Stella’s heavy mourning accentuated her unearthly pallor. Even Sir Philip was startled, so deathlike was her appearance, while Lord Carthew’s heart was stirred to infinite pity.
“Poor child!” he murmured. “Poor child!”
Kneeling by her side, he very tenderly, very reverently lifted the hand which hung over the side of the sofa to his lips before he took from his pocket and slipped on her third finger a superb diamond engagement-ring.
“I wish she would awaken and speak to me,” he said, wistfully. “I wanted to ask her about our honeymoon—whether she would like to go at once in my yacht to the Mediterranean, or, as she is so delicate, whether a stay of a few days in the Isle of Wight before setting out on our travels might not be the best thing for her. My father has placed Northborough Castle at my disposal, and it would not be much of a journey from here. Has she been asleep long?” he inquired of Dakin.
The woman was primed with her answer.
“No, my lord, not long. Poor young lady, she was awake all night. Shedogrieve dreadfully over her mamma’s death; she don’t seem to have the heart to sleep or eat or go out. But she gets a bit excited about her trousseau, my lord. That’s the only thing now that seems to interest her.”
This was a daring flight of fancy on the part of Dakin, for Stella had not even troubled to look at the patterns for materials, the gloves, and shoes, and cloaks, and dresses, which every day brought her.
“She looks dreadfully ill,” said the lover, anxiously. “What does the doctor say?”
“There’s nothing the matter with her but fretting, my lord, and change of scene is bound to cure her in no time.”
“I have brought down a present from my mother to my bride,” Lord Carthew next remarked, drawing a large, flat jeweller’s case from his pocket. “I had hoped to have clasped them round Stella’s neck myself.”
He opened the lid and displayed before Sir Philip’s approving eyes five rows of superb pearls, caught here and there by diamond clasps.
“My mother would like to have presented the gift in person,” he explained, “but when I told her of Stella’s extreme delicacy and nervous depression, she agreed that it would be better not to see her until the wedding-day. She pleaded so hard, however, to be allowed to come to the wedding that I could not refuse her. Of course she perfectly understands how essentially quiet the affair will be, so soon after Lady Cranstoun’s death. I suppose you have made every arrangement for the service to be read in the chapel here?”
“Certainly. It is a little in disrepair and I have workmen employed at this moment in putting it right,” answered Sir Philip. “Only my father-in-law, the Duke of Lanark, will be present besides myself. He has not seen Stella for some time, but she was always his favorite grandchild, and he much desires to be present. Stella is fond of him and glad to have him.”
With much relief Sir Philip saw his future son-in-law depart for town that same evening. He had been dreading lest Stella should unexpectedly awaken and spoil all. Everything was going on as well as could be expected. According to Dakin and Ellen, Stella, although she took no active interest in her trousseau, consented to stand passive while hats and gowns were tried upon her, and made no remark even when she was “fitted” for her wedding-dress. The servants thought that she must be getting reconciled to the idea of the marriage; but as she never spoke, it was difficult for them to pronounce on the subject with certainty. This neutral attitude was at least better than active opposition, and Sir Philip’s heart was elated by hope that nothing would occur to mar the ceremony.
It was the more irritating to him, therefore, when on the night before the wedding eve a strange and ominous dream troubled his repose. He thought that he was standing within some vast cathedral, in which, amid much pomp and magnificence, to the strains of a superb organ, and before the eyes of the highest in the land, the nuptials of his daughter and Lord Carthew were being celebrated. He thought he was giving his daughter away, was standing close by her side and placing her hand within that of her bridegroom, when a cold film seemed to hang across him, and he perceived the spirit of his dead wife Clare, with one hand uplifted in warning, and the other stretched protectingly around her daughter, who seemed unconscious of her presence.
Suddenly the light in the church flickered and paled; people looked at each other, whispering and alarmed. Bride and bridegroom sprang apart, affrighted, and instead of the rich notes of the organ came the shrill, eldritch laughter of the hag Sarah Carewe, as she croaked again in his ears the curse which she had uttered on the day when James Carewe was sentenced for defending his father.
It was a horrible dream, and Sir Philip awoke unnerved and alarmed. At the same hour of the night visions of help and escape hovered over Stella, the memory of which kept her in a fever of excitement throughout the day. Mechanically she let them attire her in her bridal robes in the afternoon, and Sir Philip was sent for to see her in them.
She was white as her dress, and her eyes shone strangely. The look of strain and tension about her face startled her father, suggesting, as it did, a state of mind bordering on insanity. Had these three weeks of solitary confinement been too much for her? he wondered.
“I am glad,” he said, speaking more gently than usual, “to see that you are prepared to accept with pleasure the brilliant fate in store for you.”
She stared at him for a moment, and then disconcerted him by giving vent to a low, mirthless laugh as she turned away.
Alarmed by something unexpected and uncanny in her manner, Sir Philip took Dakin apart, and gave orders that for the rest of the evening Miss Cranstoun was to be closely watched, but allowed apparent liberty of action.
“Does she seem to you at all light-headed?” he asked, and Dakin owned that that idea had occurred to her.
“Let her move about the house,” Sir Philip said, “always, of course, with one or two persons within call. Fretting and starving in that foolish way have pulled her down badly.”
All the watching during that evening, however, fell to Dakin’s share, for handsome Stephen Lee presented himself in the servants’ hall, and made such open love to Ellen that that young woman forgot everything in the joy of her supposed conquest.
Finding that she was able to leave her room unmolested, and remembering well old Sarah’s promise of help on the wedding eve, Stella took the opportunity while her father was at dinner of running lightly down the broad oak staircase toward the hall door. Here she paused a moment, and then suddenly, with trembling fingers and thumping heart, she drew back the bolt of the door.
Dakin was close behind her, although she knew it not; and Dakin followed her young mistress out on the terrace, hiding in the shadow of the doorway, and watched her hesitate a moment, and then speed across the grass to where the woods began, and lose herself among the gathering shadows.
Stella’ssudden disappearance startled Dakin.
She had believed the girl to be too seriously ill to attempt to run away. But, after all, as she told herself, stepping gingerly on to the wet grass after her errant charge, Miss Cranstoun couldn’t go very far. Still she was nervous. Sir Philip had given particular orders that his daughter should have more liberty this evening, but he had said nothing about permitting her to stray about the grounds.
Mrs. Dakin was not wholly inhuman, although of a mean, hard, vulgar, and sordid nature. She had been promised five and twenty pounds, to be divided between her and Ellen, to whom she decided that the odd five pounds should go as soon as the wedding ceremony was over, and she wanted to earn it. At the same time Stella’s appearance this evening had been so strange, her eyes had appeared so unnaturally large and bright, and her face of so waxen and unhealthy a pallor, that the spy had serious misgivings as to whether she would be alive and in her right mind for the ceremony of the morrow. Consequently, she had decided that a little fresh air might do the girl good, and as Stella was wearing a white woollen shawl over her shoulders, there was no particular danger of her catching a cold, even though the evening was damp and chilly.
