Only a girl's love
expect to have--as if the executioner was waiting outside and feeling
the edge of the ax impatiently. There is only one man here who dares to
laugh outright."
"Who is that?" asked Stella.
He nodded to Lord Guildford, who was actively engaged in bending
his head over his soup with the air of a hungry man. "Charlie," he
said--"Lord Guildford, I mean. He laughs everywhere, don't you,
Charlie?"
"Eh? Yes, oh, yes. What is he telling you about me, Miss Etheridge?
Don't believe a word he says. I mean to have him up for libel some day."
"He says you laugh everywhere," said Stella.
Lord Charles laughed at once, and Stella looked round half alarmed, but
nobody seemed to faint or show any particular horror.
"Nobody minds him," said Lord Leycester, balancing his spoon. "He is
like the King's Jester, licensed to play wheresoever he pleases."
"I'm fearfully hungry," said Lord Charles. "I've been in the saddle
since three o'clock--is that the _menu_, Miss Etheridge? Let us mark
our favorite dishes," and he offered her a half-hold of the porcelain
tablet on which was written the items of the various courses.
Stella looked down the long list with something like amused dismay.
"It's dreadfully long," she said. "I don't think I have any favorite
dishes."
"No; not really!" he demanded. "What a treat! Will you really let me
advise you?"
"I shall be most grateful," said Stella.
"Oh, this is charming," said Lord Guildford. "Next to choosing one's
own dinner, there is nothing better than choosing one for someone else.
Let me see;" and thereupon he made a careful selection, which Stella
broke into with an amused laugh.
"I could not possibly eat all these things," she said.
"Oh, but you must," he said. "Why, I have been most careful to pick out
only those dishes suitable for a lady's delicate appetite; you can't
leave one of them out, you can't, indeed, without spoiling your dinner."
"My dear," said the countess, bending forward, "don't let him teach
you anything, except to take warning by his epicureanism; he is only
anxious that you should be too occupied to disturb him."
Lord Charles laughed.
"That is cruel," he said. "You take my advice, Miss Etheridge; there
are only two things I understand, and those are a horse and a good
dinner."
Meanwhile the dinner was proceeding, and to Stella it seemed that
"good" scarcely adequately described it. One elaborate course after
another followed in slow succession, borne in by the richly-liveried
footmen on the massive plate for which Wyndward Hall was famous. Dishes
which she had never heard of seemed to make their appearance only to
pass out again untouched, excepting by the clergyman, Lord Guildford,
and one or two other gentlemen. She noticed that the earl scarcely
touched anything beyond a tiny piece of fish and a mutton cutlet; and
Lord Guildford, who seemed to take an interest in anything connected
with the dinner, remarked, as he glanced at the stately head of the
house--
"There is one other person present who is of your way of thinking, Miss
Etheridge--I mean the earl. He doesn't know what a good dinner means. I
don't suppose he will taste anything more than the fish and a piece of
Cheshire. When he is in town and at work----"
"At work? said Stella.
"In the House of Lords, you know; he is a member of the Cabinet."
Stella nodded.
"He is a statesman?"
"Exactly. He generally dines off a mutton chop served in the library.
I've seen him lunching off a penny biscuit and a glass of water.
Terrible, isn't it?"
Stella laughed.
"Perhaps he finds he can work better on a chop and a glass of water,"
she said.
"Don't believe it!" retorted Lord Guildford. "No man can work well
unless he is well-fed."
"Guildford ought to know," said Lord Leycester, audibly. "He does so
much work."
"So I do," retorts Lord Charles. "Stay and keep you in order, and if
that isn't hard work I don't know what is!"
This was very amusing for Stella; it was all so strange, too, and so
little what she imagined; here were two peers talking like school-boys
for her amusement, as if they were mere nobodies and she were somebody
worth amusing.
Every now and then she could hear Lady Lenore's voice, musical and
soft, yet full and distinct; she was talking of the coming season, and
Stella heard her speak of great people--persons' names which she had
read of, but never expected to hear spoken of so familiarly. It seemed
to her that she had got into some charmed circle; it scarcely seemed
real. Then occasionally, but very seldom, the earl's thin, clear,
high-bred voice would be heard, and once he looked across at Stella
herself, and said:
"Will you not try some of those rissoles, Miss Etheridge? They are
generally very good."
"And he never touches them," murmured Lord Charles, with a mock groan.
She could hear her uncle talking also--talking more fluently than
was his wont--to Lady Wyndward, who was speaking about the pictures,
and once Stella saw her glance in her direction as if they had been
speaking of her. The dinner seemed very long, but it came to an end
at last, and the countess rose. As Stella rose with the rest of the
ladies, the old Countess of Longford locked her arm in hers.
"I am not so old that I can't walk, and I am not lame, my dear," she
said, "but I like something young and strong to lean upon; you are
both. You don't mind?"
"No!" said Stella. "Yes, I am strong."
The old countess looked up at her with a glance of admiration in her
gray eyes.
"And young," she said significantly.
