Part 23 (2/2)
”Yes; the d.u.c.h.ess told me the whole story. I understand it, and am truly grieved for you; I know the duke's share in it and all.”
He saw her face grow pale even to the lips.
”And yet you would be my friend--you whom people call proud--you whose very name is history! I cannot believe it, Lord Arleigh.”
There was a wistful look in her eyes, as though she would fain believe that it were true, yet that she was compelled to plead even against herself.
”We cannot account for likes or dislikes,” he said; ”I always look upon them as nature's guidance as to whom we should love, and whom we should avoid. The moment I saw you I--liked you. I went home, and thought about you all day long.”
”Did you?” she asked, wonderingly. ”How very strange!”
”It does not seem strange to me,” he observed. ”Before I had looked at you three minutes I felt as though I had known you all my life. How long have we been talking here? Ten minutes, perhaps--yet I feel as though already there is something that has cut us off from the rest of the world, and left us alone together. There is no accounting for such strange feelings as these.”
”No,” she replied, dreamily, ”I do not think there is.”
”Perhaps,” he continued, ”I may have been fanciful all my life; but years ago, when I was a boy at school, I pictured to myself a heroine such as I thought I should love when I came to be a man.”
She had forgotten her sweet, half sad shyness, and sat with faint flush on her face, her lips parted, her blue eyes fixed on his.
”A heroine of my own creation,” he went on; ”and I gave her an ideal face--lilies and roses blended, rose-leaf lips, a white brow, eyes the color of hyacinths, and hair of pale gold.”
”That is a pretty picture,” she said, all unconscious that it was her own portrait he had sketched.
His eyes softened and gleamed at the _navete_ of the words.
”I am glad you think so. Then my heroine had, in my fancy, a mind and soul that suited her face--pure, original, half sad, wholly sweet, full of poetry.”
She smiled as though charmed with the picture.
”Then I grew to be a youth, and then to be a man,” he continued. ”I looked everywhere for my ideal among all the fair women I knew. I looked in courts and palaces, I looked in country houses, but I could not find her. I looked at home and abroad, I looked at all times and all seasons, but I could not find her.”
He saw a shadow come over the sweet, pure face as though she felt sorry for him.
”So time pa.s.sed, and I began to think that I should never find my ideal, that I must give her up, when one day, quite unexpectedly, I saw her.”
There was a gleam of sympathy in the blue eyes.
”I found her at last,” he continued. ”It was one bright June morning; she was sitting out among the roses, ten thousand times fairer and sweeter than they.”
She looked at him with a startled glance; not the faintest idea had occurred to her that he was speaking of her.
”Do you understand me?” he asked.
”I--I am frightened, Lord Arleigh.”
”Nay, why should you fear? What is there to fear? It is true. The moment I saw you sitting here I knew that you were my ideal, found at last.”
”But,” she said, with the simple wonder of a child. ”I am not like the portrait you sketched.”
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