While Lady Lancaster was finishing her toilet upstairs, Leonora
finished her fugue in the drawing-room. Then she played a little
_morceau_ from Bach. Then she began to sing. The dowager, coming along
the corridor outside with stealthy, cat-like steps, was amazed to catch
the passionate words of a little gem from "Iolanthe," sung in a voice
as sweet and clear and well trained as many a professional could boast.
"An opera song! Upon my word! What sort of a girl is it, anyhow?"
ejaculated the dowager, in astonishment; and in spite of her haste and
anger, she could not help pausing to hear the words of the tender love
song:
"None shall part us from each other,
All in all to each are we;
All in all to one another,
I to thee, and thou to me!
Thou the tree, and I the flower--
Thou the idol, I the throng--
Thou the day, and I the hour--
Thou the singer, I the song!
Thou the stream, and I the willow--
Thou the sculptor, I the clay--
Thou the ocean, I the billow--
Thou the sunrise, I the day!"
"Upon my word, that must be a remarkable child," Lady Lancaster said to
herself; and, like Elise, she peeped around the door to get a secret
view of the daring transgressor.
After she had looked she stepped back a pace in amazement. She was more
astonished than she had ever been in her life.
The child she had come to see was nowhere. She had come down the stairs
with a distinct intention of "boxing the little brat's ears for her
temerity." She stared in amazement at what she saw.
And yet it was not a wonderful sight, but only a very pleasing
one--unless my lady had been hard to please--only a graceful, girlish
figure in deep black, with a line of white at the slender throat, where
the narrow linen collar was fastened with a neat bar of jet--only a
fair young face, with its profile turned toward the door, and two
small white hands guiltless of rings or other adorning, save their own
dimpled beauty, straying over the keys with a loving touch, as if all
her soul was in her song.
Lady Lancaster caught her breath with a gasp as if someone had thrown
cold water over her. She turned to the maid; exclaiming, in a shrill
whisper:
"Elise, that is not West's American niece. You are trying to deceive
me!"
"No, my lady, I am not. It is Miss West. Is she not a pretty girl?"
"But I thought," said my lady, ignoring the question, "that West's
niece was a child. I am sure she told me so."
"I do not know what she told you; but this is certainly Leonora West,"
reiterated the maid; and then her mistress stepped over the threshold
into the room, the long train of her stiff brocade rustling behind her
as she walked with an air of withering majesty upon her wrinkled face.
Leonora, hearing the ominous sound, glanced around with a startled air,
her hands fell from the keys, and she sprung to her feet, and stood
waiting the lady's approach--not humbly, not nervously, but with that
calm dignity and self-possession that seemed characteristic of her,
and that seemed to belong peculiarly to her as fragrance belongs to a
flower.
Lady Lancaster was not propitiated by that peculiar air. To her angry
eyes it savored of defiance.
She walked on across the thick, soft pile of the velvet carpet until
she was directly in front of the waiting girl, and then Leonora lifted
her eyes with an air of gentle curiosity, and dropped her a graceful
courtesy.
"Impertinent! I have a great mind to slap her, anyhow!" the old lady
said, irately, to herself; but she kept down her spleen with a great
effort of will, and said, with ironical politeness:
"You are Leonora West, the housekeeper's niece, I presume?"
"Yes, madame, that is my name," Leonora answered, with another graceful
bow. "And you are--Mrs. Lancaster!"
"Lady Lancaster, if you please," flashed the dowager, haughtily.
"Ah?" smoothly. "Lady Lancaster, I beg your pardon. You see we have no
titles in America. A plain Mrs. is a title of honor in itself, and when
one comes to England one is apt to forget the requirements of rank."
A graceful, simple explanation enough; but Elise, who kept close beside
her mistress, saw a roguish gleam in the blue-gray eyes shaded by the
drooping black lashes.
"She is laughing in her sleeve at my lady," thought the astute maid;
but she did not resent the girlish impertinence in her mind. Lady
Lancaster snubbed her handmaid so often that Elise rather enjoyed
seeing her snubbed in her turn.
Lady Lancaster dimly felt something in the suave, silver-sweet tones
that vaguely angered her.
"You are very excusable, Miss West," she said, tartly and insultingly.
"One has to pardon much to American impudence and ignorance."
Leonora looked at her with the full gaze of her clear orbs.
"I hardly think I understand you, Lady Lancaster," said she, calmly.
"I fail to make my meaning clear, do I?" cried the dowager, furious.
"Tell me this, then. How dared you come into my drawing-room and play
on the piano?"
"Your drawing-room?" the girl lifted her eyes in gentle, courteous
inquiry.
"Lord Lancaster's, then; and just as good as mine, since he is too poor
to live at home. But that is no concern of yours. I repeat--how dared
you play on the piano?"