Mrs. Dakin approached the outskirts of the wood and called Stella’s name, not too loudly, being in great dread lest she should draw Sir Philip’s anger upon her own head for losing sight of her.
“Miss Cranstoun! Miss Cranstoun! Miss Stella! Pray come in. You’ll be catching cold!”
Only a faint echo thrown from the thick walls of the Chase answered her. Unaccustomed to country sights and sounds, the last murmurs of the birds twittering good-nights to each other from the trees and the sound of the light rain which began to patter on the leaves made her nervous. The wood seemed full of rustlings, and almost, as it appeared to her, of human laughter, fitful and mocking.
Was Miss Stella hidden anywhere and laughing at her? Such a course of conduct seemed very unlike her young mistress, who never scrupled to show her proud dislike and distrust for the paid spies by whom she was surrounded. And yet, if it was not Stella, who could it be, for there undoubtedlywaslaughter sounding somewhere in the twilight woods?
Dakin was growing frightened. It was now fully twenty minutes since Stella had given her the slip. She did not know her way about the property, and could see no sign of Miss Cranstoun anywhere. With her neat black gown torn and her hands badly scratched by the brambles, she made her way out again into the open, resolved upon engaging further help in the discovery of her mistress. To her great relief, she caught sight of Stephen Lee, sauntering along with his hands in his pockets from the direction of the kitchen quarters. He looked less saturnine than usual, and a smile actually lurked about his mouth. Without hesitation, Dakin ran toward him.
“Mr. Lee!” she exclaimed; “the very man I want! I came out here with my young lady for her to get a breath of fresh air, and I’ve lost her somehow in the wood. You know your way in and out of them trees—find her at once, there’s a good fellow, and I’ll give you five shillings for yourself. She’s ill and upset, and I’m almost afraid,” she added, lowering her tone, “if she’s left alone that she’ll be doing herself a mischief.”
The blood rushed all over the young gypsy’s face in an instant. He guessed that old Sarah had some hand in Stella’s disappearance, yet he had no more idea than Dakin as to where Stella was or what old Mrs. Carewe’s plans with regard to her could be. His own instructions had been simply to make love to the lady’s maid, and so to withdraw her attention from her mistress, and at this task he had succeeded only too well.
He stood now, hesitating a moment, as Dakin addressed him. Old Sarah was about in the woods, probably, and James Carewe also; of that he felt as certain as that a gypsy’s caravan was encamped immediately outside the Chase demesne on a piece of waste land, not very far from the ruined tower. He must not meddle in grandame Sarah’s concerns for certain. If Sarah intended to spirit Stella away that night, she would most certainly do so, and if she didnotmean that, what was the sense of all her prophecies about Stella’s relenting toward him—Stephen—and showing signs of returning his love?
He was so long silent that Dakin grew impatient.
“Why, man,” she cried, “why are you standing, staring, there? She is lost in the wood—your young mistress—can’t you understand?”
“I understand right enough,” he answered in a surly tone; “but I’ve got to think out for myself which path she’d be likely to take. You wait on the terrace steps, missis, and I’ll see if I can find her.”
He struck into the wood, and made his way rapidly through the branches until he reached a point at which he calculated that Dakin could not hear him. The sky had grown very dark by this time with falling dusk, and the rain-clouds. Here, under the overarching branches, it was difficult even for Stephen’s hawk-eyes to distinguish anything. Stopping still, he uttered three times the same low, peculiar whistle with which he had heralded his approach to the ruined tower. Then he listened, and very faintly, as from some distance, he caught an answering sound.
Again he gave the signal, and this time the responsive whistle was nearer, and the sound of breaking twigs heralded the approach of one or more persons through the brushwood. He hardly knew whether or not to feel surprised when, through an opening of the boughs, he perceived two female figures approaching him. One was Stella, with her white woollen shawl drawn about her head and shoulders, the other wasmamiSarah, looking very bent and tiny, as she hobbled along beside her tall companion.
“You are here all right, then,” said the old woman to him. “Good boy—good boy! Now, see this young lady back into the house. She’s been having a little talk with poor old Sarah. She knows old Sarah’s her friend, don’t you, deary?”
The girl bent her head in a dazed fashion, as it seemed to Stephen. He, for his part, utterly failed to understand the whole business.
“I came into the woods to find Miss Cranstoun,” he said, doubtfully. “It was that spy woman sent me. I thought—I hoped,” he stammered, “that you,mamiSarah, might have helped Miss Cranstoun to escape.”
The crone broke into her creaking laugh.
“Leave it to me, Steve,” she muttered; “old Sarah knows her business. Steve needn’t teach his great-grandmother. Remember all I’ve said to you, dearie,” she added, turning to Stella, “and as for this young man, though you’re Miss Cranstoun of the Chase, he’s your cousin, and you may trust him. Now, good-night to you, my dearies, both. A handsome pair they make, a handsome pair!”
So, muttering and gibbering to herself, old Mrs. Lee disappeared again among the trees, huddled in her hooded cloak, and as like the realization of a witch in a fairy-tale as could be imagined, leaving Stephen and Stella standing opposite each other in the dusk, while the rain pattered on the branches above their heads.
Stephen was the first to break the silence. Some strange fear of the girl possessed him; he had always been in awe of her, and her unmoved manner of receiving Sarah’s communication struck him as being out of place and strange.
“Do you really wish to go back to the house, Miss Cranstoun?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“You have no desire to escape? Because you have only to say the word, and I will lay down my life trying to set you free. Don’t you want to be free?”
“No.”
She spoke mechanically, although he felt that in the darkness her eyes were fixed searchingly upon him.
He drew a long breath, and then said, in the same constrained tones:
“The woman Dakin is waiting for you on the terrace. Shall I take you to her?”
“Yes.”
Without another word he led the way through the trees on to the grass before the house. It was considerably more than half an hour since Dakin had lost Stella, but she was there on the terrace, anxiously awaiting her.
The rain had ceased, and the sky was clear. There was still sufficient light for Stephen, as he suddenly turned to look at his young mistress, to distinguish her features and expression.
As he did so, his heart grew cold within him, for the look in her dilated dark eyes was not only wild, but absolutely wicked.
“I thoughtyou were lost, miss—I did, indeed,” protested Dakin, as Miss Cranstoun, hardly deigning to notice her, swept past her into the house. “And if Sir Philip thought I’d let you run out of the house like that—— Lor’, here he is!”
Mistress and maid were crossing the wide hall as Sir Philip entered it from the dining-room. Miss Cranstoun’s shawl had fallen back, and her plentiful blue-black hair, disarranged by the woollen wrap, curled in picturesque disorder round her face. The Baronet advanced to meet her, and then suddenly stopped. He did not even see Dakin in attendance as his pale face grew paler still, and his dry lips murmured:
“Clare!”
It was only a trick of light, no doubt, but he had never seen Stella look so startlingly like her dead mother as she did to-night; the same proud, defiant carriage of the head, the same flashing dark eyes, and curved, scornful, red lips. Twenty years seemed to have slipped away, and he himself to be taken back into the body of a young fool, bringing his beautiful, low-bred bride into the home of his fathers.
