CHAPTER XXV.

The excitement attending their arrival had brought a flush to Esmeralda’s face, and no one excepting Norman noticed the change in her, but it was remarked that Trafford looked pale, and quite as grave, if not graver, than of old. There was a great deal of bustle and stir in the hall, for all the household was anxious to see and welcome the young marchioness who had been popular with them as Miss Chetwynde, and whose importance was now increased tenfold by her position as the wife of the marquis.

As Esmeralda entered the hall, Ada Lancing came down the stairs. Esmeralda’s heart beat fast and then seemed to stop, but Lady Ada came toward her with a smile and a pleasant, unembarrassed greeting. She would have offered to kiss her, but Esmeralda stood away from her a little and only offered her hand. Lady Ada looked at her with an instant’s scrutiny, then went to Trafford.

No one watching them would have suspected them of being anything more than old friends; indeed, Trafford’s words and manner were markedly reserved.

[199]

Lilias made haste to take Esmeralda upstairs; she had her old rooms, with Trafford’s adjoining them. Barker discreetly left the two ladies alone, and Lilias helped Esmeralda to take off her hat, stopping once to kiss her lovingly.

“I am so glad you have come,” she said. “We scarcely hoped that you would consent, for Deepdale must be so beautiful now, and—and you must be so happy there,” she added, shyly. “How well you look”—for the flush rose to Esmeralda’s face at Lilias’s innocent speech, but it died away presently, and Lilias added—“but you must be very tired. I will leave you so that you can rest.”

“No, no; don’t go yet!” said Esmeralda, almost hurriedly. “I am not tired; and—and I am glad to get back to see you, Lilias. How—how long have Lord Norman and—and Lady Ada been here?” she asked, inconsequently.

“They came last night,” said Lilias. “Selvaine thought we ought to ask some one so that you might not feel dull, it is such a huge place and we are so quiet, and you know them so well; they are old friends, are they not?”

“Yes,” said Esmeralda, with her face averted.

“And will you dine at the old hour, dear?” asked Lilias.

Esmeralda stared at her.

“Why do you ask me?” she asked.

Lilias blushed.

“You are the mistress here now, dearest,” she said, sweetly.

“No, no!” Esmeralda exclaimed, with a strange expression in her voice and face. “No, no! I am not!”

“But, dearest,” remonstrated Lilias, gently, “you are Trafford’s wife, the duke’s daughter, and, of course, the mistress of the house. You must take the lead; and how well you will do it!” she added, admiringly.

Esmeralda turned and looked at her curiously.

“I will not, Lilias,” she said. “You—you do not know. I mean”—she faltered—“I would rather not. You shall be the mistress at Belfayre, as you always have been. Do you think I would supplant you and take your place? Why,” she forced a laugh, “I could not, if I tried. I should not know what to do, what to order. No, you must be the mistress.”

Lilias shook her head smilingly.

“That would not be right, dear,” she said, quietly. “You must be the chatelaine for the future; I will be your obedient lieutenant, if you like, but you must be the chief and the mistress.[200] Do you think I could presume to take charge of Belfayre now that Trafford has a wife?”

Esmeralda felt an almost irresistible impulse to exclaim, “I am Trafford’s wife only in name!”—to unburden her heart of its secret and its misery to this gentle, loving girl, whose very gentleness and affection had helped to mislead Esmeralda—but she remembered her promise of secrecy to Trafford and closed her lips tightly.

Lilias, suspecting nothing of the truth, remained with her for a little while, then went away to send Barker.

All the while she was dressing, Esmeralda was thinking of Lady Ada’s presence, and her heart ached and burned with the emotion which she scarcely recognized as jealousy. The woman whom Trafford loved was in the same house with them! The thought brought the hot tears to Esmeralda’s eyes. How long would she stay? Would she and Trafford be much together? How should she—Esmeralda—endure the presence of her rival under the same roof and make no sign? Her heart ached with apprehension, then burned with a kind of defiance.

She looked in the glass. Lady Ada was a beautiful woman; but she—Esmeralda—well, she had been told often enough that she was beautiful, also. Was she to show the white feather in the presence of her rival? A flame of the old Three Star spirit rose once within her bosom, and for the first time since her wedding she displayed some interest in her dress.

Barker was delighted, and pondered over the innumerable costumes, with her finger to her chin, until they decided upon one which Barker considered most suitable.

“There’s the French gray velvet and point, my lady. That’s more of a dress than this; but perhaps it’s too much for a house-party. You will want to keep it for a dinner; there are sure to be several while we’re here. I think this one will be the best for to-night, after all.” And she shook out with a loving hand a soft, creamy silk with touches of sea-blue flowers—a darling dress, which only a woman with Esmeralda’s wonderful hair and complexion could venture upon.

