Lancaster's Choice

CHAPTER XXXVIII

Lady Lancaster was surprised and angry and frightened all in one when she heard that Leonora West had refused Lieutenant De Vere. She made him own the truth when he came to make his hasty adieus, and she roundly abused the "pert minx," as she called her, for her "impertinence and presumption."

"Whom does she think she will get? Does she think she will capture an earl or a duke?" she sneered, and De Vere answered, coldly:

"I do not believe that she has any matrimonial designs on any one, Lady Lancaster. She returns to America in a very few days."

Lady Lancaster was so surprised that she gave vent to her relief in a hasty exclamation:

"Thank Heaven! And I devoutly wish that she had remained there."

"There are more persons than one who will agree with your ladyship there," he said, betrayed into a laugh at her naïveté.

"Whom?" she exclaimed, with a start.

"Myself for one," he answered. "I am not at liberty to implicate any one else."

She gave him a savage glance.

"Do you mean my nephew?" she inquired.

"I said I was not at liberty to name any one else," he replied.

Then he went away, and Lady Lancaster straightway confided the fact of his rejection to all the ladies in the house. They all agreed with her that Leonora West was an impertinent minx to have refused such a splendid offer, but that it was a narrow escape for Lieutenant De Vere and that he had need to be very thankful over it.

In the meantime, Lady Lancaster's guests grew very curious over her nephew's absence. The earl and his daughter talked of going away. They felt secretly aggrieved and resentful over Lord Lancaster's continued absence. It was a palpable slight to them. They did not believe the story of important business in London.

What business could he have?

Lady Lancaster wrote her nephew a sharp, imperative letter of recall. She was on thorns lest her long-cherished scheme should fail. She intimated quite plainly that her patience was exhausted, and that if he did not come to terms soon she would never forgive him, and worse still, she would cut him out of her will.

Lancaster threw that letter angrily into the fire, and swore to himself that he would not go near Lancaster. He would go off to India, and she might buy another husband for her favorite with the money she prized so much. He would have none of it.

In short, our hero was in a most sullen and intractable mood. His heart was sorely wounded, for he had loved Leonora with all the strength and passion of a noble nature. His sorrow for a time completely mastered him. He said to himself that he could not bear to go back now. He must wait a little longer.

Then came De Vere with his strange story. Now indeed all was ended, thought the hopeless lover. She was going away, and he would never even see her again, this bright-eyed, soft-voiced girl who had stolen into his heart almost unawares, who had been so cruel to him, who had so lightly scorned him, and yet whom he loved with all the strong passion of his young manhood.

Once or twice De Vere reiterated his advice that he should go home and marry Lady Adela, but Lancaster only laughed miserably in his face.

"What, with my heart and soul full of another woman?" he said, bitterly. "No, I can not do that much injustice to beautiful Lady Adela. I respect her too much."

Go where he would, do what he might, the face he loved was ever before his fancy. As the time drew near for her departure to America a strange longing took possession of him. He yearned to see the living face of the girl once more, before the wild waves of the blue Atlantic divided them forever as widely as if she were in her grave and he in his. He had no longer any bitterness or anger toward her in his heart since he had learned of that sweet sorrow hidden in her young breast—a sorrow akin to his own.

"I should like to see the man who was so cold and hard that he could not love her," he said to himself. "He must be a stock or a stone indeed. Poor little Leonora! I will go down to Lancaster and bid her good-bye and god-speed on her homeward way. There can be no harm in that. I must see her once more, or I shall go mad with longing for her sweet, fair face and her soft voice."

So in the first heat of sweltering July he went down to Lancaster Park, intent on sating his restless pain with one last look at the beloved face.

CHAPTER XXXIX

He thought himself very fortunate that when he crossed the grounds of Lancaster and entered the house, no one saw him. It was just what he wished.

He went straight to the housekeeper's room, and he found Mrs. West sitting alone in the little sitting-room, going over her account-book with a pen and ink. She rose in some perturbation at the unexpected sight of the master of Lancaster Park.

"I did not know you were in the house, my lord," she said.

"I have just entered it," he replied. "Do not let me disturb you, Mrs. West. I came to see your niece."

"Leonora?" she said, with some surprise. "Oh, dear! I am very sorry, but she is not here;" and she wondered at the sudden paleness that overspread his face.

"Not here?" he stammered. "Is she gone, then? I thought—I understood that you would go with her to America."

"Oh, yes, so I shall," she answered; "but she is not gone there yet. I did not mean that. She will be here this evening."

"Where is she now?" he asked, eagerly, and Mrs. West replied:

"She has gone over to the Abbey ruins to make a sketch this morning."

"Thank you," he said, and hurried out of the room with such precipitancy that the good soul stared after him in amazement and consternation.

