Only a Girl's Love

Even as he stood silently regarding her, a bitter suspicion smote through his heart that the joyousness which shone from the dark eyes had been set there by Lord Leycester. He bit his lip and his face went pale, then with a start he came close to her.

"Give me which you please," he said. "Here is a knife."

Stella took the knife heedlessly and carelessly. There was no significance in the deed; she did not know that he would attach any importance to the fact that she should cut the rose and give it to him with her own hand; if she had so understood it she would have dropped the knife as if it had been an adder.

In simple truth she was not thinking of him – scarcely saw him; she was thinking of that lover, the god of her heart, and seeing him as he swam through the river foam. For she was scarcely conscious of Jasper Adelstone's presence, and in the acuteness of his passion he almost suspected it.

"White or red?" she said, knife in hand.

He glanced at her.

"Red," he said, and his lips felt hot and dry.

Stella cut a red rose – a dark red rose, and with a little womanly gesture put it to her face; it was a little girlish trick, all unthinking, unconsciously done, but it sent the blood to the heart of the man watching her in a sudden, passionate rush.

"There," she said; "it is a beauty. They speak of the roses of Florence, but give me an English rose, Florentine roses are fuller than these, but not so beautiful – oh, not so beautiful! There," and she held it out to him, without looking at him. If she had done so, she would have surely read something in the white constrained face, and small, glittering eyes that would have warned her.

He took it without a word. In simple truth he was trying to restrain himself. He felt that the time was not ripe for action – that a word of the devouring passion which consumed him would be dangerous, and he whispered to himself, "Not yet! not yet!" But her loveliness, that touch of the rose to his face, overmastered his cool, calculating spirit.

"Thank you," he said at last; "thank you very much. I shall value it dearly. I shall put it on my desk in my dark, grim room, and think of you."

Then Stella looked up and started slightly.

"Oh!" she said, hurriedly. "You would like some more perhaps? Pray take what you would like," and she held out the knife, and looked upon him with a sudden coldness in the eyes that should have warned him.

"No, I want no more," he said. "All the roses that ever bloomed would not add to my pleasure. It is this rose from your hand that I value."

Stella made a slight movement toward the window, but he put out his hand.

"Stay one moment – only a moment," he said, and in his eagerness he put out his hand and touched her arm, the arm sacred to Leycester.

Stella shrank back, and a little shudder swept through her.

"What – what is it!" she asked, in a low voice that she tried to make calm and cold and repressive.

He stood, shutting and opening the knife with a nervous restlessness, as unlike his calm impassability as the streaming torrent that forces its way through the mountain gorge is like the lake at their feet; his eyes fixed on her face with anxious eagerness.

"I want to speak to you," he said. "Only a few words – a very few words. Will you listen to me? I hope you will listen to me."

Stella stood, her face turned away from him, her heart beating, but coldly and with fear and repugnance, not as it had beat when Leycester's low tones first fell upon her ear.

He moistened his lips again, and his hand closed over the shut knife with a tight clasp, as if he were striving to regain self-command.

"I know it is unwise. I feel that – that you would rather not listen to me, and that I shall do very little good by speaking, but I cannot. There are times, Stella – "

Stella moved slightly at the familiar name.

"There are times when a man loses self-control, when he flings prudence to the winds, or rather, lets it slip from him. This is one of those moments, Stella – Miss Etheridge; I feel that I must speak, let it cost me what it may."

Still silent, she stood as if turned to stone. He put his hand to his brow – his white, thin hand, with its carefully trimmed nails – and wiped away the perspiration that stood in big beads.

"Miss Etheridge, I think you can guess what it is I want to say, and I hope that you will not think any the less of me because of my inability to say it as it should be said, as I would have it said. Stella, if you look back, if you will recall the times since first we met, you cannot fail to know my meaning."

She turned her face toward him for a moment, and shook her head.

"You mean that I have no right to think so. Do you think that you, a woman, have not seen what every woman sees so quickly when it is the case – that I have learned to love you!"

The word was out at last, and as it left him he trembled.

Stella did not start, but her face went paler than before, and she shrank slightly.

