Lancaster's Choice

"Lord Lancaster, I want to ask you something," said Lady Adela Eastwood.

It was in the evening after the gentlemen had come in from their walnuts and wine. Lord Lancaster had retired rather sulkily to a corner, and the earl's daughter had followed him and sat down near him.

She looked very handsome in her dinner-dress of rose-pink satin draped with creamy lace. Her brilliant black eyes searched his face eagerly, as she said:

"Lady Lancaster has been telling us the strangest story before the gentlemen came in. I am going to ask you if it is true."

He tried to rouse himself to interest in her theme.

"Yes," he said, "I know that Lady Lancaster can be very interesting," sarcastically. "What is it all about, Lady Adela?"

She lowered her voice, and glanced across the room where Lieutenant De Vere sat with rather a bored look on his face, trying to become interested in the lively chatter of the pretty Miss Dean.

"It is about that handsome Lieutenant De Vere," she said; "Lady Lancaster has been telling us that he is infatuated with a ridiculous creature—a servant, I think she said, or something like that. And he is going to propose to her, and it will most likely be a match. Now, you are his friend, Lord Lancaster. Please tell me if it is really so?"

"No, it is not," he replied, pulling savagely at the innocent ends of his long mustache.

"Then it is not true? Lady Lancaster was only telling it to tease Emma Dean, I fancy. Emma has been setting her cap at the lieutenant, you know. She will be very glad to hear it was all a joke."

"But it was not a joke, really," he said, embarrassed. "You know what Tennyson says about a 'lie that is half a truth,' Lady Adela. Well, that is how the case stands. Lady Lancaster has simply misrepresented the facts. There was a grain of truth in her bushel of falsehood."

"Oh, dear!" cried Lady Adela, in dismay. She nestled a little nearer him on the fauteuil where they were sitting. "Do tell me the right of it, Lord Lancaster; I am all curiosity."

"Then I will tell you the right of it, if you care to hear," he replied; and there was so stern a look on his face that the earl's daughter was frightened. She wondered if he was angry with her.

"I hope you are not offended with me for repeating what Lady Lancaster said," she observed sweetly, giving him a demure look out of her large black eyes.

He looked at her gravely a minute without replying. She was very handsome, certainly—a brilliant brunette, very vivacious when it pleased her to be so, and again with a languor and indolence amounting to laziness. She had been in society several seasons, and owned to twenty-three years old. She was beautiful, graceful, and dignified, and Lancaster felt that she would make a fitting mistress for Lancaster Park; but his pulse did not beat any faster at her bright glance, nor at her sweet, half-confidential tones.

But he looked back at her reassuringly as he replied:

"I am sorry I looked so black as to inspire you with such an idea, Lady Adela. Of course I am not offended with you. You are not answerable for Lady Lancaster's peccadilloes. I think, however, that she might have shown more respect to Lieutenant De Vere than to indulge herself in such gossip, more than half of it being false."

"Oh, then he isn't going to commit such a folly after all?" she exclaimed, relieved that it was not so, for her patrician pride had been somewhat hurt at the idea of one of her own order descending to a plebeian.

"You jump so quickly from one conclusion to another, Lady Adela, that you will not give me time to explain," he said, smiling.

"Oh!" she cried, abashed. "Then I shall not say another word, only listen to your story."

"There is no story—only an explanation," he said. "I should not speak of it, only I think De Vere would thank me for setting him right. Yes, he is in love, Lady Adela, but not with a servant girl, as my aunt insinuated. The young lady who has won his heart is a fair, refined young girl, cultured and accomplished, and of respectable although not noble birth. She is an American girl who came over with De Vere and myself from New York to her aunt, who is the housekeeper here. That is the long and the short of the servant-girl story."

"You know her?" cried Lady Adela, amazed. "Oh, how I would like to see this fascinating girl, admired both by Lieutenant De Vere and Lord Lancaster!"

"You have seen her," he replied, with that quick flush that showed so clearly through his fine skin.

"Where?" she cried, amazed.

"You remember the young lady we saw sketching among the ruins yesterday?"

"Yes," she replied.

"It was Miss West—De Vere's inamorata," he answered.

Lady Adela did not speak for a moment. She was surprised into silence. When she recovered her speech, she said, faintly:

"You said she was staying in the neighborhood for the sketching."

"That was a small fib, Lady Adela, for which I humbly crave your pardon. The truth is that Miss West's father, lately dead, has left his daughter to Mrs. West's care. She is staying at Lancaster because she has no other home."

"Ah! Then she is the housekeeper's niece. I presume that is the reason Lady Lancaster called her a servant," said the earl's daughter, in a tone that quite excused the dowager.

He gave her a quick look which, not being an adept in reading expressions, Lady Adela did not understand.

"No, she is not Mrs. West's niece. Her father's brother was Mrs. West's husband. There is all the relationship there is," he said, almost curtly.

Lady Adela gave him a glance that was rather haughty, yet half jealous.

"I can see that Lieutenant De Vere has a zealous champion in you," she said, with a tincture of bitterness in her voice.

"I do not think he needs or desires a champion," he answered.

"No? And why not?" she asked. "Surely he must be aware that he will be censured by many for his course in marrying below his own station in life. He will need some one to make excuses for him."

"His wife, if he wins her, will be an all-sufficient excuse for him," Lancaster said, calmly.

"Why?" she asked, rather piqued at his words.

"Because Miss West is quite fascinating enough to make any man excusable for his folly, if folly it be," he replied.

"You are very complimentary to her," Lady Adela said, with her head held high. "I can not see how she could be so fascinating. I did not think she was so very pretty, really. She had quite common brown hair, and gray eyes, I think, and one of those baby faces that some people admire, but which I never did."

"It is not at all a baby face," he said. "She has a great deal of character and decision in it, I think."

"Indeed? But, of course, you have had a better chance of studying her face than I have, and may be a better judge. I think you are more than half-way in love with the housekeeper's niece yourself," Lady Adela exclaimed, flashing a reproachful glance upon him, for, being well aware of Lady Lancaster's scheme, she felt that he belonged to her.

"De Vere would not like that much," he said, carelessly, without betraying his inward vexation.

She fanned herself rapidly with her pink satin fan for a moment, then said, with a keen glance at him:

"Lady Lancaster has formed a fine plan for showing him his folly and breaking off the affair."

"Really?" he inquired, sarcastically.

"Yes; she is quite sure that if he could once see this girl in the company of real ladies, he would see the difference and become disenchanted."

"Yes?"

"It seems as if the girl can play quite well," said Lady Adela, going on in her low, confidential tones. "And the ladies are all curious to see her. So Lady Lancaster is going to have her in to play for us, just for a pretext, you know; and then Lieutenant De Vere can not help seeing the difference between her and the women of his own set. Perhaps it will cure him of his fancy."