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 Another Random Document on
Scribd Without Any Related Topics
The horses are fresh and eager for work, and for a time he drives,
but presently he puts the reins in her hands.
"According to promise," he says. "Hold 'em tight while I," and he
bends down and searches for something under the box seat.
"Oh, how beautifully they go," she says, half to herself. "What is it
you are looking for, your gra—Lord Yorke?"
"Never you mind," he says. "You look after your horses."
Leslie laughs, and laughs again as he comes up, red in the face, and
with a Scotch wrap in his hand.
"Are you so cold?" she asks.
"Very," he responds. "It's going to snow, I fancy."
"Why, it is quite close," she says, removing her eyes for a moment
from the horses to glance at him with smiling surprise. "It seems
hotter than it has been all day."
As she speaks, a low rumbling rolls over their heads and a flash of
light cuts across the sky.
"That is lightning," she exclaims.
"It was rather like it," he admits, dryly.
"Did you bring any gamps?" asks the duke.
"Nary one," replies Yorke, grimly. "Slang away, I can bear it—and I
deserve it," he mutters, glancing at the girlish figure beside him.
Mr. Lisle looks round absently.
"I'm afraid—it—it is going to rain," he says.
In another minute it is raining. Yorke takes the rug in both hands,
and deftly wraps it round Leslie.
"Oh, no, please," she says, and she glances behind her. "Give it to
him—Mr. Temple."
"It would be more than my life is worth," he says. "I dare not offer it
to him. Please let me fasten it. How shall I? Give me a hairpin!"
"You must hold the horses, then," she says.
"I can see one sticking out," he says.
"Well, take it," she responds, innocently and all unconsciously, for
she is thinking of her driving far more than the rain or the rug or
anything else.
He looks at her intent and absorbed face, and puts up his hand and
draws the hairpin from its soft and silken nest, and she, unheeding,
does not know that his hand trembles, actually trembles, as he
fastens the rug round her.
"Now give me the reins," he says, "and keep your head down; we
are in for a regular storm."
As he speaks, the rain comes down with a whiz, as if it meant to
wash them off the box.
Leslie laughs.
"After all, it is a proper picnic," she says.
But the next instant her laugh dies away, for the heavens seem to
open before them, a peal of thunder roars like the discharge of a
park of artillery just above their heads, and the horses, startled and
frightened, stop dead short, then rear up on end.
The carriage sways, and for a moment it seems as if it were going
over, and Leslie is forced up close against Yorke.
He holds the terrified horses with one strong hand, against him.
"All right," he says, in a low voice. "Don't be afraid, Leslie!" His arm
holds her, supports her, presses her to him, perhaps unconsciously.
"You are quite safe, dearest, dearest."
Low as his voice is, Leslie hears him, or—she asks herself—is it only
fancy?
For a moment, one brief moment, she cowers, nestling to him, her
face hidden against his shoulder; then with a start, she draws away,
and with her face red and white by turns, looks straight before her.
And through the roar of thunder, and the hissing of the rain, she
hears those words re-echoing, "Leslie, dearest—dearest!"
 CHAPTER X.
YORKE IN LOVE.
The great changes of our lives come suddenly. Swift as the
lightning's flash is the revelation to Yorke that he loves the girl who
sits beside him.
Half-unconsciously he had uttered the words which are still ringing in
her ears, but he knows that his heart has been saying "dearest" all
day long.
He knows now what that strange, peaceful happiness meant which
made him feel as if he would be content to pass the rest of his life
by her side in the hermit's cell.
And he knows that this is no transient passion which will have its
day, and pass, leaving not a wreck behind, as so many passions
alas! have passed with him. To every one of the sons of men, it is
said, comes once in his life, the great all-absorbing love which wipes
out all others, and which shall make of all his days an endless misery
or a surpassing happiness; and this love has come to Yorke.
In an instant, as it were, it seems to have wrought a change in him.
Gay, reckless, thoughtless, an hour ago, he is serious enough now.
His heart is beating quickly, furiously; his strong hands tremble as he
holds the terrified horses, and urges them on with whip and voice;
and yet, though apparently engrossed with them, thinking more of
the silent girl beside him.
She is so silent! She scarcely seems to move, but sits, with the rug
concealing her face, her head bent down.
"What have I said?" he asks himself; in truth he scarcely knows. It is
as if his heart had suddenly become the master of his voice and
actions, and had made a helpless slave of him.
If she would only speak! He longs past all description to hear her
voice, even though it should be in anger and indignation; but she
does not speak. He lifts his face to the sweeping rain and almost
welcomes it. The storm is in harmony with the tempest of awakened
passion which rages in his breast. He does not dare to speak to her,
scarcely ventures to look her way, and he sits as silent as herself,
while the horses dash along the streaming road and up the
Portmaris street.
