Only a girl's love
At the "my lord," a slight shade covered his face, but it went again
instantly, as he said:
"Well, then, will you come when the inevitable pudding is made? There,"
he said, eagerly, and still holding her hand he drew her to the window
and pointed with his whip, "there's the place! It is not far--just
across the meadows, and through the first gate. Do you see it?"
"Yes," said Stella, gently withdrawing her hand.
"And you will come?" he asked, his eyes fixed on hers with their intent
earnestness.
At that instant the word--the odious word--"infamous" rang in her ears,
and her face paled. He noticed the sudden pallor, and his eyes grew
dark with earnest questioning.
"I see," he said, quietly, "you will not come!"
What was it that moved her? With a sudden impulse she raised her eyes
and looked at him steadily.
"Yes, I will come!" she said.
He inclined his head without a word, called to the dogs, and passed out.
Stella stood for a moment looking after them; then she went into the
kitchen--not laughing nor singing, but with a strange gravity; a
strange feeling had got possession of her.
She felt as if she was laboring under some spell. "Charmed" is an often
misused word, but it is the right word to describe the sensation.
Was it his face or his voice that haunted her? As she stood absently
looking down at the table, simple words, short and commonplace, which
he had used rang in her ears with a new meaning.
Mrs. Penfold stood and regarded her in curious astonishment. She was
getting used to Stella's quickly changing moods, but the sudden change
bewildered her.
"Let me do it, Miss Stella," she pleaded, but Stella shook her head
firmly; not by one inch would she swerve from her cause for all the
beautiful voice and noble face.
In rapt silence she finished her work, then she went up-stairs and put
on her hat and came down. As she passed out of the house and down the
path, the mastiff leaped the gate and bounded toward her, and the next
moment she saw Lord Leycester seated on a stile.
He dropped down and came toward her.
"How quick you have been," he said, "I thought a pudding was a mystery
which demanded an immensity of time."
Stella looked up at him, her dark brows drawn to a straight line.
"You waited for me?" she said.
"No," he said, simply, "I came back. I did not like to think that you
should come alone."
Stella was silent.
"Are you angry?" he asked, in a low voice.
Stella was silent for a moment, then she looked at him frankly.
"No," she said.
If she had but said "yes," and turned back! But the path, all beautiful
with the bright coloring of Spring stretched before her, and she had
no thought of turning back, no thought or suspicion of the dark and
perilous land toward which she was traveling by his side.
Already the glamour of love was falling upon her like the soft mist of
a Summer evening; blindly, passively she was moving toward the fate
which the gods had prepared for her.
CHAPTER VII.
Side by side they walked across the meadows; the larks rising before
them and soaring up to the heavens with a burst of song; the river
running in silvery silence to the sea; the green trees waving gently in
the Summer breeze; and above them the long stretching gray masonry of
Wyndward Hall.
Lord Leycester was strangely silent for some minutes since that "Are
you angry?" and Stella, as she walked by his side, stooping now and
again to gather a cowslip, glanced up at his face and wondered whether
her uncle could be mistaken, whether they were not all deceived in
thinking the quiet, graceful creature with the beautiful face and
dreamy, almost womanly, soft eyes, wild and reckless, and desperate and
altogether bad. She almost forgot how she had seen him on that first
night of their meeting, with his whip upraised and the sudden fire of
anger in his eyes.
Presently he spoke, so suddenly that Stella, who had been lost in her
speculations respecting him, started guiltily:
"I have been wondering," he said, "how Mr. Etheridge takes the change
which your presence must make in the cottage."
Stella looked up with surprise, then she smiled.
"He bears it with admirable resignation," she said, with that air of
meek archness which her uncle found so amusing.
Lord Leycester looked down at her.
"That is a rebuke for the presumption of my remark?" he said.
"No," said Stella.
"I did not mean to be presumptuous. Think. Your uncle has lived the
whole of his life alone, the life of a solitary, a hermit; suddenly
there enters into that life a young and beau--a young girl, full of the
spirit of youth and its aspirations. It must make a great change."
"As I said," says Stella, "he bears it with pious fortitude." Then she
added, in a lower voice, "He is very good to me."
"He could not be otherwise," was the quiet response. "I mean that he
could not be anything but good, gentle, and loving with any living
thing. I have known him since I was a boy," he added. "He was always
the same, always living a life of dreams. I wonder whether he takes you
as a dream?"
"A very substantial and responsible one, then," said Stella, with her
little laugh. "One that lasts through the daytime."
He looked at her with that strange intent look which she had learned
that she could not meet.
"And you?" he said.
"I?" said Stella, though she knew what he meant.
He nodded.
"How do you like the change?--this still, quiet life in the Thames
valley. Are you tired of it already? Will you pine for all the gayeties
you have left?"
Stella looked up at him--his eyes were still fixed on hers.
"I have left no gayeties," she said. "I left a bare and horrid school
that was as unlike home as the desert of Sahara is like this lovely
meadow. How do I feel? As if I had been translated to Paradise--as if
I, who was beginning to think that I was alone in the world I had no
business to be in, had found some one friend to love----"
She paused, and he, glancing at the black waistband to her white dress,
said, with the tenderest, most humble voice:
"I beg your pardon. Will you forgive me?--I did not know----"
And his voice broke.
