Only a girl's love
"But I say 'Yes!'" said Lord Leycester, his eyes blazing. "Is every
tailor to ride through the Chase and knock down whom he will? Ask for
pardon, sir, or----"
Jasper stood looking from one to the other.
"No, no!" said Stella. "It was all an accident. Please, pray do not say
another word. Mr. Adelstone, I beg you will go without another word."
Jasper Adelstone hesitated for a moment.
"Miss Stella," he said, hoarsely.
Alas! it was oil on the smoldering fire.
"Miss Stella!" exclaimed Lord Leycester. "Who gave you the right to
address this lady by her Christian name, sir?"
Jasper bit his lip.
"Miss Etheridge, you cannot doubt that I am heartily sorry that this
unpleasant contretemps should have been caused by my carelessness. I
was riding carelessly----"
"Like an idiot!" broke in Lord Leycester.
"And did not see you. No harm would have resulted, however, if this
man--if Lord Leycester Wyndward had not, with brutal force, thrown me
from the saddle. I should have seen you in time, and, as I say, no harm
would have been done. All that has occurred is this man--Lord Leycester
Wyndward's--fault. Again I beg your pardon."
And he bent his head before her. But as he did so a malignant gleam
shot out of his eyes in the direction of the tall, stalwart figure and
white, passionate face.
"No, no, there is no occasion!" said Stella, trembling. "I do not want
you to beg my pardon. It was only an accident. You did not expect to
see anyone here--I--I--oh, I wish I had not come."
Lord Leycester started.
"Do not say that," he murmured.
Then aloud:
"Here is your horse, sir; mount him and go home, and thank your stars
the lady has escaped without a broken limb."
Jasper stood a moment looking at him, then, with another inclination of
the head, he slowly mounted the horse.
Lord Leycester, his passion gone, stood calm and motionless for a
moment, then raised his hat with an old-world gesture.
"Good-day to you, and remember to ride more carefully in future."
Jasper Adelstone looked down at him with a malignant smile on his thin
lips.
"Good-day, my lord. I shall remember. I am not one to forget. No, I am
not one to forget," and striking spurs into the horse, he rode off.
CHAPTER IX.
"Who is 'Lenore,' uncle?"
It was the evening of the same day--a day never to be forgotten by
Stella, a day marked with a white stone in her mental calendar. Never
would she be able to look upon a field of primroses, never hear the
music of the river running over the weir, without remembering this
morning the first she had spent with Lord Leycester.
It was evening now, and the two--the painter and the girl--were sitting
by the open window, looking out into the gloaming, he lost in memory,
she going over and over again the incidents of the morning, from the
visit of Mr. Jasper Adelstone to his encounter with Lord Leycester.
It was strange, it was almost phenomenal--for Stella was frankness and
candor itself--that she had said nothing of the encounter to her uncle;
once or twice she had opened her lips--once at dinner, and once again
as she sat beside him, leaning her arm on his chair while he smoked his
pipe--she had opened her lips to tell him of that sudden outburst of
fury on the part of Lord Leycester--that passionate rage which proved
all that the painter had said of his hot temper to be true, but she had
found some difficulty in the recital which had kept her silent.
She had told him of her walk in the woods, had told him of her meeting
with Lady Lilian, but of that passionate encounter between the two men
she said nothing.
When Jasper had ridden on, pale and livid with suppressed passion, Lord
Leycester had stood looking at her in silence. Now, as she sat looking
into the gloaming, she saw him in her mind's eye still, his beautiful
eyes eloquent with remorse and humility, his clear-cut lip quivering
with the sense of his weakness.
"Will you forgive me?" he said, at last, and that was all. Without
another word, he had offered to help her into the boat, help which
Stella had disregarded, and had rowed her across to her uncle. Without
a word, but with the same penitent, imploring look in his eyes, he
raised his hat and left her--had gone home to the Hall, to his sister
Lady Lilian, and to Lenore.
Ever since she had heard the name drop softly from Lady Lilian's lips
it had rung in her ears. There was a subtle kind of charm about it that
half fascinated, half annoyed her.
And now, leaning her head on her arm, and with her dark eyes fixed on
the stars which glittered merrily in the sky, she put the question:
"Who is Lenore, uncle?"
He stirred in his chair and looked at her absently.
"Lenore, Lenore? I don't know, Stella, and yet the name sounds
familiar. Where did you hear it? It's scarcely fair to spring a
question like that on me; you might ask me who is Julia, Louisa, Anna
Maria----"
Stella laughed softly.
"I heard it this morning, uncle. Lady Lilian told her brother as she
left us that 'Lenore had come.'"
"Ah, yes," he said. "Now I know. So she has come, has she? Who is
Lenore?" and he smiled. "There is scarcely another woman in England who
would need to ask that question, Stella."
"No?" she said, turning her eyes upon him with surprise. "Why? Is she
so famous?"
"Exactly, yes; that is just the word. She is famous."
"For what, uncle? Is she a great actress, painter, musician--what?"
"She is something that the world, nowadays, reckons far above any of
the classes you have named, Stella--she is a great beauty."
"Oh, is that all!" said Stella, curtly.
"All!" he echoed, amused.
"Yes," and she nodded. "It seems so easy."
"So easy!" and he laughed.
"Yes," she continued; "so very easy, if you happen to be born so. There
is no merit in it. And is that all she is?"
