Part 14 (1/2)

'I have the divine right of my own deep love--of heart which cries out to heart. Do you think there is no magnetic power in true love which can divine the answering love in another? Lesbia, call me an insolent c.o.xcomb if you like, but I know you love me, and that you and I may be utterly happy together. Oh, why--why do you shrink from me, my beloved; why withhold yourself from my arms! Oh, love, let me hold you to my heart--let me seal our betrothal with a kiss!'

'Betrothal--no, no; not for the world,' cried Lesbia. 'Lady Maulevrier would cast me off for ever; she would curse me.'

'What would the curse of an ambitious woman weigh against my love? And I tell you that her anger would be only a pa.s.sing tempest. She would forgive you.'

'Never--you don't know her.'

'I tell you she would forgive you, and all would be well with us before we had been married a year. Why cannot you believe me, Lesbia?'

'Because I cannot believe impossibilities, even from your lips,' she answered sullenly.

She stood before him with downcast eyes, the tears streaming down her pale cheeks, exquisitively lovely in her agitation and sorrow. Yes, she did love him; her heart was beating pa.s.sionately; she was longing to throw herself on his breast, to be folded upon that manly heart, in trust in that brave, bright look which seemed to defy fortune. Yes, he was a man born to conquer; he was handsome, intellectual, powerful in all mental and physical gifts. A man of men. But he was, by his own admission, a very obscure and insignificant person, and he had no money.

Life with him meant a long fight with adverse circ.u.mstances; life for his wife must mean patience, submission, long waiting upon destiny, and perhaps with old age and grey hairs the tardy turning of Fortune's wheel. And was she for this to resign the kingdom that had been promised to her, the giddy heights which she was born to scale, the triumphs and delights and victories of the great world? Yes, Lesbia loved this fortuneless knight; but she loved herself and her prospects of promotion still better.

'Oh, Lesbia, can you not be brave for my sake--trustful for my sake? G.o.d will be good to us if we are true to each other.'

'G.o.d will not be good to me if I disobey my grandmother. I owe her too much; ingrat.i.tude in me would be doubly base. I will speak to her. I will tell her all you have said, and if she gives me the faintest encouragement----'

'She will not; that is a foregone conclusion. Tell her all, if you like; but let us be prepared for the answer. When she denies the right of your heart to choose its own mate, then rise up in the might of your womanhood and defy her. Tell her, ”I love him, and be he rich or poor, I will share his fate;” tell her boldly, bravely, n.o.bly, as a true woman should; and if she be adamant still, proclaim your right to disobey her worldly wisdom rather than the voice of your own heart. And then come to me, darling, and be my own, and the world which you and I will face together shall not be a bad world. I will answer for that. No trouble shall come near you. No humiliation shall ever touch you. Only believe in me.'

'I can believe in you, but not in the impossible,' answered Lesbia, with measured accents.

The voice was silver-sweet, but pa.s.sing cold. Just then there was a rustling among the pine branches, and Lesbia looked round with a startled air.

'Is there any one listening?' she exclaimed. 'What was that?'

'Only the breath of heaven. Oh, Lesbia, if you were but a little less wise, a little more trustful. Do not be a dumb idol. Say that you love me, or do not love me. If you can look me in the face and say the last, I will leave you without another word. I will take my sentence and go.'

But this was just what Lesbia could not do. She could not deny her love; and yet she could not sacrifice all things for her love. She lifted the heavy lids which veiled those lovely eyes, and looked up at him imploringly.

'Give me time to breathe, time to think,' she said.

'And then will you answer me plainly, truthfully, without a shadow of reserve, remembering that the fate of two lives hangs on your words.'

'I will.'

'Let it be so, then. I'll go for a ramble over the hills, and return in time for afternoon tea. I shall look for you on the tennis lawn at half-past four.'

He took her in his arms, and this time she yielded herself to him, and the beautiful head rested for a few moments upon his breast, and the soft eyes looked up at him in confiding fondness. He bent and kissed her once only, but a kiss that meant for life and death. In the next moment he was gone, leaving her alone among the pine trees.

CHAPTER XI.

'IF I WERE TO DO AS ISEULT DID.'

Lady Maulevrier rarely appeared at luncheon. She took some slight refection in her morning-room, among her books and papers, and in the society of her canine favourites, whose company suited her better at certain hours than the noisier companions.h.i.+p of her grandchildren. She was a studious woman, loving the silent life of books better than the inane chatter of everyday humanity. She was a woman who thought much and read much, and who lived more in the past than the present. She lived also in the future, counting much upon the splendid career of her beautiful granddaughter, which should be in a manner a lengthening out, a renewal of her own life. She looked forward to the day when Lesbia should reign supreme in the great world, a famous beauty and leader of fas.h.i.+on, her every act and word inspired and directed by her grandmother, who would be the shadow behind the throne. It was possible--nay, probable--that in those days Lady Maulevrier would herself re-appear in society, establish her salon, and draw around her closing years all that is wittiest, best, and wisest in the great world.

Her ladys.h.i.+p was reposing in her low reading-chair, with a volume of Tyndall on the book-stand before her, when the door was opened softly and Lesbia came gliding in, and seated herself without a word on the ha.s.sock at her grandmother's feet. Lady Maulevrier pa.s.sed her hand caressingly over the girl's soft brown hair, without looking up from her book.

'You are a late visitor,' she said; 'why did you not come to me after breakfast?'