"Yes," he went on, "I have learned to love you. I think I loved you the first evening we met; I was not sure then, and – I will tell you the whole truth, I have sworn to myself that I would do it – I tried to fight against it. I am not a man easily given to love; no, I am a man of the world – one who has to make his way in the world, one who has an ambition; and I tried to put you from my thoughts – I tried hard, but I failed."

He paused, and eyed her watchfully. Her face was like a mask of stone.

"I grew to love you more day by day – I was not happy away from you. I carried your image up with me to London – it came between me and my work; but I was patient – I told myself that I should gain nothing by being too rash – that I must give you time to know me, and to – to love me."

He paused and moistened his lips, and looked at her. Why did she not speak – of what was she thinking?

At that moment, if he could but have known it, she was thinking of her true lover – of the young lord who had not waited and calculated, but who had poured the torrent of his passionate love at her feet – had taken her in his arms and made her love him. And as she thought, how small, how mean this other man seemed to her!

"I gave you mine – I meant to give you more," he continued; "I want to do something worthy of your love. I am – I am not a rich man, Stella – I have no title – as yet – "

Stella's eyes flashed for a moment, and her lips closed. It was an unlucky speech for him.

"No, not yet; but I shall have riches and title – I have set my mind on them, and there is nothing that I have set my mind on that I have not got, or will not get – nothing!" he repeated, with almost fierce intensity.

Still she did not speak. Like a bird charmed, fascinated by a snake, she stood, listening though every word was torture to her.

"I have set my mind on winning your love, Stella. I love you as few men love, with all my heart and soul. There is nothing I would not do to win you, there is nothing I would – pause at."

A faint shudder stole through her; and he saw it, and added, quickly:

"I would do anything to make you happy – move heaven and earth to see you always smiling as you smiled this morning. Stella, I love you! What have you to say to me?"

He stopped, white and seemingly exhausted, his thin lips tightly compressed, his whole frame quivering.

CHAPTER XXII

Stella, turned her eyes upon him, and something like pity took possession of her for a moment. It was a womanly feeling, and it softened her reply.

"I – am very sorry," she said, in a low voice.

"Sorry!" he repeated, hoarsely, quickly. "Do not say that!"

"Yes – I am very sorry," she repeated. "I – I – did not know – "

"Did not know that I loved you!" he retorted, almost sharply. "Were you blind? Every word, every look of mine would have told you, if you had cared to know – "

Her face flushed, and she raised her eyes to his with a flash of indignation.

"I did not know!" she breathed.

"Forgive me!" he pleaded hoarsely. "I – I am very unfortunate. I offend and anger you! I told you that I should not be able to say what I had to say with credit to myself. Pray forgive me. I meant that though I tried to hide my love, it must have betrayed itself. How could it be otherwise? Stella, have you no other word for me?"

"None," she said, looking away. "I am very sorry. I did not know. But it could not have been. Never."

He stood regarding her, his breath coming in long gasps.

"You mean you never can love me?" he asked.

Stella raised her eyes.

"Yes," she said.

His hand closed over the knife until the back of the blade pressed deeply into the quivering palm.

"Never is – is a long day," he said, hoarsely. "Do not say 'never.' I will be patient; see, I am patient, I am calm now, and will not offend you again! I will be patient and wait; I will wait for years, if you will but give me hope – if you will but try to love me a little!"

Stella's face paled, and her lips quivered.

"I cannot," she said, in a low voice. "You – you do not understand. One cannot teach oneself to love – cannot try. It is impossible. Besides – you do not know what you ask. You do not understand!"

"Do I not?" he said, and a bitter sneer curled the thin lips. "I do understand. I know – I have a suspicion of the reason why you answer me like this."

Stella's face burnt for a moment, then went pale, but her eyes met his steadily.

"There is something behind your refusal; no girl would speak as you do unless there was something behind. There is someone else. Am I not right?"

"You have no right to ask me!" said Stella, firmly.

"My love gives me the right to ask. But I need not put the question, and there is no necessity for you to answer. If you have been blind, I have not. I have seen and noted, and I tell you, I tell you plainly, that what you hope for cannot be. I say cannot – shall not be!" he added, between his closed teeth.

