no heavier than a cat.”
“Is Lord Carthew revengeful?” she asked presently. “I mean, do you think he will ever forgive me?”
“Of course he would, if he had anything to forgive. What makes you dwell upon that idea that he would blame you?”
“I heard what he said to you in the wood,” she answered, blushing deeply.
Lord Carthew hardly knew how to explain away his friend’s harsh words. Already he had been greatly surprised by Hilary’s antagonistic attitude toward. Sir Philip’s lovely daughter, although, perhaps, in his secret heart he was not ill-pleased thereby. Hilary had neither the intention nor the desire to get married, and he was far too handsome to be regarded without alarm as a rival. It was, therefore, by no means a misfortune that he should have taken so strong a dislike against Stella, although Lord Carthew was too loyal not to praise his friend to her in his absence.
That evening was one of the most delightful he had ever experienced. Every moment he fell deeper in love with this beautiful girl, who seemed to realize the ideal of perfect womanhood which he had dreamed of since he had arrived at man’s estate. Her manner to him was frank and friendly, and she so evidently liked his society that he went to bed feeling both hopeful and elated. Yet when the subject of his thoughts retired to her own room, it is to be feared that Lord Carthew’s image by no means occupied her mind.
The windows of her bedroom, large, gloomy, and scantily furnished like the rest of the house, were open, and a flood of moonlight poured into the room. Stella walked toward it, and stood within its silver radiance, with delicate face upturned toward the stars.
“He must have disliked me very much to speak like that,” she murmured, as she slowly began to unfasten her gown, without lighting the candles on her dressing-table. “Will he ever forgive me, I wonder? I could ask his pardon better if he were not what he is; if he and that kind Mr. Pritchard could only change places!”
A sudden thought struck her, and caused her to quickly fasten her dress again. Crossing the room she opened her bedroom door and listened. There was no sound in the wide corridor, in which Lady Cranstoun’s rooms as well as her daughter’s were situated. At the other end was the guest-chamber assigned to the wounded man, while Dr. Graham and Lord Carthew occupied rooms in another part of the house.
After a moment’s hesitation Stella ran lightly to the room occupied by Hilary and tapped at the door, which was at once opened, as she expected, by Margaret.
“How is he?” Stella whispered.
“He’s wandering, miss. Dr. Graham and the other young gentleman came to see him, and he seemed asleep then, though the doctor didn’t quite like the looks of him. But now he seems delirious, and if he gets worse I must rouse the doctor. You needn’t fear to look in; he won’t recognize you.”
Hilary’s face was flushed, and his brown eyes glittered unnaturally as he muttered under his breath an unintelligible string of words and tossed his head from side to side on the pillow.
Tears started to Stella’s eyes as she watched him.
“Margaret,” she said suddenly, “shall I try to soothe him with my touch on his forehead? I always charm away mamma’s headaches.”
Margaret shook her head doubtfully.
“I don’t suppose you’ll have much effect,” she said, “but there’s no harm in your trying.”
Margaretstood on one side of Hilary’s pillow, and her young mistress on the other, while the latter passed her slim fingers slowly and lightly about the wounded man’s fevered forehead.
As the old servant watched her standing there in her white gown, her pale sensitive face framed in blue-black hair, her black lashes lowered over her luminous eyes, and her mouth hard set in the supreme effort of will-power exercised over the troubled nerves of the patient, the thought came to Margaret that it was truly astonishing that any one could suppose Stella Cranstoun to be the daughter of Lady Gwendolen.
Old Margaret was a silent woman, gifted with but little imagination, and her knowledge of physiognomy was not sufficiently developed to enable her to realize in what special features of the girl before her the Cranstoun characteristics were grafted on the wild Carewe growth. To Margaret’s way of thinking, Stella was not so handsome as her mother, but “a deal more ladylike and amiable.” The first Lady Cranstoun’s eyes were of a brown so dark that it appeared almost black; until her last illness her figure and her handsome red mouth was a trifle coarse in outline. There was no coarseness in Stella’s face, but behind the eyes a light seemed to shine, telling of some strange force and fire within, kept in check by a determined will. Her touch was instinct with magnetism, and soon Hilary ceased his uneasy tossing of his head on the pillows and seemed to pass from a fevered nightmare into sweet and pleasant dreams.
Some one, he thought, some one very lovely, very tender, with dark blue eyes and dusky hair, was soothing and caressing him. He could not clearly see her face in his dream-fancies, but the feeling of her presence was delightful, and presently, half-waking from what seemed a feverish sleep, he heard her voice, sweet and rippling and sounding as though it came from a long way off, speaking to some one.
“You see, Margaret, my touch has soothed him to sleep. I wish he were not a lord.”
“That is just what would make your father like him, miss.”
“And just what would make me hate him as much as he hates me.”
“Why should he hate you?”
“Because I was the cause of his accident. I heard him speak so bitterly about me to his friend. Margaret, do you think he will soon get well?”
“Oh, yes. He’s only a bit weak and light-headed from loss of blood. This time three days he will be miles away.”
“And I shall never see him again. Well, I am sorry. I must go now; he seems to be sleeping quietly. Good-night, Margaret.”
For one moment more, Hilary felt her soft, cool finger-tips upon his eyelids; then he realized that she was gone, and nothing left to him but dreams of her.
“What is your name?” he asked of Margaret in the morning, while he was still pondering how much of his over-night dreams had been true.
“Margaret, my lord.”
“I wish you wouldn’t call me that,” he said, irritably and relapsed into silence.
Meantime, Lord Carthew had also spent the night in dreaming of Stella Cranstoun, and was looking eagerly forward to meeting her the next morning.
When the breakfast-gong summoned him, he was shown into a room of moderate size where the table was laid for two, and behind the tea-urn he found the fair Stella awaiting him, with Lady Cranstoun’s apologies for her absence.
“Mamma breakfasts in bed, if a cup of tea can be called breakfast, and Dr. Graham had to leave for London half an hour ago,” Stella explained, while Lord Carthew decided that by daylight, in blue serge with a collar and cuffs of point lace as her only ornaments, she seemed, if possible, even more desirable than in her riding-habit or her white silk evening-gown on the preceding day.
Questioned about his friend, Lord Carthew declared that Hilary had a good night and was certainly no worse.
“Very soon, indeed, he will be able to be moved, I believe,” he said.
“There need be no hurry about that,” she said hastily; and then, to his great joy, she blushed.
“I hope we may have the pleasure of meeting Sir Philip Cranstoun before we leave,” he observed presently, and at once noted how her face clouded at the mention of her father’s name.
“I don’t know when he will return,” she said, and at once dropped the subject.
A little questioning as to the way in which she spent her time elicited the fact that already that morning, so early as half-past six, Zephyr had been saddled, and had carried his mistress for half an hour’s canter in the park.
“And tell me what you would like to do after breakfast,” she said. “Would you care to see the curiosities of the Chase—old pictures, and old armor, and old tapestries? Or would you like to quietly study the books in the library or smoking-room, with a cigar? Or would you like a ride or drive in the neighborhood?”