Speech would dispel the hateful illusion; he realized that, and uttered his daughter’s name sharply:
“Stella!”
“Yes.”
“Be sure that you are dressed in time to-morrow. The train for Portsmouth leaves Grayling Station at two o’clock. Neither Lord Carthew nor I like to be kept waiting. Do you hear me?”
“Yes.”
“I shall probably not see you to-morrow until you are dressed for the ceremony. You will, of course, wear the pearl necklace Lady Northborough sent you. I hope you have by this time realized fully the honor that Lord Carthew is conferring on you by making you his wife.”
No answer. She was looking him full in the eyes with an expression he had never before seen in hers, such an expression as his own face often wore—scornful, sarcastic, and hard.
“On my side,” he continued, longing to humble her untamable spirit, “on my side, indeed, there is no question of honoring. The Cranstouns can vie with the Guelphs for antiquity of race; but as the daughter of such a mother as yours, it should, indeed, be gratifying to you that a man of Lord Carthew’s rank should have asked for your hand.”
She did not answer in words, but broke into a low laugh of unmistakable contempt. It was the second time that evening that she had laughed at him, and something defiant and insolent in her manner provoked him beyond endurance. He seized both her slender hands in one of his, and shook her savagely.
“Be silent!” he muttered.
Into her dark eyes there flashed a look which seemed the reflex of his own in savagery. Then, suddenly lowering her head, she buried her teeth in his fingers, causing him instantly to let her go; whereat she looked at him, laughed again, and fled away up the stairs.
The assiduous Dakin, who had stolen to the floor above unobserved during the little passage of arms between father and daughter, led the way to the turret bedroom. It made her flesh creep, she admitted afterward, to hear Miss Cranstoun laughing to herself as she glided in. Stella walked straight up to the wedding-dress, which lay upon the bed, a perfectly plain garment of high-necked white satin, with a long tulle veil.
As Miss Cranstoun turned the dress over, she laughed again, and flitting about the room, she next lighted on the case containing the pearl necklace. A little exclamation of pleasure escaped her lips as she opened it; until that moment she had not troubled to do so. Now she clasped it round her neck and stood before the looking-glass, trying the effect.
Dakin, watching her, decided that she had never seen her look so handsome. A feverish flush tinged her ordinarily pale face, and her eyes shone with unnatural brilliancy. Seizing the wedding-dress, she motioned to Dakin to assist her into it, grumbling the while in a low undertone, quite unlike her usual clear, sweet voice, about the fit.
Dakin had very little doubt by this time that the poor girl’s mind was temporarily deranged. She had been but a comparatively short time in the Cranstoun service, but she knew enough of Stella’s outward manner to be sure that this strange, restless irritability, these low, cunning fits of laughter, and this rough impatience of movement, differed entirely from Stella’s natural deportment. Once convinced that Miss Cranstoun was a little “off her head,” Dakin was extra anxious to please her. It was not her place, but Ellen’s, to help her to dress, and to make alterations in the fit of her gown; but rather than excite her to any outward paroxysm, Dakin pinned and stitched for a good hour, and felt genuinely thankful that it was Ellen, and not she, who had to sleep that night in the same room with the bride of to-morrow.
When the lady’s maid at length entered the bedroom after supper, Dakin was curious to see whether she also would note the alteration for the worse in Stella’s manner. At first, the young woman was too much absorbed in Mr. Stephen Lee’s compliments to pay heed to anything around her; but gradually, as she whispered apart to Dakin, she became aware that Miss Cranstoun, seated by the fire in a white cashmere dressing-gown, with her black hair loose about her shoulders, was listening to her silly confidences, and staring at her with great, gleaming eyes.
Ellen tried to go on with her chatter, but came suddenly to a full stop.
“What’s wrong with her?” she asked of Dakin, in an awestruck whisper.
Dakin, with her back to her young mistress, touched her forehead significantly, and shook her head.
“Mad?”
Ellen’s pale lips formed rather than uttered the words.
Dakin nodded, and held up her finger warningly.
“They get that sharp when they’re that way,” she whispered, confidentially. “If she’s violent in the night I’ll be sleeping in the next room, and I’ll come to you.”
But this was not enough for Ellen. Shaking with fear, she protested that she could not be left alone with a mad woman, and that unless Dakin promised to sleep with her she would go right down to Sir Philip and tell him then and there that the marriage must be put off because his daughter was crazy. This threat had the effect of persuading Dakin to stay, the more so as she could see Miss Cranstoun watching them, and laughing softly to herself as the unhappy spies took whispering counsel together. Neither of them slept that night, except for occasional broken snatches, from which they were awakened with a start by fitful bursts of the same crazy laughter from the bride of the ensuing day.
Stella’s wedding morn was clear and fair. Scarcely a cloud marred the blue clearness of the sky, and the sun shone bright upon the bridegroom as he drove with his mother from Grayling Station in the carriage sent from the Chase to meet them. Lord Northborough had been unable to attend the ceremony, owing to a sudden Parliamentary crisis and impending change of Ministry. But Lady Northborough made up by her vivacity and high spirits for her husband’s absence. She was a typical American, highly educated, witty, fascinating, and sympathetic. She was not beautiful, but always exquisitely dressed, and dainty as a Dresden china statuette. This morning, in silver-gray brocade and rare old white lace, she looked a little picture as she chattered and smiled at her son during the drive.
“I’m just mad with anxiety to see your lovely Stella,” she was saying. “I’m so glad you are going to marry a beauty. I do love pretty women.”
“There isn’t the slightest doubt about Stella’s beauty, mother; but I’m afraid you’ll think she looks terribly delicate. She has been wearing herself to a shadow, crying over her mother’s death. There seems to be no sympathy at all between her and her father. The man is made of cast-iron. But Stella’s prettiness is her least charm. She is so frank and innocent, so naïve, and at the same time so refined; her face is as pure as a child’s, and yet as tender as a woman’s; but if I once begin, I shall rhapsodize over her until we reach the house. She has been bought up in the most conventual manner; even Tennyson has been kept from her, and she listened to the ‘Lady of Shalott’ as a child does to a fairy-tale. She has herself lived like that; shut up, as the Lady of Shalott was, among dreams. It is by that name that I like to think of her.”
“Fanciful boy!” his mother murmured, fondly tapping his cheek lightly with her gloved fingers. “How can people consider you hard and sarcastic? Only your little mother understands you as you really are.”
“Dear little mother! But one thing disappoints me. I can find no trace of Hilary Pritchard. He has not returned to his rooms in town, nor is he at his Yorkshire home. In the state he was in, with a gunshot wound in his shoulder, his disappearance is the more inexplicable.”
“Don’t you think,” Lady Northborough suggested, with her fine woman’s instinct, “that he, too, may have fallen a victim to the charms of your beautiful Miss Cranstoun, and that that may be his reason for stopping away?”
“Quite impossible,” her son answered, decidedly. “He had taken a most unaccountable dislike against her at first sight.”
“Ah! That sounds bad!”
“And he saw nothing of her. He left the very day after his arrival, while every one was having luncheon, rather than stay an hour longer in the house, although he was not fit to travel.”