"We might have come by boat, there is water enough," says the
duke, dryly. "Miss Lisle, I am afraid you are wet through. Pray get in
at once, or you will catch cold."
She stands up on the box, and Yorke goes to unfasten the wrap, but
she is too quick for him, and, taking out the hairpin, lets the rug fall,
and stands before his eyes, her slim, graceful figure swayed a little
away from him as if she did not want him to touch her.
He gets down, and offers her his hand, but she springs from the box
lightly, stands a moment, then with a low-voiced "Good-night—and
thank you," follows her father into the house.
The duke looks after her.
"The poor child is wet through and chilled," he says, sympathetically.
"It's a pity you didn't think of a mackintosh, Yorke. What are you
going to do with the rig and horses?"
Yorke looks down at him as if he scarcely heard or understood, for a
moment; then he says, absently, like a man only half recovered from
a stunning blow:
"The horses—oh, I'll find a place for them."
"You might take them to the station, your grace; they could put
them up there in the good stable," suggests Grey.
"Yes, yes; and look sharp," says the duke. "We'll have some dinner
by the time you are back. Will you have a glass of whisky and water
before you go?"
But Yorke shakes his head almost impatiently.
"I'm all right," he says, curtly, and he drives off.
He sees the horses made comfortable in the stable at the station,
and helps to rub them down and litter them; then he turns back.
But at the top of the street he pauses. He cannot face the duke just
yet. There is that in his face, in his voice, he knows, which will reveal
his secret.
He turns off to the right, and makes his way along a little used road
toward the sea.
He is wet through, but he does not notice it; he scarcely knows
where he is going until he stands on the edge of the sea.
"I love her!" he murmurs. "Yes, I love her. There is no woman in all
the world like her! So good, so gentle, so beautiful."
He thinks of all the girls he has seen, talked with, danced with, and
flirted with; but there is none like Leslie.
"I am a lost man if I do not get her!" he says to himself. "And how
can I get her?" He groans, and pushes his hat off his brow, that is
hot and burning. "She cares nothing for me; why should she? If I
was to ask her to be my wife—my wife! How can I?" And he
shudders as if some black thought had swept down upon him, and
crushed the hope out of him. "How can I? Oh, what a mad,
senseless fool I have been! How we chuck our lives away to find out,
when it is too late, what it is we've lost. If I had met her a year ago
——." He breaks off, and sighs, as he tramps up and down in the
rain. "If I could only wipe out that year! But I can't, I can't, though
I'd give ten years of the life that's left in me to be able to do it! What
would she think—say—if she knew, if I told her? With all her sweet,
childlike ways, and all her innocence and purity, she is a woman, and
the very goodness for which I love her would fight against me! She
looked and spoke like an angel when she was telling me that story
about the hermit. An angel! I'm a nice kind of man to fall in love
with an angel, and want to marry her! I might as well fall in love
with one of those stars." And he looks up despairingly at the
diamond lights that are peering through the rift in the clouds.
"Besides," he mutters, "even if—if that other woman weren't in the
question," and he sets his teeth, "how could I ask her to marry me?
Even if she'd have me—and why should I dare to think that I could
win her love? I'm a pauper and worse. And she thinks me a duke!
That's another thing! I forgot that idiotic business! Oh, I've tied
myself up in every way, and haven't a chance! And yet I love her—I
love her! Leslie!" he repeats the name, as Romeo might have
repeated Juliet's, finding a torturing joy in its music. "No, there's no
hope! Yorke, my boy, you are badly hit. You've laughed at this kind
of thing often enough, but your turn has come. And as there is no
hope for you, you have got to bear it. The best thing you can do is
to clear out in the morning, and blot Portmaris out of the map of
England. I mustn't see her again—never again!"
All his nature protests against this resolve, and his heart aches
badly, very badly; but he squares his shoulders and sets his teeth
hard.
"Yes, that's the only thing to do; to cut and run. There's one
comfort, she won't mind. She won't miss me. God knows what I said
when I felt her face against my breast; but whatever it was, I've
offended her past forgiveness. She wouldn't see me again, I dare
say, if I stayed, and so——." He heaves a sigh, which is very much
like a groan, and turns homeward.
He finds Grey alone in the room when he enters; the dinner things
are still on the table, and Grey looks at him with a rather grave and
startled expression.
"I've saved some dinner, your grace," he says.
"'Your grace' be da—hanged!" says Yorke, almost fiercely.
"Yes, my lord," murmurs Grey. "The duke waited for over an hour,
and he has gone to bed; I was afraid of a chill, my lord. And your
lordship is wet, very wet, still——."
"All right," says Yorke, as politely as he can. "Never mind. Go and
see after the duke, and dinner—oh, yes. Thanks, you need not wait."
He tries to eat, but for once his faithful appetite fails him, and he
pushes his plate away and gets his pipe, that great consoler in all
times of trouble; and this is the worst trouble Yorke Auchester has
ever had.
