Volume III Part 15 (1/2)
”Now I can forgive anyone for sending me such jewellery as that,” said Lady Mabel. ”It is not the sort of thing one sees in every jeweller's shop.”
Rorie looked at the blue stones with rueful eyes. He knew them well. He had seen them contrasted with ruddy chestnut hair, and the whitest skin in Christendom--or at any rate the whitest he had ever seen, and a man's world can be but the world he knows.
”There is a letter,” said Lady Mabel. ”Now I shall find out all about my mysterious Jersey friend.”
She read the letter aloud.
”Les Tourelles, Jersey, July 25th.
”Dear Lady Mabel,--I cannot bear that your wedding-day should go by without bringing you some small token of regard from your husband's old friend. Will you wear these earrings now and then, and believe that they come from one who has nothing but good wishes for Rorie's wife?--Yours very truly,
”VIOLET TEMPEST.”
”Why, they are actually from your old playfellow!” cried Mabel, with a laugh that had not quite a genuine ring in its mirth. ”The young lady who used to follow the staghounds, in a green habit with bra.s.s b.u.t.tons, ever so many years ago, and who insisted on calling you Rorie. She does it still, you see. How very sweet of her to send me a wedding-present.
I ought to have remembered. I heard something about her being sent off to Jersey by her people, because she had grown rather incorrigible at home.”
”She was not incorrigible, and she was not sent off to Jersey,” said Roderick grimly. ”She left home of her own free will; because she could not hit it with her stepfather.”
”That is another way of expressing it, but I think we both mean pretty much the same thing,” retorted Mabel. ”But I don't want to know why she went to Jersey. She has behaved very sweetly in sending me such a pretty letter; and when she is at home again I shall be very happy to see her at my garden-parties.”
Lord Mallow had no share in this conversation, for the Duke had b.u.t.tonholed him, and was giving him a detailed account of the cart-horse's symptoms.
The little party dispersed soon after this, and did not foregather again until just before dinner, when the people who had been to see the ruins were all a.s.sembled, full of their day's enjoyment, and of sundry conversational encounters which they had had with the natives of the district. They gave themselves the usual airs which people who have been laboriously amusing themselves inflict upon those wiser individuals who prefer the pa.s.sive pleasure of repose, and made a merit of having exposed themselves to the meridian sun, in the pursuit of archaeological knowledge.
Lady Mabel looked pale and weary all that evening. Roderick was so evidently distrait that the good-natured Duke thought that he must be worrying himself about the cart-horse, and begged him to make his mind easy, as it was possible the animal might even yet recover.
Later on in the evening Lady Mabel and Lord Mallow sat in the conservatory and talked Irish politics, while Rorie and the younger members of the house party played Nap. The conservatory was deliciously cool on this summer evening, dimly lighted by lamps that were half hidden among the palms and orange-trees. Lady Mabel and her companion could see the stars s.h.i.+ning through the open doorway, and the mystical darkness of remote woods. Their voices were hushed; there were pauses of silence in their talk. Never had the stirring question of Home Rule been more interesting.
Lady Mabel did not go back to the drawing-room that evening. There was a door leading from the conservatory to the hall; and, while Rorie and the young people were still somewhat noisily engaged in the game of Napoleon, Lady Mabel went out to the hall with Lord Mallow in attendance upon her. When he had taken her candle from the table and lighted it, he paused for a moment or so before he handed it to her, looking at her very earnestly all the while, as she stood at the foot of the staircase, with saddened face and downcast eyes, gravely contemplative of the stair-carpet.
”Is it--positively--too late?” he asked.
”You must feel and know that it is so,” she answered.
”But it might have been?”
”Yes,” she murmured with a faint sigh, ”it might have been.”
He gave her the candlestick, and she went slowly upstairs, without a word of good-night. He stood in the hall, watching the slim figure as it ascended, aerial and elegant in its palely-tinted drapery.
”It might have been,” he repeated to himself: and then he lighted his candle and went slowly up the staircase. He was in no humour for billiards, cigars, or noisy masculine talk to-night. Still less was he inclined to be at ease and to make merry with Roderick Vawdrey.
CHAPTER VIII.
Wedding Bells.
Vixen had been more than a year in the island of Jersey. She had lived her lonely and monotonous existence, and made no moan. It was a dreary exile; but it seemed to her that there was little else for her to do in life but dawdle through the long slow days, and bear the burden of living; at least until she came of age, and was independent, and could go where she pleased. Then there would be the wide world for her to wander over, instead of this sea-girdled garden of Jersey. She had reasons of her own for so quietly submitting to this joyless life. Mrs.
Winstanley kept her informed of all that was doing in Hamps.h.i.+re, and even at the Queen Anne house at Kensington. She knew that Roderick Vawdrey's wedding-day was fixed for the first of August. Was it not better that she should be far away, hidden from her small world; while those marriage bells were ringing across the darkening beech-woods?