CHAPTER VII.

Side by side they walked across the meadows; the larks rising before them and soaring up to the heavens with a burst of song; the river running in silvery silence to the sea; the green trees waving gently in the Summer breeze; and above them the long stretching gray masonry of Wyndward Hall.

Lord Leycester was strangely silent for some minutes since that "Are you angry?" and Stella, as she walked by his side, stooping now and again to gather a cowslip, glanced up at his face and wondered whether her uncle could be mistaken, whether they were not all deceived in thinking the quiet, graceful creature with the beautiful face and dreamy, almost womanly, soft eyes, wild and reckless, and desperate and altogether bad. She almost forgot how she had seen him on that first night of their meeting, with his whip upraised and the sudden fire of anger in his eyes.

Presently he spoke, so suddenly that Stella, who had been lost in her speculations respecting him, started guiltily:

"I have been wondering," he said, "how Mr. Etheridge takes the change which your presence must make in the cottage."

Stella looked up with surprise, then she smiled.

"He bears it with admirable resignation," she said, with that air of meek archness which her uncle found so amusing.

Lord Leycester looked down at her.

"That is a rebuke for the presumption of my remark?" he said.

"No," said Stella.

"I did not mean to be presumptuous. Think. Your uncle has lived the whole of his life alone, the life of a solitary, a hermit; suddenly there enters into that life a young and beau—a young girl, full of the spirit of youth and its aspirations. It must make a great change."

"As I said," says Stella, "he bears it with pious fortitude." Then she added, in a lower voice, "He is very good to me."

[45]

"He could not be otherwise," was the quiet response. "I mean that he could not be anything but good, gentle, and loving with any living thing. I have known him since I was a boy," he added. "He was always the same, always living a life of dreams. I wonder whether he takes you as a dream?"

"A very substantial and responsible one, then," said Stella, with her little laugh. "One that lasts through the daytime."

He looked at her with that strange intent look which she had learned that she could not meet.

"And you?" he said.

"I?" said Stella, though she knew what he meant.

He nodded.

"How do you like the change?—this still, quiet life in the Thames valley. Are you tired of it already? Will you pine for all the gayeties you have left?"

Stella looked up at him—his eyes were still fixed on hers.

"I have left no gayeties," she said. "I left a bare and horrid school that was as unlike home as the desert of Sahara is like this lovely meadow. How do I feel? As if I had been translated to Paradise—as if I, who was beginning to think that I was alone in the world I had no business to be in, had found some one friend to love——"

She paused, and he, glancing at the black waistband to her white dress, said, with the tenderest, most humble voice:

"I beg your pardon. Will you forgive me?—I did not know——"

And his voice broke.

Stella looked up at him with a smile shining through the unshed tears.

"How—why should you know? Yes, I was quite alone in the world. My father died a year ago."

"Forgive me," he murmured; and he laid his hand with a feather's weight on her arm. "I implore you to forgive me. It was cruel and thoughtless."

"No," said Stella. "How should you know?"

"If I had been anything better than an unthinking brute, I might have guessed."

There was a moment's pause, then Stella spoke.

"Yes, it is Paradise. I had no idea England was like this, they called it the land of fogs."

"You have not seen London on a November evening," he said, with a laugh. "Most foreigners come over to England and put up at some hotel at the west-end, and judge the whole land by the London sample—very few come even so far as this. You have not been to London?"

"I passed through it," said Stella, "that is all. But I heard a great deal about it last night," she added, with a smile.

"Yes!" he said, with great interest—"last night?"

"Yes, at Mrs. Hamilton's. She was kind enough to ask me to an evening party, and one of the guests took great pains to impress me with the importance and magnificence of London."

He looked at her.

[46]

"May I ask who she was?" he said.

"It was not a she, but a gentleman. It was Mr. Adelstone."

Lord Leycester thought a moment.

"Adelstone. Adelstone. I don't know him."

Before she was quite aware of it the retort slipped from her lips.

"He knows you."

He looked at her with a thoughtful smile.

"Does he? I don't remember him. Stay, yes, isn't he a relation of Mr. Fielding's?"