“Mysterious conduct on his part, wasn’t it?”
“Oh, part of his pride and independence, I suppose. Besides, why should he keep away? He doesn’t even know that I am going to be married to Miss Cranstoun.”
“Not when the fact has been announced in every society paper for the past fortnight?”
“I forgot that. But I repeat, little mother, his absence has nothing to do with my marriage, and his conduct in avoiding me hurts me very deeply—unless, indeed, it may arise from illness. But here we are within the Chase enclosure. Splendid timber, isn’t it?”
The Chase chapel had been unused, save as a lumber-room, for very many years. The Cranstouns were not a religious race, and the beautiful little mediæval building had been desecrated by being utilized alternately as a barn and a box-room. But for the masses of white flowers on the altar, there was no attempt at decoration, an omission accounted for by Lady Cranstoun’s recent death.
Round about the arched graystone doorway of the chapel the servants and retainers of the Chase were assembled, and a faint cheer went up as Lord Carthew helped his mother to descend from the carriage. The Squire was not popular with his tenants any more than with his domestics; he had an absolute genius, indeed, for making himself disliked by all classes among whom he moved. Still, he was all powerful in the district, and great interest was felt in the beautiful daughter whom hardly any one had ever seen outside the Chase enclosure. The crowd round the chapel doors was necessarily a comparatively small one, comprising, as it did, only the tenants of farms and cottages within easy distance of the house, and among them a little, wrinkled, aged woman, neatly dressed in a cotton gown, a shawl, apron, and large straw bonnet, was hardly noticed at first, each group supposing her to belong to some other in the party.
There was no way into the chapel save through the Norman archway, and to enter it from the house it was necessary to walk some yards along the terrace. Inside the little building, which smelt musty and disused, two clergymen were waiting: Canon Wrextone, who had been a college contemporary of Sir Philip Cranstoun, and the Rev. John Turner, of Grayling. The Canon was a stout, genial man of the world; the Vicar of Grayling, a pale, ascetic-looking man of middle age. In one of the few high oak pews, too, there sat his Grace the Duke of Lanark, the late Lady Gwendolen’s father, a tall, bent, old gentleman of seventy-five, in deep mourning, with the pallor of eld upon his face, which was almost as colorless as his snow-white hair.
The head of the house of Douglas had felt it to be his duty to grace by his presence the union of her whom he believed to be his daughter’s child with Lord Northborough’s heir, who himself had the extreme honor of being connected by marriage with the Douglas family. His duchess had not accompanied him, as she had an equally strong objection against the Chase and its master, and considered that a wedding so close on the heels of her daughter’s death was indecorous in the extreme. But Lord Northborough and the Duke were political allies, and the Earl had joined with Sir Philip in begging the favor of his presence. The old gentleman had therefore journeyed down, attended by his valet, who sat at some distance behind his master. The Duke was curious to see his granddaughter, of whose remarkable beauty he had heard with surprise. The Douglases had been plain for generations, and it seemed a little sacrilegious for a Douglas’ daughter to be beautiful.
But no eyes watched for the bride’s appearance more keenly than those of the little, wizened old woman in the neat cotton gown and straw bonnet. Her bent frame was actually quivering with excitement as she hung on her stick, with her piercing eyes fixed upon the entrance doors to the house through which the bride must pass on her way to the chapel. Stephen Lee, having received strict orders not to recognize his old relation, kept at some distance from her, attired, as were all the grooms, gamekeepers, stable and farmhands among the crowd, in his best clothes, and looking a handsome and attractive figure in his brown velveteen coat, smart corduroys, and gaiters.
In his secret heart he was profoundly angry, anxious, and unhappy. What did old Sarah mean by her promise to save Stella from a distasteful marriage, when here they were at the church doors, waiting for the girl to appear in her wedding-dress, and be married to this infernal whipper-snapper of a swell, whom he, Stephen, could have felled with one hand? What, too, had passed between Stella and Sarah in the course of that interview in the woods last night, and what was the meaning of that strange look he had seen in Stella’s eyes?
Sarah was up to some trick, that was certain, but of what nature he had no means of divining; meantime the chapel held already a duke, a countess, two ministers of the Church, and the young bridegroom, only waiting for Stella’s appearance to begin the ceremony.
At last she came, radiant sunshine falling down on her as she emerged from the doors on to the terrace, her fingers laid upon her father’s arm, towering over him in height, and looking, in her plain trained gown of white satin, taller and more commanding than she had ever yet appeared. Sir Philip’s face was set like a mask. It was impossible to say what were his feelings, but his cold heart in reality was aflame with astonishment, indignation, and rage.
Stella had kept him waiting in the hall, watch in hand; had then sauntered leisurely down the broad oak staircase in her wedding-gown, attended at a distance by the two frightened satellites, Ellen and Dakin, and by old Margaret, whose features wore a scared and troubled look. Miss Cranstoun had offered no apologies to her father for keeping him waiting, but had coolly crossed to where he was standing, and looked at him with shining eyes, in which some strange laughter seemed hidden, from behind her veil.
“What are you waiting for?” he had asked in his harshest tones.
“Your arm, of course.”
There was more than defiance, there was an insolence in her tone and manner utterly new to him. Nevertheless, there was no time to be lost in reprimands or punishments now. He dreaded beyond all things lest she might make a scene in church before Lady Northborough and the Duke. Her fear of him and constraint in his presence seemed to have vanished. Some subtle change had come over her state of mind toward him. She actually shook his arm impatiently as he stood a moment, pale with anger, regarding her.
“Get on to the church,” she muttered, roughly. “Don’t waste time.”
The grasp of her fingers tightened on his arm. This time it was actually she who was hurting him, as she clutched his skin through his coat. He glanced at her quickly, and then at the faces of the women behind her. The idea which possessed their brains entered his also, and he asked himself whether grief and harsh treatment could have temporarily deprived his daughter of her reason.
As Sir Philip led the bride along the terrace toward the church door, a murmur of admiration ran through the crowd. Her face had lost its pallor; through the tulle veil a bright color showed in her cheeks, and contrasted with the intense purple-blue of her restless, gleaming eyes. Two persons her gaze sought in the crowd about the doors. First they lighted upon old Sarah Carewe, and that look in her eyes which was almost a smile deepened and broadened. Next, her gaze sought out Stephen Lee, and seemed to read in one piercing glance, as she passed close to him, the hopeless passion for her which consumed him. As though by accident, she dropped her lace handkerchief at the church door. One or two persons among the crowd pressed forward to pick it up, and among them Stephen, who, as he transferred it to the bride’s hand, felt, to his utter astonishment, that she had slipped a piece of paper into his fingers.
Speechless with amazement, he watched her enter the church; the doors were clanged to behind her, and every eye was fixed upon her as she walked proudly up the aisle, leaning on her father’s arm. Lady Northborough could hardly refrain from a little cry of admiration. Her son’s description had prepared her for something ethereal, thin and pale to a fault; but this queenly young creature, with the proud little dark head, the perfect figure, and startlingly brilliant coloring, was no subject for pity, but rather for wondering admiration.
