The Earl of Bude had meant to lay his heart, coronet, and other
possessions, real and personal, before the tiny feet of the fair American
at Goodwood. But when he learned from Merton the involvements of this
heiress and paragon, that her hand depended on the choice of the people,
that the choice of the people was to settle on the adventurer who brought
to New York the rarest of nature's varieties, the earl honourably held
his peace. Yet he and the object of his love were constantly meeting, on
the yachts and in the country houses of their friends, the aristocracy,
and, finally, at shooting lodges in the Highlands. Their position, as
the Latin Delectus says concerning the passion of love in general, was 'a
strange thing, and full of anxious fears.' Bude could not declare
himself, and Miss McCabe, not knowing that he knew her situation, was
constantly wondering why he did not speak. Between fear of letting her
secret show itself in a glance or a blush and hope of listening to the
words which she desired to hear, even though she could not answer them as
her heart prompted, she was unhappy. Bude could not resist the
temptation to be with her--indeed he argued to himself that, as her
suitor and an adventurer about to risk himself in her cause, he had a
right to be near her. Meanwhile Merton was the confidant of both of the
perplexed lovers; at least Miss McCabe (who, of course, told him nothing
about Bude) kept him apprised as to the conduct of her trustees.
They had acted with honourable caution and circumspection. Their
advertisements guardedly appealed to men of daring and of scientific
distinction under the age of thirty-five. A professorship might have
been in view for all that the world could see, if the world read the
advertisements. Perhaps it was something connected with the manufacture
of original explosives, for daring is not usually required in the
learned. The testimonials and printed works of applicants were jealously
scrutinised. At personal interviews with competitors similar caution was
observed. During three weeks in August the papers announced that Lord
Bude was visiting the States; arrangements about a yachting match in the
future were his pretence. He returned, he came to Scotland, and it was
in a woodland path beside the Lochy that his resolution failed, and that
he spoke to Miss McCabe. They were walking home together from the river
in the melancholy and beautiful close of a Highland day in September.
Behind them the gillies, at a respectful distance, were carrying the rods
and the fish. The wet woods were fragrant, the voice of the stream was
deepening, strange lights came and went on moor and hills and the distant
loch. It was then that Bude opened his heart. He first candidly
explained that his heart, he had supposed, was dead--buried on a distant
and a deadly shore.
'I reckon there's a lost Lenore most times,' Miss McCabe had replied to
this confession.
But, though never to be forgotten, the memory of the lost one, Bude
averred, was now merged in the light of a living love; his heart was no
longer tenanted only by a shadow.
The heart of Miss McCabe stood still for a moment, her cheek paled, but
the gallant girl was true to herself, to her father's wish, to her native
land, to the flag. She understood her adorer.
'Guess _I_'m bespoke,' said Miss McCabe abruptly.
'You are another's! Oh, despair!' exclaimed the impassioned earl.
'Yes, I reckon I'm the Bride of Seven, like the girl in the poem.'
'The Bride of Seven?' said Bude.
'One out of _that_ crowd will call me his,' said Miss McCabe, handing to
her adorer the list, which she had received by mail a day or two earlier,
of the accepted competitors. He glanced over the names.