CONFESSING HIS LOVE.
"Norston's Rest" was now in a state of comparative quiet. The throng
of visitors that had made the place so brilliant had departed, and,
for the first time in months, Sir Noel could enjoy the company of his
son with a feeling of restfulness; for now the discipline of school
and college lay behind the young man, and he was ready to begin life
in earnest. After travelling a while on the continent he had entered
upon the dignity of heir-ship with all the pomp and splendor of a
great ovation, into which he had brought so much of kindly memory and
generous purpose that his popularity almost rivalled the love and
homage with which his father was regarded.
Sir Noel was a proud man--so proud that the keenest critic must have
failed to discover one trace of the arrogant self-assumption that so
many persons are ready to display as a proof of superiority. With Sir
Noel this feeling was a delicate permeation of his whole being,
natural to it as the blue blood that flowed in his veins, and as
little thought of. Profound self-respect rendered encroachment on the
reserve of another simply impossible. During the stay of his son at
"The Rest" one fond hope had possessed the baronet, and that grew out
of his intense love of two human beings that were dearest to him on
earth--the young heir and Lady Rose Hubert.
It could not be asserted that ambition led to this wish; though the
lady's rank was of the highest, and she was the inheritor of estates
that made her a match even for the heir of "Norston's Rest." The
baronet in the isolation of his long widowerhood had found in this
fair girl all that he could have desired in a daughter of his own. Her
delicacy of bloom and beauty appealed to his aesthetic taste. Her
gayety and the spirituelle sadness into which it sometimes merged gave
his home life a delightful variety. He could not think of her leaving
"The Rest" without a pang such as noble-hearted fathers feel when they
give away their daughters at the altar. To Sir Noel, Lady Rose was the
brightest and most perfect being on earth, and the great desire of his
heart was that she should become his daughter in fact, as she already
was in his affections.
Filled with this hope he had watched with some anxiety for the
influence this young lady's loveliness might produce upon his son,
without in any way intruding his wishes into the investigation; for,
with regard to the perfect freedom which every heart should have to
choose a companionship of love for itself, this old patrician was
peculiarly sensitive. Having in his own early years suffered, as few
men ever had, by the uprooting of one great hope, he was peculiarly
anxious that no such abiding calamity should fall on the only son and
heir of his house, but he was not the less interested in the choice
that son might make when the hour of decision came. With all his
liberality of sentiment it had never entered the thoughts of the
baronet that a man of his race could choose ignobly, or look beneath
the rank in which he was born. To him perfect liberty of choice was
limited, by education and family traditions, to a selection among the
highest and the best in his own proud sphere of life. Thus it became
possible that his sentiments, uttered under this unexplained
limitation, might be honestly misunderstood.
Some months had passed since the young heir had taken up his home at
"The Rest"--pleasant months to the baronet, who had looked forward to
this period with the longing affection which centred everything of
love and pride on this one human being that man can feel for man. At
first it had been enough of happiness that his son was there, honored,
content--with an unclouded and brilliant future before him--but human
wishes are limitless, and the strong desire that the young man should
anchor his heart where his own wishes lay grew into a pleasant belief.
How could it be otherwise, when two beings so richly endowed were
brought into the close companionship of a common home?
One day, when the father and son chanced to be alone in the grand old
library, where Sir Noel spent so much of his time, the conversation
seemed naturally to turn upon some future arrangements regarding the
estate.
"It has been a pleasant burden to me so far," said the old gentleman,
"because every day made the lands a richer inheritance for you and
your children; but now I am only waiting for one event to place the
heaviest responsibility on your young shoulders."
"You mean," said the young man, flushing a little, "that you would
impose two burdens upon me at once--a vast estate and some lady to
preside over the old house."
The baronet smiled, and answered with a faint motion of the head.
Then the young man answered, laughingly:
"There is plenty of time for that. I have everything to learn before
so great a trust should be given me. As for the house, no one could
preside there better than the Lady Rose."
The baronet's face brightened.
"No," he said, "we could hardly expect that. In all England it would
be difficult to find a creature so lovely and so well fitted to the
position."
Sir Noel faltered as he concluded this sentence. He had not intended
to connect the idea of this lady so broadly with his wishes. To his
refined nature it seemed as if her dignity had been sacrificed.
"She is, indeed, a marvel of beauty and goodness," answered the young
man, apparently unmindful of the words that had disturbed his father.
"I for one am in no haste to disturb her reign at 'Norston's Rest'."
Sir Noel was about to say: "But it might be made perpetual," but the
sensitive delicacy natural to the man checked the thought before it
formed itself into speech.
"Still it is in youth that the best foundations for domestic happiness
are laid. I look upon it as a great misfortune when circumstances
forbid a man to follow the first and freshest impulses of his heart--"
Here the baronet broke off, and a deep unconscious sigh completed the
sentence.
Young Hurst looked at his father with awakened interest. The
expression of sadness that came over those finely-cut features made
him thoughtful. He remembered that Sir Noel had entered life a younger
son, and that he had not left the army to take possession of his title
and estates until after mid-age. He could only guess at the romance of
success or disappointment that might have gone before; but even that
awoke new sympathy in the young man's heart for his father.
"I can hardly think that there is any time of life for which a man has
power to lay down for himself certain rules of action," he said. "To
say that any man will or will not marry at any given period is to
suppose him capable of great control over his own best feelings."
"You are right," answered Sir Noel, with more feeling than he usually
exhibited. "The time for a man to marry is when he is certainly in
love."
"And the person?" questioned the young man, with a strange expression
of earnestness in his manner.
"Ah! The person that he does love."
Sir Noel, thinking of his ward, was not surprised to see a flood of
crimson rush over the young man's face, nor offended when he arose
abruptly and left the library.