Only a girl's love
Mrs. Penfold hesitated a moment, then she went out.
Stella made an effort to eat some breakfast, but it was a failure; she
felt restless and listless; a spell seemed to have been cast over the
little house--a spell of mystery and secrecy.
After breakfast she took up her hat and wandered about the garden,
communing with herself, and ever watching the path across the meadows,
though she knew that her uncle could not possibly return yet.
The day wore away and the evening came, and as the daylight gave
place to sunset, Stella's heart beat faster. All day she had been
thinking--dreaming of the hour that was now so near at hand, longing
for and yet almost dreading it. This love was so strange, so mysterious
a thing, that it almost frightened her.
Almost for the first time she asked herself whether she was not doing
wrong--whether she had not better stay at home and give up this
precious meeting.
But she mentally pictured Lord Leycester's waiting for her--mentally
called up the tone of his voice welcoming her, and her conscience was
stilled.
"I must go!" she murmured, and as if afraid lest she should change her
mind, she put on her hat, and went down the path with a quick step. But
she turned back at the gate, and called to Mrs. Penfold.
"I am going for a stroll," she said, with a sudden blush. "If uncle
returns while I am away, tell him I shall not be long."
And then she went across the meadows to the river bank.
All was silent save the thrushes in the woods and the nightingale with
its long liquid note and short "jug, jug," and she sank down upon the
grassy bank and waited.
The clock struck the hour of appointment, and her heart beat fast.
Suppose he did not come! Her cheek paled, and a faint sickening feeling
of disappointment crept over her. The minutes passed, hours they
seemed, and then with a sudden resolution she rose.
"He will not come," she murmured. "I will go back; it is better so!"
But even as the words left her lips sadly, a light skiff shot from the
shadow of the opposite bank and flew across the river.
It was Lord Leycester, she knew him though his back was turned toward
her and he was dressed in a suit of boating flannel, and her heart
leapt.
With practiced ease he brought the skiff alongside the bank and sprang
up beside her, both hands outstretched.
"My darling!" he murmured, his eyes shining with a greeting as
passionate as his words--"have you been waiting long? Did you think I
was not coming?"
Stella put her hands in his and glanced up at him for a moment; her
face flushed, then paled.
"I--I--did not know," she said, shyly, but with a little smile lurking
in the corner of her red lips.
"You knew I should come," he went on. "What should, what could, prevent
me? Stella! I was here before you. I have been lying under that tree,
watching you; you looked so beautiful that I lay there feasting my
eyes, and reluctant to move lest I should dispel the beautiful vision."
Stella looked across and her eyes drooped.
"You where there while I--I was thinking that you had
perhaps--forgotten!"
"Forgotten!" and he laughed softly. "I have been looking forward to
this hour; I dreamt of it last night. Can you say the same, Stella?"
She was silent for a moment, then she looked up at him shyly, as a soft
"Yes" dropped from her lips.
He would have drawn her close to him, but she shrank back with a little
frightened gesture.
"Come," he said, and he drew her gently toward the boat.
Stella hesitated.
"Suppose," she said, "someone saw us," and the color flew to her face.
"And if!" he retorted, with a sudden look of defiance, which melted in
a moment. "There is no fear of that, my darling; we will go down the
back water. Come."
There was no resisting that low-voiced mingling of entreaty and loving
command. With the tenderest care he helped her into the boat and
arranged the cushion for her.
"See," he said, "if we meet any boat you must put up your sunshade, but
we shall not where we are going."
Stella leant back and watched him under her lowered lids as he
rowed--every stroke of the strong arm sending the boat along like an
arrow from the bow--and an exquisite happiness fell upon her. She did
not want him to speak; it was enough for her to sit and watch him, to
know that he was within reach of her hand if she bent forward, to feel
that he loved her.
He rowed down stream until they came to an island; then he guided the
boat out of the principal current into a back water, and rested on his
oars.
"Now let me look at you!" he said. "I haven't had an opportunity yet."
Stella put up her sunshade to shield her face, and laughingly he drew
it away.
"That is not fair. I have been thirsting for a glance from those dark
eyes all day. I cannot have them hidden now. And what are you thinking
of?" he asked, smilingly, but with suppressed eagerness, "There is a
serious little look in those eyes of yours--of mine! They are mine, are
they not, Stella? What is it?"
"Shall I tell you?" she answered, in a low voice.
"Yes," he said. "You shall whisper it. Let me come nearer to you," and
he sank down at her feet and put up his hand for hers. "Now then."
Stella hesitated a moment.
"I was thinking and wondering whether this--whether this isn't very
wrong, Le--Leycester."
The name dropped almost inaudibly, but he heard it and put her hand to
his lips.
"Wrong?" he said, as if he were weighing the question most judiciously.
"Yes and no. Yes, if we do not love each other, we two. No, if we do. I
can speak for myself, Stella. My conscience is at rest because I love
you. And you?"
Her hand closed in his.
"No, my darling," he said, "I would not ask you to do anything
wrong. It may be a little unconventional, this stolen half-hour of
ours--perhaps it is; but what do you and I care for the conventional?
It is our happiness we care for," and he smiled up at her.
