Lancaster's Choice

"Yes, for you," he replied. "You are too beautiful and gifted, Miss West, to be contented in your present humble condition. You should marry wealth and position. Both would become you rarely."

"Thank you, my lord," she said, bowing, with a pretty gesture of mock humility.

"That reminds me to tell you that De Vere will be here to-morrow," he said, suddenly.

"What has that to do with our subject?" she inquired, shortly.

"Everything. De Vere is in love with you, and he is rich and well born. You can be Mrs. De Vere any time you wish."

"Did your friend employ you to tell me this?" asked Leonora, pale with passion.

"No; but he would have no objection to my doing so. He will tell you so himself when he comes."

"And you advise me to marry him?" she asked, gazing into his face with her soft, steady glance.

His own eyes fell beneath it.

"I should not presume to advise you; yet it would be a good thing for you, I know. De Vere adores you. He would be your slave, and you would be like a little queen in the position to which his wealth would raise you."

"You make a great deal of wealth," she said, gravely, and waiting curiously for his reply.

"It is a great power in the world," he replied.

"Is it?" she asked. "Ah! Lord Lancaster, 'almost thou persuadest me' to sink to Lady Adela's level and sell myself for gold."

"You seem to have imbibed a strange contempt for Lady Adela," he said.

"I have. Where is her womanliness, her self-respect, that she can lend herself to that wicked old woman's ambitious schemes for buying a coroneted head with her twenty thousand a year? She is the daughter of a hundred earls, and yet she can give herself to you merely for the money's sake. Pah!"

"Need it be merely for the money's sake?" he asked. "Am I repulsive to look upon, Miss West? Is it quite impossible that a woman, Lady Adela or another, should give me her heart with her hand?"

Something like wounded pride quivered in his voice, and he looked at her reproachfully.

"Would it be impossible for me to be loved for myself alone?" he went on, slowly. "Might not some good, true, sweet woman love me for my own self—even as I am?"

She looked up at the handsome face, the large, graceful form, and silently recalled the words Lieutenant De Vere had spoken to her on the steamer's deck that day:

"He is more run after by the women than any man in the regiment."

"He knows his power," she thought; and from sheer contrariness made no answer to his appeal. "He shall not know what I think about it," she said to herself.

CHAPTER XXVII

The handsome young lord stood looking at the fair face and mute red lips with a half chagrined air for a moment; then he said, hastily:

"Good-day, Miss West. I see how disagreeable my presence is, so I will leave you to your meditations among the tombs. I hope none of those old fellows will come out of their graves to haunt you for your scorn of their descendant.

"I hope not, indeed!" said Leonora, and then she laughed.

He turned back at the sound of that laugh.

Perhaps she was relenting.

She had risen, indeed, and was holding out to him the sketch he coveted.

"Take it," she said. "I was in a bad temper just now. Lady Adela may have it."

"Will you, indeed, be so kind?" he exclaimed, radiant with pleasure. "But, indeed, you must not give your whole morning's work for nothing. Let me—"

He put his hand into his pocket and brought out a shining gold piece.

"Thank you, my lord," said Leonora, demurely, as she received the money into her palm. "I shall be able to buy myself a new dress with this."

"You are not angry?" he said, struck by an inexplicable something in her tone.

"Oh, no; I am very glad to be so well paid for my work," she answered, with the same demure air; and then she said, suddenly: "Good-morning," and walked away from him.

He followed her.

"Are you going home alone, Miss West?"

"No; I have a small escort hereabouts, if he has not eaten my lunch and run away," she replied, carelessly.

"Johnnie Dale? No, he has not run away. You will find him in the lane, where I saw him as we came through. Shall I find him for you?"

"No, thank you. Doubtless Lady Adela is impatient at your long stay," she said, walking coolly away from him.

"The deuce! I expect she is. I had quite forgotten the daughter of a hundred earls," he said to himself, ruefully. "I forget everything with Leonora West. She would not answer my question, yet I would give the world to know what she really thinks. If I had not promised De Vere a fair field, I would try to find out what she thought before the sun sets. How brusque she is! Ah!"

The last exclamation was wrung from him by seeing Leonora lift her hand as she walked across the field.

Something bright and shining flashed in the air a moment, then fell into the grass.

"She has thrown my gold piece away like so much dross! What does she mean?" he asked himself.

But the question was one not easily answered, so he returned to his friends, who were chattering like so many magpies among the ruins.

"We thought you had gone back home, you were so long away," said Lady Adela, looking rather cross.

"Now I shall have to invent some fiction to account for my long absence," he thought, pulling vexedly at his long mustache. "Deuce take the women! They pull one this way and that way, until one is out of patience!"

And while he was hastily concocting an excuse, Leonora was walking rapidly through the lanes and fields with little Johnnie, on her way back to the Hall.

"I'm glad you came back so soon," Mrs. West said; "for some of the young people have gone over to the ruins, I hear, and I was afraid they would see you."

"They did see me; but I came away soon after," the girl answered, carelessly.

"They are going to have a picnic at the ruins to-morrow, it seems," pursued her aunt. "Lady Lancaster and all of them are going. So the house will be empty, and I can take you all over it to-morrow, if you like."