“Gad! Where did the girl get her good looks from?” muttered the old Duke, who had occasionally an awkward habit of thinking aloud.
As to Lord Carthew, he was enraptured by the alteration for the better in his lovely bride’s appearance. The strange restlessness of her glances he attributed to her natural nervousness, which caused her also to whisper and mumble the necessary responses in the service with even less than the ordinary bride’s accuracy. Sir Philip, watching his daughter closely, felt every moment more convinced that the girl’s brain and memory were momentarily clouded. She stared about her without reverence, but with evident curiosity, during the service, to which she paid not the slightest attention, and her bridegroom especially she continually regarded with a kind of amused wonder, as some specimen of humanity the like of whom she had never seen before. But no one else seemed to heed her irreverent behavior or to note that strange look as of suppressed laughter in her dancing eyes, and Sir Philip drew a deep sigh of relief when the ceremony was over, and the signing of the book followed.
Here again a strange thing happened. The newly made Lady Carthew, after receiving with an odd little laugh the congratulatory kisses of her grandfather, the Duke, and the Countess, her mother-in-law, murmured that her hand shook so badly she could not hold a pen, and was with difficulty persuaded to scrawl “Stella Cranstoun,” in an almost undecipherable hand, on the page before her. Strange fears and fancies filled Sir Philip’s mind. Was her feverish color, her strange behavior, due to a partially paralyzed brain and nerves, he wondered. Still, she was Lady Carthew, and he had triumphed; but that strange likeness to her dead mother, which seemed so much stronger to-day than it had ever been before, troubled him, and that incomprehensible laugh in her eyes.
“I wish Carthew joy of his bargain,” was Sir Philip’s mental comment. “But, in any case, she is in his charge now, and safely off my hands, so that there is no chance of that senseless old gypsy prophecy being realized.”
“Goto Grayling Station, and get into the two o’clock Portsmouth train with Lord C. and me.”
“Goto Grayling Station, and get into the two o’clock Portsmouth train with Lord C. and me.”
Such was the message, scrawled in a shaky handwriting, on the scrap of paper thrust by the bride into Stephen Lee’s hand.
It perplexed him beyond measure, but it seemed to him that her will was law, and he must obey. For more than five years he had cherished a dog-like devotion, of which she had been apparently quite unconscious. Yet now she wanted him, and he could not choose but obey her orders. First, however, he must contrive to show the paper to old Sarah, and this he succeeded in doing while the bridal party were leaving the church, at which time the crowd had eyes for none but the chief actors in the ceremony.
Quickly running her eye over the bit of paper he had slipped into her hand, for the old woman’s sight was excellent in spite of her years, Sarah grinned in intense and evident amusement as she thrust it back upon him. Stephen was angry with her for her inexplicable merriment, but there was no time for controversy now; and abruptly leaving the group about the doors, he strode away in the direction of Grayling.
“Your daughter’s a handsome girl, sir,” the Duke observed to Sir Philip Cranstoun, as he and his host, with Lady Northborough and her son, sat in the vast and gloomy dining-hall of the Chase, facing that sardonic gray portrait in armor which had so greatly interested Lord Carthew on the occasion of his first visit to the house—“a very fine girl indeed. And I don’t wonder that Carthew here had his head turned. Can’t think where she gets her looks from. You’re not a beauty yourself, Cranstoun, and we Douglases have never been good-looking. Only known her a month, eh, Carthew? Well, well, marry in haste and repent at leisure, you know!”
“Now, Duke, you are just too cruel!” exclaimed Lady Northborough, as the old gentleman wheezed with elderly laughter over his own humor. “Stella is quite too lovely, and would certainly have been the most beautifuldébutanteat the Drawing-Room this year but for her unhappy mourning. Now mind, Claud, dear, that you get her quite well at Northborough Castle, and on the yacht. Though, really, she doesn’t look a bit ill now; but that’s on account of her lovely complexion.”
“Handsome is as handsome does,” persisted the old gentleman, teasingly. “Cranstoun, I am a judge of character, and I shouldn’t be surprised if Carthew here had caught a Tartar in your child and my granddaughter.”
For the first time in his life, Sir Philip seemed to have lost his gift of bitter speech. The Duke of Lanark’s words filled him neither with indignation nor amusement, but with something approaching alarm. The Stella he had always known, with her sensitiveness, refinement, and proud self-control, seemed to have altered into something strange and fierce, wholly beyond his influence. This impression deepened when she presently entered the room, in her going-away costume of soft gray crape, and gray velvet cape trimmed with gray ostrich feathers, which last also adorned her large, shady hat. It had seemed unlucky to start a honeymoon in black, so for the time her mourning for her mother had been mitigated by this very becoming compromise.
The new Viscountess Carthew was buttoning one of her long gray Suède gloves as she came in. She stopped in her employment at the threshold of the dining-room, and gazed with a sort of bold, amused curiosity at the group who sat discussing an elegant lunch of old wines and cold viands at the other end of the room. Her bridegroom hurried to meet her, followed by the Duke of Lanark.
“Allow me, my dear,” the latter said, and deftly fastened the button, while almost at the same time he clasped round her wrist a magnificent bangle of rubies and diamonds.
“From your grandmother and myself,” he said, with a courtly bow.
She flushed with pleasure, and her wonderful eyes sparkled at sight of the jewels. She was almost as tall as he, and seemed to tower over her bridegroom, her father, and little Lady Northborough, who tripped up to her, full of compliments and admiration.
Under a thin gray net veil the bride looked more beautiful than ever, and Claud found himself wondering why he had never before noted the wonderful tints of her skin, where the whites and reds were indeed “cunningly laid on” by Nature’s lavish hand. She was strangely silent, though, and hardly spoke one word in reply to Lady Northborough’s fluent effusiveness. As to her father, she pointedly ignored him, and every one present noted with a shock of surprise that when, at the very last moment of leaving her home, as she stood on the terrace steps before entering the carriage, Sir Philip took her hand and would have kissed her cheek, she drew sharply back, and laughed in a way not pleasant to hear.
The next moment she had sprung lightly into the open carriage, and Lord Carthew, after taking an affectionate leave of his mother, got in beside her, the signal was given to the coachman, the gray horses started at a brisk pace, and without rice, or satin slippers, or any other harbingers of good luck in their rear, the bridal pair started on their journey.
Lord Carthew was very loath to begin his married life with fault-finding. But his bride’s conduct on the steps had startled and shocked him.
“I am sorry, dearest,” he said, gently, “that you did not part friends from Sir Philip.”
She turned her head sharply, and looked straight into his eyes under the brim of her shady gray hat.
“I hate him!” she whispered, emphatically, drawing her full red lips back from her white teeth, with a grimace which had something animal in its ferocity.
He felt startled and chilled by the sight. He knew quite well that Stella did not love her father. In her frank and naïve confidences, she had acknowledged this, but always with regret. To-day, with her beauty enhanced by what seemed a sudden and astonishing return to bodily health, she seemed already to have lost some of the womanly charm which had gone as far to win his heart as her personal attraction.