Stella's eyes flashed as she stood before him glorious in her loveliness.

"Have you finished?" she asked.

He was silent, regarding her watchfully.

"If you have finished, Mr. Adelstone, I will leave you."

"Stay," he said, and he stood in the path so that she could not pass him, "Stay one moment. I will not ask you to reconsider your reply. I will only ask you to forgive me." His voice grew hoarse, and his eyes drooped. "Yes, I will beg you to forgive me. Think of what I am suffering, and you will not refuse me that. Forgive me, Stella – Miss Etheridge! I have been wrong, mad, and brutal; but it has sprung from the depth of my love; I am not altogether to blame. Will you say that you will forgive me, and that – that we remain friends?"

Stella paused.

He watched her eagerly.

"If – if," he said quickly, before she could speak – "if you will let this pass as if it had not been – if you will forget all I have said – I will promise not to offend again. Do not let us part – do not send me away never to see you again. I am an old friend of your uncle's; I should not like to lose his friendship; I think I may say that he would miss mine. Let us be friends, Miss Etheridge."

Stella inclined her head.

"Thank you, thank you," he said, meekly, tremulously; "I shall be very grateful for your friendship, Miss Stella. I will keep the rose to remind me of your forbearance," and he was patting the rose in his coat, when Stella with a start stretched out her hand.

"No! give it me back, please," she said.

He stood eying her.

"Let me keep it," he said; "it is a little thing."

"No!" she said, firmly, and her face burnt. "You must not keep it. I – I did not think when I gave it to you! Give it me back, please," and she held out her hand.

He still hesitated, and Stella, overstrained, made a step toward him.

"Give it me," she said. "I must – I will have it!"

An angry flush came on his face, and he held the rose from her.

"It is mine," he said. "You gave it to me; I cannot give it back."

The words had scarcely left his lips, when the rose was dashed from his hand, and Frank stood white and panting between them.

"How dare you!" he gasped, passionately, his hands clinched, his eyes gleaming fiercely upon the white face. "How dare you!" and with a savage exclamation the boy dashed his foot on the flower, and ground it under his heel.

The action, so full of scornful defiance, spurred Jasper back to consciousness. With a smothered oath he grasped the boy's shoulders.

Frank turned upon him with the savage ferocity of a wild animal, with upraised arm. Then, suddenly, like a lightning flash, Jasper's face changed and a convulsive smile forced itself upon his lips.

He caught the arm and held it, and smiled down at him.

"My dear Frank," he murmured. "What is the matter?"

So sudden was the change, so unexpected, that Stella, who had caught the boy's other arm, stood transfixed.

Frank gasped.

"What did you mean by keeping the rose?" he burst out.

Jasper laughed softly.

"Oh, I see!" he said, nodding with amused playfulness. "I see. You were watching – from the window, perhaps, eh?" and he shook his arm playfully. "And like a great many other spectators, took jest for earnest! Impetuous boy!"

Frank looked at the pale, smiling face, and at Stella's downcast one.

"Is it true?" he asked Stella, bluntly.

"Oh, come!" said Jasper, reproachfully. "Isn't that rather rude? But I must forgive you, and I do it easily, my dear Frank, when I remember that your sudden onslaught was prompted by a desire to champion Miss Stella! Now come, you owe me a rose, go and cut me one, and we will be friends – great friends, will we not?"

Frank slid from his grasp, but stood eying him suspiciously.

"You will not?" said Jasper. "Still uncertain lest it should have been sober earnest? Then I will cut one for myself. May I?" and he smiled at Stella.

Stella did not speak, but she inclined her head.

Jasper went to one of the standards and cut a red rose deliberately and carefully, and placed it in his coat, then he cut another, and with a smile held it to Stella.

"Will that do instead of the one the stupid boy has spoiled?" he said, laughing.

Stella would have liked to refuse it, but Frank's eyes were upon her.

Slowly she held out her hand and took the rose.

A smile of triumph glittered for a moment in Jasper's eyes, then he put his hand on Frank's shoulder.