"His nephew," said Stella, and feeling the dark, penetrating eyes on her she blushed faintly. It annoyed her, and she struggled to suppress it, but the blush came and he saw it.

"I remember him now," he said; "a tall, thin dark man. A lawyer, I believe. Yes, I remember him. And he told you about London?"

"Yes," said Stella, and as she remembered the conversation of a few hours ago, her color deepened. "He is very amusing and well-informed, and he took pity on my ignorance in the kindest way. I was very grateful."

There was something in her tone that made him look at her questioningly.

"I think," he said, "your gratitude is easily earned."

"Oh, no," she retorted; "I am the most ungrateful of beings. Isn't that uncle sitting there?" she added, quickly, to change the subject.

He looked up.

"Yes, he is hard at work. I did not think I should have won him. It was my sister's name that worked the magic charm."

"He is fond of your sister," said Stella, thoughtfully.

His eyes were on her in an instant.

"He has spoken of her?" he said.

Stella could have bitten her tongue out for the slip.

"Yes," she said. "He—he told me about her—I asked him whose house it was upon the hills."

"Meaning the Hall?" he said, pointing with his whip.

"Yes, and he told me. I knew by the way he spoke of your sister that he was fond of her. Her name is Lilian, is it not?"

"Yes," he said, "Lilian," and the name left his lips with soft tenderness. "I think every one who knows her loves her. This picture is for her."

Stella glanced up at his face; anything less imperious at that moment it would be impossible to imagine.

"Lady Lilian is fond of pictures?" she said.

"Yes," he said; "she is devoted to art in all its forms. Yes, that little sketch will give her more pleasure than—than—I scarcely know what to say. What are women most fond of?"

Stella laughed.

"Diamonds, are they not?"

"Are you fond of them?" he said. "I think not."

"Why not?" she retorted. "Why should I not have the attributes of my sex? Yes, I am fond of diamonds. I am fond[47] of everything that is beautiful and costly and rare. I remember once going to a ball at Florence."

He looked at her.

"Only to see it!" she exclaimed. "I was too young to be seen, and they took me in a gallery overlooking the great salon; and I watched the great ladies in their beautiful dresses and shining gems, and I thought that I would give all the world to be like one of them; and the thought spoiled my enjoyment. I remember coming away crying; you see it was so dark and solitary in the great gallery, and I felt so mean and insignificant." And she laughed.

He was listening with earnest interest. Every word she said had a charm for him; he had never met any girl—any woman—like her, so frank and open-minded. Listening to her was like looking into a crystal lake, in which everything is revealed and all is bright and pure.

"And are you wiser now?" he asked.

"Not one whit!" she replied. "I should like now, less than then, to be shut up in a dark gallery and look on at others enjoying themselves. Isn't that a confession of an envious and altogether wicked disposition?"

"Yes," he assented, with a strange smile barely escaping from under his tawny mustache. "I should be right in prophesying all sorts of bad endings to you."

As he spoke he opened the gate for her, driving the dogs back with a crack of his whip so that she might pass first—a small thing, but characteristic of him.

The painter looked up.

"Keep those dogs off my back, Leycester," he said. "Well, Stella, have you concocted your poison?"

Stella went and looked over his shoulder.

"Yes, uncle," she said.

"You have been long enough to make twenty indigestible compounds," he said, gazing at the view he was sketching.

Stella bent her head, to hide the blush which rose as she remembered how slowly they had walked across the meadows.

"How are you getting on?" said Lord Leycester.

The old man grunted.

"Pretty well; better than I shall now you have come to fidget about."

Lord Leycester laughed.

"A pretty plain hint that our room is desired more than our company, Miss Etheridge. Can we not vanish into space?"

Stella laughed and sank down on the grass.

"It is uncle's way of begging us to stay," she said.

Lord Leycester laughed, and sending the dogs off, flung himself down almost at her feet.

"Did I exaggerate?" he said, pointing his whip at the view.

"Not an atom," replied Stella. "It is beautiful—beautiful, and that is all that one can find to say."

"I wish you would be content to say it and not insist upon my painting it," replied Mr. Etheridge.

Lord Leycester sprang to his feet.

[48]

"That is the last straw. We will not remain to be abused, Miss Etheridge," he said.