Even before the bridal pair had entered the train at Grayling Station, Lord Carthew began to be glad of his bride’s silence.
So long as she sat by his side without speaking, beautiful as a poet’s dream, he could go on attributing to her all kinds of ideal qualities. But, although he would hardly yet acknowledge it even to himself, when she spoke she dispelled the illusion.
Not only did she display the utmost vindictiveness on the mention of her father’s name, but she appeared hardly to listen when he spoke to her of his mother, and of the latter’s admiration for his bride; and when he went on to descant on the beauties of the scenery in which they were going to pass the first days of the honeymoon, she cut him short by saying, abruptly, that she would “sooner go to London.”
Her voice jarred upon him. Hitherto he had admired its melodious accents—to-day they sounded hoarse and rough, and he inquired anxiously if she had taken a chill.
“No,” she answered, staring vacantly at him. “Why do you ask?”
“Your voice sounded a little strained and hoarse to me.”
“I have a bad cold,” she said, quickly. “I did not like to worry you about it before. I caught it last night. Sir Philip had kept me a prisoner in my room ever since my mother’s death, and last night while dew and rain were falling I managed to give them all the slip and ran into the wood. I got my feet wet, lost my voice, and have been feeling queer ever since.”
This was the longest speech she had made that day. Lord Carthew listened to it, trying in vain to catch the sweet cadences of the voice which he had loved so well. In some way, for which he was at a loss to account, the soul seemed to have gone out of the girl beside him, leaving only the beautiful body behind it.
He tried to think that she was nervous in her new position, and hoped that time and companionship would bring back that frank confidence which had so much delighted him. But meantime he also relapsed into silence, which was hardly broken until they reached the railway station at Grayling.
Here they were met by Lord Carthew’s valet, and Lady Northborough’s maid, lent by the Countess to her daughter-in-law for the honeymoon on account of her exceptional tact and cleverness. Lady Carthew’s bright eyes, glancing about beyond these persons, sought for Stephen Lee, and perceived him at length by the third-class portion of the train.
Dispatching Lord Carthew for a book, she beckoned to Stephen, who, flushed and confused, came at her bidding.
“I shall take you on as my groom,” she said. “You shall leave the Chase, and enter my service.”
“Yes, my lady.”
“We’re a bit late for the train, and can’t talk here,” she said, her restless eyes roving about the platform. “When the train stops at Peterstone, come to my carriage.”
“Yes, my lady.”
Stephen retired as Lord Carthew returned, book in hand, and assisted his bride into a luxurious saloon which he had reserved for their use on the journey.
“Was not that the keeper who shot poor Hilary I saw you speaking to just now?” he asked, carelessly, as the train began to start, while he was still arranging on the table the baskets of flowers which had been prepared by the station-master as a compliment to Sir Philip’s daughter.
“Yes; Stephen Lee. He taught me to ride, and I want him in my service now as a groom. He’s in this train.”
Lord Carthew did not speak for a few moments. He was, indeed, too much surprised at first to make any remark.
“Is it by your wish that the man is coming by this train?” he asked, at length, in a constrained voice.
She nodded.
“Yes. I have engaged him, and I thought he might as well come along now.”
“The fact is,” he said, after another pause, “I have a not unnatural prejudice against the fellow who was clumsy enough to have wounded my friend. I own, too, I don’t like the appearance of the man. There is a surly, gypsy-like look about him, which sets me against him.”
She turned and looked at him critically, a mocking light shining in her eyes.
“You don’t like his looks?” she repeated. “Well, inmyopinion, he’s a lot better looking thanyouare.”
Lord Carthew flushed with annoyance.
Was this his ideal Lady of Shalott, this the girl like a fairy princess come to life, all poetry, romance, and charm? She looked back at him, full in the eyes. Suddenly her face changed, and seemed to grow softer, and more what used formerly to appear to him.
“I was only laughing,” she said, in a very low voice. “I don’t know what’s the matter with me to-day. I think I am over-excited, and too glad to get away from that dreary prison, which the Chase has been to me. Why do you look at me in that shocked sort of way? Are you sorry you married me now that you have got me safe?”
Before he could answer, she had taken off her large hat and veil. Without them she looked more beautiful than ever, with the naturally waving and silky curls of her blue-black hair framing her exquisite face. Coming nearer to him, she nestled her head on his shoulder with a spontaneous gesture of affection, and lifting her long, soft eyes to his, she inclined her red lips toward his face in a littlemoue, irresistible in so beautiful a woman.
Lord Carthew was only a man, and in an instant he had forgotten all that she had said and done amiss in his delight at her unexpected tenderness. In a transport of passionate love, he pressed her in his arms, and repeatedly kissed her lips, her eyes and cheeks, and the soft curls about her brow.
“How adorably beautiful you are, my darling!” he exclaimed, as he caressed her face with his hand. “It is strange that I never until to-day realized your wonderful loveliness. You were always so pale, but to-day you have a color like ala Francerose, and eyes that will make your diamonds look dowdy and dull. Have you the least idea how beautiful you are, Stella?”
She smiled for answer, and appeared pleased at his kisses and caresses. It was not until afterward that her ready affection struck him as unusual in a girl of her training. At the time, being very much in love, he was too much delighted to analyze her conduct.
At Peterstone Station there was a stoppage of a few minutes, and Lady Carthew, who was intensely restless, ran to the window, looked up and down the platform, and then suddenly turning on her bridegroom, informed him that she was longing for a cup of tea.
“I will tell Trevor,” he said, and was hurrying to the window to summon his servant when she laid her hands on his arm.
“I would rather you fetched it me yourself,” she said, coaxingly. “I shall not enjoy it from any one else.”
Thus adjured, Lord Carthew could do nothing less than spring out of the carriage at once to carry out his lady’s behests. The moment he had gone, his bride stretched herself, yawned, arranged her hair at the looking-glass, and then leaned out of the window again. As she expected, Stephen Lee stood a little way down the line, watching her saloon, and she motioned with her hand for him to join her.
All the other passengers by the Portsmouth train were fully aware that Lord Northborough’s heir was travelling toward his father’s seat, in the Isle of Wight, on his honeymoon journey with Sir Philip Cranstoun’s daughter. The rank of the pair and the extreme beauty of the bride naturally attracted many curious glances in the direction of the saloon, and at Peterstone several of their more inquisitive fellow-travellers left their seats in order to stroll about the platform, in the hope of getting a good look at the newly made Viscountess Carthew.
The bride herself appeared utterly indifferent to their scrutiny. She was sitting by the open door of the saloon, talking in low and, as it appeared, familiar tones with a handsome, black-bearded man in the dress of a gamekeeper, and her conversation, could the bystanders have heard it, would have considerably surprised them.
“Don’t be afraid of me, Stephen,” she was saying. “You know we are cousins. Old grandmother Sarah told me so. It’s a relief to look at a handsome man after being shut up in this carriage with that little monkey of a Carthew.”
Stephen stared at her in undisguised astonishment, but she only laughed.
