Only a girl's love
Lord Leycester looked up at the exquisite face with a new light of
admiration.
This was no mere pretty doll, no mere bread-and-butter school-girl
to whom he had given his love, but a girl who thought, and who could
express her thoughts.
"Stella!" he murmured, "you almost frighten me with your wisdom.
Where did you learn such experience? Well, it is not to be a cottage,
then; and I am not to work in the fields or tend the sheep. What then
remains? Nothing, save that you take your proper place in the world
as my wife;" the indescribable tenderness with which he whispered the
last word brought the warm blood to her face. "Where should I find a
lovelier face to add to the line of portraits in the old hall? Where
should I find a more graceful form to stand by my side and welcome my
guests? Where a more 'gracious ladye' than the maiden I love?"
"Oh, hush! hush!" whispered Stella, her heart beating beneath the
exquisite pleasure of his words, and the gently passionate voice in
which they were spoken. "I am nothing but a simple, stupid girl, who
knows nothing except----" she stopped.
"Except!" he pressed her.
She looked at the water a moment, then she bent down, and lightly
touched his hand with her lips.
"Except that she loves you!"
It was all summed up in this. He did not attempt to return the caress;
he took it reverentially, half overwhelmed with it. It was as if a
sudden stillness had fallen on nature, as if the night stood still in
awe of her great happiness.
They were silent for a minute, both wrapped in thoughts of the other,
then Stella said suddenly, and with a little not-to-be-suppressed sigh:
"I must go! See, the moon is almost above the trees."
"It rises early to-night, very," he said, eagerly.
"But I must go," she said.
"Wait a moment," he pleaded. "Let us go on shore and walk to the
weir--only to the weir; then we will come back and I will row you over.
It will not take five minutes! Come, I want to show it to you with
the moon on it. It is a favorite spot of mine; I have often stood and
watched it as the water danced over it in the moonlight. I want to do
so this evening, with you by my side. I am selfish, am I not?"
He helped her out of the boat, almost taking her in his arms, and
touching her sleeve with his lips; in his chivalrous mood he would not
so far take advantage of her in her helplessness as to kiss her face,
and they walked hand in hand, as they used to do in the good old days
when men and women were not ashamed of love.
Why is it that they should be now? Why is it that when a pair of lovers
indulge on the stage in the most chaste of embraces, a snigger and a
grin run through the audience? In this age of burlesque and satire, of
sarcasm and cynicism, is there to be no love making? If so, what are
poets and novelists to write about--the electric light and the science
of astronomy?
They walked hand in hand, Leycester Wyndward Viscount Trevor, heir to
Wyndward and an earldom, and Stella, the painter's niece, and threaded
the wood, keeping well under the shadows of the high trees, until they
reached the bank where the weir touched.
Lord Leycester took her to the brink and held her lightly.
"See," he said, pointing to the silver stream of water; "isn't that
beautiful; but it is not for its beauty only that I have brought you to
the river. Stella, I want you to plight your troth to me here."
"Here?" she said, looking up at his eager face.
"Yes; this spot is reported haunted--haunted by good fairies instead of
evil spirits. We will ask them to smile on our betrothal, Stella."
She smiled, and watched his eyes with half-serious amusement; there was
a strange light of earnestness in them.
Stooping down he took up a handful of the foaming water and threw a few
drops on her head and a few on his own.
"That is the old Danish rite, Stella," he said. "Now repeat after me--
"'Come joy or woe, come pain or pleasure,
Come poverty or richest treasure,
I cling to thee, love, heart unto heart,
Till death us sever, we will not part.'"
Stella repeated the words after him with a faint smile on her lips,
which died away under the glow of his earnest eyes.
Then, as the last words dropt hurriedly from her lips, he took her in
his arms and kissed her.
"Now we are betrothed, Stella, you and I against all the world."
As he spoke a cloud sailed across the moon, and the shadows now at
their feet suddenly changed from silver to dullish lead.
Stella shuddered in his arms, and clung to him with a little convulsive
movement that thrilled him.
"Let us go," she said; "let us go. It seems almost as if there were
spirits here! How dark it is!"
"Only for a moment, darling!" he said. "See?" and he took her face and
turned it to the moonlight again. "One kiss, and we will go."
With no blush on her face, but with a glow of passionate love in her
eyes, she raised her face, looked into his for a moment, then kissed
him.
Then they turned, and went toward the boat; but this time she clung
to his arm, and her head nestled on his shoulder. As they turned,
something white and ghost-like moved from behind the trees, in front of
which they had been standing.
It stood in the moonlight looking after them, itself so white and
eerie that it might have been one of the good fairies; but that in its
face--beautiful enough for any fairy--there glittered the white, angry,
threatening look of an evil spirit.
Was it the nearness of this exquisitely-graceful figure in white which
by some instinct Stella had felt and been alarmed at?
The figure watched them for a moment until they were out of sight, then
it turned and struck into a path leading toward the Hall.
As it did so, another figure--a black one this time--came out of the
shadow, and crossed the path obliquely.
