"Lord Lancaster, I want to ask you something," said Lady Adela Eastwood.
It was in the evening after the gentlemen had come in from their
walnuts and wine. Lord Lancaster had retired rather sulkily to a
corner, and the earl's daughter had followed him and sat down near him.
She looked very handsome in her dinner-dress of rose-pink satin draped
with creamy lace. Her brilliant black eyes searched his face eagerly,
as she said:
"Lady Lancaster has been telling us the strangest story before the
gentlemen came in. I am going to ask you if it is true."
He tried to rouse himself to interest in her theme.
"Yes," he said, "I know that Lady Lancaster can be very interesting,"
sarcastically. "What is it all about, Lady Adela?"
She lowered her voice, and glanced across the room where Lieutenant
De Vere sat with rather a bored look on his face, trying to become
interested in the lively chatter of the pretty Miss Dean.
"It is about that handsome Lieutenant De Vere," she said; "Lady
Lancaster has been telling us that he is infatuated with a ridiculous
creature--a servant, I think she said, or something like that. And he
is going to propose to her, and it will most likely be a match. Now,
you are his friend, Lord Lancaster. Please tell me if it is really so?"
"No, it is not," he replied, pulling savagely at the innocent ends of
his long mustache.
"Then it is not true? Lady Lancaster was only telling it to tease Emma
Dean, I fancy. Emma has been setting her cap at the lieutenant, you
know. She will be very glad to hear it was all a joke."
"But it was not a joke, really," he said, embarrassed. "You know what
Tennyson says about a 'lie that is half a truth,' Lady Adela. Well,
that is how the case stands. Lady Lancaster has simply misrepresented
the facts. There was a grain of truth in her bushel of falsehood."
"Oh, dear!" cried Lady Adela, in dismay. She nestled a little nearer
him on the fauteuil where they were sitting. "Do tell me the right of
it, Lord Lancaster; I am all curiosity."
"Then I will tell you the right of it, if you care to hear," he
replied; and there was so stern a look on his face that the earl's
daughter was frightened. She wondered if he was angry with her.
"I hope you are not offended with me for repeating what Lady Lancaster
said," she observed sweetly, giving him a demure look out of her large
black eyes.
He looked at her gravely a minute without replying. She was very
handsome, certainly--a brilliant brunette, very vivacious when it
pleased her to be so, and again with a languor and indolence amounting
to laziness. She had been in society several seasons, and owned to
twenty-three years old. She was beautiful, graceful, and dignified, and
Lancaster felt that she would make a fitting mistress for Lancaster
Park; but his pulse did not beat any faster at her bright glance, nor
at her sweet, half-confidential tones.
But he looked back at her reassuringly as he replied:
"I am sorry I looked so black as to inspire you with such an idea, Lady
Adela. Of course I am not offended with you. You are not answerable for
Lady Lancaster's peccadilloes. I think, however, that she might have
shown more respect to Lieutenant De Vere than to indulge herself in
such gossip, more than half of it being false."
"Oh, then he isn't going to commit such a folly after all?" she
exclaimed, relieved that it was not so, for her patrician pride had
been somewhat hurt at the idea of one of her own order descending to a
plebeian.
"You jump so quickly from one conclusion to another, Lady Adela, that
you will not give me time to explain," he said, smiling.
"Oh!" she cried, abashed. "Then I shall not say another word, only
listen to your story."
"There is no story--only an explanation," he said. "I should not speak
of it, only I think De Vere would thank me for setting him right. Yes,
he is in love, Lady Adela, but not with a servant girl, as my aunt
insinuated. The young lady who has won his heart is a fair, refined
young girl, cultured and accomplished, and of respectable although not
noble birth. She is an American girl who came over with De Vere and
myself from New York to her aunt, who is the housekeeper here. That is
the long and the short of the servant-girl story."
"You know her?" cried Lady Adela, amazed. "Oh, how I would like to see
this fascinating girl, admired both by Lieutenant De Vere and Lord
Lancaster!"
"You have seen her," he replied, with that quick flush that showed so
clearly through his fine skin.
"Where?" she cried, amazed.
"You remember the young lady we saw sketching among the ruins
yesterday?"
"Yes," she replied.
"It was Miss West--De Vere's inamorata," he answered.
Lady Adela did not speak for a moment. She was surprised into silence.
When she recovered her speech, she said, faintly:
"You said she was staying in the neighborhood for the sketching."
"That was a small fib, Lady Adela, for which I humbly crave your
pardon. The truth is that Miss West's father, lately dead, has left
his daughter to Mrs. West's care. She is staying at Lancaster because
she has no other home."
"Ah! Then she is the housekeeper's niece. I presume that is the reason
Lady Lancaster called her a servant," said the earl's daughter, in a
tone that quite excused the dowager.
He gave her a quick look which, not being an adept in reading
expressions, Lady Adela did not understand.
"No, she is not Mrs. West's niece. Her father's brother was Mrs. West's
husband. There is all the relationship there is," he said, almost
curtly.
Lady Adela gave him a glance that was rather haughty, yet half jealous.
"I can see that Lieutenant De Vere has a zealous champion in you," she
said, with a tincture of bitterness in her voice.
"I do not think he needs or desires a champion," he answered.
"No? And why not?" she asked. "Surely he must be aware that he will be
censured by many for his course in marrying below his own station in
life. He will need some one to make excuses for him."
"His wife, if he wins her, will be an all-sufficient excuse for him,"
Lancaster said, calmly.
"Why?" she asked, rather piqued at his words.
"Because Miss West is quite fascinating enough to make any man
excusable for his folly, if folly it be," he replied.
"You are very complimentary to her," Lady Adela said, with her head
held high. "I can not see how she could be so fascinating. I did not
think she was so very pretty, really. She had quite common brown hair,
and gray eyes, I think, and one of those baby faces that some people
admire, but which I never did."
"It is not at all a baby face," he said. "She has a great deal of
character and decision in it, I think."
"Indeed? But, of course, you have had a better chance of studying her
face than I have, and may be a better judge. I think you are more than
half-way in love with the housekeeper's niece yourself," Lady Adela
exclaimed, flashing a reproachful glance upon him, for, being well
aware of Lady Lancaster's scheme, she felt that he belonged to her.
"De Vere would not like that much," he said, carelessly, without
betraying his inward vexation.
She fanned herself rapidly with her pink satin fan for a moment, then
said, with a keen glance at him:
"Lady Lancaster has formed a fine plan for showing him his folly and
breaking off the affair."
"Really?" he inquired, sarcastically.
"Yes; she is quite sure that if he could once see this girl in the
company of real ladies, he would see the difference and become
disenchanted."
"Yes?"
"It seems as if the girl can play quite well," said Lady Adela, going
on in her low, confidential tones. "And the ladies are all curious to
see her. So Lady Lancaster is going to have her in to play for us,
just for a pretext, you know; and then Lieutenant De Vere can not help
seeing the difference between her and the women of his own set. Perhaps
it will cure him of his fancy."
"Perhaps," said Lancaster, dryly; but his heart began to beat. Would
Lady Lancaster really bring Leonora into the drawing-room? Something
assured him that if she did it would only be to humiliate and snub her.
He read this intuitively in Lady Adela's supercilious expression. His
heart swelled with hot resentment. He rose hurriedly.
"She shall not send for her," he said; but the earl's daughter
answered, with ill-concealed malice:
"She has already done so."
"Then she shall not come. I will myself forbid it," he exclaimed; but
even as the words left his lips, he paused and stood for a moment
speechless. The drawing-room door had opened just then, and Leonora
West stood just inside of it, hesitating on the threshold.