Only a Girl's Love, Charles Garvice [a book to read .txt] 📗

that he had the portrait of Lord Leycester in his hand.

His face was turned toward her, and as she turned quickly, he was in time to catch a sinister frown of dislike, which rested for a moment on his face, but vanished as he raised his eyes and met hers.

"Lord Leycester," he said, with a smile and an uprising of the eyebrows. "A remarkable instance of an artist's power."

"What do you mean?" asked Stella, quietly, but with lowered eyes.

"I mean that it is a fair example of ideality. Mr. Etheridge has painted a likeness of Lord Leycester, and added an ideal poetry of his own."

"You mean that it is not like him?" she said.

Mr. Etheridge painted on, deaf to both of them.

"No," he said, looking at the picture with a cold smile. "It is like him, but it—honors him. It endows him with a poetry which he does not possess."

"You know him?" said Stella.

[36]

"Who does not?" he answered, and his thin lips curled with a smiling sneer.

A faint color came into Stella's face, and she raised her eyes for a moment.

"What do you mean?"

"I mean that Lord Leycester has made himself too famous—I was going to say infamous—"

A vivid crimson rushed to her face, and left it pale again the next instant.

"Do not," she said, then added quickly, "I mean do not forget that he is not here to defend himself."

He looked at her with a sinister scrutiny.

"I beg your pardon. I did not know he was a friend of yours," he said.

She raised her eyes and looked at him steadily.

"Lord Leycester is no friend of mine," she said, quietly.

"I am glad of it," he responded.

Stella's eyes darkened and deepened in a way peculiar to her, and her color came. It was true that Lord Leycester was no friend of hers, she had but seen and spoken with him by chance, and for a few moments; but who was this Mr. Adelstone that he should presume to be glad or sorry on her account?

He was quick to see that he had made a slip, and quick to recover himself.

"Pray forgive me if I have presumed too far upon our slight acquaintance, but I was only thinking at that moment that you had been so short a time in England as to be ignorant of people who are well known to us with whom they have lived, and that you would not know Lord Leycester's real character."

Stella inclined her head gravely. Something within her stirred her to take up arms in the absent man's defense; the one word "infamous," stuck and rankled in her mind.

"You said that Lord Leycester was 'infamous,'" she said, with a grave smile. "Surely that is too strong a word."

He thought a moment, his eyes resting on her face keenly.

"Perhaps, but I am not sure. I certainly used it as a play upon the word 'famous,' but I don't think even then that I did him an injustice. A man whose name is known all over the country—whose name is familiar as a household word—must be notorious either for good or evil, for wisdom or folly. Lord Leycester is not famous for virtue or wisdom. I cannot say any more."

Stella turned aside, a faint crimson dyeing her face, a strange thrill of pity, ay, and of impatience, at her heart. Why should he be so wicked, so mad and reckless—so notorious that even this self-satisfied young gentleman could safely moralize about him and warn her against making his acquaintance! "Oh, the pity of it—the pity of it!" as Shakespeare has it—that one with such a beautiful, god-look face, should be so bad.

There was a few moments' silence. Jasper Adelstone still stood with the picture in his hand, but glancing at Stella's face with covert watchfulness. For all his outward calmness, his heart was beating quickly. Stella's was the sort of beauty to make a[37] man's heart beat quickly, or not at all; those who came to offer at her shrine would offer no half-measured oblations. As he watched her his heart beat wildly, and his small, bright eyes glittered. He had thought her beautiful at the party last night, where she had outshone all the other girls of the village as a star outshines a rushlight; but this morning her loveliness revealed itself in all its fresh purity, and he—Jasper Adelstone, the critical man of the world, the man whose opinion about women was looked upon by his companions in Lincoln's-inn and the bachelors' haunts at the West-end as worth having—felt his heart slipping from him. He put the picture down and approached her.

"You have no idea how beautiful and fresh the meadows are. Will you stroll down to the river with me?" he said, resolving to take her by surprise and capture her.

But he did not know Stella. She was only a school-girl—innocent and ignorant of the ways of men and the world; but, perhaps, because of that—because she had not learnt the usual hackneyed words of evasion—the ordinary elementary tactics of flirtation, she was not to be taken by surprise.

With a smile she turned her eyes upon him and shook her head.

"Thank you; no, that is impossible. I have all my household duties to perform, and that"—pointing to the sun with her white slim hand—"reminds me that it is time I set about them."

He took up his hat instantly, turning to hide the frown that knitted his brow and spoiled his face, and went up to the painter to say "good-morning."

Mr. Etheridge started and stared at him; he had quite forgotten his presence.

"Good-morning, good-morning—going? I beg your pardon. Won't you stop and take some tea with us?"

"Mr. Adelstone would like some dinner first, uncle," said Stella.

Then she gave him her hand.

"Good-morning," she said, "and thank you very much for the flowers."

He held her hand as long as he dared, then passed out.

Stella, perhaps unconsciously, gave a sigh of relief.

"Very nice young fellow, my dear," said Mr. Etheridge, without taking his eyes from the canvas. "Very clever, too. I remember him quite a little boy, and always said he would make his way. They say that he has done so. I am not surprised. Jasper——"

"Jasper!" said Stella. "What a horrible name."

"Eh? Horrible? I don't know—I don't know."

"But I do," said Stella, laughing. "Well, what were you going to say?"

"That Jasper Adelstone is the sort of man to insist upon having anything he sets his heart upon."