“If you haven’t had enough of riding, I should be very glad of a mount, if you and Zephyr will be so kind as to accompany me. The fact is, my friend and I have left our horses at an inn in a village close by, and I am fearful as to how they may be treated if left longer to the landlord’s tender mercies.”
“I shall not be more than a few minutes putting my habit on, and it will be so nice to have some one to ride with,” she said with a charming smile, as she left the room.
Mental pictures arose again in his mind. He imagined her riding in the Row beside him, the “mad viscount” and his lovely bride, every man there envying him his newly found treasure. Not only would she outshine every woman there in beauty, but also in the management of her horse. He pictured his friends and acquaintances clamoring for an introduction, and Stella talking to them with her sweet seriousness and total absence of coquetry and affectation. He longed, like any romantic schoolboy, for her love, which he set himself with all his heart and all his intellect to win.
She, for her part, liked him immensely. She had seen very few men, and she did not think him ugly by any means, but most interesting looking. She could not divine that as she accepted his aid to spring into her saddle, the mere contact of her slim foot, resting birdlike, in his hand, sent a quiver of delight through the young man’s frame. His manner appeared so unemotional, his face so unmoved, that she never once suspected the passion for her which was taking hold of his entire mind and soul. Nor while she talked freely and gayly to him about the tenantry and the country round, couldheguess that before her eyes all the while there seemed to flit the remembrance of a bronzed and handsome face, the brows contracted in pain, the strong white teeth gnawing the lip under the drooping golden mustache, and the short brown curls disordered on a shapely head against the white pillow.
So they rode and talked, under the pale green leaves that were bursting into a delicate lace-work on the branches overhead, happy together to all outward seeming, but at cross purposes in reality; he thinking that she listened and understood, she believing him merely friendly, and wishing she could change his sympathetic kindness for the cold disapprobation of that other one who had been wounded through her folly.
From the darker shadows of the undergrowth a pair of malevolent eyes followed them.
“What is she talking so free and smiling with that ugly swell for?” Stephen Lee asked himself. “Bad luck to the day when he and that hulking giant trespassed into these grounds. I wish I’d ’a’ killed him and this chap, too.”
Down in his fierce heart, Stephen Lee cherished a secret passion for his beautiful young mistress, the existence of which she never once suspected. Unknown to her, his destiny was influenced by hers, and he was the means of communicating news concerning her at stated times to some birds of evil omen who were sometimes to be found at nightfall hovering within the confines of Cranstoun woods. Sir Philip would have been furious indeed could he have guessed that a member of the hated gypsy tribe had been for five years earning his living in his service; yet such was the case. The handsome, black-bearded young keeper, known as Stephen Lee, and one of the best men on the Cranstoun estates, was a true Romany, and hated his master with a hatred to the full as bitter as Sir Philip cherished against the entire gypsy tribe.
Yet at this moment, as he watched Stella and Lord Carthew ride by laughing and talking gayly, Stephen found himself wishing Sir Philip home again.
“The gray wolf would soon put a stop to this,” he said. “If it was the other chap, the lord, he might forgive it. I know right enough he means to try and marry her to some tip-top swell. But old Sarah will see her way to prevent that, I reckon.”
He was muttering to himself, when a hard, rasping voice, speaking in low tones immediately behind him, made him start in surprise.
“Is that the friend of the man you shot?”
Sir Philip himself stood among the brushwood, attired in a light tweed suit, as cool and unmoved as though he had not been absent from home for more than a month. The accident had only taken place on the preceding evening, and Stephen judged by the small handbag that Sir Philip was carrying, and by the direction from which he was coming, that he had not been home. Yet already he was quite well acquainted with what had taken place in the woods on the preceding evening. But Stephen Lee had long before this suspected some system of spying by which the master of the Chase contrived to inform himself of the doings of his household in his absence, and he was not therefore much surprised by Sir Philip’s question, to which he responded, after his wont, in a civil monosyllable:
“Yes, sir.”
“This is the man called Pritchard?”
“Yes, sir.”
“How is Lord Carthew?”
“Better.”
“Did you shoot him accidentally?”
“Partly.”
“Explain yourself.”
“You have often told me to keep off tramps and trespassers and such like,” the man answered, with a forced and rather sullen civility. “Lord Carthew stopped Miss Cranstoun’s horse and seemed to be annoying her. I fired to frighten him and he got hurt.”
“Ah!”
Sir Philip paused for a moment. His eyes followed the retreating figures of Lord Carthew and Stella as, with their heads inclined together in converse, they rode on together to a bend in the avenue between the trees. Then he turned to Stephen, his face set and mask-like as usual.
“You were only obeying orders,” he said, and threw the man half a crown.
The gypsy picked it up and glowered after his employer as the latter bent his steps towards the house.
“I’ll drink to your destruction in this world and the next,” he said; “but I’m hanged if I can make out what you are up to. Old Sarah will understand, perhaps. She’s a match in cunning even foryou.”
All this time Lord Carthew was learning from Stella’s lips all that there was to tell of her life as it was lived on the surface. She was seventeen last Christmas, she told him, and she believed it to be true, ignoring that first year of life which she had passed in London as the unloved child of a gypsy mother. For months past she had been trained in the correct way of bowing, kissing the Queen’s hand, and backing out of the royal presence over her train by a duly qualified lady, who had attended at the Chase in order to impart to her this highly necessary instruction, and she made Lord Carthew laugh by her lively description of these lessons.
“Don’t you feel horribly nervous about it?” he asked.
She turned her large black eyes upon him in surprise.
“Oh, no, not in the least,” she answered. “All this London trip I should look forward to eagerly, I think, but for leaving poor mamma, and—and for something else.”
He saw by the sadness in her look and the way in which she shut her mouth fast that some especially anxious thought connected with this stay in London troubled her.
“Won’t you tell me what is the other thing?” he asked, gently. “You have already said you regard me as a friend, and it will be a relief to you to tell me your worries, since you say you have never any one to speak to.”
“I don’t know quite how to put it,” she said, as she meditatively stroked her horse’s neck and ears with her whip. “It seems so egotistical to be boring you with so much about myself. But this season, this presentation to the Queen, and the balls and parties that will follow, for which I have been trained so long, what will it all mean in the end, but that I am to show off my graces and accomplishments and wear smart clothes, so that I may attract an offer of marriage? And if any come, there will be no question of love or liking on my part; my father’s intention is just to hand me over to the best bidder. The Chase is gloomy and dreary and prison-like, and I am often very lonely; but it is a thousand times better than to be married to the man who has the highest title and the largest fortune among those who may condescend to take notice of me,” she went on, bitterly. “Why, if I could stoop to such a marriage, there would not be a scullery-maid at the Chase, or a cottager on my father’s property, who would not have the right to despise me!”
“But you might meet some one among these men of rank and wealth whom you might like,” suggested Lord Carthew. “Having a title and money doesn’t absolutely debar any one from being capable of inspiring love.”
“I suppose it is my training and my contradictory nature,” she said, “but I must own that the fact of a man wearing a title would be a reason with me for having a strong prejudice against him to start with.”
“Isn’t that rather unfair?”
