Only a girl's love
has parted with the world and almost forgotten it?"
"No, no! a thousand times no!" was the reply.
He wandered to the fireplace and took up his pipe, but with a sudden
glance at her laid it down again. Slight as was the action she saw it,
and with the graceful, lithe movement which he had noticed, she glided
across the room and took up the pipe.
"You were going to smoke, uncle."
"No, no," he said, eagerly. "No, a mere habit----"
She interrupted him with a smile, and filled the pipe for him with her
taper little fingers, and gave it to him.
"You do not want me to wish that I had not come to you uncle?"
"Heaven forbid!" he said, simply.
"Then you must not alter anything in your life; you must go on as if I
had never dropped from the clouds to be a burden upon you."
"My child!" he murmured, reproachfully.
"Or to make you uncomfortable. I could not bear that, uncle."
"No, no!" he said, "I will alter nothing, Stella; we will be happy, you
and I."
"Very happy," she murmured, softly.
He wandered to the window, and stood looking out; and, unseen by him,
she drew a chair up and cleared it of the litter, and unconsciously he
sat down.
Then she glided to and fro, wandering round the room noiselessly,
looking at the curious lumber, and instinctively picking up the books
and putting them in something like order on the almost empty shelves.
Every now and then she took up one of the pictures which stood with
their faces to the wall, and her gaze would wander from it to the
painter sitting in the moonlight, his white hair falling on his
shoulders, his thin, nervous hands clasped on his knee.
She, who had spent her life in the most artistic city of the world,
knew that he was a great painter, and, child-woman as she was, wondered
why the world permitted him to remain unknown and unnoticed. She had
yet to learn that he cared as little for fame as he did for wealth,
and to be allowed to live for his art and dream in peace was all he
asked from the world in which he lived but in which he took no part.
Presently she came back to the window, and stood beside him; he started
slightly and put out his hand, and she put her thin white one into it.
The moon rose higher in the heavens, and the old man raised his other
hand and pointed to it in silence.
As he did so, Stella saw glide into the scene--as it was touched by
the moonbeams--a large white building rearing above the trees on the
hill-top, and she uttered an exclamation of surprise.
"What house is that, uncle? I had no idea one was there until this
moment!"
"That is Wyndward Hall, Stella," he replied, dreamily; "it was hidden
by the shadow and the clouds."
"What a grand place!" she murmured. "Who lives there uncle?"
"The Wyndwards," he answered, in the same musing tone, "the Wyndwards.
They have lived there for hundreds of years, Stella. Yes, it is a grand
place."
"We should call it a palace in Italy, uncle."
"It is a palace in England, but we are more modest. They are contented
to call it the Hall. An old place and an old race."
"Tell me about them," she said, quietly. "Do you know them--are they
friends of yours?"
"I know them. Yes, they are friends, as far as there be any friendship
between a poor painter and the Lord of Wyndward. Yes, we are friends;
they call them proud, but they are not too proud to ask James
Etheridge to dinner occasionally; and they accuse him of pride because
he declines to break the stillness of his life by accepting their
hospitality. Look to the left there, Stella. As far as you can see
stretch the lands of Wyndward--they run for miles between the hills
there."
"They have some reason to be proud," she murmured, with a smile. "But I
like them because they are kind to you."
He nodded.
"Yes, the earl would be more than kind, I think----"
"The earl?"
"Yes, Lord Wyndward, the head of the family; the Lord of Wyndward they
call him. They have all been called Lords of Wyndward by the people
here, who look up to them as if they were something more than human."
"And does he live there alone?" she asked, gazing at the gray stone
mansion glistening in the moonlight.
"No, there is a Lady Wyndward, and a daughter--poor girl."
"Why do you say poor girl?" asked Stella.
"Because all the wealth of the race would not make her otherwise than
an object of tender pity. She is an invalid; you see that window--the
one with the light in it?"
"Yes," Stella said.
"That is the window of her room; she lies there on a sofa, looking down
the valley all the day!"
CHAPTER II.
"Poor girl!" murmured Stella. There was silence for a moment. "And
those three live there all alone?" she said.
"Not always," he replied, musingly. "Sometimes, not often, the son
Leycester comes down. He is Viscount Trevor."
"The son," said Stella. "And what is he like?"
The question seemed to set some train of thought in action; the old man
relapsed into silence for a few minutes. Then suddenly but gently he
rose, and going to the other end of the room, fetched a picture from
amongst several standing against the wall, and held it toward her.
"That is Lord Leycester," he said.
Stella took the canvas in her hand, and held it to the light, and an
exclamation broke involuntarily from her lips.
"How beautiful he is!"
The old man took the picture from her, and resting it on his knees,
gazed at it musingly.
"Yes," he said, "it is a grand face; one does not see such a face
often."
Stella leant over the chair and looked at it with a strange feeling of
interest and curiosity, such as no simply beautiful picture would have
aroused.
It was not the regularity of the face, with its clear-cut features
and its rippling chestnut hair, that, had it been worn by a Wyndward
of a hundred years ago, would have fallen in rich curls upon the
square, well-formed shoulders. It was not the beauty of the face, but a
something indefinable in the carriage of the head and the expression of
the full, dark eyes that attracted, almost fascinated, her.