"I am glad to hear it," said Stella, as she opened the door, "for his sake; and I hope, also for his sake, that he won't set his[38] mind upon the sun or the moon!" and with a laugh she ran away.

In the kitchen Mrs. Penford was awaiting her with unconcealed impatience. Upon the white scrubbed table stood the preparations for the making of pastry, an art which Stella, who had insisted upon making herself useful, had coaxed Mrs. Penfold into teaching her. At first that good woman had insisted that Stella should do nothing in the little household. She had announced with terrible gravity that such things weren't becoming to a young lady like Miss Stella, and that she had always done for Mr. Etheridge, and she always would; but before the second day had passed Stella had won the battle. As Mrs. Penfold said, there was no resisting the girl, who mingled willfulness with bewitching firmness and persuasion, and Mrs. Penfold had given in. "You'll cover yourself with flour, Miss Stella, and give your uncle the indigestion, miss, that you will," she remonstrated.

"But the flour will brush off, and uncle needn't eat pies and puddings for a little while; I'll eat them, I don't mind indigestion," Stella declared, and she made a delightfully piquant little apron, which completed Mrs. Penfold's conquest.

With a song upon her lips she burst into the kitchen and caught up the rolling pin.

"Am I not awfully late?" she exclaimed. "I was afraid you would have done it all before I came, but you wouldn't be so mean as to take an advantage, would you?"

Mrs. Penfold grunted.

"It's all nonsense, Miss Stella, there's no occasion for it."

Stella, with her hand in the flour, elevated the rolling-pin in heroic style.

"Mrs. Penfold!" she exclaimed, with the air of a princess, "the woman, be her station what it may, who cannot make a jam roley-poley or an apple tart is unworthy the name of an Englishwoman. Give me the jam; stop though, don't you think rhubarb would be very nice for a change?"

"I wish you'd go and play the organ, Miss Stella, and leave the rhubarb alone."

"Man cannot live on music," retorted Stella; "his soul craves for puddings. I wonder whether uncle's soul craves for jam or rhubarb. I think I'll go and ask him," and dropping the rolling-pin—which Mrs. Penfold succeeded in catching before it fell on the floor—she wiped her hand of a fifteenth part of the floor and ran into the studio.

"Uncle! I have come to lay before you the rival claims of rhubarb and strawberry jam. The one is sweet and luscious to the taste, but somewhat cloying; the other is fresh and young, but somewhat sour——"

"Good Heavens! What are you talking about?" exclaimed the bewildered painter, staring at her.

"Rhubarb or jam. Now, noble Roman, speak or die!" she exclaimed with upraised arm, her eyes dancing, her lips apart with rippling laughter.

[39]

Mr. Etheridge stared at her with all an artist's admiration in his eyes.

"Oh! the pudding," he said, then he suddenly stopped, and stared beyond her.

CHAPTER VI.

Stella heard a step on the threshold of the window, and turning to follow the direction of his eyes, saw the stalwart form of Lord Leycester standing in the window.

He was dressed in a suit of brown velveteen, with tight-fitting breeches and stockings, and carried a whip in his hand with which he barred the entrance against a couple of colleys, a huge mastiff, and a Skye terrier, the last barking with furious indignation at being kept outside.

Even at the moment of surprise, Stella was conscious of a sudden reluctant thrill of admiration for the graceful figure in the close-fitting velvet, and the handsome face with its dark eyes regarding her with a grave, respectful intenseness.

"Back dogs!" he said. "Go back, Vix!" then as they drew back, the big ones throwing themselves down on the path with patient obedience, he came into the room.

"I beg your pardon," he said, standing before Stella, his head bent. "I thought Mr. Etheridge was alone, or I should not have entered in this rough fashion."

As he spoke in the lane, so now it was no meaningless excuse, but with a tone of most reverential respect and proud humility, Stella, girl-like, noticed that he did not even venture to hold out his hand, and certainly Mr. Adelstone's self-satisfied smile and assured manner rose in her mind to contrast with this stately, high-bred humility.

"Do not apologize; it does not matter," she said, conscious that her face had grown crimson and that her eyes were downcast.

"Does it not? I am forgiven," and he held out his hand.

Stella had crossed her hands behind her as he entered with an instinctive desire to hide her bare arms and the flour, now she put out her hand a few inches and held it up with a smile.

"I can't," she said.

He looked at the white hand—at the white arm so beautifully molded that a sculptor would have sighed over it in despair at his inability to imitate it, and he still held out his hand.

"I do not mind the flour," he said, not as Mr. Adelstone would have said it, but simply, naturally.

Stella gave him one small taper finger and he took it and held it for a moment, his eyes smiling into hers; then he relinquished it, with not a word of commonplace compliment, but in silence, and turned to Mr. Etheridge.

"It is quite hopeless to ask you to forgive me for interrupting you I know, so I won't ask," he said, and there was in his voice, Stella noticed, a frank candor that was almost boyish but full of respect. At once it seemed to intimate that he had known and honored the old man since he, Leycester, was a boy.

[40]

"How are you, my lord?" said Mr. Etheridge, giving him his long, thin hand, but still keeping a hold, as it were, on his beloved easel. "Taking the dogs for a walk? Are they safe? Take care, Stella!"

For Stella was kneeling down in the midst of them, making friends with the huge mastiff, much to the jealous disgust of the others, who were literally crowding and pushing round her.

Lord Leycester looked round and was silent for a moment; his eyes fixed on the kneeling girl rather than on the dogs. Then he said, suddenly:

"They are quite safe," and then he added, for