The day after Lady Ford's ball dawns cheerlessly. It is cool, and
the air is full of floating mists. The gentlemen determine to go out
anyhow. The ladies elect to remain at home. The glowing fire in the
library has more charms than the bleak, spring air.
"I am not surprised at Nella," says Captain Lockhart, leisurely
buttoning his overcoat. "_She_ was raised in America, and our ladies
do not walk much. But I have been told that English ladies walk every
morning, whether rain or shine. Are you false to the tradition, Lady
Vera?"
The color flies into her cheek at his quizzical glance, but she will
not tell him what she sees he does not know--that she has been raised
in America, too.
"I suppose so," she says, a little shortly, in answer to his question.
"Suppose you come with us for a turn around the square, my dear?"
suggests the earl.
"So I will," answers Lady Vera, determined to have Captain Lockhart see
that she is quite English in her habits.
She comes down in a moment covered almost to the pink tips of her ears
in rich velvet. To her dismay Earl Fairvale strolls forward in a fit of
absent-mindedness with Sir Harry, leaving her to be accompanied by the
American soldier. She sees no other course but to accept the situation.
"It is only for a few minutes at the worst," she thinks to herself.
So she walks on by his side, looking so pretty with the nipping wind
kissing her cheeks into a scarlet glow, that Captain Lockhart can
scarcely keep the admiration out of his eyes.
"The loveliest girl I have ever seen in my life," he mentally decides.
"But, by Jove! as cold and proud as an iceberg!"
"So you do not like Americans?" he says to her, regretfully, as they
turn a corner.
"No," curtly.
"Ah, but, Lady Vera, is that fair?" plaintively. "You do not know us,
yet you condemn us without a hearing. Mere English prejudice--is it
not?"
She looks around at the handsome face, full of fire and life, and the
sparkling blue eyes. The thoughtful gravity on the lovely face grows
deeper. The dark eyes flash.
"Captain Lockhart, you are talking of what you do not understand," she
says, impatiently.
"I beg your pardon, Lady Vera," he answers, flushing, "I spoke from
the merest impulse. I thought--since you are so very young--you could
not know my country well."
Lady Vera blushes, but holds her peace. Of course, somebody will tell
him her story soon--tell him that her mother was American, and that
she herself had spent seventeen years in his own native land. At least
he shall not hear it from her. She has a vague notion that it would
please him to know it, that the blue eyes whose sparkle she has already
learned to know, would light with pleasure at the knowledge.
Those eyes, how bright and keen they are. They seem to read one's
thoughts. Lady Vera finds her gaze drooping from them as they never
drooped before mortal man's before. Why? she asks herself.
"It is because he is so bold," she decides, vexedly. "He seems to be
trying to read one's inmost thoughts. I will show him that I am not
afraid of him."
Thereupon she lifts the dark eyes bravely to give him a cool society
stare, but in an instant they waver and fall before the glance they
have surprised in his. Just so the blue eyes had turned on her last
night, when he sang:
"On the banks of Allan Water,
When the sweet spring tide did fall,
Was the miller's lovely daughter,
Fairest of them all!
For his bride a soldier sought her,
And a winning tongue had he,
On the banks of Allan Water
None so gay as she."
"Why do you stare at me _so_?" she breaks out, angry with herself, and
with him.
He flushes, startled by her _brusquerie_.
"I beg your pardon--I did not mean to be rude," he answers, quietly.
"But, Lady Vera, a man must be blind not to look at _you_."
"Why?" she asks, still sharply.
"Because I think God made all beautiful things for the pleasure of
men's eyes," he answers, firmly, yet respectfully.
"Impertinent!" Vera says to herself, indignantly, and looks another way.
"Do you lay an embargo on my eye-sight as far as you are concerned,
Lady Vera?" he continues, after a moment.
"Yes," she replies, with her head still turned away.
"Then I shall try to obey you," he answers, calmly. "I will not even
see you when I can help it, but you must forgive me for saying that if
I should never see you again I shall never forget a single line of your
face."
"I hope he is not making love to me," Lady Vera says to herself,
uneasily, then laughing at herself. "Of course not; I dare say he has
a sweetheart in his own land, some dear, sweet, angelic creature, like
Ivy Cleveland, perhaps."
They speak no more, and when they have gone once around the square,
Captain Lockhart leaves the earl's daughter at the door with a low
bow. She goes into the house, her cheeks tingling with an odd kind of
shame.
"I was rude, _perhaps_," she thinks, a little uneasily. "What must he
think of English manners? But then why did he look at me so? I felt
so--so strangely."
To Lady Clive, who is trifling over a bit of fancy work, she says,
presently:
"Why did you not tell me you expected your brother?"
Lady Clive glances up under her long lashes at the flushed face, a
gleam of mischief in the blue eyes so much like her brother's.
"It was just like me--to forget it," she exclaims. "But then I knew you
would not be interested. And, besides, I knew he would not be in your
way. Phil is only a plain, blunt soldier--not at all a ladies' man."
"I thought he seemed like _that_ last night," Lady Vera answers,
turning the leaves of a book very fast, and not knowing how ambiguous
is her answer.
"Like _what_?" her friend inquires.
"A ladies' man," Vera answers.