It is well on into the small hours when weary, but oppressed by a
ghastly wakefulness, he goes to bed, and there he lies, open-eyed
and thoughtful, until the sun floods the room.
He gets up, and as he looks in the glass after his bath, he smiles
grimly.
"Only one night of it!" he says. "And a great many similar ones lie
before me before I get over this! I wonder whether she has been
thinking of me? Why should she? And if she should have been they
wouldn't be pleasant thoughts."
He pulls the blinds aside and looks at the house opposite, wondering
which is her window; and as he does so, the lover's heart-hunger for
a sight of his loved one assails him.
It has still strong possession of him when he goes down the stairs
and into the street; but he fights against it. The best thing he can do
is not to see Leslie Lisle, but to drive Vinson's horses back to
Northcliffe, and take the train from there to London, and—stop
there; stop there till in a round of the folly which has suddenly
grown so senseless and worthless in his eyes, he has dulled the pain
of this, his first real love.
It is early, but Portmaris is alive and very much in evidence. The
fishermen are out on the beach, the women are bustling about, the
children are playing in the road-way. Some with a huge slice of
bread and butter or treacle in their fists; breakfast is evidently a very
movable feast with the entire population.
Yorke stands a moment and looks round with a pang of regret.
"I shall think of this place," he says. "Think of it too often to be
comfortable. Why couldn't I have come here—and to her—a year
ago? What's that song about 'the might have been'? That's how I
feel this morning. Oh, lord!"
He strides on with his head drooping, in an attitude very unlike that
of Yorke Auchester's usual one; and without the last night's opera
song on his lips as is ordinarily the case; and he is near the station,
when he hears the laughter of children ahead of him, and looking
up, sees a group that make his heart leap, and the blood rush to his
face.
Under a great oak in the pretty lane stands no other than Leslie
herself, with a child upheld in her arms, and two others clinging to
the skirts of her pretty, simple morning dress. The child borne aloft
has pulled off her hat, and the sunlight as it comes through the
trees, falls in flecks of light and shadow on her hair and upturned
face. She is laughing the soft, sweet laugh, which, though he should
live to be as old as the old man walking along on the other side of
the road, Yorke will never forget, and—she does not see him.
Shall he turn and go back, go back and leave her forever? Better!
But he cannot, simply cannot. So he goes on slowly, and it is not
until he is close behind her that she hears him.
She turns, the child still held, crowing and struggling in her arms,
and a startled look comes into her eyes, and the color flies to her
face, and then leaves it pale.
Yorke lifts his hat.
"Good-morning," he says.
Her lips move, and her head bends over the child now lying in her
arms, and staring with blue eyes up at the big man who dares to
address "Miss Lethlie." Leslie's lips move; no doubt she says "good-
morning," in response, though he cannot hear her.
"You are early this morning," he says, and he knows that his voice
falters and sounds unnatural, as surely as he knows that his heart is
beating like a steam-hammer, and that the longing to cry to her,
"Leslie, I love you!" is almost irresistible.
"Yes," she says. "It is so beautiful after the rain——."
She stops, for the word has recalled that homeward drive, the
storm, his words—all that she has been thinking of through the long
night.
"Yes," he says, vaguely, stupidly. Then he says, suddenly, "That child
is too heavy for you——."
"Oh, no; I often carry it," she falters, bending still lower over the
pretty face enshrined in the yellow curls.
"But it is," he says. "Let me take it, if it must be carried."
"She would not let you," she says.
"We'll see," he rejoins, scarcely knowing what he is saying; and he
holds out his arms.
The mite stares at him, turns and clutches Leslie for a moment,
then, with the fickleness of its sex, swings round and holds out its
arms to him.
Yorke laughs, and holds it up above his head.
"Now what shall I do with you?" he says, hurriedly. "Take you to
London with me. No?" for the child struggles. "For that is where I
am going." He puts the child down, and it toddles off with the other
two. "Yes, I am going to London, Miss Lisle," he goes on, trying to
speak lightly, carelessly.
"Yes?" she says, with downcast eyes, and she stoops to pick up her
hat. As she does so, he stoops too; they get hold of it together, and
their hands meet.
But for that sudden meeting, that touch of her hand, he could have
gone, and the history of Leslie Lisle would have been a very different
one; but it is the link which the Fates have been wanting to make
their chain complete.
"Leslie!" he cries, scarcely above his breath. "Leslie!" And he takes
both her hands and holds them fast, and looks into her eyes, the
dark, gray eyes which she lifts to him with a swift fear—or is it a
swift joy? mirrored in their clear depths.
"Let—me—go," she falters, with trembling lips.
"No!" he says, desperately. "Not till I have told you that I love you!"
 CHAPTER XI.
AN IMPETUOUS AVOWAL.
"I love you!"