It was in a voice almost hushed by the indescribable effect produced by
the face, that she said:
"And he is like that?"
"It is lifelike," he answered. "I, who painted it, should not say it,
but it is like him nevertheless--that is Leycester Wyndward. Why did
you ask?"
Stella hesitated.
"Because--I scarcely know. It is such a strange face, uncle. The
eyes--what is it in the eyes that makes me almost unable to look away
from them?"
"The reflection of a man's soul, Stella," he said.
It was a strange answer, and the girl looked down at the strange face
interrogatively.
"The reflection of a man's soul, Stella. The Wyndwards have always
been a wild, reckless, passionate race; here, in this village, they
have innumerable legends of the daring deeds of the lords of Wyndward.
Murder, rapine, and high-handed tyranny in the olden times, wild
license and desperate profligacy in these modern ones; but of all the
race this Leycester Wyndward is the wildest and most heedless. Look
at him, Stella, you see him here in his loose shooting-jacket, built
by Poole; with the diamond pin in his irreproachable scarf, with
his hair cut to the regulation length: I see him in armor with his
sword upraised to watch the passionate fire of his eyes. There is a
picture in the great gallery up yonder of one of the Wyndwards clad
just so, in armor of glittering steel, with one foot on the body of a
prostrate foe, one hand upraised to strike the death-dealing blow of
his battle-ax. Yes, Leycester Wyndward should have lived four centuries
back."
Stella smiled.
"Has he committed many murders, uncle, burnt down many villages?"
The old man started and looked up at the exquisite face, with its arch
smile beaming in the dark eyes and curving the red, ripe lips, and
smiled in response.
"I was dreaming, Stella; an odd trick of mine. No, men of his stamp
are sadly circumscribed nowadays. We have left them no vent for their
natures now, excepting the gambling-table, the turf, and----" he roused
suddenly. "Yes, it's a beautiful face, Stella, but it belongs to a man
who has done more harm in his day than all his forefathers did before
him. It is rather a good thing that Wyndward Hall stands so firmly, or
else Leycester would have melted it at ecarte and baccarat long ago."
"Is he so bad then?" murmured Stella.
Her uncle smiled.
"Bad is a mild word, Stella; and yet--look at the face again. I have
seen it softened by a smile such as might have been worn by an innocent
child; I have heard those lips laugh as--as women are supposed to laugh
before this world has driven all laughter out of them; and when those
eyes smile there is no resisting them for man or woman."
He stopped suddenly and looked up.
"I am wandering on like an old mill. Put the picture away, Stella."
She took it from him and carried it across the room, but stood for
a moment silently regarding it by the lamp light. As she did so, a
strange fancy made her start and set the picture on the table suddenly.
It seemed to her as if the dark eyes had suddenly softened in their
intense fixed gaze and smiled at her.
It was the trick of a warm, imaginative temperament, and it took
possession of her so completely that with a swift gesture she laid her
hand over the dark eyes and so hid them.
Then, with a laugh at her own folly, she put the picture against the
wall and went back to the window and sat beside the old man.
"Tell me about your past life, Stella," he said, in a low voice.
"It seems to me as if you had always been here. You have a quiet way of
speaking and moving about, child."
"I learnt that while papa was ill," she said, simply. "Sometimes he
would sit for hours playing softly, and I did not wish to disturb him."
"I remember, I remember," he murmured. "Stella, the world should have
known something of him; he was a born musician."
"He used to say the same of you, uncle; you should have been a famous
artist."
The old man looked up with a smile.
"My child, there are many men whom the world knows nothing of--luckily
for them. Your father and I were dreamers, both; the world likes men of
action. Can you play?"
She rose and stood for a moment hesitating. In the corner of the room
there was a small chamber organ--one of those wonderful instruments
which in a small space combine the grand tones of a cathedral organ
with the melodious softness of a flute. It was one of the few luxuries
which the artist had permitted himself, and he was in the habit of
playing snatches of Verdi and Rossini, of Schubert and Mozart, when the
fading light compelled him to lay the brush aside.
Stella went up to it softly and seated herself, and presently began to
play. She attempted no difficult fugue or brilliant march, but played
a simple Florentine vesper hymn, which she had heard floating from the
devout lips of the women kneeling before the altar of the great church
in Florence, and presently began to sing it.
The old man started as the first clear bird-like notes rose softly
upon the evening air, and then covering his face with his hands went
straight to dreamland.
The vesper hymn died softly, slowly out, and she rose, but with a
gesture of his hand he motioned her to remain at the organ.
"You have your father's voice, Stella; sing again."
She sang a pleasant ditty this time, with a touch of pathos in the
refrain, and hearing a slight noise as she finished, looked round, and
saw the old man rise, and with quivering lips turn toward the door.
The young girl's sweet voice had brought back the past and its dead too
plainly, and he had gone out lest she should see his emotion.
Stella rose and went to the window, and stood looking into the night.