He was staggered by her _sang froid_ for a moment.
"Well, I was scarcely fair, perhaps. As you say, it is very easy to be
a great beauty--if you are one--but it is rather difficult if you are
not; but Lenore is something more than that--she is an enchantress."
"That's better," remarked Stella. "I like that. And how does she
enchant? Does she keep tame snakes, and play music to them, or
mesmerize people, or what?"
The painter laughed again with great enjoyment at her _naivete_.
"You are quite a cynic, Stella. Where did you learn the trick; from
your father, or is it a natural gift? No, she does not keep tame
snakes, and I don't know that she has acquired the art of mesmerism;
but she can charm for all that. First, she is, really and truly, very
beautiful----"
"Tell me what she is like?" interrupted Stella, softly.
The old man paused a moment to light his pipe.
"She is very fair," he said.
"I know," said Stella, dreamily, and with a little smile; "with yellow
hair and blue eyes, and a pink and white complexion, and blue veins and
a tiny mouth."
"All wrong," he said, with, a laugh. "You have, woman-like, pictured
a china doll. Lenore is as unlike a china doll as it is possible to
imagine. She has golden hair it is true--but golden hair, not yellow;
there is a difference. Then her eyes are not blue; they are violet."
"Violet!"
"Violet!" he repeated, gravely. "I have seen them as violet as the
flowers that grow on the bank over there. Her mouth is not small; there
was never yet a woman worth a fig who had a small mouth. It is rather
large than otherwise, but then it is--a mouth."
"Expressive?" said Stella, quietly.
"Eloquent," he corrected. "The sort of mouth that can speak volumes
with a curve of the lip. You think I exaggerate? Wait until you see
her."
"I don't think," said Stella, slowly, "that I am particularly desirous
of seeing her, uncle. It reminds me of what they say of Naples--see
Naples and die! See Lenore and die!"
He laughed.
"Well, it is not altogether false; many have seen her--many men, and
been ready to die for love of her."
Stella laughed, softly.
"She must be very beautiful for you to talk like this, uncle. She is
charming too?"
"Yes, she is charming," he said, low; "with a charm that one is bound
to admit at once and unreservedly."
"But what does she do?" asked Stella, with a touch of feminine
impatience.
"What does she not?" he answered. "There is scarcely an accomplishment
under the sun or moon that she has not at her command. In a word,
Stella, Lenore is the outcome of the higher civilization; she is the
type of our latest requirement, which demands more than mere beauty,
and will not be satisfied with mere cleverness; she rides beautifully
and fearlessly; she plays and sings better than one-half the women one
hears at concerts; they tell me that no woman in London can dance with
greater grace, and I have seen her land a salmon of twenty pounds with
all the skill of a Scotch gillie."
Stella was silent a moment.
"You have described a paragon, uncle. How all her women friends must
detest her."
He laughed.
"I think you are wrong. I never knew a woman more popular with her sex."
"How proud her husband must be of her," murmured Stella.
"Her husband! What husband? She is not married."
Stella laughed.
"Not married! Such a perfection unmarried! Is it possible that mankind
can permit such a paragon to remain single. Uncle, they must be afraid
of her!"
"Well, perhaps they are--some of them," he assented, smiling. "No,"
he continued, musingly; "she is not married. Lenore might have been
married long before this: she has had many chances, and some of them
great ones. She might have been a duchess by this time if she had
chosen."
"And why did she not?" said Stella. "Such a woman should be nothing
less than a duchess. It is a duchess whom you have described, uncle."
"I don't know," he said, simply. "I don't think anyone knows; perhaps
she does not know herself."
Stella was silent for a moment; her imagination was hard at work.
"Is she rich, poor--what, uncle?"
"I don't know. Rich, I should think," he answered.
"And what is her other name, or has she only one name, like a princess
or a church dignitary?"
"Her name is Beauchamp--Lady Lenore Beauchamp."
"Lady!" repeated Stella, surprised. "She has a title, then; it was all
that was wanted."
"Yes, she is the daughter of a peer."
"What a happy woman she must be;--is she a woman or a girl, though. I
have imagined her a woman of thirty."
He laughed.
"Lady Lenore is--is"--he thought a moment--"just twenty-three."
"That's a woman," said Stella, decidedly. "And this wonderful creature
is at the Hall, within sight of us. Tell me, uncle, do they keep her in
a glass case, and only permit her to be seen as a curiosity at so much
a head? They ought to do so, you know."
He laughed, and his hand stroked her hair.
"What is it Voltaire says, Stella," he remarked. "'If you want a woman
to hate another, praise her to the first one.'"
Stella's face flushed hotly, and she laughed with just a touch of scorn.
"Hate! I don't hate her, uncle--I admire her; I should like to see her,
to touch her--to feel for myself the wonderful charm of which you
speak. I should like to see how she bears it; it must be strange, you
know, to be superior to all one's kind."
"If she feels strange," he said, thoughtfully, "she does not show it.
I never saw more perfect grace and ease than hers. I do not think
anything in the world would ruffle her. I think if she were on board
a ship that was going down inch by inch, and she knew that she was
within, say, five minutes of death, she would not flinch, or drop for
a moment the smile which usually rests upon her lips. That is her
charm, Stella--the perfect ease and perfect grace which spring from a
consciousness of her power."
There was silence for a moment. The painter had spoken in his usual