“I don’t care; only let me look well to-night,” said Esmeralda, almost feverishly; and Barker nodded and glanced at her curiously, and yet approvingly.

“You’ll do that, whatever you wear, my lady,” she said, with perfect honesty. “I’m glad your ladyship takes an[201] interest— I beg your pardon, my lady, but you never seemed to care at Deepdale.”

“That was different,” said Esmeralda, hurriedly, and in a low voice, as she turned over some of her costly jewels with a hasty hand.

“Certainly—so it was, my lady. There was no one to see you—begging his lordship’s pardon for calling him no one—but I meant—”

“I know what you meant,” Esmeralda broke in, with an impatience so novel that Barker was almost startled. “Let me look my best—my very best, please. What is that way Lady Ada does her hair?”

Barker shook her head and smiled.

“Lady Ada does her hair very nicely, my lady,” she said, “and it suits her, because her hair is short and doesn’t go so far, and that way makes the most of it; but there’s no need for you to have it done like that, with the mass your ladyship has got.”

“Do you think mine prettier than Lady Ada’s?” said Esmeralda; and then she blushed with shame at her question. What had come to her?

Barker smiled.

“Lady Ada!” she said. Then she added, quietly: “I’ve never seen such hair as yours, my lady. No one can see it for the first time without raving about it. If you could hear the gentlemen—”

But Esmeralda had descended low enough.

“Thank you, Barker,” she said, recovering herself; “I don’t think I want to hear what the gentlemen say about it.”

“No, my lady,” assented Barker, humbly.

When Esmeralda went down they were all assembled in the drawing-room—she had waited until she had heard the second bell, waited with a strange nervousness which she had not felt on her first visit to Belfayre—and her entrance made a sensation. The shaded light fell upon her ivory-clear face and red-gold hair, and upon the superb dress and flashing jewels, so that she looked like a picture of Rossetti’s.

“Great Heaven, she is more lovely than ever!” murmured Lord Selvaine, startled, for once, out of his cynical calm.

“Yes—yes!” breathed Lilias.

Lady Ada looked at her, and then away. Norman Druce caught his breath and turned away also; the duke looked round with pride, as if she were indeed his daughter. And Trafford—Trafford stood motionless for a moment, his pale[202] face growing paler, an expression of wistfulness, intense enough for pain, in his eyes.

The duke led her to the head of the table. She glanced appealingly at Lilias, whose place she was taking, but Lilias shook her head with a smile; and so, for the first time, Esmeralda, the waif of Three Star Camp, presided over the ducal table at Belfayre; and the duke smiled at Trafford as if he had done the greatest and cleverest thing a man could do in winning so lovely and divine a wife.

When she could collect herself sufficiently to look round, Esmeralda found that she had Norman Druce upon her right and Lord Selvaine on her left. The table was oval, and the party of a family character.

For a little while she did not speak; but presently she found the two men regarding her, each after the manner of his kind—Norman Druce with a dog-like kind of watchfulness, and Lord Selvaine with that concealed scrutiny for which he was famous; and in an instant she fancied that they were thinking that she was too silent, that there was something amiss, and she forced herself to talk. She sipped her champagne, and the wine seemed to give her strength and self-possession. She carefully avoided looking at Trafford and Lady Ada, and tried not to hear their voices.

As the dinner proceeded she became almost gay, but there was a feverishness and unrest in her mood which both men noticed. Norman, whose mood seemed to reflect hers as a pool reflects the sun, exerted himself to win a smile from her, and when he succeeded in getting one of her low, rippling laughs, his eyes grew bright and his tanned cheeks flushed. He had all the gossip of fashionable London and the clubs to select from, and he retailed such of it as was fit for publication in a capital style.

It was: “You remember Mrs. Everyoung, Lady Trafford? She wears a golden wig now; it used to be black, you know.”

“I know,” said Esmeralda, smiling.

“Well, it’s quite gold now. Shall I tell you of an awful slip Lady Blankyre made with her? Mrs. Everyoung went away for a week, and when she came back—with the new wig—she asked Lady Blankyre if she didn’t think she looked better for the change. ‘Oh, very much better, indeed, dear. There is nothing like change of air,’ says Lady Blankyre, innocently. They say Mrs. Everyoung’s face was a study.”

“I remember that chestnut when I was a boy in knickerbockers,”[203] remarked Lord Selvaine, plaintively; but Esmeralda laughed, and Norman urged on his wild career.

“Did you hear of the contretemps at the Dodsleys’ picnic? Dodsley is under the delusion that he can make a salad, you know, and he had brought all the ingredients with him in a small hamper. He mixed the thing behind a tree and brought it forward with an air of triumph, and the first man to taste it was the Bishop of Barnstaple, and he sprung up and said something like ‘jam’ or ‘lamb,’ and they had to give him brandy to bring him round.”