Leslie draws her hands from his grasp, and stands with averted face,
her bosom heaving, her breath coming with difficulty.
It is so sudden, so swift, this declaration, that she is overwhelmed.
The heart of a pure-minded, innocent girl is not unlike a fortress. It
withstands many an attack, and is able to repulse the besiegers until
the one comes who cries "Surrender!" and at the sound of his voice,
before some nameless magic in his presence, her strength goes, the
gate is thrown wide open, and the conqueror marches in.
Leslie had been calm and self-possessed enough when Ralph
Duncombe was pleading his passionate love, and was able to
withstand his urgent prayer, but to Yorke she can find nothing to
say; she can only stand with downcast eyes, her heart beating fast,
and the gates beginning to open!
He takes her hand, but again she draws it from him, and sinking on
to the trunk of a fallen tree, keeps her face, her eyes, from him.
"You are angry?" he says, his usually light and careless voice deep
and earnest enough now. "Well, I deserve that. I—I ought not to
have told you so suddenly. But——," he leans against a tree close
beside her, and looks down at her—"but—well, I couldn't help it. I
was going away this morning." His heart gives a little quiver. "I was
going away from Portmaris—and from you. I've been thinking of you
all night, and I'd decided that that was the best thing to do. It's
sudden and—and startling to you, Leslie—Miss Lisle—but it doesn't
seem so to me. You see, I suppose I have been getting to love you
ever since I saw you on the beach; that's not long ago, I dare say
you'll say, but it seems a long time to me—months, ages."
It is almost as if her own heart were speaking, it is just as she has
felt. She listens in a kind of amazement at the subtle sympathy
between them.
"I have thought of nothing else but you since I saw you. I know that
I shall be the happiest man in the world if—if you'll let me go on
loving you, and try to love me a little in return, and the most
wretched beggar in existence if—if you can't."
He waits a moment, for a strange sensation comes in his throat and
stops his speech, usually so fluent and so free. Then, she still
remaining silent, he goes on with the same grave, earnest tone, and
with the same half-eager, half-hesitating tremor in his voice.
"I've never seen any one like you; I know plenty of women, but
none like you, Leslie—I beg your pardon! You see, I always think of
you as Leslie. If I were to try and tell you how I feel, I should make
a mess of it. I can only say that I love you, I love you!"
With all his ignorance and lack of eloquence he is wise. "I love you,"
sums up all a woman wants or cares to hear.
"Of course," he goes on in a lower voice, daunted by her silence, her
motionless, downcast face, her hidden eyes. "Of course, I can't
expect, don't expect you to understand or—or to care for me even a
little. You haven't known me long enough or—or—anything about
me. All I want is a little hope. If you don't dislike me, right down
dislike me, I'll be glad enough, and I'll try and get you to love me a
little. You can't love me as I love you; that isn't to be thought of!"
"Is it not?" she thinks, but she says nothing.
Up above their heads a thrush is singing melodiously, and the liquid
notes seem to say quite plainly, "I love you." The sun, as it shines
between the leaves of the old oak, and touches Yorke's brave, and
eager face, is surely smiling, "He loves you!" The stream rippling in a
hollow behind them, as it runs laughing down to the sea, is as
certainly murmuring, "Love, love, love!"
"You are angry and—and offended," he says, after a pause, during
which she has been listening to this harmony of nature's voices.
"Well, I deserve it! I ought to have waited until you knew more of
me—but you see, as I said, I could not keep it. I had been thinking
of you, dreaming of you, all night, and then I saw you suddenly, and
I felt as if I must speak, happen what might. If I hadn't seen you, I
dare say I could have found heart enough to clear out, and—and
hold my tongue; but when I saw you with that little one in your
arms, looking so beautiful and so good, just the Leslie I love so
dearly, the words rushed out almost before I knew it—and—and
——," he squares his broad chest, and tilts his hat back with a
gesture which, unlike most gestures, fits him like a glove, "there it
is!"
She does not lift her face, does not open the lips that are trembling
—if he could only see it; and he waits a moment before he says,
sadly, with the lover's despairing note audible through an affected
cheerfulness:
"I'm—I'm sorry that I've made a nuisance of myself, and—and
worried you. Don't be upset and think anything of it. I ought not to
have spoken. I couldn't help loving you, but I might have had the
sense to hold my tongue, and taken myself off without distressing
you. Don't—don't think any more of it. I'm not worthy of you, not
worth a thought from such as you, and—well, I'll say good-by, Miss
Lisle."
He puts his hat straight, and braces himself together, so to speak,
for the parting; then he bends down and takes her hand, the hand
that lies in the lap of the pretty morning frock like a white flower.
She does not draw it away now, and as he holds it, the passion
which raises men to a level with the gods, takes possession of him.