"My dear Frank," he said, in a soft voice, "you must be careful; you must repress that impulsive temper of yours, must he not?" and he turned to Stella and held out his hand. "Good-bye! It is so dangerous, you know," he murmured, holding Stella's hand, but keeping his smiling eyes fixed on the boy's face. "Why, some of these days you will be doing someone an injury and find yourself in prison, doing as they call it, six months' hard labor, like a common thief – or forger!" and he laughed, as if it were the best joke in the world.

Not so Frank. As the bantering words left the thin, smiling lips, Frank recoiled suddenly, and his face went white.

Jasper looked at him.

"And now you are sorry?" he said. "Tell me it was only your fun! Why, my dear boy, you wear your heart on your sleeve! Well, if you would really like to beg my pardon, you may do it."

The boy turned his white face toward him.

"I – beg – your – pardon," he said, as if every word cost him an agony, and then, with a sudden twitch of the face, he turned and went slowly with bent head toward the house.

Jasper looked after him with a steely, cruel glitter in his eyes, and he laughed softly.

"Dear boy!" he murmured; "I have taken so fond a liking for him, and this only deepens it! He did it for your sake. You did not think I meant to keep the rose! No; I should have given it to you! But I may keep this! I will! to remind me of your promise that we may still be friends!"

And he let her hand go, and walked away.

CHAPTER XXIII

Lord Leycester was on fire as he strode up the hill to the Hall, and that notwithstanding he was wet to the skin. He was on fire with love. He swore to himself, as he climbed up the slope, that there was no one like his Stella, no one so beautiful, so lovable and sweet as the dark-eyed girl who had stolen his heart from him that moonlight night in the lane.

And he also vowed that he would wait no longer for the inestimable treasure, the exquisite happiness that lay within his grasp.

His great wealth, his time honored title seemed as nothing to him compared with the thought of possessing the first real love of his life.

He smiled rather seriously as he pictured his father's anger, his mother's dismay and despair, and Lil's, dear Lilian's, grief; but it was a smile, though a serious one.

"They will get over it when it has once been done. After all, barring that she has no title and no money – neither of which are wanted, by the way – she is as delightful a daughter-in-law as any mother or father could wish for. Yes; I'll do it!"

But how? that was the question.

"There is no Gretna Green nowadays," he pondered, regretfully. "I wish there were! A ride to the border, with my darling by my side, nestling close to me all the way with mingled love and alarm, would be worth taking. A man can't very well put up the banns in any out-of-the-way place, because there are few out-of-the-way places where they haven't heard of us Wyndwards. By Jove!" he muttered, with a little start – "there is a special license. I was almost forgetting that! That comes of not being used to being married. A special license!" and pondering deeply he reached the house.

The party at the hall was very small indeed now, but Lady Lenore and Lord Charles still remained. Lenore had once or twice declared that she must go, but Lady Wyndward had entreated her to stay.

"Do not go, Lenore," she had said, with gentle significance. "You know – you must know that we count upon you."

She did not say for what purpose she counted upon her, but Lenore had understood, and had smiled with that faint, sweet smile which constituted one of her charms.

Lord Charles stayed because Leycester was still there.

"Of course I ought to go, Lady Wyndward," he said; "you must be heartily tired of me, but who is to play billiards with Leycester if I go, or who is to keep him in order, don't you see?" and so he had stayed, with one or two others who were only too glad to remain at the Hall out of the London dust and turmoil.

By all it was quite understood that Lord Leycester should be considered as quite a free agent, free to come and go as he chose, and never to be counted on; they were as surprised as they were gratified if he joined them in a drive or a walk, and were never astonished when he disappeared without furnishing any clew to his intentions.

Lady Wyndward bore it all very patiently; she knew that what Lady Longford had said was quite true, that it was useless to attempt to drive him; but she did say a word to the old countess.

"There is something amiss!" she said, with a sigh, and the old countess had smiled and shown her teeth.

"Of course there is, my dear Ethel," she retorted; "there always is where he is concerned. He is about some mischief, I am as convinced as you are. But it does not matter, it will come all right in time."

"But will it?" asked Lady Wyndward with a sigh.