“I suppose it is; but I have had that formula that I was being educated solely with a view to marrying ‘well,’ and adding extra lustre to the name of Cranstoun dinned into me until I have revolted against it. And I know that after this season, when I am to be taken out and dressed, and inspected by eligible London bachelors, there will be terrible quarrels between my father and me, which will worry and terrify poor mamma beyond measure. You see, Mr. Pritchard,” she said, turning to him with that sweet, frank smile he had already learned to love, “I am indeed talking to you as though I had known you all my life. I dare say it is a good deal what you told me about your leaving England so very shortly which makes me so ready to confide in you. It seems much easier to be frank with a friend whom one may not see again for many years; and then when I heard you tell mamma your people were just yeoman farmers, and that you had nothing in wealth or position to be proud of, I warmed to you at once, and quite longed for a talk with you. The very name of Cranstoun and the expressions ‘old family,’ ‘county family,’ ‘blue blood,’ ‘rank, title, wealth, position, and ancestry,’ somehow produce a feeling of intense annoyance in me. I have been so much trained and preached to, in fact,” she concluded, laughing, “that at heart I have reverted to the savage, and that ideal of my father’s of which he constantly speaks as my vocation in life, to marry some man of brilliant position and fortune, is so detestably repugnant to me that I would far rather kill myself than submit to it.”
He listened, deeply interested, but a little puzzled. The romantic novelty of her sentiments amused and attracted him by their dissimilarity from the point of view taken of such subjects by the ordinary young Englishwoman of good education and good family, who is usually quite as anxious as her parents and guardians to make what is called “a good match,” and who only hopes that her future husband may be presentable enough for her to like him.
The clew to the mystery of Stella’s character Lord Carthew did not possess. As much as an emotional woman can dread and hate a man and a system, so strongly had Stella’s mother hated and feared Sir Philip Cranstoun and the aristocratic lords of the soil of whom he was a representative, and a very strong measure of the same rebellion, the same hatred, she had transmitted to her daughter. So that it necessarily came about that Stella tried not to think about Hilary Pritchard because she believed him to be Lord Carthew, while her heart and sympathies went readily out to Lord Carthew, whom she believed to be an altogether poor and undistinguished person.
This was exactly the state of mind in which her father, Sir Philip, desired to find her. The far-seeing Baronet had some time ago set himself to the task of investigating the means and position of certain eligible bachelors among the aristocracy whom Stella was likely to meet in London. And among these, few had a fairer record in the matter of eligibility than Claud Edward Clayton Bromley, Viscount Carthew, heir to the Earl of Northborough.
That horrible blot, the introduction of the gypsy Carewe element into the annals of the Cranstouns, might well be wiped out by such an alliance. Sir Philip’s keen eyes had noted what his daughter’s had totally failed to observe, the intensity of Lord Carthew’s regard as he turned toward Stella on his horse and drank in her words. As to what the girl’s sentiments in the matter were, that did not trouble Sir Philip for one moment. She had only been admitted into his household on suffrage, he told himself, a wretched infant, born in a hovel, and brought to his house by beggars. He did not know, so he argued, that she was even his wife’s child at all. When he said this, however, he lied, for the girl’s resemblance to her mother was very striking. In any case, it was not for her own sake, but to save her noble stepmother’s reason, that baby Stella was taken from her hiding-place in London and brought up in her father’s house. And a hundred times a day Sir Philip punished her for her lost mother’s pride and passionate temper.
If she liked flowers and she planted them, orders were given for them to be uprooted and destroyed. A Miss Cranstoun must not soil her hands by gardening. No servant that she liked was allowed to be about her, and in her growing girlhood books that she seemed to enjoy were invariably taken away. These petty tyrannies Stella had endured for years in proud silence. It was as though she had been reserving her strength for some great struggle which was one day to take place, and to alter for all time the relations between herself and her father. For a long time she had felt it, as it were, hovering in the air, and that it would be upon the subject of her marriage she had no doubt. Only, she supposed that the trip to London would be the starting point for their quarrel, nor could she guess that this kindly new friend, who rode beside her and listened with such sympathetic interest to her little troubles, would be closely associated with the crucial conflict which was shortly to wage between herself and her father.
Minehost at the wayside inn, where the two young men had left their horses on the preceding day, was duly surprised and impressed by the appearance of one of his guests in company with no less a personage than Miss Cranstoun of the Chase.
Sir Philip Cranstoun was the innkeeper’s landlord, and although he had hardly ever caught more than a fleeting glimpse of the young lady, he knew who she must be by the livery of the groom, who rode at some distance behind the young lady, and her cavalier, on a sturdy cob not given to exerting himself.
“I assure you, sir, that I never had the least idea that you and Lord Carthew wouldn’t come back to pay your little trifle here, as you suggest,” the man said, all deference and smiles. “Seeing as you’d left a hundred guineas or more of horseflesh in my stables, it wasn’t likely, sir, was it?”
Stella at once begged to see the horses, and Lord Carthew hastened to help her down from her saddle, a proceeding which took far too little time in his opinion, for Stella was lithe and active as a sailor lad. Gathering her neat, dark green habit into her small hand in its dogskin glove, she followed the landlord and her guest to the inn stables, while the groom held the horses upon which they had come.
Black Bess and the chestnut cob duly made their appearance, and were stroked and made much of by Stella, who, somewhat to Lord Carthew’s chagrin, manifested a decided preference for the big black mare.
“She isn’t what I call a ’andsome ’oss, either, if I may make so bold as to say so,” observed the old hostler of the inn, critically. “At least, not for such a young gentleman as his lordship. But she looks like a good ’un to go and to stay. This ’ere chestnut of yours, sir, ’as a lot more blood in ’im now, ’asn’t ’e?”
“He has a long pedigree, certainly,” returned Lord Carthew. “But my friend weighs fourteen stone against my ten, and wants more bone and muscle than I do in his mount.”
“That ’e do, sure enough, sir. And this ’ere animal,” signifying Black Bess, “she’d carry the Mayor and Corporation o’ London by turns all day long and be as frisky as a colt at bedtime. She’s as strong as a dray ’oss, she is.”
Stella’s fair cheek was pressed against Black Bess’ long, black satin neck, and her soft, cooing voice, beloved of all dumb things, was murmuring friendly speeches into the ears of the mare, which were pricked up, and moving quickly backward and forward in appreciation of the attention paid her.
Lord Carthew meanwhile was increasing Stella’s liking for him by giving minute directions as to the food for the animals until they would be wanted again by their masters. Stella would have suggested that they should be sent to the Chase stables, but Lady Cranstoun had given her no instruction on that point and fear of her father restrained her.
“I should like to take you for some pretty ride in the neighborhood,” she explained to Claud after they had again mounted their horses, “but in that case I must ask the way of the groom. Except for a few mad spins late at night, I have been very little outside the park, except in a closed carriage with mamma. You see, there are a good many square miles enclosed round the Chase, so that I get plenty of riding and some capital hurdles and ditches, too. But Sir Philip has forbidden me to go outside at all.”
“Don’t you want to sometimes?”