She turned and saw a white, not unhandsome, face, with small keen eyes
bent on her. She, the watcher, had been watched.
For a moment she stood as if half-tempted to speak, but the next drew
the fleecy shawl round her head with a gesture of almost insolent
hauteur.
But she was not to escape so easily; the dark, thin figure slipped
back, and stooping down picked up the handkerchief, which in her
sweeping gesture she had let drop.
"Pardon!" he said.
She looked at him with cool disdain, then took the handkerchief, and
with an inclination of her head that was scarcely a bow would have
passed on again, but he did not move from her path, and hat in hand
stood looking at her.
Proud, fearless, imperiously haughty as she was, she felt constrained
to stop.
He knew by the mere fact of her stopping that he had impressed her, and
he at once followed up the advantage gained.
If she had wanted to pass him without speaking she should have taken
no notice of the handkerchief, and gone on her way. No doubt she now
wished that she had done so, but it was too late now.
"Will you permit me to speak to you?" he said, in a quiet, almost a
constrained voice, every word distinct, every word full of significance.
She looked at him, at the pale face with its thin, resolute lips and
small, keen eyes, and inclined her head.
"If you intend to speak to me, sir, I apprehend that I cannot prevent
it. You will do well to remember that we are not alone here."
Still uncovered, he bowed.
"Your ladyship has no need to remind me of that fact. No deed or word
of mine will cause you to wish for a protector."
"I have yet to learn that," she said. "You appear to know me, sir!"
No words will convey any idea of the haughty scorn expressed by the icy
tone and the cold glance of the violet eyes.
A faint smile, deferential yet self-possessed, swept across his face.
"There are some so well known to the world that their faces are easily
recognized even in the moonlight; such an one is the Lady Len----"
She put up her hand, white and glittering with priceless gems, and at
the commanding gesture he stopped, but the smile swept across his face
again, and he put up his hand to his lips.
"You know my name; you wish to speak to me?"
He inclined his head.
"What have you to say to me?"
She had not asked his name; she had treated him as if he were some
beggar who had crept up to her carriage as it stood at rest, and by a
mixture of bravado and servility gained her ear. There was a fierce,
passionate resentment at this treatment burning in his bosom, but he
kept it down.
"Is it some favor you have to ask?" she said, with cold, pitiless
hauteur, seeing that he hesitated.
"Thanks," he said. "I was waiting for a suggestion--I must put it in
that way. Yes, I have to ask a favor. My lady, I am a stranger to
you----"
She waved her hand as if she did not care so much as a withered blade
of grass for his personal history, and with a little twitch of the lips
he continued:
"I am a stranger to you, but I still venture to ask your assistance."
She looked and smiled like one who has known all along what was coming,
but to please his own whim, had waited quite naturally.
"Exactly," she said. "I have no money----"
Then he started and stood before her, and what there was of manliness
awoke within him.
"Money!" he said. "Are you mad?"
Lady Lenore stared at him haughtily.
"I fear that you are," she said. "Did you not demand--_ask_ is too
commonplace a word to describe a request made by a man of a woman alone
and unprotected--did you not demand money, sir?"
"Money!" he repeated; then he smiled. "You are laboring under a
misapprehension," he said. "I am in no need of money. The assistance I
need is not of a pecuniary kind."
"Then what is it?" she asked, and he detected a touch of curiosity in
the insolently-haughty voice. "Be good enough to state your desire as
briefly as you can, sir, and permit me to go on my way."
Then he played a card.
With a low bow he raised his hat, and drew from the path.
"I beg your ladyship's pardon," he said, respectfully, but with a
scarcely feigned air of disappointment. "I see that I have made a
mistake. I apologize most humbly for having intruded upon your good
nature, and I take my leave. I wish your ladyship good-evening," and he
turned.
Lady Lenore looked after him with cold disdain, then she bit her lip
and her eyes dropped, and suddenly, without raising her voice, she said:
"Wait!"
He turned and stood with his hand thrust in the breast of his coat, his
face calm and self-possessed.
She paused a moment and eyed him, struggling, if the truth were known,
and no doubt he knew it, with her curiosity and her pride, which last
forbade her hold any further converse with him. At last curiosity
conquered.
"I have called you back, sir, to ask the nature of this mistake you
say that you have made. Your conduct, your manner, your words are
inexplicable to me. Be good enough to explain."
It was a command, and he inclined his head in respectful recognition.
"I am a student of nature, my lady," he said, in a low voice, "and I am
fond of rambling in the woods here, especially at moonlight; it is not
a singular fancy."
Her face did not flush, but her eyes gleamed; she saw the sneer in the
words.
"Go on, sir," she said, coldly.
"Chance led me to-night in the direction of the river. I was standing
admiring it when two individuals--the two individuals who have just
left us--approached. Suspecting a love tryst, I was retreating, when
the moon revealed to me that one of the individuals was a person in
whom I take a great interest."
"Which?" she asked, coldly and calmly.
"The young lady," he replied, and his eyes drooped for a moment.
"That interest rather than curiosity,"--her lips curled, and she
looked up at him with infinite scorn--"interest rather than curiosity