"Dear me! what has that poor child done now?" she thought, nervously. "It is a pity she ever came to Lancaster Park. She has but a sorry time of it here. I almost wish she had accepted Lieutenant De Vere. It would have been such a grand match for her, and she is too bright and pretty to remain in my station of life. I wonder what Lord Lancaster can want with her. Is he going to scold her for anything she has done?"

But while she propounded these uneasy questions to herself, our hero was striding across the park and lanes and fields toward the Abbey ruins, every other thought swallowed up in the intense longing to see Leonora again. His heart beat heavily as he came in sight of her, at last, sitting among the green graves, as he had seen her before, but not sketching busily now, for her drawing materials lay beside her on the grass, and her head was bowed on her arm, her face hidden from sight on her black sleeve.

"Poor child!" he thought, compassionately, "she has a sorrow to grieve over as well as I;" and he stepped softly, almost fearing to intrude upon the sacredness of her grief, yet loath to turn back again, for something drew him irresistibly to her side.

The soft echo of his footstep in the grass startled her. She looked up quickly with a low cry. He saw tears upon her face, and her rosy lips were quivering like a child's.

"Leonora!" he cried, and knelt down impulsively by her side.

She was so taken by surprise for a moment that she forgot to draw away the hands he caught daringly in his. She looked up at him, and said, with a catch in her breath:

"I thought you were in London."

"So I was until to-day; but I came down to bid you good-bye," he answered, feasting his hungry sight unrestrainedly on the pale beauty of her lifted face.

"Then you knew that I was going away?" she asked.

"Yes; I saw De Vere in town. He told me," he answered; and a pretty blush crept into her cheeks, and her lashes fell. "And so," he went on, half smiling, "you refused my friend, in spite of all my advice to the contrary?"

She pulled her hands suddenly away.

"Yes, I refused him. Was it worth my while," with a stinging scorn her voice, "to sell my body and soul for paltry gold?"

"No; you were right not to give the hand while your heart was another's," he said, bending down to look into her face that suddenly grew burning crimson as she cried out, sharply:

"Why do you say that? How dare you? Has Lieutenant De Vere told you—"

"Yes, he has told me that you would not marry him because you loved another. He is a thrice better man whoever he may be, Leonora. How much I envy him I need not say," he said, earnestly, carried away by the passion that filled him.

She looked at him with her gray-blue eyes full of wonder.

"You! Lady Adela's intended husband!" she said, bitterly.

"I am not her intended husband," he answered. "Do you think I am less noble than you, Leonora? that I could wrong any one by giving my hand without my heart? No, I do not love Lady Adela, and I can never be her husband. Do you know what I was doing up in London, child?"

"How should I know?" she answered.

"Well, I was trying to exchange into a regiment that is en route for India. I am going to throw over the twenty thousand a year and run away from England and my pain."

"You are?" she said, drawing a long breath and gazing at him with dilated, wondering eyes. "But why, Lord Lancaster?"

"Can you ask me why?" he asked, bitterly.

"Yes, because I can not understand at all why you are going to India. What pain is it you are running away from?"

He started and looked at her keenly. Was it possible that she did not guess? Had she misunderstood him all along? His heart beat with a sudden hope.

"I am fleeing from that misery that the poet has put into immortal doggerel," he said. "Have you never heard of it, Leonora? That pain which is

She looked at him with a new, strange light in her soft eyes that made his heart beat tumultuously.

"Yes, I have heard of it," she said; "but I did not know that you were a victim to its pangs. Who is it that you love, Lord Lancaster?"

"Is it possible you do not know?" he asked; and then he saw that her eyes were shining with hope, and her whole graceful form trembling.

He took the small hands again into his, and she did not offer to take them away.

"I will make a compact with you, Leonora," he said. "If I will tell you whom I love, will you then tell me to whom you have given your heart?"

"Yes, I will tell you," she replied, with a soft, sweet laugh.

"Listen, then," he said. "I have been in love with you, Leonora, ever since that first day I saw you in New York."

"And I with you," she answered, glowing with happy blushes.

"My darling!" he cried, and caught her in his arms and pressed her to his beating heart. "Then why have you been so cruel to me all the time?"

"Because I thought you were going to marry Lady Adela, and I was so jealous and unhappy that I misunderstood you all the while," Leonora confessed, with shy frankness.

CHAPTER XL

"Lady Lancaster will be very angry with us, will she not?" asked Leonora, lifting her head from his breast, where it had been resting a few silent, happy moments.

"I have no doubt she will," he replied, with supreme indifference to his aunt's wrath.

"She will not give you any of her money, I suppose?" pursued the girl.

"No, not a penny, I am sure. But we can do without it, can we not, love?" he asked, fondly.

"But will you never regret that you chose me instead of Lady Adela and your aunt's fortune? Can you bear poverty for my sake?"