“Why, of course I do,” she answered simply. “Just because I am ordered not to, for no other reason. In the evenings, when Sir Philip is away, I ride as near the boundaries of the Chase enclosure as possible, and sometimes I can’t resist taking a jump over and cantering along the roads in the early moonlight. Sometimes, as if he knew we were doing wrong, Zephyr flies so fast his hoofs seem hardly to touch the ground, and I am sure, as we flash by the few country folk trudging along the lonely roads, they think we are wraiths, and go home and make stories about us.”
“Why you are a modern version of Tennyson’s ‘Lady of Shalott,’ ” he exclaimed, and then quoted in clear, rhythmical fashion:
“ ‘Four gray walls and four gray towers.’
“ ‘Four gray walls and four gray towers.’
That’s a good description of the Chase, isn’t it? even if in your case they do not ‘overlook a space of flowers.’ And the continuation applies:
“ ‘But who hath seen her wave her hand?Or at the casement seen her stand?Or is she known in all the land,The Lady of Shalott?Only reapers, reaping earlyIn among the bearded barley,Hear a song that echoes cheerly,From the river winding clearly,Down to towered Camelot.And by the moon the reaper, weary,Piling sheaves in upland airy,Listening, whispers, “ ’Tis the fairyLady of Shalott.” ’ ”
“ ‘But who hath seen her wave her hand?
Or at the casement seen her stand?
Or is she known in all the land,
The Lady of Shalott?
Only reapers, reaping early
In among the bearded barley,
Hear a song that echoes cheerly,
From the river winding clearly,
Down to towered Camelot.
And by the moon the reaper, weary,
Piling sheaves in upland airy,
Listening, whispers, “ ’Tis the fairy
Lady of Shalott.” ’ ”
She had reined in her horse and was listening in eager delight.
“I have never read a word of Tennyson,” she said. “The only poetry-books allowed me have been Milton and Wordsworth and some selected readings from Pope and Shakespeare. Sir Philip says that reading poetry fosters romantic and ridiculous notions, and that I should only read the poets his mother read, and know the others by name. But I like what you have quoted better than anything I have ever read yet. What became of the Lady of Shalott?”
“Oh, you must not take her for your prototype,” he said quickly. “She used to ‘weave by night and day, a magic web with colors gay,’ and she was never allowed to look out of the window to see the surly village churls, and red cloaks of the market girls, pass onward to Shalott. She had to content herself with seeing their reflections in a magic mirror which hung on a wall in her room. A curse was to fall upon her should she turn from its reflections and gaze on the realities of life, until one day, when there passed by ‘two young lovers lately wed; “I am half sick of shadows,” said the Lady of Shalott.’ ”
“But that was not the end, surely?” asked Stella, with childlike eagerness. “The day came, of course, when she looked out on life itself, braving any curse which might befall her.”
“Oh, yes; trust her for that. She was a woman as well as a fairy, you see:
“ ‘A bow-shot from her bower-eavesHe rode between the barley sheaves,The sun came dazzling thro’ the leaves,And flamed upon the brazen greavesOf bold Sir Lancelot.’
“ ‘A bow-shot from her bower-eaves
He rode between the barley sheaves,
The sun came dazzling thro’ the leaves,
And flamed upon the brazen greaves
Of bold Sir Lancelot.’
He was her fate, I suppose. Anyhow, as a modern writer would say, the ‘exact psychological moment of her life had arrived,’ and:
“ ‘She left the web, she left the loom,She made three paces thro’ the room,She saw the water-lily bloom,She saw the helmet and the plume,She look’d down to Camelot.Out flew the web and floated wide;The mirror crack’d from side to side;“The curse is come upon me,” criedThe Lady of Shalott.’ ”
“ ‘She left the web, she left the loom,
She made three paces thro’ the room,
She saw the water-lily bloom,
She saw the helmet and the plume,
She look’d down to Camelot.
Out flew the web and floated wide;
The mirror crack’d from side to side;
“The curse is come upon me,” cried
The Lady of Shalott.’ ”
“And what was the end?” asked Stella. She had followed each line, conjuring up mental pictures of the scenes. But bold Sir Lancelot she saw in a brown-eyed giant, with a golden mustache drooping over a mouth that was a little hard in outline. And for the lady it was pardonable girlish egotism if she saw herself, living as she did in semi-imprisonment, confined within those “four gray walls” and the demesnes adjacent. What did she herself know more of life than was pictured in the old-fashioned books to which she had access, or hinted at in the prim and guarded talk of her instructors? Of life as it really was, its passion, its pain, its hopes, and fears, and sorrows, its mad delights and long regrets, its brilliant colors and heavy shadows, she knew no more than the Lady of Shalott learned from her mirror as she caught sight of the village maidens and gay young knights reflected there. Untilhecame! And how would it end after that, she wanted to know.
“Oh, poor Lady of Shalott, she had better have been content with her looking-glass and her needlework,” said Lord Carthew. “Apparently, she went straight to her death resignedly, after falling in love at first sight with Lancelot. She ‘found a boat, beneath a willow left afloat, and round about the prow she wroteThe Lady of Shalott.’ In this she was wafted up along the river to ‘many-towered Camelot,’ where all the gay knights and ladies were enjoying themselves, foremost among them being Sir Lancelot of the Lake, lover of Queen Guinevere:
“ ‘Under tower and balcony,By garden wall and gallery,A gleaming shape she floated by,Dead-pale between the houses high,Silent into Camelot.’
“ ‘Under tower and balcony,
By garden wall and gallery,
A gleaming shape she floated by,
Dead-pale between the houses high,
Silent into Camelot.’
Then they all came out and looked at her, and read her name on the prow.
“ ‘Who is this? and what is here?’And in the lighted palace near,Died the sound of royal cheer;And they crossed themselves for fear,All the knights of Camelot:But Lancelot mused a little space;He said, ‘She has a lovely face,God in His mercy lend her grace,The Lady of Shalott.’ ”
“ ‘Who is this? and what is here?’
And in the lighted palace near,
Died the sound of royal cheer;
And they crossed themselves for fear,
All the knights of Camelot:
But Lancelot mused a little space;
He said, ‘She has a lovely face,
God in His mercy lend her grace,
The Lady of Shalott.’ ”
Tears had started to Stella’s eyes as Lord Carthew finished reciting the verses.
“Sir Lancelot never guessed that she loved him, then?” she asked.
“Not in that poem. But you are taking it quite seriously, Miss Cranstoun. I shall be angry with myself if I have saddened you.”
“You will think me very silly,” she said, “but I never get a chance of reading poetry, or of listening to stories told. And you repeat poetry so well, and tell tales in such an interesting manner, I could listen for weeks at a stretch.”
His heart leaped up with delight at her words; but when he spoke again, after a slight pause, he had perfect control of his voice.
“Do you know,” he said, “that during the last half hour I have been thinking a great deal of what you were telling me a little while ago about your dread of the consequences of going to London. You have been amiable enough to treat me as your friend, and in that character I have been trying to discover some way out of your difficulties. You are tired of living here, and find the life intolerably dull, do you not? You long to see the world with your own eyes, to travel, to go out and come in as you like, to be no longer repressed and restrained, and blamed when you do not deserve it? You would like to visit strange countries, to sail in ships to foreign places, to see something of gayety and brightness in the great cities of the world?”
