That night when the girl had gone to her state-room, and the two men
were alone on deck smoking their cigars in the soft spring moonlight,
Lancaster said, rather diffidently:
"Oh, I say, De Vere, weren't you going the pace rather strong this
evening?"
"Eh?" said the lieutenant.
"I say you oughtn't to try to flirt with little Leonora West. You were
saying no end of soft things to her this evening. It isn't right.
She's in my care, and I can't see her harmed without a word."
"Harmed? Why, what the deuce are you hinting at, Lancaster?" his friend
demanded, hotly.
"Nothing to make you fly into a temper, Harry," Lancaster answered,
gravely. "Nothing but what is done every day by idle, rich men--winning
an innocent, fresh young heart in a careless flirtation, and then
leaving it to break."
De Vere dropped his fine Havana into the waves and looked around.
"Look here, Lancaster," he said, "tell me one thing. Do you want Miss
West for yourself?"
"I don't understand you," haughtily, with a hot flush mounting to his
brow.
"I mean you are warning me off because you're in love with the little
thing yourself? Do you want to win her--to make her my lady?"
"What then?" inquired Lancaster, moodily.
"Why, then, I only want an equal chance with you, that's all--a fair
field and no favor."
They gazed at each other in silence a moment. Lancaster said then, with
something like surprise:
"Are you in earnest?"
"Never more so in my life."
"Have you remembered that your family will consider it a _mésalliance_?"
"I am independent of my family. I have ten thousand a year of my own,
and am the heir to a baronetcy."
"But you are rash, De Vere. You never saw Leonora West until to-day.
What do you know of her?"
"I know that she is the fairest, most fascinating creature I ever met,
and that she has carried my heart by storm. I know that if she is to be
won by mortal man, that man shall be Harry De Vere!" cried the young
soldier, enthusiastically.
There was silence again. The great ship rose and fell with the heaving
of the waves, and it seemed to Lancaster that its labored efforts were
like the throbbing of a heart in pain. What was the matter with him? He
shook off angrily the trance that held him.
"Since you mean so well, I wish you success," he said.
"Thanks, old fellow. I thought at first--" said De Vere, then paused.
"Thought--what?" impatiently.
"That you were--jealous, that you wanted her for yourself."
"Pshaw! My future is already cut and dried," bitterly.
"A promising one, too: twenty thousand a year, a wife already picked
out for you--high-born and beautiful, of course. Even Lady Lancaster
couldn't have the impertinence to select any other for Lord Lancaster."
"Oh, by the bye," Lancaster said, with sudden eagerness.
"Well?"
"Do me this favor: don't rehearse any of my family history to Miss
West--the barren title, the picked-out bride, and--the rest of it."
"Certainly not. But of course she will know once she gets to England."
"At least she need not know sooner," Lancaster replied.
"No," assented De Vere; and then he asked thoughtfully. "Is it true
that her aunt is the housekeeper at Lancaster Park?"
"That is what my aunt says in her letter."
"And yet she--my little beauty--does not look lowly born."
"No; her mother was an American, you know. They--the Americans--all
claim to be nobly born, I believe. They recognize no such caste
distinctions as we do. Miss West bears a patent of nobility in her
face," said Lancaster, kindly.
"Does she not, the little darling? What a sweet good nature beams in
her little face. And, after all, it is our own poet laureate who says:
"'Howe'er it be, it seems to me,
'Tis only noble to be good:
Kind hearts are more than coronets,
And simple faith than Norman blood.'"
"Yet I think you will find it hard to bring the rest of the De Veres to
subscribe to Tennyson's verse," Lancaster said, anxiously.
"They will e'en have to. I shall please myself, if I can--mark that,
lad. So you needn't scold any more, old fellow, for I am in dead
earnest to make Leonora Mrs. H. De Vere," laughed the young soldier.
"You are the arbiter of your own destiny. Enviable fellow!" grumbled
Lancaster.
"I never knew what a lucky fellow I was until now," agreed De Vere. "It
was fortunate for me that I had a bachelor uncle in trade, and he left
me his fortune when he died. I can snap my fingers at my family if
they cut up about my choice."
"Yes," Lancaster said, dryly.
"Ah, you are just thinking to yourself what a dude I am!" exclaimed De
Vere, suddenly. "Here I am talking so confidentially about my choice,
when I do not even know if she will look at me. What do you think about
it, eh? Do I stand any chance with her?"
"If she were a society girl, I should say that you stood no chance of
being refused. No girl who had been properly educated by Madame Fashion
would say no to ten thousand a year and a title in prospective,"
Lancaster replied, with conviction.
"You are putting my personal attractions quite out of the question,"
said De Vere, chagrined.
"Because they are quite secondary to your more solid recommendations,"
sarcastically.
"And, after all, you have not said what you think about my chances with
Miss West."
"I do not know what to say, because I do not at all understand her. Yet
if she is poor, as of course she must be, and being lowly born, as we
know, she could not do better than take you, if she is worldly wise."
"You talk about my worldly advantages very cynically, Lancaster. Do you
not think that I might be loved for myself?" inquired De Vere, pulling
at his dark mustache vexedly, and wondering if he (Lancaster) believed
himself to be the only handsome man in the world.
"Why, yes, of course. You're not bad looking. You have the smallest
foot in the regiment, they say, and the whitest hand, and your
mustache is superb," Lancaster replied, laughing, for from his superb
size and manly beauty he rather despised small dandies; and De Vere,
feeling snubbed, he scarcely knew why, retired within himself after the
dignified reply:
"I humbly thank you, Captain Lancaster; but I was not fishing for such
weak compliments."