It was a dangerously subtle argument for a girl of nineteen, and coming
from the man she loved, but it sufficed for Stella, who scarcely knew
the full meaning of the term "conventional," but, nevertheless, she
looked down at him with a serious light in her eye.
"I wonder if Lady Lenore would have done it," she said.
A cloud like a summer fleece swept across his face.
"Lenore?" he said, then he laughed. "Lenore and you are two very
different persons, thank Heaven. Lenore," and he laughed, "worships the
conventional! She would not move a step in any direction excepting that
properly mapped out by Mrs. Grundy."
"You would not ask her, then?" said Stella.
He smiled.
"No, I should not," he said, emphatically and significantly. "I should
not ask anyone but you, my darling. Would you wish me to?"
"No, no," she said hastily, and she laughed.
"Then let us be happy," he said, caressing her hand. "Do you know that
you have made a conquest--I mean in addition to myself?"
"No," she said. "I?"
"Yes, you," he repeated. "I mean my sister Lilian."
"Ah!" said Stella, with a little glad light in her eyes. "How beautiful
and lovable she is!"
He nodded.
"Yes, and she has fallen in love with you. We are very much alike in
our tastes," he said, with a significant smile. "Yes, she thinks _you_
beautiful and lovable."
Stella looked down at the ardent face, so handsome in its passionate
eagerness.
"Did you--did you tell her?" she murmured.
He understood what she meant, and shook his head.
"No; it was to be a secret--our secret for the present, my darling. I
did not tell her."
"She would be sorry," said Stella. "They would all be sorry, would they
not?" she added, sadly.
"Why should you think of that?" he expostulated, gently. "What does it
matter? All will come right in the end. They will not be sorry when you
are my wife. When is it to be, Stella?" and his voice grew thrillingly
soft.
Stella started, and a scarlet blush flushed her face.
"Ah, no!" she said, almost pantingly, "not for very, very long--perhaps
never!"
"It must be very soon," he murmured, putting his arm around her. "I
could not wait long! I could not endure existence if we should chance
to be parted. Stella, I never knew what love meant until now! If you
knew how I have waited for this meeting of ours, how the weary hours
have hung with leaden weight upon my hands, how miserably dull the day
seemed, you would understand."
"Perhaps I do," she said softly, and the dark eyes dwelt upon his
musingly as she recalled her own listlessness and impatience.
"Then you must think as I do!" he said, quick to take advantage. "Say
you do, Stella! Think how very happy we should be."
She did think, and the thought made her tremble with excess of joy.
"We two together in the world! Where we would go and what we would do!
We could go to all the beautiful places--your own Italy, Switzerland!
and always together--think of it."
"I am thinking," she said with a smile.
He drew closer and put her arm around his neck. The very innocence and
purity of her love inflamed his passion and enhanced her charms in his
sight.
He had been loved before, but never like this, with such perfect,
unquestioning love.
"Well, then, my darling, why should we wait? It must be soon, Stella."
"No, no," she said, faintly. "Why should it? I--I am very happy."
"What is it you dread? Is it so dreadful the thought that we should be
alone together--all in all to each other?"
"It is not that," said Stella, her eyes fixed on the line of light that
fell on the water from the rising moon. "It is not that. I am thinking
of others."
"Always of others!" he said, with tender reproach. "Think of me--of
ourselves."
"I wish----" she said.
"Wish," he coaxed her. "See if I cannot gratify it. I will, if it be
possible."
"It is not possible," she said. "I was going to say that I wish you
were not--what you are."
"You said something like that last night," he said. "Darling, I have
wished it often. You wish that I were plain Mr. Brown."
"No, no," she said, with a smile; "not that."
"That I were a Mr. Wyndward----"
"With no castle," she broke in. "Ah, if that could be! If you were
only, say, a workman! How good that would be! Think! you would live in
a little cottage, and you would go to work, and come home at night, and
I should be waiting for you with your tea--do they have tea or dinner?"
she broke off to inquire, with a laugh.
"You see," he said, returning her laugh, "it would not do. Why, Stella,
you were not made for a workman's wife; the sordid cares of poverty
are for different natures to yours. And yet we should be happy, we
two." And he sighed wistfully. "You would be glad to see me come home,
Stella?"
"Yes," she said, half seriously, half archly. "I have seen them in
Italy, the peasants' wives, standing at the cottage doors, the hot
sunset lighting up their faces and their colored kerchiefs, waiting for
their husbands, and watching them as they climbed the hills from the
pastures and the vineyards, and they have looked so happy that I--I
have envied them. I was not happy in Italy, you know."
"My Stella!" he murmured. His love for her was so deep and passionate,
his sympathy so keen that half phrases were as plainly understood by
him as if she had spoken for hours. "And so you would wait for me
at some cottage door?" he said. "Well, it shall be so. I will leave
England, if you like--leave the castle and take some little ivy-green
cottage."
She smiled, and shook her head.
"Then they would have reason to complain," she said; "they would say
'she has dragged him down to her level--she has taught him to forget
all the duties of his rank and high position--she has'--what is it
Tennyson says--'robbed him of all the uses of life, and left him
worthless.'"