“Yes; oh, yes!”
Her gypsy blood had mantled in her cheeks, her breath came quickly, and her eyes sparkled with excitement at the pictures his words conjured up before her.
“And you also long, I am sure, sometimes, when you are alone in that great dreary house,” he went on, softly, “for love and affection, for a tenderness that shall wrap you round, and guard you from all worry and trouble, for the arms of some one who would love you above everything else in the world clasped round you; for the loving companionship of some one who would think of you always, understand you in everything, and answer your mind with his, for love that is friendship, and friendship that is love; the love that will grow gray beside you, and find you dearer and more beautiful when your youth is past than even you are now.”
She faltered, blushed, and looked at him quickly.
“I have mamma——” she was beginning, when he stopped her by laying his hand lightly upon her own, which held the reins on her horse’s neck.
“Wait a moment, please, Miss Cranstoun. I don’t want you to speak until you have heard me out. I love you, and I want you to be my wife. Don’t start and draw back. There is nothing after all so very wonderful in such a statement. I knew when I first saw you last night that I should ask you to marry me, and since that moment I have only been waiting for the terms to come to me. I am not in the least attractive, I know. But there’s this to be in my favor, that I am too plain to be conceited, or to have my head turned by women’s flatteries. You are not happy here, and you lead a caged-bird sort of life. As my wife, you would be free as air, and your will would be law. Of course I don’t expect you to love me—not for a long time yet. But in time,” he added, wistfully, “in time, as you realize that you are everything in the world to me, I think you will grow to like me a little. You see, we are such good friends, and I should understand you, and that is something to begin with, is it not? And we would travel all over Europe—all over the world, if you like. Of course,” he went on in some confusion, noting her look of surprise, “it is not as though I were very rich. But I have some money saved, quite enough to enable me to give my bride a long and delightful wedding tour by sea and land before starting for my Canadian farm. Don’t answer me directly—don’t say anything at all just now. Think it over, and let me know. I will speak to Lady Cranstoun when we get back, and you can consult with her.”
“But, Mr. Pritchard,” she said, turning her great, startled eyes upon him, “do you think for a moment my father would consent? He would be furiously angry, and horribly insulting at the mere idea. Don’t, pray don’t speak of this any more. Let us forget all about it, and go on being merely friends.”
“That is impossible,” he answered, gently. “Tell me truthfully, Miss Cranstoun, is your objection to a marriage with me based solely upon the fear of your father’s disapproval?”
“Yes—no—that is—I don’t want to marry you, Mr. Pritchard! I have never thought of such a thing!”
The words burst from her lips, and a bewildered, troubled look clouded her fair face.
“Well, I will give you time to think of it,” he said, quietly. “As to Sir Philip’s objections, I have little doubt that I can overcomethem.”
“You don’t know my father,” she said, with meaning. “Sometimes I wonder why he hates me us he does. But I am certain of one thing: he would far rather see me dead than married to any one who is not my superior in rank and fortune.”
“Still I don’t fear his opposition,” returned Lord Carthew, with a smile. “I am better off than you know, and may possibly even succeed to a title some day.”
“Had you told me that at first,” she said reproachfully, “we should not have been such friends.”
“You would soon forget it,” he said, smiling again. “A title, after all, is not a thing a man wears on his coat. May I take it that if your parents consent you will at least not decide against me?”
“Don’t!” she exclaimed. “You have surprised and startled me so much I can hardly think coherently. You see, I am not used to receiving offers of marriage. This is my first. I suppose it is a great honor, but—let’s have a gallop, shall we? The horses must be quite tired of walking.”
Away she flew, at break-neck speed, after a shake of the reins and a word to Zephyr, who needed no whip to urge his pace, and gave Lord Carthew work indeed to follow him.
Flushed and out of breath, they at length drew up their steeds before the steps of the Chase, having re-entered the lodge gates after a spirited canter through the lanes, the horses neck to neck part of the time, but eventually with Zephyr a long way ahead. Stella was radiant and laughing as Lord Carthew sprang from his horse to assist her to dismount, the groom having been left jolting steadily far behind. Lord Carthew felt at that moment happier and more hopeful than he had ever been before, and both were talking and laughing in merry boy and girl fashion upon the result of their extempore race as they ascended the broad, shallow steps to the entrance of the house.
Before they had had time to touch the bell, the massive doors were opened to them, and just within the hall immediately before them stood the master of the house, pale, gray-haired, gray-eyed, his square face, with its handsome clear-cut features and unpleasantly sinister expression, shown up by the clear sunshine of an April day.
Lord Carthew glanced at Stella. All gayety and brightness had died from her face at sight of her father, and instead came that look of fixed self-repression and endurance which he had once before noted there.
“So you have been enjoying an early ride,” Sir Philip remarked to his daughter, in grating tones. “Have you and this gentleman been unattended, may I ask? If not, where is the groom?”
“His horse could not keep up with the others,” Stella answered, briefly.
“And who is this gentleman? May I have the honor of being presented to him?”
“Mr. Pritchard, my father, Sir Philip Cranstoun,” said the girl, in level tones, from which all the glad youthful ring had departed. “If you will excuse me,” she added, “I will go and change my habit.”
With a little formal bend of the head, she left them, and walked in stately fashion up the staircase until she passed out of their sight, when she suddenly quickened her steps, and flew like a bird down the corridor to Lady Cranstoun’s room.
She found that lady lying on a couch, very white and feeble, wrapped in a cashmere morning-gown, and trembling in every limb.
“Oh! my dear, my dear!” Lady Cranstoun murmured, wringing her limp, white hands, “I am so thankful that you have come back. Your father has returned, and has been asking me questions. He compelled me to tell him where you were. I expected a storm, but he said nothing, which seems so much more dangerous. I am in such terror of what he may say to you.”
Stella drew a footstool to the side of Lady Cranstoun’s sofa, and taking one of her hands in both her own, gently kissed it, and rubbed her cheek against it.
“Mamma,” she said, “how would you like to leave the Chase, and come and stay with me in a nice house, where every one would love you, and no one would bully and frighten you, and where you would have nice servants instead of spies, and where your relations would be honored and welcomed, instead of being insulted whenever they came to visit you?”
“It sounds delightful,” returned the poor lady, sighing, “but, of course, it is impossible. What put such ideas into your head?”
“Mr. Pritchard has just asked me to marry him.”
Lady Cranstoun sat up on her sofa.
“My dear, you astonish me!” she exclaimed. “It is so extremely sudden.”
“He says he decided to propose to me as soon as he saw me yesterday,” returned Stella, demurely.
“But it is utterly out of the question. Of course he is a gentleman, and well educated, and has very agreeable manners; but, my dear, he told me himself that he is a farmer’s son, and has neither money nor family. Oh, dear—oh dear! it is all my fault for allowing you to be so much with him. But he seemed so little like a love-making sort of man, so plain and intellectual, I never dreamed any harm would come of it. I did certainly suggest to Dr. Graham that I ought not to leave you together while we were playing chess; but he reassured me so strongly that I thought no more about it. Sir Philip will be furious. He will never forgive me. And you—my poor dear child—I hope, oh, I do hope, that you have not grown fond of him.”
