Only a girl's love
Lord Charles turned without a word, and they went back.
The tables were still occupied, and the entrance of the two men was
noticed and greeted with a word here and there. Lord Charles dropped on
to a chair and called for some coffee--a great deal of coffee was drank
at the "Rookery"--but Leycester wandered about from table to table.
Presently he paused beside some men who were playing baccarat.
They had been playing since midnight, and piles of notes, and gold, and
I O U's told pretty plainly of the size of the stakes.
Leycester stood leaning on the back of a chair, absently watching the
play, but his thoughts were wandering back to the meadows of Wyndward,
and he stood once more beside the weir stream, with the lovely face
upon his breast.
But suddenly a movement of one of the players opposite him attracted
his attention, and he came back to the present with a start.
A young fellow--a mere boy--the heir to a marquisate, Lord Bellamy--the
reader will not have forgotten him--had dropped suddenly across the
table, his outstretched hands still clutching the cards. There was an
instant stir, the men started to their feet, the servants crowded up;
all stood aghast.
Leycester was the first to recover presence of mind, and, hurrying
round the table, picked the boy up in his strong arms.
"What's the matter, Bell?" he said; then, as he glanced at the white
face, with the dark lines round the eyes, he said in his quiet,
composed voice: "He has fainted; fetch a doctor, some of you."
And lifting him easily in his arms, he carried him in to an adjoining
room.
Lord Charles followed with a glass of water, but Leycester put it aside
with the one word--
"Brandy."
Lord Charles brought some brandy and closed the door, the others
standing outside aghast and frightened. Leycester poured some of the
spirit through his closed teeth, and the boy came back to life--to what
was left for him of life--and smiled up at him.
"The room was hot, Bell," said Leycester, in his gentle way; he could
be gentle even now. "I wanted you to go home two--three--hours ago! Why
didn't you go?"
"You--stayed----" gasped the boy.
Leicester's lips twitched.
"I!" he said. "That is a different matter."
The boy's head drooped, and fell back on Leycester's arm.
"Tell them not to stop the game," he said; "let somebody play for me!"
then he went off again.
The doctor came, a fashionable, hardworked man, a friend both of
Leycester's and Guildford's, and bent over the lad as he lay.
"It's a faint," said Lord Charles, nervously; "nothing else, eh,
doctor?"
The doctor looked up.
"My brougham is outside," he said. "I will take him home."
Leycester nodded, and carried the slight frame through the hall and
placed it in the brougham. The doctor followed. The cool air revived
the boy, and he made an effort to sit up, looking round as if in search
of something; at last his wandering sight fell on Leycester's, and he
smiled.
"That's right, Bell!" said Leycester; "you will be well to-morrow; but
mind, no more of this!" and he took the small white hand.
The heir to a marquisate clung to the hand, and smiled again.
"No, there will be no more of it, Leycester," he breathed, painfully.
"There will be no more of anything for me; I have seen the last of the
Rookery--and of you all. Leycester, I am dying!"
Leycester forced a smile to his white face.
"Nonsense, Bell," he said.
The boy raised a weak, trembling finger, and pointed to the doctor's
face.
"Look at him," he said. "He never told a lie in his--life. Ask him."
"Tell them to drive on, my lord," said the doctor.
The boy laughed, an awful laugh; then his face changed, and even as the
brougham moved on, he clung to Leycester's hand, and bending forward,
panted:
"Leycester--good-bye!"
Leycester stood, white and motionless as a statue, for the space of a
minute; then he turned to Lord Charles, who stood biting his pale lips
and looking after the brougham.
"I will go with you to-morrow," he said, hoarsely.
CHAPTER XXXV.
Time--which Lord Leycester had been so recklessly wasting in "riotous
living"--passed very quiet indeed in the Thames valley, beneath the
white walls of Wyndward Hall.
During the months which elapsed since that fearful parting between the
two lovers, life had gone on at the cottage just as before, with the
one great exception that Jasper Adelstone had become almost a daily
visitor, and that Stella was engaged to him.
That was all the difference, but what a difference it was!
Lord Leycester gone--her tried, her first lover, the man who had won
her maiden heart--and in his place this man whom she--hated.
But yet she fought the battle womanfully. She had made a bargain--she
had sacrificed herself for her two loved ones, had given herself freely
and unreservedly, and she strove to carry out her part of the compact.
She looked a little pale, a little graver than of old, but there was no
querulous tone of complaint about her; if she did not laugh the frank,
light-hearted laugh that her uncle used to declare was like the "voice
of sunlight," she smiled sometimes; and if the smile was rather sad
than mirthful, it was very sweet.
The old man noticed nothing amiss; he thought she had grown quieter,
but set the change down to her betrothal; he went on painting, absorbed
in his work, scarcely heeding the world that ran by him so merrily, so
sadly, and was quite content. Jasper's quiet, low-toned voice did not
disturb him, and he would go on painting while they were talking near
him, dead to their presence. Since that last blow his boy's crime had
struck him, he had lived more entirely and completely in his art than
ever.
Of the two, Frank and Stella, perhaps it was Frank who seemed the
most changed. He had grown thinner and paler, and more girlish and
delicate-looking than ever.