"Leslie!" he says, almost hoarsely. "I can't let you go! I love you too
much. Look at me, speak to me! Unless you hate me, I must stay
and try and make you love me! I can't lose you! You are the only
woman I have ever seen or known that I wanted badly! And I do
want you! I can't live without you! I can't leave you, knowing that I
may never see you again. I can't. Look up, Leslie—dearest—dearest!
Tell me straight, once and for all—I will never come back to worry
you—once and for all, will you try and love me?"
He takes her other hand—he has got both now, and lifts her, actually
lifts her from the tree. She does not resist him, but lets her hands,
trembling, remain willing prisoners, and when her face is on a level
with his, she raises her eyes and looks at him.
There must be something in the dark gray eyes, something under
the shadow of the black lashes, which contains a potent magic; for
at sight of it his heart leaps and the blood rushes to his face, then
leaves it pale with the intensity of a supreme emotion, an incredible
joy, an amazed delight.
"Leslie!" breaks from him, "Leslie!"
Her eyes meet his, steadily, yet shyly, o'er-brimming with the secret
which a maiden keeps, hugs closely, while she can. A secret which
she is loth to part with, but which the loved one's eyes read so
quickly.
"Leslie—do you—ah, dearest, dearest, you do love me!"
She tries to withstand him, to draw away from him, even now; but
his passion is too much for her, and the next instant she is folded in
his arms and her head lies on his breast.
Sing on happy thrush; but no music even your velvet throat can
make shall compare with the music ringing through these two
human hearts. A music which shall not die though these same hearts
may be torn apart and wrung with anguish; a music which for joy or
pain, weal or woe, shall echo through their lives till Death comes
with its great silence.
But it is of life and love and joy, and not death or parting, that they
are thinking now.
He draws her arm within his as if she had belonged to him for years,
or rather as if he wanted to assure himself that she belonged to him,
and they pace slowly along the meadow in the shadow of the trees;
her hat swings on her hand, her eyes lift, heavy with love, to his
face, as he bends down to her his own, eloquent with the devotion
and adoration which fill his heart to overflowing. And yet through all
the storm of passion that tosses in his breast, he has sense enough
to notice how beautiful she is, how lightly and gracefully she walks
by his side, how delicious is the pose of the slender neck, the half
averted face. This flower that he has found and plucked to wear in
his breast is no common weed, but a rare blossom of which an
emperor might be proud.
And she—well, she scarcely realizes yet what this is that has
happened to her; she only knows that a supreme happiness, a novel
joy, so intense as to be almost pain, is thrilling through her; that at
one moment she feels inclined to cry and the next to laugh. He is
hers! She is to be his wife!—his wife! Oh, what a singular dream!
Shall she wake soon? Wake to find that he has gone, and that all
that is now happening is but a phantasy, a vision that will fade and
leave her desolate.
She starts presently and looks up at him.
"Papa! He—will miss me—wonder where I have gone," she says.
"How long have we been here?" and she looks round as if she
expected to see the shades of night falling.
He laughs softly, the laugh of a man so completely happy that time
has ceased to be of consequence.
"I don't know. What does it matter? Your father will know you are all
right. He will think you have gone to the beach, that you are playing
with the children—how fond you are of children, dearest."
"Yes, yes," she murmurs.
"I never saw any one go on with them as you do. No wonder they
love you; but I suppose everything and every one does. By the way
——." He stops, and a faint shadow falls on his face. "I suppose
there have been ever so many fellows who've been in love with
you?"
She makes a little gesture of indifference, as if the thought was too
trivial to be entertained or spoken of. What does it matter who loved
her, now?
"That—that letter and the ring?" he says, inquiringly.
She raises her clear eyes to his.
"Do you want me to tell you about them?" she says, in a low voice,
as if he had the right to search her soul, and she were wishing that
he should do so.
"No, no," he rejoins.
"But I will. He—he who wrote the letter and gave me the ring——."
His face grows cloudier.
"No, no tell me just this. He is nothing to you, you never cared——."
"Never," she says simply. "He has gone—I will tell you."
He presses her face to his to silence her, and a wave of remorse, of
self-reproach, sweeps over him.
"No, no, not a word. That is enough for me. You are mine now and
always and forever."
"Forever!" she breathes.
"And—and," he hurries on. "I have no right to ask you about the
past—the past that did not belong to me. Besides, if I did you would
have the right to ask me, and——." He stops suddenly, pale, and
trembled.
She looks up at him.
"I ask nothing," she says, in a low voice. "You shall tell me all you
want to tell me; just that, and no more."
"My darling, my dearest!" he says, but the trouble still rings in his
voice. Shall he tell her? Now is the time. She would forgive him, love
him none the less, if he told her all now. Shall he throw himself upon
her great love and mercy?
For a moment Yorke's guardian angel hovers near him and whispers,
"Tell her, trust her!" but he thrusts the angel aside and silences her.
