It is not pleasant to trace the steps by which the simple credulous girl
fell into the snare laid for her. She had sense and reason, but they
were both overbalanced by romance--she saw only the ideal side of
everything. The romance of this hidden love was delightful to her; she
compared herself to every heroine in fiction, and found none of them in
a more charming position that herself.
Allan's profession had something to do with romance; had he been a mere
commonplace doctor or lawyer it would have been a different matter, but
an artist--the halo of his art transfigured him in her eyes--thus to be
capable of a deep and passionate love such as he felt for her!
It was altogether like one of those romances that charmed her; and after
a time she gave herself up entirely to her love.
By the skilful mamnagement of Adelaide Lyster their meetings became very
frequent, and before long he had won from her a promise that she would
love him all her life, and would consent to marry him. Even at that
time, when she was most ecstatic, most carried away by the novelty and
the romance, even then, if any sensible person had spoken to her, she
would have understood more her position than she did now.
If anyone had said to her: "That man is not a hero, he is only a fortune
hunter; he is not even an honorable man, or he would not seek to decoy
you from your duty to bind you to an underhand agreement; instead of
being honorable and a hero he is dishonorable and a rogue"--she had
sense enough to have seen that. She understood enough of the laws of
honor to know when they were broken. But this side of the question
never occured to her. He was young, handsome, and an artist; he loved
her so dearly that for love of her he was almost dying. She was rich and
powerful; he had nothing but genius; he loved her so that her smile gave
him life, her frown was death. It was pleasant, too, and most romantic,
to escape from the thraldom of school to wander with him in the gray
twilight through the old orchard and the green lanes; it was pleasant to
feel in the depth of her heart a love that no one knew anything of--no
one even understood. The scenery, viewed from its romantic side, charmed
her.
They told her continually how great and noble, how generous she was, and
she delighted in hearing it.
"You value genius more than money," Allan would say to her, "and you are
right. God gives genius, men make money. You have the power of
discriminating between them."
She began to look upon herself as something very superior
indeed--something far excelling the ordinary run of girls. They
flattered her until she hardly knew what was false and what was true.
She delighted in making pictures of the future; how she was to stoop
from the height of her grandeur to raise him; how her wealth was, as it
were, to crown his genius. They told her that the whole world would
praise her for her noble generosity. That the rich heiress who forgot
her wealth and became the artist's wife, would be honored wherever her
name was known. They intoxicated her with romance, they bewildered her
with flattery. And she was only seventeen, with no mother to speak one
warning word to her.
She pledged herself to be Allan Lyster's wife when she came of age. He
told her he would rather forego all claim to her wealth, marry her at
once, and leave her guardian to act as he thought best; but she, though
delighted to find him free from the least taint of anything mercenary,
refused to run the risk of losing her fortune.
"Would you really," she said to him one day, "love me as much if I were
quite poor, as you do now?"
"Would I! Oh, Marion, what a question to ask me! The only drawback to my
love is that hateful fortune; if it were not for that I would marry you
at once. Ah, you should find out what I loved you for, sweet. I would
work for you night and day. I would move the whole world to find for my
darling that which she would require."
And the girl in her simplicity believed him, and thought herself the
most fortunate among woman to have won a love for herself that had in it
no taint of this world.
So they flung the glamor of love and flattery around her, until she lost
the keen perception of right and wrong that would have saved her.
She promised to be Allan Lyster's wife. When he had won that promise
from her, he pretended to think better of it.
"I am wrong to ask you, Marion; I am selfish, I ought not even wish you
to share my lot."
She asked him why, raising her sweet eyes to his face.
"Why, because when you go out into the great world peers and princes
will woo you, my darling; the noblest in the land will sue for your
favor, and you, who might have been a duchess, will repent loving and
caring for one so poor and obscure as I am. I can give you no title."
"You can give me what I value more," she said. "You can give me true and
disinterested love."
He did not forget his sister's advice, that he should have that promise
in writing. One evening--it was August then, when the fruit hung ripe on
the trees--he told her, with many sighs, that he should not see her
again for some days.
"How am I to live through them, Marion, I do not know; now when I wake,
my first thought is that I shall see you; all the world seems so fair
and life so bright, because I shall see you. What will happen to me when
the morning sun brings no such delight?"
She was young and simple enough to feel very much touched with his
words; the old idea of having his life in her hands never left her.
"Grant me a favor," he said. "I shall have no energy for work unless you
promise it: Write to me every night and in your letters tell me, sweet,
that which I love best to hear, that you will marry me."
So to make him happy, to give him life and energy for his work, she
wrote to him every evening, and, remembering his request, in each one of
those letters she repeated her promise to marry him.
This is no overstrained story, it is no exaggeration; hundreds of men
have acted as Allan Lyster did, and hundreds will act so in the future.
When girls have once mastered the grand lesson that all secrecy--all
concealment is wrong, they will have taken the only precaution possible
to save themselves.
So matters went on until the continued secrecy began to prey upon
Marion's mind; then she made an appeal to Allan with which our story
opens. He did his best to argue with her, and he sent a note to his
sister, telling her the bright, bonnie bird they had ensnared was
growing restive under constraint.
No doubts ever came to her. Youth is the age of romance; youth
imperatively demands love and poetry. She had found both and was
perfectly satisfied. She believed honestly that she loved him very
dearly; it never occurred to her that the greatest charm really was the
excitement of having to plan interviews and arrange her letters so as to
escape detection; it never occured to her that if she had been like
other girls of her age in society, and so enabled to judge of people, so
far from loving him and making a hero of him, he would have been
distasteful to her. She had had no opportunities of being able to judge.
Lord Ridsdale's only idea was to keep her at school as long as possible,
in order to escape further trouble. She had never been in the society of
gentlemen, and her head was full of romance and poetry.
Therefore she fell an easy victim to the artist and his sister. She was
ready to believe he was a great hero, because he was handsome; that he
was all that could be noble and generous, because he talked poetry.
True, she began to dislike the concealment, but it never struck her that
she disliked it because the whole affair was growing tiresome to her.
She had talked it over and over again with him--how they must wait until
she was twenty-one, then they would be married and go to live at Hanton.
"You will like Hanton," she said. "It is old, gray and picturesque; the
woods are beautiful, there is a river running through them."
"I shall like any place that I could share with you," he replied. "When
shall you leave this place, Marion?"
"At Christmas, I expect. But, Allan, shall we never see each other until
I am twenty-one?"
"I hope so," he replied. "You do not know where you will live?"
"No, that is not decided. Lord Ridsdale says I cannot go to Hanton
alone, and I know that I cannot live at his house."
"But go where you will, Marion, you will write to me and see me
sometimes?"
"Of course I shall. If I remain in London it will be comparatively easy,
and if I go into the country you will be obliged to follow me."
"I wish I could disguise myself as a page and go with you," he said. "I
do not see how I am to live without you."
He did another thing which touched her generous heart--he painted a
picture, and with the proceeds of the sale of it he purchased a ring for
her. It was his sister who told her how the ring was procured.
"It is my belief," said Miss Lyster, "that if he could change his whole
heart into one great ruby, he would do so, and offer it to you."
She placed the ring on her finger, and he made her promise never to take
it off. It was made of rubies and opals set in pure gold.
"Do not remove that, Marion," he said, "until I can find a plain gold
ring and that shall bind you to me for as long as we both shall live."