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

went across to the tea-table.

Lady Wyndward was making tea, but looked up and pushed a chair close beside her.

"What is it?" she asked, with a smile.

"Who is she?" asked the countess, taking a cup and stirring the tea round and round, very much as Betty the washerwoman does—very much indeed.

Lady Wyndward did not ask "Who?" but replied in her serene, placid voice directly:

"I don't know. Of course, I know that she is Mr. Etheridge's niece, but I don't know anything about her, except that she has[78] just come here from Italy. She said that she was not happy there."

"She is very beautiful," murmured the countess.

"She is—very," assented Lady Wyndward.

"And something more than distinguished. I never saw a more graceful girl. She is only a child, of course."

"Quite a child," assented Lady Wyndward again.

There was a pause, then the old countess said, almost abruptly:

"Why is she here?"

Lady Wyndward filled a cup carefully before replying.

"She is a friend of Lilian's," she said; "at least she invited her."

"I thought she was rather a friend of Leycester's," said the old lady, dryly.

Lady Wyndward looked at her, and a faint, a very faint color came into her aristocratic face.

"You mean that he has noticed her?" she said.

"Very much! I sat next to him at dinner. Was it wise to put him next to her? A child's head is quickly turned."

"I did not arrange it so," replied Lady Wyndward. "I put his tablet next to Lenore's, as usual; but it got moved. I don't know who could have done it."

"I do," said the old lady. "It was Leycester himself. I am sure of it by the way he looked."

Lady Wyndward's white brow contracted for a moment.

"It is like him. He will do or dare anything for an hour's amusement. I ought to be angry with him!"

"Be as angry as you like, but don't let him know that you are," said the old lady, shrewdly.

Lady Wyndward understood.

"How beautiful Lenore looks to-night," she said, looking across the room where Lady Lenore stood fanning herself, her head thrown back, her eyes fixed on a picture.

"Yes," assented the old countess. "If I were a man I should not rest until I had won her; if I were a man—but then men are so different to what we imagine them. They turn aside from a garden lily to pluck a wayside flower——"

"But they come back to the lily," said Lady Wyndward, with a smile.

"Yes," muttered the old countess, suavely; "after they have grown tired of the wild flower and thrown it aside."

As she spoke the curtains were withdrawn and the gentlemen came sauntering in.

No one rests long over the wine, nowadays; the earl scarcely drank a glass after the ladies left; he would fill his glass—fill two perhaps, but rarely did more than sip them. Lord Leycester would take a bumper of claret—the cellars were celebrated for the Chateau Margaux. To-night it seemed as if he had taken an additional one, for there was a deeper color on his face, and a brighter light in his eyes than usual; the light which used to shine there in his school-days, when there was some piece of wildness on, more mad than usual. Lord Guildford came[79] in leaning lightly upon his arm, and he was talking to him in a low voice.

"One of the most beautiful faces I have ever seen, Ley: not your regular cut-out-to-pattern kind of face, but fresh and—and—natural. The sort of face Venus might have had when she rose from the sea that fine morning——"

"Hush!" said Lord Leycester, with a slight start, and he thought of the picture in his room, the picture of the Venus with the pale, fair face, across which he had drawn the defacing brush that night he had come home from his meeting with Stella. "Hush! they will hear you! Yes, she is beautiful."

"Yes, beautiful! Take care, take care, Ley!" muttered Lord Charles.

Leycester put his hand from him with a smile.

"You talk in parables to-night, Charlie, and don't provide the key. Go and get some tea."

He went himself toward the table and got a cup, but his eyes wandered round the room, and the old countess and Lady Wyndward noticed the searching glance.

"Leycester," said his mother, "will you ask Lenore to sing for us?"

He put down his cup and went down the room to where she was sitting beside the earl.

"My mother has sent me as one of her ambassadors to the queen of music," he said. "Will your majesty deign to sing for us?"

She looked up at him with a smile, then gave her cup to one of the maids, and put her hand upon his arm.

"Do you know that this is the first time you have spoken to me since—since—I cannot remember?"

"One does not dare intrude upon royalty too frequently; it would be presumptuous," he said.

"In what am I royal?" she asked.

"In your beauty!" he said, and he was the only man in the room who would have dared so pointed a reply.

"Thanks," she said, with a calm smile; "you are very frank to-night."

"Am I? And why not? We do not hesitate to call the summer sky blue or the ocean vast. There are some things so palpable and generally acknowledged that to be reserved about them would be absurd."

"That will do," she said. "Since when have you learnt such eloquent phrases? What shall I sing, or shall I sing at all?"

"To please me you have but to sing to please yourself!" he said.

"Find me something then," she said, and sat down with her hands folded, looking a very queen indeed.

He knelt down beside the canterbury, and, as at a signal, there was a general gathering round the piano, but she still sat calm and unconscious, very queen-like indeed.

Leycester found a song, and set it up for her, opened the piano, took her bouquet from her lap, and waited for her gloves,[80] the rest looking on as if interference were quite out of the question.

Slowly she removed her gloves and gave them to him, touched the piano with her jeweled fingers, and began to sing.

At this moment Stella, who had been wandering round the fernery, came back to the entrance, and stood listening and absorbed.