"I am not worthy of you, dearest," he says; "I can tell you that
much: no man is worthy of you! But the best of us couldn't love you
better than I do, Leslie. Leslie! Do you know that when I heard your
name it seemed to me the prettiest I had ever heard, and as if it
belonged to some one I had loved for years? Have you any other
name?"
She shakes her head.
"Isn't one enough?" she says, laughing, softly. "I am not big enough
for more than one of two syllables. Why, see, yours is only one, or
have you got more names? Tell me them? How strange; oh, how
strange! I do not know rightly what you are called, and yet——."
"Yet you love me, and promise to be my wife—why don't you say it
right out?" he says.
She shakes her head.
"But your names?"
"Oh," he says, carelessly. "There's a string of 'em. Yorke, Clarence,
Fitzhardinge Auchester—"
"And Rothbury," she says, with sudden gravity.
He starts slightly, and colors. This foolish whim of the duke's! What
is to be done about it now?
"Duke of Rothbury," she goes on, gravely, and with an almost
troubled smile. "I—I had forgotten——."
"Go on forgetting!" he says, drawing her arm closer.
"Yes! I—you will not be angry?"
"At nothing you can say, unless it were, 'I do not love you!'"
"I was going to say that I wish I could—that I wish you were not a
duke, and had no title of any kind!"
"So do I if you wish it," he says. "What does it matter?"
"But will it not matter?" she asks, her brows coming together. "Will
not the people—your people, all those great folks who belong to
you, your relations—be angry with me for—for——."
"Stooping to love such a worthless, useless creature as I? Why
should they?"
"I—I don't know. Yes I do. It is not girls like me, girls with no title or
anything, poor girls who know nothing of the fashionable world, and
have no relations above a plain 'Mr.' who ought to marry noblemen. I
know enough for that. They will be right to be angry and—and
disappointed!"
"Not they!" he says, lightly, but inwardly chafing against the bonds
which his promise to the duke has woven round him. "Let them mind
their own business!"
"But it is their business!" she says. "What a duke, a well-known
nobleman, does, must be everybody's business, and everybody will
be astonished and—sorry."
"Wait until they see you!" he says, confidently.
She looks up at him with eyes dewy with gratitude.
"Do you think everybody will see me with your eyes?" she says, in a
low voice.
"I think every man will envy me and wish himself in my place!" he
responds, promptly.
She shakes her head.
"No no! They will say when they hear of it that you have done
wrong, and say it still more decidedly when they see me. Why, I
shall not know what to do." She laughs half light-heartedly, half-
anxiously. "I shall not know how to begin, even, to play the great
lady; I shall make all sorts of mistakes, and call persons by their
wrong names and titles. Why, I did not know how to address you,
your grace!" And she looks up at him, with parted lips that smile but
tremble a little.
He kisses them tenderly, reassuringly.
"You are only chaffing me," he says. "I can see that. You are the last
girl in the world to be frightened by anybody. You'd just take your
place in any set as naturally as if you'd known it and been in it all
your life. Why, do you think I don't know how proud you are?"
"Am I?" she says, self-questioningly. "Yes; I think I was yesterday—
until—until now. But now my pride seems to have melted into thin
air, and I am only anxious. Do you know what I should do if I were
to see that you were even the least bit ashamed of me?"
"What would you do? Something terrible?"
"I should die of shame for your sake!" she says, slowly.
"If you wait till you die of that complaint you'll live to be as old as—
what's his name, Methuselah!" and he laughs. "Why, I feel so proud
of winning you that I'm trying all I know not to swagger."
She gives his arm just the faintest pressure.
"Oh how foolish, how foolish!" she murmurs. "To be proud of me!"
"I dare say, but I am, you see! I know I've got one of the loveliest
women in the world for a wife, and I shall get beastly conceited, I
expect, and perfectly unendurable. It isn't every man who wins the
love of an angel."
"Ah, don't," she says. "An angel! They will not think me that, but
only a commonplace girl, who knows nothing, and is not fit to be—a
duchess!"
She utters the word as if he did not like it, and he colors again.
"Tell me," she says, after a moment. "Tell me whom I shall have to
fear most. You see, I don't know even if you have a mother—a
father. I don't know anything!"
He is silent a moment, mentally execrating the chain of
circumstances which compel him, force him, to—yes, deceive her!
"They are both dead," he says, truthfully. "I haven't any near
relations—no brother and sister, I mean. I've an uncle, a Lord
Eustace and his two sons who's the next to the dukedom—he and
they."
"After you?" she says. "I don't understand—how should I?"
"It does not matter," he says, hurriedly.
"Tell me about him then—them. Is he nice? Will he be very angry?"
He laughs.
"No, he's not very nice. He's the miser of the family—you see, and
you'll have cause to be ashamed of some of us, dearest! And he
won't care the snap of his fingers whom I marry, or what becomes
of me."