Stella looked up at him with a smile shining through the unshed tears.
"How--why should you know? Yes, I was quite alone in the world. My
father died a year ago."
"Forgive me," he murmured; and he laid his hand with a feather's weight
on her arm. "I implore you to forgive me. It was cruel and thoughtless."
"No," said Stella. "How should you know?"
"If I had been anything better than an unthinking brute, I might have
guessed."
There was a moment's pause, then Stella spoke.
"Yes, it is Paradise. I had no idea England was like this, they called
it the land of fogs."
"You have not seen London on a November evening," he said, with a
laugh. "Most foreigners come over to England and put up at some hotel
at the west-end, and judge the whole land by the London sample--very
few come even so far as this. You have not been to London?"
"I passed through it," said Stella, "that is all. But I heard a great
deal about it last night," she added, with a smile.
"Yes!" he said, with great interest--"last night?"
"Yes, at Mrs. Hamilton's. She was kind enough to ask me to an evening
party, and one of the guests took great pains to impress me with the
importance and magnificence of London."
He looked at her.
"May I ask who she was?" he said.
"It was not a she, but a gentleman. It was Mr. Adelstone."
Lord Leycester thought a moment.
"Adelstone. Adelstone. I don't know him."
Before she was quite aware of it the retort slipped from her lips.
"He knows you."
He looked at her with a thoughtful smile.
"Does he? I don't remember him. Stay, yes, isn't he a relation of Mr.
Fielding's?"
"His nephew," said Stella, and feeling the dark, penetrating eyes on
her she blushed faintly. It annoyed her, and she struggled to suppress
it, but the blush came and he saw it.
"I remember him now," he said; "a tall, thin dark man. A lawyer, I
believe. Yes, I remember him. And he told you about London?"
"Yes," said Stella, and as she remembered the conversation of a few
hours ago, her color deepened. "He is very amusing and well-informed,
and he took pity on my ignorance in the kindest way. I was very
grateful."
There was something in her tone that made him look at her questioningly.
"I think," he said, "your gratitude is easily earned."
"Oh, no," she retorted; "I am the most ungrateful of beings. Isn't that
uncle sitting there?" she added, quickly, to change the subject.
He looked up.
"Yes, he is hard at work. I did not think I should have won him. It was
my sister's name that worked the magic charm."
"He is fond of your sister," said Stella, thoughtfully.
His eyes were on her in an instant.
"He has spoken of her?" he said.
Stella could have bitten her tongue out for the slip.
"Yes," she said. "He--he told me about her--I asked him whose house it
was upon the hills."
"Meaning the Hall?" he said, pointing with his whip.
"Yes, and he told me. I knew by the way he spoke of your sister that he
was fond of her. Her name is Lilian, is it not?"
"Yes," he said, "Lilian," and the name left his lips with soft
tenderness. "I think every one who knows her loves her. This picture is
for her."
Stella glanced up at his face; anything less imperious at that moment
it would be impossible to imagine.
"Lady Lilian is fond of pictures?" she said.
"Yes," he said; "she is devoted to art in all its forms. Yes, that
little sketch will give her more pleasure than--than--I scarcely know
what to say. What are women most fond of?"
Stella laughed.
"Diamonds, are they not?"
"Are you fond of them?" he said. "I think not."
"Why not?" she retorted. "Why should I not have the attributes of my
sex? Yes, I am fond of diamonds. I am fond of everything that is
beautiful and costly and rare. I remember once going to a ball at
Florence."
He looked at her.
"Only to see it!" she exclaimed. "I was too young to be seen, and
they took me in a gallery overlooking the great salon; and I watched
the great ladies in their beautiful dresses and shining gems, and I
thought that I would give all the world to be like one of them; and the
thought spoiled my enjoyment. I remember coming away crying; you see it
was so dark and solitary in the great gallery, and I felt so mean and
insignificant." And she laughed.
He was listening with earnest interest. Every word she said had a charm
for him; he had never met any girl--any woman--like her, so frank and
open-minded. Listening to her was like looking into a crystal lake, in
which everything is revealed and all is bright and pure.
"And are you wiser now?" he asked.
"Not one whit!" she replied. "I should like now, less than then,
to be shut up in a dark gallery and look on at others enjoying
themselves. Isn't that a confession of an envious and altogether wicked
disposition?"
"Yes," he assented, with a strange smile barely escaping from under
his tawny mustache. "I should be right in prophesying all sorts of bad
endings to you."
As he spoke he opened the gate for her, driving the dogs back with a
crack of his whip so that she might pass first--a small thing, but
characteristic of him.
The painter looked up.
"Keep those dogs off my back, Leycester," he said. "Well, Stella, have
you concocted your poison?"
Stella went and looked over his shoulder.
"Yes, uncle," she said.
"You have been long enough to make twenty indigestible compounds," he
said, gazing at the view he was sketching.
Stella bent her head, to hide the blush which rose as she remembered
how slowly they had walked across the meadows.
"How are you getting on?" said Lord Leycester.
The old man grunted.