They passed into a drawing-room--not the one they had entered first,
but a smaller room which bore the name of "my lady's." It was
exquisitely furnished in the modern antique style. There were some
beautiful hangings that covered the walls, and served as background for
costly cabinets and brackets, upon which was arranged a collection of
ancient china second to none in the kingdom. The end of the room opened
into a fernery, in which were growing tall palms and whole miniature
forests of maidenhair, kept moist by sparkling fountains that fell with
a plash, plash, into marble basins. Birds were twitting and flitting
about behind a wire netting, so slight and carefully concealed as to be
scarcely perceptible.
No footman was allowed to enter this ladies' paradise; two maids, in
their soft black dresses and snowy caps, were moving about arranging a
table for the countess to serve tea upon.
It was like a scene from the "Arabian Nights," only more beautiful and
luxurious than anything Stella had imagined even when reading that
wonderful book of fairy-tales.
The countess went straight to her table and took off her gray-white
gloves, some of the ladies settled themselves in the most indolent of
attitudes on the couches and chairs, and others strolled into the fern
house. The old countess made herself comfortable on a low divan, and
made room for Stella beside her.
"And this is your first visit to Wyndward Hall, my dear?" she said.
"Yes," answered Stella, her eyes still wandering round the room.
"And you live in that little village on the other side of the river?"
"Yes," said Stella, again. "It is very pretty, is it not?"
"It is, as pretty as anything in one of your uncle's pictures. And are
you quite happy?"
Stella brought her eyes upon the pale, wrinkled face.
"Happy! Oh, yes, quite," she said.
"Yes, I think you are," said the old lady with a keen glance at the
beautiful face and bright, pure eyes. "Then you must keep so, my dear,"
she said.
"But isn't that rather difficult?" said Stella, with a smile.
Lady Longford looked at her.
"That serves me right for meddling," she said. "Yes, it is difficult,
very difficult, and yet the art is easy enough; it contains only one
rule, and that is 'to be content.'"
"Then I shall continue to be happy," said Stella; "for I am very
content."
"For the present," said the old lady. "Take care, my dear!"
Stella smiled; it was a strange sort of conversation, and there was a
suggestion of something that did not appear on the surface.
"Do you think that I look very discontented, then?" she asked.
"No," said the old lady, eying her again. "No, you look very
contented--at present. Isn't that a beautiful forest?"
It was an abrupt change of the subject, but Stella was equal to it.
"I have been admiring it since I came in," she said; "it is like fairy
land."
"Go and enter it," said the old countess--"I am going to sleep for
exactly ten minutes. Will you come back to me then? You see, I am very
frank and rude; but I am very old indeed."
Stella rose with a smile.
"I think you are very kind to me," she said.
The old countess looked up at the beautiful face with the dark, soft
eyes bent down on her; and something like a sigh of regret came into
her old, keen eyes.
"You know how to make pretty speeches, my dear," she said. "You learnt
that in Italy, I expect. Mind you come back to me."
Then, as Stella moved away, the old lady looked after her.
"Poor child!" she murmured--"poor child! she is but a child; but he
won't care. Is it too late, I wonder? But why should I worry about it?"
But it seemed as if she must worry about it, whatever it was, for
after a few minutes' effort to sleep, she rose and went across to the
tea-table.
Lady Wyndward was making tea, but looked up and pushed a chair close
beside her.
"What is it?" she asked, with a smile.
"Who is she?" asked the countess, taking a cup and stirring the tea
round and round, very much as Betty the washerwoman does--very much
indeed.
Lady Wyndward did not ask "Who?" but replied in her serene, placid
voice directly:
"I don't know. Of course, I know that she is Mr. Etheridge's niece, but
I don't know anything about her, except that she has just come here
from Italy. She said that she was not happy there."
"She is very beautiful," murmured the countess.
"She is--very," assented Lady Wyndward.
"And something more than distinguished. I never saw a more graceful
girl. She is only a child, of course."
"Quite a child," assented Lady Wyndward again.
There was a pause, then the old countess said, almost abruptly:
"Why is she here?"
Lady Wyndward filled a cup carefully before replying.
"She is a friend of Lilian's," she said; "at least she invited her."
"I thought she was rather a friend of Leycester's," said the old lady,
dryly.
Lady Wyndward looked at her, and a faint, a very faint color came into
her aristocratic face.
"You mean that he has noticed her?" she said.
"Very much! I sat next to him at dinner. Was it wise to put him next to
her? A child's head is quickly turned."
"I did not arrange it so," replied Lady Wyndward. "I put his tablet
next to Lenore's, as usual; but it got moved. I don't know who could
have done it."
"I do," said the old lady. "It was Leycester himself. I am sure of it
by the way he looked."
Lady Wyndward's white brow contracted for a moment.
"It is like him. He will do or dare anything for an hour's amusement. I
ought to be angry with him!"
"Be as angry as you like, but don't let him know that you are," said
the old lady, shrewdly.
Lady Wyndward understood.
"How beautiful Lenore looks to-night," she said, looking across the
room where Lady Lenore stood fanning herself, her head thrown back, her
eyes fixed on a picture.
"Yes," assented the old countess. "If I were a man I should not rest
until I had won her; if I were a man--but then men are so different to
what we imagine them. They turn aside from a garden lily to pluck a
wayside flower----"
"But they come back to the lily," said Lady Wyndward, with a smile.
"Yes," muttered the old countess, suavely; "after they have grown tired
of the wild flower and thrown it aside."