Part 19 (2/2)
”It may be that I am going to make him profoundly miserable As punishment for your lecture, I shall refuse to tell you anything about it,” she replied; and then she added: ”You will ride with me this morning, Norman?”
”Yes. I will ride with you, Philippa. I cannot tell you how thankful and relieved I am.”
”To find that you have not made quite so many conquests as you thought,”
she said. ”It was a sorry jest to play after all; but you provoked me to it, Norman. I want you to make me a promise.”
”That I will gladly do,” he replied. Indeed he was so relieved so pleased, so thankful to be freed from the load of self-reproach that he would have promised anything.
Her face grew earnest. She held out her hand to him.
”Promise me this, Norman,” she said--”that, whether I remain Philippa L'Estrange or become d.u.c.h.ess of Hazlewood--no matter what I am, or may be--you will always be the same to me as you are now--my brother, my truest, dearest, best friend. Promise me.”
”I do promise, Philippa, with all my heart,” he responded. ”And I will never break my promise.”
”If I marry, you will come to see me--you-will trust in me--you will be just what you are now--you will make my house your home, as you do this?”
”Yes--that is, if your husband consents,” replied Lord Arleigh.
”Rely upon it, my husband--if I ever have one--will not dispute my wishes,” she said. ”I am not the model woman you dream of. She, of course, will be submissive in everything; I intend to have my own way.”
”We are friends for life, Philippa,” he declared; ”and I do not think that any one who really understands me will ever cavil at our friends.h.i.+p.”
”Then, that being settled, we will go at once for our ride. How those who know me best would laugh, Norman, if they heard of the incident of the Puritan maiden! If I go to another fancy ball this season, I shall go as _Priscilla_ of Plymouth and you had better go as _John Alden_.”
He held up his hands imploringly.
”Do not tease me about it any more, Philippa,” he remarked, ”I cannot quite tell why, but you make me feel both insignificant and vain; yet nothing would have been further from my mind than the ideas you have filled it with.”
”Own you were mistaken, and then I will be generous and forgive you,”
she said, laughingly.
”I was mistaken--cruelly so--weakly so--happily so,” he replied. ”Now you will be generous and spare me.”
He did not see the bitter smile with which she turned away, nor the pallor that crept even to her lips. Once again in his life Lord Arleigh was completely deceived.
A week afterward he received ”a note in Philippa's handwriting it said, simply:
”Dear Norman: You were good enough to plead the duke's cause. When you meet him next, ask him if he has anything to tell you.
Philippa L'Estrange.”
What the Duke of Hazlewood had to tell was that Miss L'Estrange had promised to be his wife, and that the marriage was to take place in August. He prayed Lord Arleigh to be present as his ”best man” on the occasion.
On the same evening Lady Peters and Miss L'Estrange sat in the drawing-room at Verdun House, alone. Philippa had been very restless.
She had been walking to and fro; she had opened her piano and closed it; she had taken up volume after volume and laid it down again, when suddenly her eyes fell on a book prettily bound in crimson and gold, which Lady Peters had been reading.
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