“Don’t worry, dear mamma. I don’t care a bit about him, at least not in that way. He is very clever, and very kind, and, I believe, very good, too, and I am sure he is fond of me, and would be very good to both of us; and it would be lovely, wouldn’t it, to be free of the Chase forever? As to his farm in Canada, he says it doesn’t matter about going to that yet, and that he has a lot more money saved than any one knows of, and that he will take me all over the world. You know Dr. Graham has always said a voyage to the Cape would do you good, and I thought of that directly; we would all go to the Cape together in a sailing ship. Think,” she exclaimed, springing up from her kneeling position, and beginning to pace restlessly up and down the room, “how beautiful it would be to be upon the great, wide sea, which I have only once seen in my life, with the bright sun sparkling on the waves, and you and I on deck under an awning, such as I have read about in books of travel; you on a deck-chair, and I mixing you your iced lemonade, and reading aloud while beautiful warm breezes blew over you and made you well; and above all,” here she came and knelt by Lady Cranstoun’s side, and lowered her voice to an impressive whisper, “withno Sir Philip!”
“Hush, hush, dear!” the elder lady exclaimed, nervously glancing at the door. “In your picture you leave out the man, I see. But what does it matter? Even if you loved him, and wanted to marry him for other reasons than to escape from this house, your father would not hear of it. He has said thousands of times that youmustmarry a title. Now, if it had only been Lord Carthew——”
“Don’t, mamma!” exclaimed the girl, for the first time blushing scarlet. “Lord Carthew detests me. Anyhow, we were not talking of him. Mr. Pritchard isn’t a bit afraid of Sir Philip. He says ifheis the only obstruction, he can soon removethat. It appears he is coming into a title and fortune, and can prove it to Sir Philip. But even then,” she added, “I couldn’t marry him, could I, without loving him?”
“I should like to see you happy with a good husband, my darling,” said Lady Cranstoun, tears coming into her faded eyes as she stroked the girl’s cheek. “Of course, I would much prefer you to marry a man of good birth and of some fortune; but your happiness is the chief thing.”
A little later, Stella, going down to the drawing room for a novel which Lady Cranstoun was reading, was joined there by Lord Carthew.
“I have spoken to your father,” he said.
“What did he say?” inquired Stella, curiously.
“He offers no objection against me, provided I can succeed in winning your affections.”
“I am quite sure Sir Philip didn’t saythat,” she exclaimed, laughing. “He wouldn’t think my affections had anything to do with the matter.”
“But they have everything to do with it, from my point of view,” he said, standing before her, and looking steadfastly into her face. “I don’t expect or hope that you will love me yet. But if you will marry me, I will engage that you shall be a great deal happier than you are now.”
“That might easily be, now that Sir Philip has returned.”
She spoke half under her breath, and as it were involuntarily, and then stood a few moments, reflecting. Lord Carthew was a little, a very little, shorter than she, and even such a fancy-free maiden as Stella had her ideals of the man she might some day grow to love. Like most very young girls’ ideals, he was of exaggerated height and length of limb. Lord Carthew was of pale and sallow complexion, in spite of the fact that he usually enjoyed excellent health. Gazing at him thus in the sunlight, and regarding him for the first time in the light of a possible husband, Stella noted that his deep-set, intelligent eyes were of a greenish-gray, and set too near together in his head for beauty or symmetry. Herself a brunette, she admired fair, florid skins and light hair in others. Lord Carthew was clean-shaved, and Stella’s conventional ideal invariably wore a golden mustache, similar to the one on the face of the wounded man upstairs. Lord Carthew’s upper lip was long, and his lower jaw slightly protruded. To a student of physiognomy, his mouth and chin clearly indicated an intense loyalty and fidelity in love and friendship, combined with a bull-dog obstinacy and tenacity of purpose, and his whole face denoted unusual intelligence, will, and power of loving.
But Stella was a young girl of eighteen, and saw none of these things. Her feminine instinct taught her that this man was an honorable gentleman, but what she particularly noted with dissatisfaction was that, in moments of repressed excitement, as in the present instance, Lord Carthew’s eyes and eyebrows twitched in a nervous fashion peculiar to some oversensitive temperaments.
Her survey over, she turned away with a half-sigh. Why was not this man, who loved her, more like that other man, who disliked her? But the next moment she tried to put that thought away as humiliating. She was certain Lord Carthew would be very good to her, and to her mamma also. And oh! to be free from Sir Philip’s sneering, and bullying, and hectoring!
“Only tell me one thing,” Lord Carthew said at last. “Have I a rival?”
Stella flushed deeply, but answered on the instant.
“No, no! How could you possibly have? I have hardly spoken to a man before, except Sir Philip, and the doctor, and my teachers. No, it isn’t that I love any one else, but—but——”
“But you don’t love me? Well, that would be impossible. There is nothing about me to make a beautiful young girl fall in love at first sight. But, my dear Miss Cranstoun, you have certainly beauty enough for two!”
She laughed and blushed with pleasure. She had so far in her life had hardly any compliments.
“Would you take mamma away from here as well?” she asked. “I mean, if—if I ever said yes.”
“Of course I would, if she would come. She is my kinswoman, you know—at least, my friend’s kinswoman.”
“I’ll think about it, and tell you later,” she said, springing away with one of her swift, bird-like movements, and was gone before he could speak again.
On the way to her own room, she passed the apartments which had first been occupied by the first Lady Cranstoun, and which were now given to the supposed Lord Carthew. The doors both of the bedroom and sitting-room were wide open. Stella glanced into the latter, and perceived the wounded man lying fully dressed on a sofa near the fire, apparently asleep, for his eyes were closed and his dark eyelashes rested on his cheek. He looked paler than usual, but handsomer than ever, with the extra touch of delicacy imparted by loss of blood and unaccustomed weakness.
Stella looked again, and creeping in, stood gazing down upon him until her breath came quickly, and tears gathered in her eyes. Under his half-closed lids, Hilary was watching her, and when he saw her red lip quiver and her arms involuntarily moving toward him, his self-control broke down. Suddenly stretching up his right arm, he drew her head down to his, and pressed his lips passionately to hers.
“Alas, how easily things go wrong!A sigh too much or a kiss too long;There comes a mist and a blinding rain,And things are never the same again!”
“Alas, how easily things go wrong!
A sigh too much or a kiss too long;
There comes a mist and a blinding rain,
And things are never the same again!”
Stellahad never heard the verses, but something of the same thought entered into her mind as she drew back, pale and quivering, after that one passionate kiss interchanged between her and Hilary.
In one magical moment she had learned so much—had learned that she loved Hilary, that he loved her, and, moreover, that the thought of marrying her suitor of the morning, which up to now she had been able to cherish at least without aversion, had suddenly grown intolerable to her. All this had been taught her by a kiss, the first which ever a man had laid upon her lips.