Stella remained immovable. He came and stood over her, looking down at her with wistful eagerness in silence.

"What lovely woods," she said. "You were right; they are carpeted with primroses. We have none in our meadow."

"Would you like to go and get some?" he asked.

Stella turned her face up to him.

"Yes, but I don't care to swim across."

He smiled, and went down to the bank, unfastened a boat, and leaping into it, called to her.

Stella sprang to her feet with the impulsive delight of a girl at the sight of a boat, when she had expected nothing better than rushes.

"Is it a boat—really?" she exclaimed.

"Come and see," he said.

She went down to the water's edge and looked at it.

"How did it come there?" she asked.

"I pay a fairy to drop a boat from the skies whenever I want it."

"I see," said Stella, gravely.

He laughed.

"How did you think I came across? Did you think I swam?" and he arranged a cushion.

She laughed.

"I forgot that; how stupid of me."

"Will you step in?" he said.

Stella looked back at her uncle, and hesitated a moment.

"He will assure you that I shall not drown you," he said.

"I am not afraid—do you think I am afraid?" she said, scornfully.

"Yes, I think that at this moment you are trembling with nervousness and dread."

She put her foot—he could not help seeing how small and shapely it was—on the gunwale, and he held out his hand and took hers; it was well he did so, for the boat was only a small, lightly built gig, and her sudden movement had made it rock.

As it was, she staggered slightly, and he had to take her by the arm. So, with one hand grasping her hand and the other her arm, he held her for a moment—for longer than a moment. Then he placed her on the cushion, and seating himself, took up the sculls and pushed off.

Stella leant back, and of course dropped one hand in the water. Not one woman out of twenty who ever sat in a boat can resist that impulse to have closer communion with the water; and he pulled slowly across the stream.

The sun shone full upon them, making their way a path of rippling gold, and turning Stella's hair into a rich brown.

Little wonder that, as he sat opposite her, his eyes should rest on her face, and less that, thus resting, its exquisite beauty and freshness and purity should sink into the soul of him to whom beauty was the one thing worth living for.

Unconscious of his rapt gaze, Stella leant back, her eyes fixed[49] on the water, her whole attention absorbed by its musical ripple as it ran through her fingers.

In silence he pulled the sculls, slowly and noiselessly; he would not have spoken and broken the spell for worlds. Before him, as he looked upon her, rose the picture of which he had spoken to his sister last night.

"But more beautiful," he mused—"more beautiful! How lost she is! She has forgotten me—forgotten everything. Oh, Heaven! if one were to waken her into love!"

For an instant, at the thought, the color came into his face and the fire to his eyes; then a half guilty, half repentful feeling struck through him.

"No, it would be cruel—cruel: and yet to see the azure light shining in those eyes—to see those lips half parted with the breath of a great passion, would be worth—what? It would make amends for all that a man might suffer, though he died the next moment, if those eyes smiled, if those lips were upturned, for love of him!"

So lost were they that the touching of the boat and the bank made them start.

"So soon," murmured Stella. "How beautiful it is! I think I was dreaming."

"And I know that I was," he said, with a subtle significance, as he rose and held out his hand. But Stella sprang lightly on shore without accepting it. He tied up the boat and followed her; she was already on her knee, picking the yellow primroses.

Without a word, he followed her example. Sometimes they were so near together that she could feel his breath stirring her hair—so near that their hands almost met.

At last she sank on to the mossy ground with a laugh, and, pointing to her hat, which was full of the spring earth-stars, said laughingly:

"What ruthless pillage! Do not pick any more; it is wanton waste!"

"Are you sure you have plenty?" he said. "Why hesitate when there are such millions?"

"No, no more!" she said. "I feel guilty already!"

He glanced at the handful he had gathered, and she saw the glance and laughed.

"You do not know what to do with those you have, and still want more. See, you must tie them in bundles.

"Show me," he said, and he threw himself down beside her.

She gathered them up into bundles, and tied them with a long stem of fern, and he tried to do the same, but his hands, white and slender as they were, were not so deft as hers, and he held the huge bundle to her.

"You must tie it," he said.

She laughed and put the fern round, but it broke, and the primroses fell in a golden shower over their hands. They both made a grasp at them, and their hands met.