“Well, isn’t he ugly?” she asked, and began to mimic the slight nervous twitching of the facial muscles which characterized Lord Carthew in moments of excitement. “Now, if he was likeyou,” she added, looking straight into the young gypsy’s eyes with a long, soft glance, “perhaps I shouldn’t get so bored over his compliments and his love-making.”
Sarah Carewe’s prophecy was certainly coming true. And yet, such is the contrary disposition of men, Stephen, who had for years passionately longed for the right to address one word, one look of love, toward his young mistress, felt a shock of disappointment, and even of disgust, when she thus went out of her way to lower herself to his level, and hardly knew how to answer her.
She had closed the saloon door, and was leaning out of the window, whispering something to Stephen, with her cheek actually touching his, when Lord Carthew returned with the tea. At first he could hardly believe his eyes when they rested upon his bride and her father’s servant in this familiar and even affectionate converse. It seemed too horrible, too degrading, to be true that here, under the gaze of grinning railway porters and curious and amused third-class passengers, his wife, his lovely, refined and innocent Stella, was publicly flirting with her father’s gamekeeper on a railway platform at three o’clock in the afternoon of her wedding-day! But the evidence of his eyes could not be doubted, and if anything were needed to acquaint Lord Carthew with the extent of his misfortune, Lady Carthew’s next words, which he plainly overheard, would have done so.
“Well, I wish you could change places with him, Stephen.”
“Stand out of my way, if you please!”
The words, very quietly uttered immediately behind him, made Stephen start. But the bride merely laughed as she saw her husband’s white face, and heard his voice, in hard, level tones, suggesting that she should sit farther away from the door, as her movements were being watched by a crowd.
“I like a crowd,” she said insolently.
“Ido not,” he returned, closing the door, drawing up the window, and placing the tea upon the table before her.
Stephen Lee strolled back to his own compartment, but his indifference was only assumed. He was utterly dazed and puzzled. “ ’Tis some trick of old Sarah’s,” he kept on repeating to himself, and his bewilderment was so great that he hardly troubled his mind by surmises as to what would pass between the bride and bridegroom, left alone together again after the episode of the station.
What did actually happen became a fruitful topic for society newspapers for many, many months afterward.
Lord Carthew’s face was fixed like a mask as he seated himself on the opposite side of the carriage to his bride, while the train began slowly moving out of the station. It vexed him that presently he could not control that nervous twitching at this moment when he needed all his firmness, all his dignity. He could not speak to her, for with all his radical notions he was essentially a proud man, with a very high ideal of womanhood, and a still higher ideal of the position and duties of the woman he had chosen for his wife. Her conduct filled his mind with the utmost dismay, and a sensation of strong repulsion against her began to overmaster him.
“Are you cross?” she asked at last, lightly, breaking the silence. “I only mean to tease you.”
“Stella,” he exclaimed in desperation, “are you mad? Are you not capable of appreciating the value of your own actions, or has grieving over your recent loss turned your brain? Do you understand that you are my wife, Lady Carthew, that my honor is yours, and that it is outraging my name and your own reputation to make yourself a laughing-stock for station idlers by vulgar familiarity with one of your father’s servants? Stella, I can hardly believe it possible that I should have to address such words toyou;you, whom I have reverenced as the most innocent, most refined of women! You cannot surely know what you are doing; fever must have mounted to your brain—great Heaven! If I thought you were truly responsible for such coarse and immodest behavior, I would never willingly look upon your face again!”
He had risen in his excitement, and stood staring across at her, noting with ever-increasing wonder and disgust the way in which she leaned forward, with her elbow on the table, and her face resting on her right hand, while with her left she drummed an impatient tattoo in front of her.
She looked up at him, furtively.
“Am I to understand,” she asked, “that you hope I’m mad?”
“You are to understand,” he broke out, passionately, “that only temporary insanity would, in my eyes, excuse your revolting conduct.”
“Well,” she cried, suddenly opening the carriage-door, “here goes for a little more insanity! I’m tired of you already. By-by, dearest!”
On the last word, to Lord Carthew’s horror, she sprang from the open door of the now rapidly moving train, and was lost to sight almost immediately as the engine entered a tunnel.
To communicate with the guard was hopeless until the train had passed through, by which time, after a prolonged search, Lord Carthew realized that in this particular carriage the communicator was missing.
His nerves were stunned by the unexpectedness of the blow. That Stella was mad, he had now not the slightest doubt, but this conviction did not decrease his anxiety on her account. An overwhelming dread, too, of the scandal which her crazy conduct would cause, increased his mental disquiet. What if his unfortunate bride were crushed to pieces, or maimed for life by her terrible leap! It seemed impossible that she could escape some such fate, for he could not even say for certain that she had jumped clear of the tunnel. The train was an express from this point to Portsmouth, and every moment the speed was increasing. He tried thrusting his head through the window of the saloon, and endeavored to attract the guard’s attention; but the wind, driving through his hair, and seeming to cut his face as the express darted on, blew his cries in the other direction. All that he could do was to draw down the blinds of the saloon so that Lady Carthew’s disappearance should not be noted by curious passers-by when the train stopped, and to possess his soul with such patience as he might until Portsmouth was reached at last.
Arrived there, he summoned the guard and the station-master, pledged them to secrecy, and informed them of the disastrous accident by which his bride, leaning against an imperfectly closed door, had been precipitated on to the line, not far from Peterstone Station.
Instantly the telegraph wires were set at work, but no trace of the missing bride could be found at first, until a telegram, addressed to Lord Carthew, care of station-master, Portsmouth, and sent from Clapham Junction Station, was handed in to the distracted husband.
The message ran:
“Off to London.Stella Carthew.”
“Off to London.Stella Carthew.”
Itwas three days after Lord Carthew’s wedding. Hilary Pritchard was lodging in an hotel off the Strand, and was sitting in the coffee-room at breakfast on a misty May morning.
He was in extremely low spirits and very bad temper, and while waiting for his tea and eggs, he drew from his pocket a notice, cut from a newspaper two days old, which set forth that on a given date, Stella, only daughter of Sir Philip Cranstoun, J. P., of the Chase, Surrey, and Cranstoun Hall, Aberdeenshire, was married to Viscount Carthew, eldest son of the Earl of Northborough, by the Rev. Canon Wrextone, assisted by the Rev. John Turner.
Hilary had read the words until long ago he had known them by heart. He had even, sorely against his will, written down to Northborough Castle to congratulate his friend in as few words as possible on his marriage, and to inform him that he purposed starting for Canada at least two months earlier than he had originally intended. In this letter he had mentioned the name of the hotel at which he was staying. Until now he had been anxious to keep his address a secret from his friend, from a feeling that he had not acted fairly by Lord Carthew in the matter of Stella Cranstoun; but now, since she had elected to marry her wealthy and titled suitor, Hilary’s conscience was clear. There was no longer any need for mystery, and he therefore told Lord Carthew, in his extremely brief congratulatory letter, that he was staying in this place for a few days, settling his affairs, before going north to take leave of his parents, on setting out for his new home across the sea.