With downcast eyes and rapidly beating heart, she stood now before Hilary, as he rose from the sofa and bent down toward her, holding both her little trembling hands in one of his.
“It was my fault,” he whispered, humbly. “Forgive me.”
“I—I have nothing to forgive,” the girl said, unsteadily, still without looking up. “I must go, Lord Carthew.”
“If I were really Lord Carthew,” he said, “there might be some excuse. But I am not. By a freak of my friend’s, we had changed names for a while when that accident happened to me. But I never intended the trick to continue. It is true that he begged me, as a favor, to keep silence on the subject, especially before you. But, after my folly and imprudence, I must confess the truth. I cannot masquerade any longer. Miss Cranstoun, try to forgive me.”
“I have nothing to forgive.”
“You see,” he went on, unheeding, letting her hands go, and standing at some distance from her, “I was half-dreaming—weakness, I dare say, proceeding from the ridiculous semi-invalid position I’ve been in during the last eighteen hours. Suddenly, on opening my eyes, I saw a face, a very lovely woman’s face, close to me. It seemed a part of my dreams; I did not stop to consider who she was, and I kissed her.”
“You thought it was some one else, then?”
“I did not say so. But will you forgive me?”
“I forgive you. I understand; I was only a part of your dream. Please tell me again what you were saying just now. I could not quite grasp it. What is your real name?”
“Hilary Pritchard. Here,” he continued, fumbling with one hand in his pocket, “here are cards, letters, and papers, to prove it. No one who knows the Northborough family could suppose that I belong to it. But Lord Carthew was my college chum, and I like him as well almost as one man can like another. I am all the more sorry because I have annoyed a lady whom I know he very greatly admires.”
“So it is Lord Carthew I have been talking to all last evening and this morning,” Stella observed, reflectively. “That explains a great deal.”
She broke off abruptly. What she really meant was that it explained the fact of her father’s acquiescence to the proposed marriage between herself and his younger guest; and also to the latter’s way of talking as though he were wealthy and heir to a title, as well as other points which had puzzled her.
The door of the sitting-room in which they stood was wide open, and Dakin, the housemaid, passed along the corridor, apparently without paying any particular attention to Stella and Hilary; but Stella disliked and distrusted the woman, and moved toward the door as Dakin made a great pretence of going down the staircase to the ground-floor.
“I will say good-by now, Miss Cranstoun,” said Hilary, in a constrained voice. “I shall be leaving the house almost immediately. May I leave it to you to make my apologies to Lady Cranstoun?”
“But you will stay to luncheon, surely?” Stella suggested. “It will seem so strange if you go like this. And besides, you are not nearly strong enough to be moved yet. You can hardly walk, and last night you were delirious, I know.”
“How do you know?”
She blushed deeply.
“I charm away mamma’s headaches,” she answered, in confusion. “I believe I have some kind of magnetism in my touch. So I asked Margaret to let me soothe you.”
“It was you, then. I woke out of a horrid nightmare, and felt your touch, and heard your voice.”
His tones vibrated with deep feeling, which he was trying vainly to suppress. Stella, on her part, was torn between a desire to escape and a longing to remain near him.
The first luncheon-gong rang out in the interval of silence. Stella held out her hand to him.
“Won’t you stay?” she asked.
“I cannot.”
He was holding her hand close, and through both their frames electric currents seemed to tingle. The very air about them was charged with electricity to them, so that both were quivering and excited.
They were standing near the open door, when suddenly Stella turned, laid her two small hands lightly upon Hilary’s sleeve, and looked up in his face, her own pale, but transfigured into more than its usual loveliness by passionate feeling.
“Was it only a dream?” she breathed rather than said. “Or do you love me?”
Mortal man could hold out in pride no longer. In an instant he had gathered her up in his arms, and was covering her cheeks, her eyes, and her lips with close, hot kisses, while he murmured incoherent words of love into her ear.
Only for one mad, never-to-be-forgotten moment did he hold her thus, she unresisting, clinging timidly to him, letting her soft lips meet his in answering passion.
Then he remembered all the difference between them, all the barriers, all the impossibilities. As in a flash he realized her father’s wrath, her mother’s astonishment, and the indignation of his loyal friend, Lord Carthew, and leading Stella gently to the door, he kissed her hands in token of farewell.
“Good-by,” he whispered. “I will write.”
Then he shut the door, and finding herself alone in the corridor, dazed and agitated, Stella fled to her own room, and kneeling down before an arm-chair by the fire, buried her face in her hands, to enact in imagination the scene again which she had just gone through, to thrill with ecstasy as she recalled Hilary’s kisses, to blush until her delicate skin seemed scorched as she remembered her own timid response, and to long with every fibre of her being for the moment when she would see him again.
She knew full well now what even to herself she would not own, she hardly understood before, that from the moment when that man of superb figure and perfect face had laid his hand upon Zephyr’s bridle on the preceding evening, and looked into her eyes, she had loved him, and that but for that she would hardly have braved her father’s anger by insisting upon Hilary’s removal to the Chase.
She had believed that he positively disliked her, and had secretly reproached herself for letting her thoughts dwell so persistently upon a man who scorned her. Only during the past ten minutes had she learned the truth, that against his will he loved her as passionately as she loved him. That one glorious fact outweighed all other considerations in her mind. As to Lord Carthew, he was as completely forgotten as though he had never existed. His intelligence, his kindly sympathy, his interesting talk, were of no more account in her eyes than his wealth and title. The strain of wild gypsy blood in her veins was showing itself fully now. She loved as gypsy natures can, with a passionate self-abandonment, counting the world and all that it contains of no value when compared with the love of the one person existing who could make life worth living.
Yet she was a Cranstoun, too—trained in habits of strict self-control from her infancy; and when the second summons to luncheon came, she sprang up instinctively, smoothed her hair, looked at herself fixedly in the glass, and hoped that others would not notice the strange glow in her cheeks and light in her eyes, and went down to lunch in her plain serge gown, her eyes like two dancing stars, and her mouth all tremulous with smiles.
It was almost with a start that she came face to face with Lord Carthew, and realized that he was staying in the house. Lady Cranstoun glanced at her nervously. She was a few minutes late, and Sir Philip never overlooked the least unpunctuality. To-day, however, to her great astonishment, he made no comment upon it. He and Lord Carthew seemed to get on unusually well together; both had travelled a good deal in Europe, the former unaccompanied by his wife and daughter, and they naturally fell to discussing the various hotels at which they had stayed.
Stella was heartily glad that no part of the conversation devolved upon her. She sat in her usual place at the head of the table, Lady Cranstoun not being equal to any of the duties of hostess, mechanically doing all that was required of her, and all the time wondering whether Hilary had left the house yet, how he would stand the journey in his weak condition, whether by any chance she should see him again before his departure, and if not, how soon he would write to her. Lord Carthew noticed the brightness of her eyes and her absent-minded expression, and with a thrill of joy hoped it might arise from her half-given promise to himself. His interview with her father had been short, but characteristic of both men.