For a moment Stella laughed, then the laugh died away, for he still held her hand, and the warmth of his grasp seemed stealing[50] upward to her heart. With something like an effort she drew her hand away, and sprang to her feet.

"I—I must go," she said. "Uncle will wonder where I have gone," and she looked down at the water with almost frightened eagerness.

"He will know you are here, quite safe," he said. "Wait, do not go this moment. Up there, above our heads, we can see the river stretching away for miles. It is not a step; will you come?"

She hesitated a moment, then she turned and walked beside him between the trees.

A step or two, as he said, and they reached a sort of plateau, crowned by a moss-grown rock, in which some rough steps were hewn. He sprang up the steps and reached the top, then bent down and held out his hand.

Stella hesitated a moment.

"It will repay your trouble; come," he said, and she put her hand in his and her foot on the first step, and he drew her up beside him.

"Look!" he said.

An exclamation of delight broke from Stella's lips.

"You are not sorry you came?"

"I did not think it would be so lovely," she said.

He stood beside her, not looking at the view, but at her dark eyes dilating with dreamy rapture—at her half-parted lips, and the sweet, clear-cut profile presented to him.

She turned suddenly, and to hide the look of admiration he raised his hand and pointed out the objects in the view.

"And what is that little house there?" asked Stella.

"That is one of the lodges," he said.

"One of the lodges—one of your own lodges, you mean?" she asked.

He nodded lightly, "Yes."

"And all this between here and that lodge belongs to you?"

"No, not an inch," he said, laughing. "To my father."

"It is a great deal," she said.

"Too much for one man, you think?" he said, with a smile. "A great many other people think so too. I don't know what you would think if you knew how much we Wyndwards have managed at one time or the other to lay our acquiring grasp on. This is one of our smallest estates," he said, simply.

Stella looked at the view dreamily.

"One of the smallest? Yes, I have heard that you are very rich. It must be very nice."

"I don't know," he said. "You see one cannot tell until one has been poor. I don't think there is anything in it. I don't think one is any the happier. There is always something left to long for."

She turned her dark eyes on him with a smile of incredulity.

"What can you possibly have to long for?" she said.

He looked at her with a strange smile; then suddenly his face grew grave and wistful—almost sad, as it seemed to her.

"You cannot guess, and I cannot tell you; but believe me that,[51] as I stand here, there is an aching void in my heart, and I do long for something very earnestly."

The voice was like music, deep and thrilling; she listened and wondered.

"And you should be so happy," she said, almost unconsciously.

"Happy!" he echoed, and his dark eyes rested on hers with a strange expression that was half-mocking, half-sad. "Do you know what the poets say?"

"'Count no man happy till he dies,' do you mean?" said Stella.

"Yes," he said. "I do not think I know what happiness means. I have been pursuing it all my life; sometimes have been within reach of it but it has always evaded me—always slipped from my grasp. Sometimes I have resolved to let it go—to pursue it no longer; but fate has decreed that man shall always be seeking for the unattainable—that he who once looks upon happiness with the eyes of desire, who stretches out his hands toward her, shall pursue her to the end."

"And—but surely some get their desire."

"Some," he said, "to find that the prize is not worth the race they have run for it; to find that they have wearied of it when it is gained; to find that it is no prize at all, but a delusive blank; all dead sea fruit that turns to dust upon the lips."

"Not all; surely not all!" she murmured, strangely moved by his words.

"No; not all," he said, with a hidden light in his eyes that she did not see. "To some there comes a moment when they know that happiness—real true happiness—lies just beyond their grasp. And the case of rich men is more to be pitied than all others. What would you say if I told you that it was mine?"

She looked up at him with a gentle smile, not on her lips but in her eyes.

"I should say that I was very sorry," she murmured. "I should say that you deserved——" she stopped short, smitten by sudden remembrance of all she had heard of him.

He filled up the pause with a laugh: a laugh such as she had not heard upon his lips till now.

"You were right to stop," he said. "If I get all the happiness I deserve—well, no man will envy me."

"Let us go down now," said Stella, gently; "my uncle——"

He leapt down, and held up his hand.