A Terrible Secret, May Agnes Fleming [best book clubs .TXT] 📗

laugh peals out. She leans back, almost against him, looks up, and half whispers something very daring in French.

Edith turns away disgusted, gleams of disdainful scorn in, her shining hazel eyes. What a little painted giggling idiot the woman is--what fools most young men are! What business have married women flirting, and how much more sensible and agreeable Englishmen are than Americans.

"Miss Darrell looks sick of our frivolity," Mrs. Featherbrain gayly exclaims; "the wickedness of New York and the falsity of mankind, are new to her as yet. You saved Charley's life, didn't you, my love? Trixy told me all about it,--and remained with him all night in the snow, at the risk of your own life. Quite a romance, upon my word. Now why not end it, like all romances of the kind, in a love match and a marriage?"

Her eyes glitter maliciously and jealously, even while she laughs. If it is in the shallow heart of this prettily-painted, prettily-powdered woman, to care for any human being, she has cared for Charley Stuart.

"Mrs. Featherbrain!" Edith exclaims, in haughty surprise, half rising.

"My dear, don't be angry--you _might_ do worse, though how, it would be difficult to say. I suggested it, because it is the usual ending of such things in novels, and on the stage--that is all."

"And as if I _could_ fall in love with any one now," Mr. Stuart murmurs, plaintively. "Such a suggestion from you, Laura, is adding insult to injury."

"Here comes our baronet," Mrs. Featherbrain exclaims, "bearing a water ice in his own aristocratic hand. Rather handsome, isn't he?--only I detest very fair men. What a pity, for the peace of mind of our New York girls, he should be engaged in England."

"Ah! but he isn't engaged--I happen to know," said Charley; "so you see what comes of marrying in haste, Mrs. Featherbrain. If you had only waited another year now, instead of throwing me over for old Featherbrain, it might have been for a baronet--for of course there isn't a girl in New York could stand the ghost of a chance beside _you_."

"A most delicate compliment," Edith says, her scornful lip curling; "one hardly knows which to admire most--the refined tact of Mr. Stuart's flatteries, or the matronly dignity with which Mrs. Featherbrain repels them!"

She turns her white shoulder deliberately upon them both, and welcomes Sir Victor with her brightest smile.

"And for a rustic lassie, fresh from the fields and the daisies, it isn't so bad," is Mrs. Featherbrain's cool criticism.

"And I hope, despite Sir Victor's aristocratic attentions, Miss Darrell, you'll not forget you're engaged to me for the redowa," Charley finds a chance to murmur, _sotto voce_, in her ear, as he and his flirtee move on.

"You see the poor child's jealous, Charley," is the Featherbrain's last remark--"a victim to the green-eyed monster in his most virulent form. You really should be careful, my dear boy, how you use the charms a beneficent Providence has showered upon you. As you are strong, be merciful, and all that sort of thing."

The hours go on. Edith eats her water ice, and talks very animatedly to her baronet. Balls (he has had a surfeit of them, poor fellow!) mostly bore him--to-night he is really interested. The Americans are an interesting people, he thinks that must be why. Then the redowa begins, and Charley returns and carries her off. With him she is coldly silent, her eyes are averted, her words are few. He smiles to himself, and asks her this pleasant question:

"If she doesn't think Laura Featherbrain the prettiest and best-dressed lady in the room?"

"I think Mrs. Featherbrain is well-named," Miss Darrell answers, her dark eyes flashing. "I understand Mr. Featherbrain is lying sick at home. You introduced me to her--while I live in this house, Mr. Stuart, you will be kind enough to introduce me to no more--Mrs. Featherbrains!"

She brings out the obnoxious name with stinging scorn, and a look toward the lady bearing it sharper than daggers. There is a curious smile in Charley's eyes--his lips are grave.

"Are you angry, Edith? Do you know--of course you do, though--that it becomes you to be angry? My charming cousin, I never knew until to-night how really handsome you were."

She disengages herself with sudden abruptness from his clasp.

"I am tired of dancing," she says. "I detest redowas. And be kind enough to keep your odious point-blank compliments for the 'prettiest and best-dressed lady in the room.' _I_ don't appreciate them!"

Is it jealousy? Charley wonders, complacently. He sits down beside her, and tries to coax her into good humor, but she is not to be coaxed. In ten minutes another partner comes up and claims her, and she goes. The pretty, dark girl in white, is greatly admired, and has no lack of partners. For Mr. Stuart he dances no more--he leans against a piller, pulls his mustache; and looks placid and handsome. He isn't devoted to dancing, as a rule he objects to it on principle, as so much physical exertion for very little result; he has only fatigued himself to-night as a matter of abstract duty. He stands and watches Edith dance--this country girl has the lithe, willowy grace of a Bayadere, and she is laughing now, and looking very bright and animated. It dawns upon him, that she is by all odds the prettiest girl in the house, and that slowly but surely, for the hundred-and-fiftieth time in his life, he is falling in love.