He had followed the dreaded gray wolf into his vast library, surrounded by well-filled oaken bookcases, and had watched him take his accustomed place with his back to the fire, sarcastic, and critical.
“Sir Philip,” Lord Carthew had begun, plunging at once into his subject, as he seated himself deliberately in a deep arm-chair, “first, I must thank you for the hospitality extended to my friend and myself since yesterday evening. You have no doubt heard of my friend’s unlucky accident, entirely the result of our trespassing in your grounds. Next, I must inform you that while out riding this morning, I made your daughter an offer of marriage.”
“Indeed, Mr.—Pritchard, I think the name is?”
“No, that is not my name, but that of my friend upstairs. To please a whimsical fancy of my own, we had changed names for the nonce during our travels. My name is Lord Carthew, and my father, Lord Northborough, is connected with Lady Cranstoun’s family.”
“May I ask if you are in the habit of going about under analias?”
“I don’t think I have ever had occasion to use any name but my own until yesterday. The point is, that as Miss Cranstoun expressed an indifference to titles which almost amounted to hostility, I took advantage of the fact to continue the jest, and to do my wooing in the name of my old college friend, whose people are gentlemen farmers in Yorkshire.”
“Very romantic,” sneered Sir Philip. “May I ask whether this ‘Lord of Burleigh’ style of courtship won my daughter’s heart?”
“I could not say that. Miss Cranstoun has known me a few hours only, and I am not possessed of those graces and attractions which charm at first sight. But at least she did not repel me, and even promised to think about the matter, subject, of course, to your approval.”
It was difficult for Sir Philip to keep all signs of his satisfaction from his hard and impassive face.
“I will tell you plainly, Lord Carthew,” he said, after a moment’s pause, “that after what you have told me, I shall require better proofs of your identity than your bare word if you wish me to consider you in the light of a suitor to my daughter’s hand. We Cranstouns are, as you may know, among the oldest, absolutely the oldest families in England, and on her mother’s side my daughter is granddaughter to the Duke of Lanark. I do not think my daughter is especially attached to me, although she is most devoted to my wife. But she has been brought up in habits of the strictest obedience, and would not think of encouraging any admirer without my full sanction. Had you been this Mr. Pritchard you were pleased to personate, I should most certainly have never given it.”
“My friend is a gentleman, sir,” returned Lord Carthew, coldly; “and a man of such high character and superb appearance that any girl might well fall in love with him, and any father be proud to be connected with him.”
“In that case, you must pardon me for saying so, but are you not committing an error of judgment in taking him with you when you go wife-hunting?”
The bitterness of the sarcasm, reflecting as it did upon his undistinguished appearance, stung Lord Carthew for one moment only, and he winced. Then, recovering himself, with an easy smile, he answered that fortunately for him Mr. Pritchard was not a marrying man, and proposed, indeed, shortly to leave England and seek his fortune out West. In the mean time he should be glad to know whether Sir Philip had any objection to offer against him, Lord Carthew, in the character of candidate for his daughter’s hand.
“My parents are extremely desirous that I should at once marry some lady of birth and beauty,” he continued. “My father intends settling fifteen thousand a year and a house in town upon me as soon as my choice is made. But I have hardly ever hoped to see my ideals all realized so perfectly as they are in your lovely and charming daughter.”
The two men having come to a thorough understanding, it was hard to say which was the more eager to hurry on the marriage. Even the strongest and hardest of men, to all appearance, usually have one weak spot, one touch of human foolishness about them, and in Sir Philip Cranstoun’s mind there lingered always a haunting fear lest the old gypsy woman’s prophecy of disgrace and shame to be brought upon him by his descendants might some day be verified. Over his wife he exercised the same unquestioned, domineering authority as over the servants of his household; but he had long ago recognized the proud, dumb protest in his daughter’s obedience, and had realized that she inherited something of his own will-power, together with a capability for passionate resentment and other qualities at the existence of which he could but guess.
He was all the more relieved at the thought that she would, by her brilliant marriage with the future Earl of Northborough, at once retrieve the mistake he himself had made twenty years ago in wedding Clare Carewe, and relieve his mind from all lurking anxiety on her account. Lord Carthew was evidently a man of originality and strength of purpose; even Sir Philip, who cherished a chronic contempt for nearly all his kind, was compelled to recognize this, and he congratulated himself heartily on his own sagacity in keeping as secret, even from herself, his daughter’s half humble origin.
After luncheon Lord Carthew, instead of joining his host in the smoking-room, repaired to the drawing-room, which Stella quitted almost as soon as he entered.
He noted her action, and erroneously attributed it to her natural modesty and shyness in not wishing his offer of marriage to be discussed before her mother. But in truth, Stella was not thinking of him at all. She merely wished to be alone that she might think over the emotions of the morning, and she had hardly given a moment’s thought to Lord Carthew and his proposal after that brief but momentous interview with Hilary Pritchard.
It was easy enough, so Lord Carthew found, to win Lady Cranstoun’s approval of the match. Seating himself near her sofa, he told her in a few well-chosen words of his love for her daughter, and the ruse he had practised in pleading his cause in his friend’s name.
“I can never understand my dear Stella’s extraordinary objections against wealth and position!” exclaimed Lady Cranstoun. “For my part I am delighted about the whole affair. I thought from the moment when I first saw you that you had the Douglas eyes. Do you know, with her strange opinions, I have always been nervous as to whom Stella would marry? She is so utterly unlike ordinary girls, you see, and I am the more relieved that it has all turned out so well.”
“You really think she will have me, then?”
“Certainly I do,” returned Lady Cranstoun, opening her pale blue eyes in surprise. “Of course, as she says, she has not known you long enough to love you; but she has a very high regard for you, and you seem to have similar tastes. She even—I hope I am not betraying her confidence—but she even asked me if I should like to go for a voyage with you after you were married, and drew a most charming picture of the deck of a ship with all of us assembled there.”
A faint color came into the poor lady’s face as she spoke. The prospect of leaving the Chase, and her husband’s cold, tyrannical dislike, seemed to momentarily restore her lost youth and health. Lord Carthew was delighted at her encouraging words.
“There is no breach of confidence,” he said. “Your daughter said as much to me. I think I may consider myself as the happiest man in England at this moment.”
Meanwhile, under the trees of the same shrubbery where her grandfather, Hiram Carewe, was shot down and murdered nineteen years before, Stella Cranstoun walked, with feet that seemed hardly to touch the ground, her thoughts absorbed by Hilary. She would not think of the future. The fact that he loved her should be enough for her for one happy day at least, until she could hear from him.
Turning into a fresh glade, where the branches overarched above her, she came unexpectedly face to face with her father. The flush died from her cheeks, the light from her eyes. She bowed coldly and would have passed on, when he barred her progress with his arm.
“Wait!” he said. “I have something to ask you. What is this about a proposal of marriage made to you this morning by a Mr. Hilary Pritchard?”
She looked at him scornfully. She knew quite well that he was trying to deceive her.
“You have been misinformed,” she said. “The gentleman who asked me to marry him was Viscount Carthew.”
“And what was your answer?”
“I have not yet given it. But it will most certainly be ‘No!’ ”