This would sound singularly improbable to Leslie if she were worldly
wise; but she is not. As she says, she simply does not understand or
realize.
"I am sorry," she says. "But I don't think it is true."
"You think they are all so proud and fond of me?" he laughs, with a
faint tinge of bitterness. "Well, then I've other cousins——."
"Mr. Temple?" she says.
"Yes, Mr.—Mr. Temple," he mutters.
"And what will he say?" she asks, with a smile.
"He? Oh——." He stops. Yes, what will the duke say when he hears
that Leslie "has made love," as he will put it, to the supposed duke?
"Look here, dearest," he says, after a pause.
"Why should you or I care a brass farthing what any one thinks or
says! The only one I care about is your father."
"Ah, papa!" she murmurs; and she pictures to herself Mr. Lisle's
amazement and distress at what he will regard as a "fuss" and
disturbance of his placid "artistic" life.
"Are you afraid, Leslie?" Yorke asks.
"I—I don't know. I am all in all to him; and—I do not know what he
will say. He will not be pleased; I mean he will see more plainly than
I do that I am not fit to be your wife, that I am not suitable for a
duchess. And he will say it is so sudden—and it is, is it not? If he
had had a little time to—to get used to it——."
"Let us give him time," he says. "I was going to him now straight
away to ask him to give you to me; but if you think it better, if you
wish it, it shall be exactly as you think and wish, dearest. I will wait
for a little while, until he knows me better, and has got used to me. I
suppose it would startle and upset him if I were to go now."
"Oh, yes, yes!" she says. "You do not know how nervous he is, and
how easily upset."
"I think I can guess," he responds, thoughtfully.
As he has said, it was his intention to go straight to Mr. Lisle and tell
him to go to the duke and announce the engagement; but if Leslie
wishes the announcement delayed—well, it will be as well! Will it not
be better that he should clear up sundry matters in London before
the world hears of his betrothal? Besides, how can he go to Mr. Lisle
without confessing that he has been masquerading as a duke and
explaining why? Before he can do that he must get the duke to
release him from this foolish agreement, which, foolish as it is, still
binds him.
"What shall we do, dearest?" he asks, looking down at her.
"Let us wait," she murmurs. "Let us wait for a day or two, till my
father knows you better, and—and you have had time to think
whether it is well that you should stoop so low——." Her voice dies
away. The mere thought of losing him is an agony.
"Yes," he says, almost solemnly, "we will wait, but not for that
reason, Leslie. I don't want to think about anything of that kind. As
to stooping—well, you will learn some day how I love you, and how
infinitely above me you are. God grant you will not repent having
stooped to me, dearest! Yes, we will wait. After all, it may seem
sudden to them, and we will give them a little time to get used to
it."
"And meanwhile," she says, with a smile, which is half a sigh of
regret, "I will try and realize that I am to be a great lady. It will
seem rather hard at first. There ought to be a school at which one
could learn how to behave. They used to teach girls how to enter a
room, and bow, and courtesy, so that they might not disgrace their
belongings."
He holds her at arm's length, and laughs at her, his eyes alight with
admiration, and love, and worship.
"I've seen you walk down the street and cross the beach, Leslie," he
says. "You don't want any lessons in deportment. I'm thinking you'll
give some of 'em points, and beat them easily. Don't you ever look
in the glass? Don't you know that you are the loveliest, sweetest
woman man ever went mad over?"
"Oh, hush, hush!" she says, putting her finger lightly on his lips, and
hiding her crimson face against his breast. "You must be blind! But—
oh, stay so, dearest, and never, never see me as I really am!"
 CHAPTER XII.
MISS FINETTA.
Two mornings later there rode into the Row at Hyde Park a young
lady whose appearance always attracted a great deal of attention. In
the first place, she was one of the handsomest, if not the
handsomest woman there; in the next, she rode her horse as
perfectly as it is possible for a girl to ride; and, lastly, wherever she
went, on horseback or on foot, this lady was well known; in fact a
celebrity. For she was Miss Finetta.
As she rode in at a brisk canter in the superbly-fitting habit, which
seemed an outer skin of the lithe, supple figure, and followed by her
correctly clad groom, mounted on a horse as good as that of his
mistress, the hats of the men flew off, and the eyeglasses of the
women went up, or their owners looked another way. But to smiles
or frowns, pleasant nods, or icy stares, Finetta returned the same
cool, good-humored smile, the flash of her white teeth and black
eyes.
Every now and then London has a fit. Sometimes it takes the shape
of hero worship, and down the mob go on their knees to some
celebrity, male or female; at others it goes black in the face with
hooting and mud-flinging at some object which it has suddenly taken
it into its head to hate.
At present all London—all fashionable male London—was in fits of
admiration of Finetta; and, strange to say, it had rather more than
the usual excuse for its enthusiasm. For she was a remarkable young
woman.