"But I might have known it," Mr. Stuart thinks, gravely; "brown beauties always _did_ play the dickens with me. I thought that at five-and-twenty I had outgrown all that sort of youthful rubbish, and here I am on the brink of the pit again. Falling in love in the present, involves matrimony in the future, and matrimony has been the horror of my life since I was four years old. And then the governor wouldn't hear of it. I'm to be handed over to the first 'daughter of a hundred earls' across in England, who is willing to exchange a tarnished British coronet for a Yankee million or two of dollars."

It is Trixy who is dancing with the baronet now--Trixy who descends to supper on the baronet's arm. She dances with him once again after supper; then he returns to Edith.

So the hours go on, and the April morning is growing gray. Once, Edith finds herself seated beside genial Lady Helena, who talks to her in a motherly way, that takes all her heart captive at once. Sir Victor leans over his aunt's chair, listening with a smile, and not saying much himself. His aunt's eyes follow him everywhere, her voice takes a deeper tenderness when she speaks to him. It is easy to see she loves him with almost more than a mother's love.

A little longer and it is all over. Carriage after carriage rolls away--Sir Victor and Lady Helena shake hands with this pretty, well-bred Miss Darrell, and go too. She sees Charley linger to the last moment, by fascinating Mrs. Featherbrain, whispering the usual inanity, in her pretty pink ear. He leads her to her carriage, when it stops the way, and he and the millionnaire's wife vanish in the outer darkness.

"Now half to the setting moon are gone, And half to the rising day; Low on the sand, and loud on the stone, The last wheel echoes away."

Edith hums as she toils up to her pretty room. Trixy's grand field night is over--Edith's first ball has come to an end, and the first night of her new life.


CHAPTER V.

OLD COPIES OF THE "COURIER."

"Two waltzes," said Trix, counting on her fingers; "that's two; one cracovienne, that's three; les lanciers, that's four; one galop, that's five; and one polka quadrille, that's six. Six dances, round and square, with Sir Victor Catheron. Edith," cried Miss Stuart, triumphantly, "_do_ you hear that?"

"Yes, Trixy, I hear," said Edith, dreamily.

"You don't look as if you did, or if you do hear, you don't heed. Six dances--two more I am certain, than he danced with any other girl in the house. That looks promising, now doesn't it? Edith, the long and short of the matter is this: I shall break my heart and die if he doesn't make me Lady Catheron."

A faint, half-absent smile--no other reply from Miss Darrell. In the handsome reception-room of the Stuart mansion, the two girls sat. It was half-past three in the afternoon, of the day succeeding the ball. In the luxuriant depths of a puffy arm-chair, reclined Edith Darrell, as much at home, as though puffy chairs and luxuriant reclining, had ever been her normal state. The crimson satin cushions, contrasted brilliantly with her dark eyes, hair and complexion. Her black silk dress was new, and fitted well, and she had lit it up with a knot of scarlet tangled in some white lace at the throat. Altogether she made a very effective picture.

In another puffy rocking-chair near, sat Trixy, her chestnut hair _crepe_ to her eyebrows and falling in a crinkling shower down to her waist. Her voluminous draperies balloon over the carpet for the space of a couple of yards on either side, and she looked from top to toe the "New Yorkiest of New York girls." They made a very nice contrast if you had an eye for effect--blonde and brunette, dash and dignity, style and classic simplicity, gorgeous furniture, and outside the gray, fast-drifting April afternoon, the raw, easterly April wind.

"Of course," pursued Miss Stuart, going on with the web of rose-colored knitting in her lap, "being the daughter of the house, and considering the occasion, and everything, I suppose a few more dances than usual were expected of him. Still, I _don't_ believe he would have asked me six times if--Edith! how often did he dance with you?"

"How often did--I beg your pardon, Beatrix; I didn't catch what you said."

"I see you didn't. You're half-asleep, arn't you? A penny for your thoughts, Dithy."

"They're not worth a farthing," Edith answered, contemptuously. "I chanced just then to be thinking of Mrs. Featherbrain. What was it you asked--something about Sir Victor?"

"I asked how often Sir Victor danced with you last night."

"I really forget. Four times, I think--yes, four times. Why?"

"He danced six with me, and I'm sure he didn't dance more than half as often with any one else. Mamma thinks he means something, and he took me to supper, and told me about England. We had quite a long conversation; in fact, Edith, I fairly grow crazy with delight at the thought of one day being 'My lady.'"

"Why think of it, then, since it sets you crazy?" Edith suggested, with cool indifference. "I daresay you've heard the proverb, Trix, about counting your chickens before they're hatched. However, in this case I don't really see why you should despair. You're his equal in every way, and Sir Victor is his own master, and can do as he likes."

"Ah, I don't know!" Trix answered with a despondent sigh, "he's a baronet, and these English people go so much for birth and blood. Now you know we've neither. It's all very well for pa to name Charley after a prince, and spell Stuart, with a _u_ instead of an _ew_, like everybody else, and say he's descended from the royal family of Scotland--there's something more wanted than _that_. He's sent to London, or somewhere, for the family coat-of-arms. You