Lancaster's Choice

"I shall not touch a penny. I shall sell pictures enough to buy my dresses," said Leonora, with a confident air.

"They will have to be very good ones, dear," dubiously.

"I shall try to make them so," laughing.

At that moment a burst of music swelled upon the air—one of Strauss's most intoxicating waltzes. Leonora's heart thrilled to the sound.

"How delicious!" she cried.

"It is the band. The dance has begun," cried Mrs. West. "Come, Leonora, you shall have a peep at it."

"Not from the shelter of another hot china-closet, I hope," said the girl, laughing. "I am afraid of the cobwebs and the spiders."

"We will find a better place this time. Put something over your head, Leonora; we shall have to go out-doors, and the dew is heavy."

Leonora wound a dark veil turban fashion about her head.

"Now?" she said.

"Yes, that will do; come on," Mrs. West replied.

They went on a little balcony shrouded in vines, from which they could peep unobserved through an undraped window into the brightly lighted ball-room.

"Perhaps this will not do any better than the china-closet, after all," said Mrs. West, dubiously. "These vines are so thick, there may be bugs and spiders in them, too."

Leonora, shuddering, exclaimed, "Ugh! I can feel them creeping now!" and then declared that she would stay ten minutes, anyhow.

"Isn't it a pretty sight? Did you ever see anything so pretty, my love?" exclaimed Mrs. West, proudly.

CHAPTER XXIII

It was a pretty scene. The long ball-room was draped in roseate colors and decorated with flowers. The walls were exquisitely painted in appropriate figures, and the waxed oaken floor shone so bright that it reflected the flying figures of the men and women who whirled around it in the sensuous measures of the gay waltz.

"Did you ever see anything so pretty?" repeated Mrs. West, with a certain pride in this grand old family whom she served; and her niece answered, unperturbably:

"Yes."

"You have? Where?" whispered the good soul, incredulously.

"In New York," replied the girl. "I was at a ball there last winter. It was very grand—much grander than this."

Nevertheless, she continued to gaze with a great deal of interest at the animated scene. There were more than a dozen couples upon the floor, the beautiful, richly dressed women and black-coated men showing to their greatest advantage in the gay dance. Leonora saw Lord Lancaster's tall, splendid figure among them. He had Lady Adela Eastwood for a partner. His arm was clasped lightly about her tall, slender form; her dark, brilliant face drooped toward his shoulder with rather a languishing air.

"Lady Adela is Lord Lancaster's partner," whispered the housekeeper. "Aren't they a well-matched pair? He is so fair, she is so dark, they go well together."

"Very well," said Leonora. She watched the two figures admiringly, and thought how exquisitely the light of the lamps shone down on Lady Adela's ruby silk and her flashing diamonds. The black hair bound into a braided coronet on the top of the graceful head contrasted well with the fair locks that crowned Lord Lancaster's brow.

"Yes, they go well together," she said to herself. "Will expediency and inclination go hand in hand? Will he marry her?"

"Lady Adela has superb diamonds," said the housekeeper, in her shrill whisper.

"Yes, they are very nice," said Leonora. "But I have—a friend who has much finer ones. Her father gave them to her for a birthday present. They cost fifty thousand dollars."

"What an odd girl! She is not one bit astonished at the splendor of anything she sees. She has seen a great deal of the world, really, and America must be a much finer place than I ever thought it," mused Mrs. West to herself.

"There, the waltz is over, Aunt West," whispered the girl, clinging to her arm. "Hadn't we better go now? Some one may come out here."

"Yes, if you have seen enough—have you?" Mrs. West replied, and Leonora answered:

"Yes, quite enough, thank you. I do not like to look at such gayety, and my dear papa so lately dead. Oh, Aunt West, please let us walk out in the air awhile. It is so warm here, and these vines are full of spiders and cobwebs, just like that china-closet."

When Leonora West said "please" in that coaxing tone there were not many people who could resist her. Mrs. West did not. She said to herself that it would be no harm to walk about the grounds a bit with her niece. She could not refuse her a breath of fresh air, certainly.

She saw Lady Lancaster sitting in a chair in the ball-room, and she did not think it likely that she would stir from her seat for at least an hour.

"So I'll run the risk," said the kind-hearted woman. "Come along, Leonora."

They went down into the beautiful grounds, along the moonlighted paths, past gleaming groups of statuary, ghost-like in the weird light, past beds of rarest flowers, past thickets of roses, walls of honeysuckles, with the white radiance of the moon shining over everything.

"How sweet this is!" the girl whispered. "When we were crossing the ocean, I grew so tired of the water and the sky; I longed for the green grass and the flowers. How soft and fragrant the air is, and how beautiful the moonlight! I think I could stay out here all night."

"You would catch your death of cold," Mrs. West said, aghast. "The dews are very heavy."

"Oh, of course, I don't mean to; but it is so romantic. It is like an Eastern night, so soft and balmy, and—oh, oh! Aunt West, is that the nightingale—the English nightingale papa used to love so dearly?"

She clapped her little hands. It was the nightingale, indeed, hid in some flowery covert, all alone,

"Pouring his full heart,
In profuse strains of unpremeditated art."

"Yes, it is the nightingale," said Mrs. West, delighted that Leonora had found something at last in England to grow enthusiastic over. "There are so many of them here, and it is down by the Magic Mirror you hear that one singing. It is their favorite resort."

"The Magic Mirror?" echoed Leonora.

"Yes. It is a pretty pond of water a little further on, all fringed with willows and roses. It is as smooth and clear as a mirror, and there is an old tradition that the youth or maiden gazing into the Magic Mirror by moon light, in the month of June, may see there reflected the face of his or her life companion."

"Oh, Aunt West, let us go there!" cried the girl, eagerly.

"What! you don't believe in that silly tradition?" laughed the good woman.

"No, no, but to hear the nightingales," cried Leonora. "Is it far, auntie?"

"No; only a short distance further on, at a little bend where two paths meet. But we have come so far already—"

"And you are tired," said the girl, with generous compunction. "I ought to have remembered that." She pushed Mrs. West gently into a low rustic seat by the path, and said, kindly: "Sit here and rest while I go find it myself. The nightingale's voice shall guide me."

"You will not be long?" said Mrs. West, hesitatingly.

"No, no. May I go, Aunt West? Will you wait for me here?" pleadingly.