“What was the matter with it?” asked Esmeralda.

“Oh, nothing much; only Dodsley had put in paraffine in mistake for white vinegar.”

“Our double refined oil without smell,” murmured Lord Selvaine; but he nodded encouragingly to Norman.

“Tell me some more,” said Esmeralda. “They are all new to me, and I believe them, whatever Lord Selvaine may say.”

“There’s one about a wedding,” said Norman. “Ffoulkes tells it, and swears it’s true. It was a brother-officer of his, so he says, who, when the clergyman asked him whether he would take this woman for his wife, said, with an air of surprise:

“‘Why, that’s what I’ve come here for!’”

“Ffoulkes has an admirable memory,” murmured Lord Selvaine; but Esmeralda laughed, though the laugh was a very quiet one; for the word “wedding” jarred upon her. “You should edit a book of jokes and call it, ‘Ancient and Modern—Mostly Ancient,’ Norman,” said Lord Selvaine.

Norman passed from jokes to legitimate gossip, and kept Esmeralda amused, as he thought, until the ladies left the room; then he drank off a glass of wine and fell back in his chair, like an actor who has played his part for all he knows.

Lord Selvaine looked at him curiously.

“You have done very well, young man,” he said, quietly.

Norman started.

“Eh, what? I beg your pardon?”

“Nothing,” said Lord Selvaine. “I am not offended, though I have every reason to be, after what I have suffered.”

“Ah, well—she laughed,” said Norman, under his breath. “Pass the wine; I’m thirsty. It’s the heat, I suppose.”

Lord Selvaine pushed the decanter across.

“Esmeralda is looking well,” he said, in a casual way.

“Yes,” said Norman, abstractedly. “She is so pale, and—there is a strange look in her eyes—”

[204]

“I said ‘well,’” remarked the diplomatist, blandly.

Norman started and colored.

“Oh, yes, yes!” he said; “very well;” and he began talking to Trafford, as if he dreaded being drawn into a conversation about Esmeralda with Lord Selvaine.

The duke sat and sipped his thin claret with an air of perfect felicity. He had not noticed anything wrong in Esmeralda’s expression or manner, and that he was thinking of her beauty and queenliness was evident from the remark which he made to Trafford.

“I should like her portrait painted, Trafford. It has not yet been done, has it?”

Trafford looked up and then down at his dessert plate.

“No, sir.”

“Ah! I am almost glad that it has not; for I think she is still more lovely than she was before her marriage. Will you see about it, and at once, if you please?”

“Yes, sir,” said Trafford, gravely.

“I think Millais had better do it,” continued the duke, thoughtfully. “What do you say, Selvaine?”

“Millais, certainly,” responded Lord Selvaine.

“It should be done at once, and it must be the size of the others in the hall. There will not be a more beautiful face there. I should like a miniature also, to place with the others in the cabinet. I do not know who is now most famous for miniatures; but you will know, Trafford. Please do not lose any time over the matter; it is really an obligatory one.”

“Yes, sir,” said Trafford again. His quietude and lack of enthusiasm seemed to strike the old man; and he looked at him with a faint surprise, then he smiled.

“It is all very well for you, my dear boy,” he said. “You possess the original, but we shall not have her here always, and so we need her picture. How admirably that dress became her,” he went on, after a pause. It was evident that he was absorbed in her. “Some women have the faculty of wearing their clothes with that instinctive grace which indues the robe with something of their own charm; Esmeralda is one of them. The simplest frock would become imperial while she wore it.”

Lord Selvaine smiled his cynical smile.

“Is the door closed, Norman? Do you think they can hear us in the drawing-room? You really should be careful, sir.”

The duke laughed and shook his white head.

[205]

“I should not be afraid even if she could hear me,” he said. “Esmeralda is the only woman in the world incapable of vanity.”

“Do you always carry the end of her chain, Trafford?” said Lord Selvaine. “Angels have an awkward knack of flying; a woman without vanity must be an angel.”

Trafford started slightly.

“I think you deserve that, sir,” he said to his father, with a forced smile.

The duke laughed again unabashed.

“Even Selvaine can enunciate a truth in a jest,” he said. “She is an angel—in my eyes; as she must be in yours, Traff,” and he laid his hand approvingly on his son’s.

Norman sat listening in perfect silence; once he reached for the decanter, then paused and put it away. He had had quite enough wine, he remembered suddenly.

Yes, she was paler; and—and what did that look in her eyes mean? She had not looked so at Three Star; she had not looked so when she came into the room at Lady Wyndover’s to be introduced to him. It could not mean that she was—unhappy!