He came on quickly toward the figure sitting among the graves, with the
small head poised defiantly, although Leonora was thinking to herself:
"He is coming to scold me, perhaps, for trespassing on his property."
He came up to her and stood bareheaded before her with the sunlight
falling on his fair head--tall, stalwart, handsome--a living Lancaster
among those dead and gone ones; one who did no discredit to the name.
"I beg your pardon for interrupting you," he said; "but--you are
sketching the ruins?"
"Yes."
"Will you let me see your work?"
She held it out to him in silence.
He scrutinized it in mingled wonder and delight.
"How perfect! how spirited! how beautiful!" he cried. "You must have
real talent!"
"Thank you!" she answered, with a slight inclination of her head.
He stood watching the half-averted face a moment in silence. It had a
slightly bored air, as if she wished he had not come, or that he would,
at least, soon go.
"You are very brave, Miss West, sitting here all alone among these
graves," he said, after that momentary pause.
"Did you leave your friends to come back and tell me that?" inquired
she, with delicate sarcasm.
"No-o," slowly; "I came back to ask a favor, Miss West."
"Indeed?" incredulously.
"Yes; and it is this: I should like to have that sketch. My friend,
Lady Adela, is in raptures over that pile of old ruins. She would like
to have a picture of it."
He was watching her closely. He was rewarded for his intent scrutiny by
seeing an angry crimson flush the round cheek.
"You would like this for her?" said Leonora, with ominous calmness.
"Yes; will you part with it?--for money, if you will. It is singularly
perfect, and should be worth something considerable."
"You are very kind," said Leonora.
She had pulled a flower from a grave, and was tearing its petals apart
with fierce cruelty between her white fingers.
"No; I am only just," he said; then, with a smile. "Ah! Miss West, do
not be so cruel to that poor flower. I have a shuddering conviction
that it is, metaphorically, myself you are deliberately annihilating."
She glanced up to him rather curiously from beneath her shady lashes.
"I--did not really think what I was doing," she said. "Why should you
think I would treat you that way?"
"Because I have been so unfortunate as to incur your dislike," he
answered.
She did not utter the denial he half hoped she would, but she threw her
mutilated flower from her with a quickly suppressed sigh.
"Well, am I to have the sketch?" he inquired, after waiting vainly for
an answer.
"No."
"You refuse?" he asked, chagrined.
"Yes. I drew the picture for myself, not for Lady Adela," she replied,
spiritedly.
"She will be disappointed at my failure to secure it for her," said he.
"That does not matter to me," Leonora returned, coldly. "Why does she
not make a picture for herself?"
"She does not sketch."
"Ah! is it beneath her dignity?" asked the girl.
"No, but beyond her power," he returned.
"Really?" asked the girl.
"Yes," he replied; "she assures me that she has no talent at all in
that way. You who are so clever, Miss West, might afford to pity her."
"I do, but not because she can not draw," said Leonora.
"Why, then?"
"Because, for all her high birth and proud position, she will have to
sell herself for money."
The shot told. She saw his cheek grow red.
"Mrs. West has been telling her these things. I wish to Heaven she had
held her tongue!" he thought, bitterly. But aloud he said, lightly:
"Perhaps you may find it expedient to do the same thing, Miss West."
"To do what?" she inquired.
"To marry for money," he replied.
"And you think it would be expedient?" she inquired, drawing her
delicate black brows together in a vexed little frown.
"Yes, for you," he replied. "You are too beautiful and gifted, Miss
West, to be contented in your present humble condition. You should
marry wealth and position. Both would become you rarely."
"Thank you, my lord," she said, bowing, with a pretty gesture of mock
humility.
"That reminds me to tell you that De Vere will be here to-morrow," he
said, suddenly.
"What has that to do with our subject?" she inquired, shortly.
"Everything. De Vere is in love with you, and he is rich and well born.
You can be Mrs. De Vere any time you wish."
"Did your friend employ you to tell me this?" asked Leonora, pale with
passion.
"No; but he would have no objection to my doing so. He will tell you so
himself when he comes."
"And you advise me to marry him?" she asked, gazing into his face with
her soft, steady glance.
His own eyes fell beneath it.
"I should not presume to advise you; yet it would be a good thing for
you, I know. De Vere adores you. He would be your slave, and you would
be like a little queen in the position to which his wealth would raise
you."
"You make a great deal of wealth," she said, gravely, and waiting
curiously for his reply.
"It is a great power in the world," he replied.
"Is it?" she asked. "Ah! Lord Lancaster, 'almost thou persuadest me' to
sink to Lady Adela's level and sell myself for gold."
"You seem to have imbibed a strange contempt for Lady Adela," he said.
"I have. Where is her womanliness, her self-respect, that she can
lend herself to that wicked old woman's ambitious schemes for buying
a coroneted head with her twenty thousand a year? She is the daughter
of a hundred earls, and yet she can give herself to you merely for the
money's sake. Pah!"
"Need it be merely for the money's sake?" he asked. "Am I repulsive to
look upon, Miss West? Is it quite impossible that a woman, Lady Adela
or another, should give me her heart with her hand?"
Something like wounded pride quivered in his voice, and he looked at
her reproachfully.
"Would it be impossible for me to be loved for myself alone?" he went
on, slowly. "Might not some good, true, sweet woman love me for my own
self--even as I am?"
She looked up at the handsome face, the large, graceful form, and
silently recalled the words Lieutenant De Vere had spoken to her on the
steamer's deck that day:
"He is more run after by the women than any man in the regiment."
"He knows his power," she thought; and from sheer contrariness made no
answer to his appeal. "He shall not know what I think about it," she
said to herself.