He was conscious of a feeling of disloyalty in that he could not banish from his mind those two short love-scenes which had passed between himself and Stella. He told himself again and again that she was now his friend’s wife, and that she was most certainly a coquette, who had been amusing herself at his expense. “She would presently, if I were still in England, ask her husband to invite me to stay at one of their country seats,” he told himself, bitterly. “That’s how flirts always behave toward their old sweethearts when they’ve married another fellow. Ask them to stay, that he may see and envy the other fellow’s happiness. See them make love to their husbandsathim, and call him by his Christian name when they are alone. ‘DearJack,’ or ‘dearHilary, it wasn’tmyfault I didn’t marryyou, you know. I am very happy now, of course, but I was forced into it, and—you don’t bear me any grudge, do you?’ Then if they can, and if the husband is fool enough to stand it, they make a tame cat of the old sweetheart, and do their best to prevent him from marrying any one else, sacrificing his life’s happiness on the altar of their own petty, miserable vanity.”
With which cynical, if partially true, reasoning he strove to allay the gnawing bitterness at his heart, and to forget the passionate love which Stella had so suddenly aroused there.
He was very “hard hit,” for certain. Stella’s shining dark-blue eyes seemed to be gazing at him from every corner, and with her voice they haunted his dreams, from which he awoke with outstretched arms to meet the empty air. He had never meant to fall in love with her or with anybody, and it angered him to think that even incessant occupation and bodily activity could not stifle the constant pain at his heart. To a man of his essentially manly and practical nature, it seemed little short of contemptible to be thus dominated by a hopeless feeling of love for a woman, particularly now that she had become the wife of his friend; and he longed, with all his soul, for the moment when he should set sail for Canada, and, among new work and new surroundings, forget this foolish infatuation.
So he sat, brooding, over the breakfast-table, in a moody frame of mind with which, until the past few days, he had been totally unacquainted, until the voice of the elderly, greasy-looking English waiter recalled him to his immediate surroundings.
“A gentleman, sir, to see you on very pressing business. ’Ere is ’is card, sir.”
A touch of unwonted reverence in the man’s voice and manner attracted Hilary’s attention. He took up the card and read thereon, with great surprise, the name of Lord Carthew.
But two days married, and already in London visiting his bachelor friends! Hilary had read in an evening paper that the bridal pair intended spending a few days at the Earl of Northborough’s seat in the Isle of Wight before undertaking a lengthened cruise in the Mediterranean. A presentiment of something wrong filled his mind as he told the waiter to show the gentleman in.
It was half-past eight o’clock, and as yet Hilary was the sole occupant of the coffee-room. There were no strangers present to note the pale and worried appearance of the man who only two days before had made a love-match with a beautiful and accomplished lady.
“Carthew!” Hilary exclaimed, springing from his seat and grasping his friend by the hand. “What is wrong?”
“Don’t you know? Thank Heaven! it hasn’t got about much yet, then! But, of course, it can’t be kept a secret much longer.”
“Man alive, what do you mean? What is it that should be kept a secret? Has anything happened toher—to Lady Carthew?”
His friend sat down by the table and wearily rested his head on his hand.
“I haven’t slept for three nights,” he said. “Anxiety about her has banished rest by night and day. She is mad, Hilary, I am certain of it. No other explanation could explain, could justify her conduct. She sprang from the train on our wedding journey, and I have not seen her since.”
“And you can sit quietly there and tell me such a thing!” almost shouted Hilary, stirred to violent indignation by what he supposed to be his friend’s callous apathy. “Good heavens! Carthew, what are you made of?”
Lord Carthew looked at him and frowned.
“There is no need for this excitement on your part,” he said, coldly. “Lady Carthew was not injured by her escapade. Indeed, within three hours of her leap, she telegraphed to me from Clapham Junction, informing me that she was on her way to London. I was forced to go on first to Northborough, where all manner of rejoicings had been prepared, to quiet them with some story of Lady Carthew’s health which had necessitated a change of plans. But I wired to a detective agency to find out her address, and communicate with me at my club. Imagine, Hilary, the awful disgrace of the thing. Having to call in professional spies to find out one’s own wife! Worst of all, this girl, who seemed the perfection of modesty and refinement, has, through her mental affliction, become so strangely different that you would hardly know her. All her reserve, all her delicacy and grace have left her. In the short time we spent together, she contrived to make me the laughing-stock of a vulgar crowd by her open flirtation with her father’s gamekeeper, that gypsy fellow who shot you in the arm.”
Hilary’s face betokened amazement, largely tinctured by incredulity; but the latter quality he refrained from expressing, as he asked, quietly:
“Have the detectives furnished you with any clue?”
“So far, with two incorrect ones. I have in my hands now a third address to a lodging-house in Duchess Street, Oxford Street, whither they have tracked a woman who exactly answers to the description I have furnished. I was on my way thither from the detective office when, passing this street, I resolved to speak with you. Hilary, I hardly know whether I hope or dread to find her. I have suffered so much during the past three days that I have come to wish that she or I were dead.”
“But your love for her——”
“She herself killed that. My great dread is lest the affair should reach the ears of my people. If I can only find her first, and put her away somewhere quietly until she recovers her reason! That is my one hope now.”
Hilary, on his part, was so profoundly shocked by his friend’s story that he knew not what to suggest by way of alleviating his grief and anxiety. The pair very shortly afterward parted, Lord Carthew having promised to return and report the success or failure of his mission.
Hilary had long ago forgotten his breakfast. Swallowing a cup of tepid tea, he sought the open air, there to reflect on the strange story he had just heard. He had struck into the Strand, and was about to cross Trafalgar Square, when his attention was attracted by the figure of a girl, tall, slender, and attired in shabby black, who stood, hesitating and frightened, between the rows of hurrying cabs, carriages, and omnibuses which were incessantly passing.
Something in the outline of her figure, for her face was concealed by a thick black crape veil, attracted Hilary’s attention so strongly that he resolved at once to see her over the crossing, that he might set at rest a strange suspicion which shot across his heart.
In a few seconds he was at her side, addressing her as a stranger, and offering to escort her over the road through the crowded traffic. But she, regardless of the publicity of the spot, gave a little cry of surprise and delight at sight of him, and throwing back her veil, displayed the lovely, flushed face and brilliant eyes of Stella.
“Hilary!” she murmured, joyfully. “Oh, Iamso glad! Yes, see me across the road—I am not used to crowds, and take me somewhere where we can have a beautiful long talk. It is my first walk alone in London, and I haven’t the least idea where we are.”
He listened to her in ever-increasing wonder, and after piloting her safely through the vehicles, he led her down to the comparative seclusion of St. James’ Park.
There he turned and faced her.
“I have just parted from your husband,” he said, sternly.
She stared at him, and then burst out laughing.
“What do you mean?” she asked. “Is it a jest?”
“Isthisa jest?” he asked, impressively, taking from his pocket-book the announcement of the marriage, cut from theMorning Post, and thrusting it into her hand.
She read it with knitted brows and evident amazement, and then looked up at him, pale to the lips.
“What can it mean, Hilary?” she faltered. “Surely I can’t have been married without knowing it! And yet of what happened between my leaving the Chase and finding myself here in London I can remember nothing at all!”