Not very long ago she had been playing in company with other girls
in the alley in which her father's small coal store was situated; and
was perfectly happy when the organ man came into the alley, and
she and her playmates danced round that popular instrument.
Her mother wanted her to go to school, or at any rate to help her in
the green grocer shop, which was run in conjunction with the coal
store; but Finetta—her name at that time was Sarah Ann, by the
way—declined to go to school, and confined her ministrations in the
shop to stealing the oranges and apples.
Her mother alternately scolded and beat her; her father declared
with emphatic and descriptive language, that she would come to no
good. And Sarah Ann, taking the scoldings, and the beatings, and
the prophecies of a bad end, with infinite good-humor, went on
playing hop-scotch, and dancing round the organ, quite happy in her
ragged skirts and her black tousled hair, and almost as black face
and hands.
But the gods, they say, delight in surprises, and one day an
individual happened to come down that alley who was fated to have
an immense influence on Sarah Ann's career.
He was a well-known dancing-master, a first-rate one, and a
respectable man whose whole life had been devoted to his art and
nothing else.
He saw the group of girls dancing round the organ, stood and
watched them with an absent, reflective smile, and then, suddenly,
his face lit up and his eyes brightened.
Sarah Ann had run out from the green grocer's shop with an orange
she had stolen, and as she tore off the peel with her white teeth, set
to dancing with the rest.
The dancing-master drew aside a little, and kept his eyes on the
lank, angular girl whose dark orbs glowed under the excitement of
the dance, which, unlike that of her companions, was in perfect time
with the "music," and full of a grace which was as natural as a
young Indian's.
Monsieur Faber, he was a Frenchman, went up to her.
"Are you fond of dancing?" he asked.
"Am I! Ain't I?" she retorted, flashing her teeth upon him. "Why, of
course I am! Who ain't?"
"So am I," he said. "Would you like to learn to dance properly?"
"Learn! I can dance already!" she retorted, with a toss of her head.
"Ah, you think so!" he said, smiling, with a kind of good-natured pity.
He looked round; the alley was empty, excepting for the children;
and he signed to the organ man to go on playing, and as he played,
the thin, dapper little Frenchman began to dance. We won't try and
describe it. All the world has seen him, and knows what is meant
when it is said that it was Monsieur Faber at his best.
He seemed to be made of springs, India rubber springs, to be as
light as a thistle down, to tread, float, on air, and to possess the
wind and speed of a dervish.
The black-eyed slip of a girl watched him in breathless amazement
and delight; and when he finished and came on his toe points as if
he had just floated down from the grimy house-tops, she uttered a
long-drawn sigh of envy and admiration.
"I couldn't do that," she said, looking at him sullenly but wistfully.
"No, not yet," he said. "And why, my child? Because you have not
been taught. One does not know how to dance till one learns. Would
you like to learn?"
"Shouldn't I, just!" she responded.
"Take me to your mother, and we will see," he said.
She ran, sprang into the shop.
"Mother, here's a man as dances like—like—an angel," (she said "a
hangel",) "and he's going to teach me."
The poor woman "went for her" with a stick that lay handy, but M.
Faber interposed, and entered on an explanation and a proposal.
He would take Sarah Ann as a pupil, teach her to dance, get her an
engagement at one of the theaters, and in return, she was to be
bound to him as a kind of apprentice, and give him a certain
percentage—it was a fair one—of all she might earn for the next five
years.
Sarah Ann's parents hesitated, but Sarah Ann cut the negotiation
short by coolly announcing her determination, in the event of their
refusing, to accept the offer, to "cut and run," and, knowing that she
was quite capable of carrying out her threat the couple consented.
M. Faber christened her Finetta, and commenced the lessons at
once. He had two daughters of his own, but though they worked
hard, neither they nor any of the other pupils were half so quick at
the enchanting science as Sarah Ann—pardon! Finetta—the daughter
of the small coal man.
She worked hard, almost day and night; it might be said that she
danced in her dreams. She had a good ear for music; "if you only
had a voice, my dear child," M. Faber would murmur, throwing up his
hands, and when she danced it was like a human instrument
playing, moving, in accord and harmony with the mechanical one,
the violin or the piano.
She would do nothing at home in the alley; would not serve in the
shop, or keep the small coal accounts, or wash her face or brush her
hair; but she obeyed M. Faber with an eager alacrity which was
almost pathetic.
"I want to dance better than any one in the world!" she would say,
and her master encouraged her by remarking that it was not unlikely
she would attain her wish.
The months passed on. The angular girl—all legs and wings, like a
pullet—grew into a graceful young woman, with a face, which, if not
beautiful in the regulation way, was singularly striking, with flashing
eyes, and rather large but mobile lips.
"There is a great future before that girl," M. Faber would remark to
his wife, a good-natured woman, who treated all the pupils as if they
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