It had been arranged that he should go up to the university for the
next term, but Mr. Hamilton, the old doctor, who had been called in to
see to a slight cough which the boy had started, had hummed and hawed,
and advised that the 'varsity should be shelved for the present.
"Was he ill?" Stella had asked, anxiously--very anxiously, for,
woman-like, she had grown to love with a passionate devotion the boy
for whom she had sacrificed herself.
"N--o; not ill," the old doctor had said. "Certainly not ill," and he
went on to explain that Frank was delicate--that all boys with fair
hair and fair complexions were more or less delicate.
"But he has such a beautiful color," said Stella, nervously.
"Y--es; a nice color," said the old man, and that was all she could get
out of him.
But the cough did not go; and as the Autumn mists stole up from the
river and covered the meadows with a filmy veil, beautiful to behold,
the cough got worse; but the beautiful color did not go either, and so
Stella was not very anxious.
As for Frank himself, he treated his ailments with supreme indifference.
"Do I take any medicine?" he said, in answer to Stella's questioning.
"Yes, I take all the old woman--I beg his pardon!--the doctor sends.
It isn't very unpleasant, and though it doesn't do me much good
apparently, it seems to afford you and the aforesaid old woman some
satisfaction, and so we are pleased all round."
"You don't seem to take any interest in things, Frank," said Stella,
one morning, when she had come into the garden to look at the trees
that drew a long line of gold and brown and yellow along the river
bank, and had found him leaning on the gate, his hands clasped before
him, his eyes fixed on the Hall, very much as she had first seen him,
the night he had come home.
He looked round at her and smiled faintly.
"Why don't you go and try the fish?" she said. "Or--or--go for a ride?
You only wander about the gardens or in the meadows."
He looked at her curiously.
"Why do not you?" he said, slowly, his large blue eyes fixed on her
face, which grew slowly blush-red under his regard. "You do not seem to
take much interest in things, Stel. You don't go and fish, or--or--take
a drive, or anything. You only wander about the garden, or in the
meadows."
The long lashes swept her cheeks, and she struggled with a sigh. His
words had told home.
"But--but," she said falteringly, "I am not a boy. Girls should stay at
home and attend to their duties."
"And walk and move as if they were in a dream--as if their hearts and
souls were divorced from their bodies--and miles, miles away," he said,
waving his thin white hand in the air slowly.
Her lips quivered, and she turned her face away, but only for a moment;
it was back upon him with a smile again.
"You are a foolish, fanciful boy!" she said, putting her hand on his
shoulder and caressing his cheek.
"Perhaps so," he said. "'My fancies are more than all the world to me,'
says the poet, you know," he added, bitterly.
Stella's heart ached.
"Are you angry with me, Frank?" she said. "Don't be!"
He shook his head.
"No, not angry," he said, looking out at the mist that was rising.
She smothered a sigh; she understood his reproach; not a moment of the
day but he accused her in his heart of betraying Lord Leycester; if he
could but have known why she had done it; but that he never would know!
"You are a fanciful boy," she said, with a forced lightness. "What are
you dreaming about now, I wonder?"
"I was wondering too," he answered, without looking at her, "I was
wondering--shall I tell you----"
She answered "yes," with her hand against his cheek.
"I was wondering where Lord Leycester was, and how----"
Her hand dropped to her side and pressed her heart; the sudden mention
of the name had struck her like a blow.
He glanced round.
"I beg your pardon," he said, "I forgot; his name was never to be
mentioned, was it? I will not sin again--in word. In thought--one can't
help one's thoughts, Stel!"
"No," she murmured, almost inaudibly.
"Thoughts are free," he said; "mine are not, however; they are always
flying after him--after him, the best and noblest of men, the man who
saved my life. You see, though I may not speak of him, it would be
ungrateful to forget him!"
"Frank!"
At her tone of piteous supplication and almost reproach, he turned and
put his hand on her arm.
"Forgive me, Stel! I didn't mean to hurt you, but--but--well it is
so hard to understand, so hard to bear! To feel, to know that he is
far away and suffering, while that man, Jasper Adelstone--I beg your
pardon, Stel! There! I will say no more!"
"Do not," she murmured, her face white and strained, but resigned--"do
not. Besides, you are wrong; he has forgotten by this time."
He turned and looked at her with a sudden anger; then he smiled as the
exquisite beauty of her face smote him.
"You wrong him and yourself. No, Stel, men do not forget such a girl as
you----"
"No more!" she said, almost in a tone of command.
He shook his head, and the cough came on and silenced him.
She put her arm round his neck.
"That cough," she said. "You must go in, dear! Look at the mist. Come,
come in!"
He turned in silence and walked beside her for a few steps. Then he
said tremulously:
"Stella, let me ask one question, and then I will be silent--for
always."
"Well?" she said.
"Have you heard from him?--do you know where he is?"
She paused a moment to control her voice, then she said:
"I have heard no word; I do not know whether he is alive or dead."
He sighed and his head dropped upon his breast.
"Let us go in," he said, then he started, for his ears, particularly
sharp, had caught the sound of a well-known footstep.
"There is--Jasper," he said, with a pause before the name, and he drew
his arm away and walked away from her. Stella turned with a strange set