She had never heard so beautiful a voice, not even in Italy. But presently, even while a thrill of admiration was running through her, she became conscious that there was something wanting. Her musical sense was unsatisfied. The notes were clear, bell-like, and as harmonious as a thrush's, the modulation perfect; but there was something wanting. Was it heart? From where she stood she could see the lovely face, with its dark violet eyes upturned, its eloquent mouth curved to allow the music vent, and the loveliness held her inthralled, though the voice did not move her.

The song came to an end, and the singer sat with a calm smile receiving the murmurs of gratitude and appreciation, but she declined to sing again, and Stella saw Lord Leycester hand her her gloves and bouquet and stand ready to conduct her whither she would.

"He stands like her slave, to obey her slightest wish," she thought. "Ah! how happy she must be," and with a something that was almost a sigh, she turned back into the dim calm of the fernery; she felt strangely alone and solitary at that moment.

Suddenly there was a step behind her, and looking up she saw Lord Leycester.

"I have found you!" he said, and there was a ring of satisfaction and pleasure in his voice that went straight to her heart. "Where have you been hiding?"

She looked up at the handsome face full of life and strong manhood, and her eyes fell.

"I have not been hiding," she said. "I have been here."

"You are right," he said, seating himself beside her; "this is the best place; it is cool and quiet here; it is more like our woods, is it not, with the ferns and the primroses?" and at the "our" he smiled into her eyes.

"It is very lovely here," she said. "It's all lovely. How beautifully she sings!" she added, rather irrelevantly.

"Sings?" he said. "Oh, Lenore! Yes, she sings well, perfectly. And that reminds me. I have been sent to ask you to make music for us."

Stella shrank back with a glance of alarm.

"I? Oh, no, no! I could not."

He smiled at her.

"But your uncle——"

"He should not!" said Stella, with a touch of crimson. "I could not sing. I am afraid."

"Afraid! You?" he said. "Of what?"

"Of—of—everything," she said, with a little laugh. "I could not sing before all these people. I have never done so. Besides, to sing after Lady Lenore would be like dancing a hornpipe."

[81]

"I should be content if you would dance a hornpipe," he said. "I should think it good and wise."

"Are you laughing at me?" she said, looking up at the dark eyes. "Why?"

"Laughing at you?" he repeated. "I! I could not. It is you who laugh at me; I think you are laughing at me most times. You will not sing, then?"

"I cannot," she said.

"Then you shall not," he responded; "you shall not do anything you do not like. But some time you will sing for us, will you not? Your uncle has been telling us about your voice, and how you came by it," and his own voice grew wonderfully gentle.

"My father, he meant," said Stella, simply. "Yes; he could sing. He was a great musician, and when I think of that, I am inclined to resolve never to open my lips again."

There was a moment's pause. Stella sat pulling a piece of maidenhair apart, her eyes downcast; his eyes were reading her beautiful face, and noting the graceful turns of the white neck. Someone was playing the grand piano, and the music floated in and about the tall palms. It was an intoxicating moment for him! The air was balmy with perfumes from the exotics, the warm blood was running freely in his veins, the beauty of the girl beside him seemed to entrance him. Instinctively his hand, being idly near her, went toward hers, and would have touched it, but suddenly one of the maids entered, and with a slow, respectful air approached them. She held a silver salver, on which lay a small note, folded in a lover's knot.

Lord Leycester looked up; the interruption came just in time.

"For me?" he said.

"For Miss Etheridge, my lord," replied the maid, with a courtesy.

"For me?" echoed Stella, taking the note.

"I can guess who it is from," he said, with a smile. "Lilian is growing impatient—if she is ever that."

Stella unfolded the note. This was it: "Will you come to me now, if you care to?"

"Oh, yes, I will go at once," she said, standing up.

He rose with a sigh.

"It is the first time I have envied Lilian anything," he said, in a low voice.

"This way, if you please, miss," said the maid.

"A moment—a moment only," said Lord Leycester, and as Stella stopped, he gathered a few sprays of maidenhair from the margin of the fountain.

"It is a peace-offering. Will you take it to her? I promised that I would ask you to go directly after dinner," he said, softly.

"Yes," said Stella, and as she took it there rose once more in her mind the word Jasper Adelstone had spoken—"infamous." This man who sent his sister such a message in such a voice!

"Thanks," he said. "But it was scarcely necessary. I have sent her something more beautiful, more precious."

[82]

Stella did not understand far a moment, then as her eyes met his, she knew that he meant herself, and the color flooded her face.

"You should not say that," she said, gravely, and before he could answer she moved away, and followed the maid.

The maid led her through the hall and up the broad stairs, across the corridor and knocked at Lady Lilian's door.

Stella entered, and a grave peace seemed to fall upon her.

Lady Lilian was lying on the couch by the window, and raised herself to hold out her hand.

"How good of you to come!" she said, eagerly, and as the voice broke on Stella's ear, she knew what Lady Lenore's voice wanted. "You think me very selfish to bring you away from them all do you not?" she added, still holding Stella's hand in her white, cool one.

"No," said Stella, "I am very glad to come. I would have come before, but I did not know whether I might."

"I have been waiting, and did not like to send for you," said Lady Lilian, "and have you had a pleasant evening?"

Stella sank into a low seat beside the couch, and looked up into the lovely face with a smile.

"I have had a wonderful evening!" she said.

Lady Lilian looked at her inquiringly.

"Wonderful," said Stella, frankly. "You see I