"I shall never regret anything, and for the rest I shall never know that I am poor. Having you, my darling, I shall always deem myself rich," he answered, fondly caressing her.

"And you will never be ashamed of me?" anxiously.

"Never, my darling."

"Nor of poor Aunt West, who is only the housekeeper at Lancaster Park?"

Then indeed he winced, but only for a moment, and he answered bravely:

"She belongs to you, Leonora, and she is, besides, a good and worthy woman. I shall not be ashamed of her, but she must not serve at the Park any more; she shall be raised to a position befitting the aunt of the future Lady Lancaster."

"She will leave the Park to-morrow. We are going to London for a week, then we sail for New York," said Leonora.

"Is my bride going to leave me so soon?" he whispered, fondly.

"Yes; but she will come back when you come to New York for her," answered Leonora, with a blush and a smile.

"That will be in a very short while, then. But why go at all, darling? Couldn't we be married right away?"

"Without my trousseau? No, sir, thank you. Besides, my aunt and I have some business to attend to in New York, and I want her to see my native land and appreciate it."

"When may I come after you, then, my darling? In September?"

"Oh, dear, no!"

"October?"

"No, indeed—that is, I will ask Aunt West," demurely.

"I shall not wait a day longer than October, miss. Do you hear that?" he says, laughing, but in earnest, for he says to himself, thoughtfully, "The darling has no one but Mrs. West to take care of her, and the sooner she is married and settled, the better for her."

"You begin to play the tyrant soon," laughs the happy betrothed.

"In revenge for the way you have treated me all this while," he replies.

And then he adds, with a sterner light in his handsome blue eyes:

"I am going to take you home now, Leonora, and present you to Lady Lancaster as my promised wife. Are you willing, my darling?"

"I have no objection," she answered, for Leonora, being but human, thought she would rather enjoy this triumph over her enemy.

So they went back to the house, and Lancaster led his love to the library, where one of the servants had told him Lady Lancaster was sitting with Mrs. West, going over the housekeeping books of the latter.

They opened the door and entered. My lady stared at the pair in horror for a moment, then she rose majestically to her feet and struck her gold-headed cane upon the floor with a resounding thump.

"So you are come home at last!" she cried. "But what does this mean? Why have you brought this impertinent minx into my presence?"

"Perhaps you will speak more respectfully of Miss West when I tell you that she is my promised wife, and the future Lady of Lancaster," her nephew answered sternly.

"The Lady of Lancaster! What! do you mean that you have sacrificed all your future prospects for this low-born and penniless girl?" cried my lady, growing purple in the face and actually foaming at the lips with fury.

"I have sacrificed nothing, and I have secured my future happiness by my betrothal," Lord Lancaster answered, proudly.

The old lady stared at him speechless with rage for a few seconds, then she struck her cane violently upon the floor again, and burst out with concentrated wrath:

"Then hear me, you blind, besotted fool! You think you have played me a fine trick, but I'll have my revenge, be sure of that! Not a dollar of my money shall ever go to you! I will leave it all to the next of kin. And you, Clive Lancaster, may go on earning your beggarly pittance in the army, and your wife may take in soldiers' washing, and your children starve or beg, but I will never throw you a crust to keep you from starving, nor a rag to keep you from freezing!"

An indignant retort rose to the young man's lips, but before he could speak Leonora's sweet, clear voice rang out upon the silence:

"I hope, Lady Lancaster, that neither myself, my husband, nor my children may be reduced to the dire necessity you anticipate. I shall persuade Captain Lancaster to leave the army and live at Lancaster Park. He can well afford to do so without your money, for I am as rich as you are."

"Oh, Leonora!" cried her aunt, dismayed.

"Yes, dear aunt," cried the girl, dauntlessly, "I am not the poor, dependent girl you and every one else thought me. My father made his fortune in California. He was very wealthy, and he left me his whole fortune, with the exception of a legacy to yourself that will keep you in luxury all your life."

"But why did you let us think that you were poor, my dear?" exclaimed the good soul.

Leonora laughed gayly, in spite of her enemy's angry, wondering face.

"I did not exactly let you," she said. "You see, you all took it for granted, and I did not contradict it, for," with a shy glance into her lover's face, "I wanted to see if any one would love me for myself alone, and I am richly rewarded; for

Lady Lancaster could have killed her for her brilliant triumph, but she was powerless to do anything but carry out her angry threats, so she retired from the scene and went to her dower house, where she actually adopted a scion of the house of Lancaster and made him the heir to her wealth; but this lad was too young to marry the earl's daughter, so the dowager never had that honor in the family.

But her spleen and venom passed harmlessly and unheeded over the heads of Lord Lancaster and his fair Leonora, for, in the far-famed language of the story-book, "they were married, and live happily ever afterward."