Leonora looked very innocent and wondering and candid.
"I assure you I have not injured the piano one bit," she said. "It is
a very nice one; but I understand how to use it, and my touch is very
soft."
"Who cares about your touch? I was not talking about that. No one cares
for that," contemptuously. "I referred to your impertinence in coming
out of your proper place in the housekeeper's rooms and entering this
drawing-room."
"Oh!" intelligently.
"Well, what do you mean by 'oh'?" inquired the angry dowager.
"I mean that there was no harm done by my entrance here. I have not
hurt anything. I was very curious to know what great people's houses
looked like, so I persuaded my aunt to let me come and see; but I
really can not understand what terrible offense I have committed
against your ladyship," said Leonora, with her gentle, candid air.
"You are poor and lowly born, and your place is in the rooms of the
servants, and--and--I thought you were a child," sputtered Lady
Lancaster, unable to fence with the polished tools of her fair
opponent, and continuing, incoherently: "What did you mean, anyway,
by--by--"
"By being a tall, grown-up girl instead of a child?" interposed
Leonora, allowing a soft little smile to flicker over her rosy lips.
"Oh, Lady Lancaster, pray be reasonable! Could I help it, really? Can
one turn back the hands of Time? If that were possible, surely _you_
would have availed yourself long ago of that wondrous art;" and with
a graceful little bow, Leonora walked deliberately out of the room,
having fired this Parthian shot of delicate feminine spite into the
camp of the astounded enemy.
Lady Lancaster was purple with rage and dismay. She had sallied upon
the field ready to drive the intruder from her grounds, and she, Lady
Lancaster, the great rich lady, had been vanquished by the sharp little
tongue of a low-born girl who had so innocent and candid an air that
she did not at this moment quite realize that the girl herself knew the
enormity of the offense she had committed.
Elise, full of silent, demure laughter, waited for her mistress to
speak.
It was several minutes before she rallied from her fit of rage enough
to speak clearly. When she did, she said, sharply:
"Put me into a chair, Elise, and bring Mrs. West to me."
"Hadn't I better take you back to your room first? Perhaps some one may
come in here. And you have pushed your wig awry, and the powder is all
off your face, my lady," said Elise, demurely; and her mistress groaned:
"Take me back to my room, then, and tell West to come at once--at once,
do you hear?"
And when she had regained the privacy of her own room she sunk down
exhausted upon her bed to await the housekeeper's arrival.
Leonora had already gone to Mrs. West's room and related her adventure.
"And oh! Aunt West, she was so proud and scornful and overbearing that
I was vexed at her; and I'm afraid that I was just a little bit saucy
to her. What will she do, do you think? Will she send me away from
Lancaster Park?"
"She will have to send me too if she does!" cried Mrs. West.
"Oh, Aunt West, would you really go? Would you give up the home of
sixteen years for my sake?" cried the girl.
"Yes, dear, I would go. You have no one but me, and I mean to do the
best I can for your happiness. If Lady Lancaster is unreasonable about
this matter, I shall leave her," said Mrs. West, decidedly.
"But, oh, aunt, you will be sorry that I came to you--sorry that poor
papa left me on your hands," anxiously.
"I shall regret nothing, dear, if I can only do my duty by you," was
the reassuring reply that brought a look of relief into Leonora's
beautiful face.
Then Elise came with Lady Lancaster's message. She looked curiously at
the calm, unruffled face of Leonora.
"Oh, Miss West, you have seriously offended my mistress!" she exclaimed.
"Have I?" Leonora answered, demurely; and Elise knew by the gleam under
the girl's long lashes that she did not care. She delivered her message
and departed.
"I do not know what to make of that Miss West; but she is decidedly too
proud and too pretty for her position," Elise said to herself, when she
was going slowly back upstairs to her mistress. "I'm afraid she will
cause Mrs. West to lose her place."
Mrs. West went upstairs to the great lady, and Leonora waited in the
little sitting-room for her return, which occurred in about fifteen
minutes. The housekeeper was somewhat red in the face, and her lips
were curved rather sternly.
"Well, aunt, have you promised to send me away?" the young girl asked,
demurely.
"She would have liked to have me do so," said Mrs. West, indignantly.
"She was very arrogant and presuming. She seems to be quite angry
because poor Dick's daughter is as pretty and accomplished as the young
ladies in a higher rank of life."
Leonora smiled, and her aunt continued:
"I gave warning that I would leave her in a month. If it were not for
Lord Lancaster, I would go to-day; but he has always been so kind that
I shall stay a few weeks longer for his sake. Can you endure it that
much longer, my child?"
"Oh, yes," said Leonora, "I will try to be very good that long. And,
Aunt West, when we leave here we are going back to New York. You need
not shake your head so solemnly. I am a willful child, and I mean to
have my own way."