"Did you? Oh, yes, when he is thrown among them he tries to make
himself agreeable, but he does not fall in love, he does not run after
them. When he was with us last season, Lady Eva Clarendon made a dead
set at him. Phil was very civil at first--sang with her, danced with
her, played the agreeable in his careless way, you know. But when he
found she was losing her heart to him, he drew off, terrified--seemed
to think she would marry him, willy-nilly--and went away to Italy, then
back home."
"I should have thought it would have been a grand match for _him_,"
Lady Vera answers, with unconscious emphasis of the pronoun.
Lady Clive's head goes up, slightly.
"For _my_ brother? Not at all, Lady Vera," she answers, with a slight
touch of stiffness in her voice. "Philip met the Clarendons on equal
ground. He is wealthy--that is the first and greatest thing with
people, you know--our great-uncle left him a fortune. Next, he is
well-born, and the general, our father, is famous over two continents.
As for Lady Eva's title, that would not weigh a feather with my
brother. He comes from a land, you know, where native worth and
nobility take precedence over all."
And having thus blandly squelched Lady Vera's arrogance, the American
lady bends smilingly to her lace work again. Lady Vera only smiles. She
cannot feel offended.
"I deserved it all," she thinks, soberly to herself. "Oh! why do I
suffer my hatred of the Clevelands and Leslie Noble to make me venomous
and unjust to every American I meet? I have offended this kind friend
of mine, and been rude to her brother all through my spite against
those wicked people. I wish he would forgive those ridiculous words
I said to him. Not look at me, indeed. How silly! He will think me
wondrous vain."
But Captain Lockhart does not forget. When they meet at dinner again
Vera glances at him shyly several times across the silver and crystal
and flowers, but the blue eyes are always on his plate, or on someone
else's face--never on hers. What though she is lovely as a dream in
pale-blue satin and gleaming pearls? Captain Lockhart is serenely
unconscious of the color of her robe, or the half-repentance in her
starry eyes.
"I cannot blame him," she admits to herself, "I acted like a silly
child."
The days go by, Captain Lockhart and the earl's daughter are merely
civil--they seldom seem to see each other. Each absorbed in the
engagements of the gay season, each drifting further apart in the
whirl, there is no time for pardon or reconciliation. Lady Vera finds
no time for the nursery now save when the soldier is out. Yet she is
ever listening for one step, and the color flies into her cheek when
she hears it.
Lady Clive is perplexed and sorry because her brother and her favorite
do not take to each other.
"I thought they seemed made for each other," she complains, to Sir
Harry. "And I thought I had managed them so cleverly. But they scarcely
seem conscious of each other's existence."
"I hope you are not turning match-maker, Nella," Sir Harry Clive
replies, laughing.
Earl Fairvale sees nothing. Day by day he grows more gloomy, more
self-absorbed, and goes less into society. The only interest in his
life outside of his adored daughter, centers in the occasional letters
that reach him from America. But after each one he grows more sad
and gloomy, losing flesh and color daily. Only Vera knows that the
vengeance that is the object of his life is so long delayed that
the strain on his mind is killing him. For though the most skilled
detectives in the world are watching and working, they can find
no trace of the secure hiding-place where Marcia Cleveland dwells
untroubled by the vengeance from which she has fled.
Lady Vera's roses pale when she sees how her father is breaking
down--how the mind is wearing out the body, even as the sword wears out
the scabbard.
"Father, even if you found out her hiding-place, what could you do?
What form could your revenge take?" she asks him, mournfully, as she
has done many times before.
"I cannot tell--but some way would be opened. I should find some
vulnerable point at which to strike," he answers, moodily.
She twines her fair, white arms about his neck, and presses her fresh
young lips to his clouded brow.
"Father, this long brooding over your revenge, this hatred, nourished
in your heart, is sapping your life," she sighs. "I beg you, for my
sake, to give it up, dear father. Give it up, and leave it to Heaven!"
He looks at the beautiful, tearful eyes and the sweet face, pale now
with its sorrow.
"Vera, you come to me with your mother's face, your mother's voice, and
ask me not to avenge her ruined life, her broken heart, her mournful
death," he answers, bitterly. "Child, you know not what you ask. What
can you know of the pangs I have endured? Have you forgotten, too, the
indignities heaped upon you in your young, defenseless life?"
The dark eyes filled with smouldering wrath.
"No, father, never!" she cries; "but it is all past. Mother is safe in
Heaven, you and I are together. Let us forget those wicked ones. Surely
God will punish them for the ruin they have wrought."
"I will not listen to you, Vera," he says, putting her from him,
resolutely. "I have sworn to break Marcia Cleveland's heart if it be
not made of stone. If I fail--listen to me, darling--if I fail, I shall
bequeath my revenge and my oath to you in dying."
She pales and shivers through all her slight young frame, as if some
dim foreboding came to her of the nearing future--that future in whose
black shadow her feet already tread, it comes so near.
"I shall bequeath it to you," Earl Fairvale repeats, gloomily; "you
will lack no means to accomplish it if only you can find out the
serpent's lair. You will be Countess of Fairvale. You will inherit
great wealth, and an enormous rent-roll. With wealth you can do almost
anything. If I fail you will take up the work where it dropped from my
hand in dying--you, Vera, will avenge the dead."