"Yes, I think so," said the old countess, "and Lenore agrees with me, or she would not stay."

"It is very good of her to stay," said Lady Wyndward, with a sigh.

"Very!" assented the old lady, with a smile. "It is encouraging. I am sure she would not stay if she did not see excuse. Yes, Ethel it will all come right; he will marry Lenore, or rather, she will marry him, and they will settle down, and – I don't know whether you have asked me to stand god-mother to the first child."

Lady Wyndward tried to feel encouraged and confident, but she felt uneasy. She was surprised that Lenore still remained. She knew nothing of that meeting between the proud beauty and Jasper Adelstone.

And Lenore! A great change had come over her. She herself could scarcely understand it.

At night – as she sat before her glass while her maid brushed out the long tresses that fell over the white shoulders like a stream of liquid gold – she asked herself what it meant? Was it really true that she was in love with Lord Leycester? She had not been in love with him when she first came to the Hall – she would have smiled away the suggestion if anyone had made it; but now – how was it with her now? And as she asked herself the question, a crimson flush would stain the beautiful face, and the violet eyes would gleam with mingled shame and self-scorn, so that the maid would eye her wonderingly under respectfully lowered lids.

Yes, she was forced to admit that she did love him – love him with a passion which was a torture rather than a joy. She had not known the full extent of that passion until the hour when she had stood concealed between the trees at the river, and heard Leycester's voice murmuring words of love to another.

And that other! An unknown, miserable, painter's niece! Often, at night, when the great Hall was hushed and still, she lay tossing to and fro with miserable longing and intolerable shame, as she recalled that hour when she had been discovered by Jasper Adelstone and forced to become his confederate.

She, the great beauty – before whom princes had bent in homage – to be love-smitten by a man whose heart was given to another – she to be the confederate and accomplice of a scheming, under-bred lawyer.

It was intolerable, unbearable, but it was true – it was true; and in the very keenest paroxysm of her shame she would confess that she would do all that she had done, would conspire with even a baser one than Jasper Adelstone to gain her end.

"She!" she would murmur in the still watches of the night – "she to marry the man to whom I have given my love! It is impossible – it shall not be! Though I have to move heaven and earth, it shall not be."

And then, after a sleepless night, she would come down to breakfast – fair, and sweet, and smiling – a little pale, perhaps, but looking all the lovelier for such paleness, without the shadow of a care in the deep violet eyes.

Toward Leycester her bearing was simply perfection. She did not wish to alarm him; she knew that a hint of what she felt would put him on his guard, and she held herself in severe restraint.

Her manner to him was simply what it was to anyone else – exquisitely refined and charming. If anything, she adopted a lighter tone, and sought to and succeeded in calling forth his rare laughter.

She deceived him completely.

"Lenore in love with me!" he said to himself more than once; "the idea is ridiculous! What could have made the mother imagine such a thing?"

And so they met freely and frankly, and he talked and laughed with her at his ease, little dreaming that she was watching him as a cat watches a mouse, and that not a thing he said or did escaped her.

She knew by instinct where he spent the times in which he was missing from the Hall, and pictured to herself the meetings between him and the girl who had robbed her of his love. And as the jealousy increased, so did the love which created it. Day by day she realized still more fully that he had won her heart – that it was gone to him forever – that her whole future happiness depended upon him.

The very tone of his voice, so deep and musical – his rare laugh – the smile that made his face so gay and bright – yes, even the bursts of the passionate temper which lit up the dark eyes with sudden fire, were precious to her.

"Yes, I love him," she murmured to herself – "it is all summed up in that. I love him."

And Leycester, still smiling to himself over his mother's "amusing mistake," was all unsuspecting. All his thoughts were of Stella.

Now as he came toward the terrace, she stood with Lady Longford and Lord Charles looking down at him.

She watched him, her cheek resting on her white hand, her face hidden from the rest by the sunshade, whose lining of hearty blue harmonized with the golden hair, and "her heart hungered," as Victor Hugo says.

"Here's Leycester," said Lord Charles.

Lady Longford looked over the balustrade.

"What has he been doing? Rowing – fishing?"