Lancaster's Choice

"Yes, indeed. Ask him, if you doubt me."

She looked around at Lancaster. There was a flush on his face, a frown between his eyebrows.

"You did not, really, did you?" she asked, naïvely.

"I did," curtly.

"Don't tease him about it. He was furiously angry because you ran away and came by yourself," said De Vere. He was beginning to turn the tables on Lancaster now, and he enjoyed it immensely.

"But I did not come by myself. My friends where I boarded—Mrs. Norton and her husband—came with me. I did not know Captain Lancaster was coming for me. If I had known I should have waited," apologetically.

"You do not know what you missed by not waiting," said De Vere. "When Lancaster came aboard he had a great big hot-house bouquet."

"And I do so love flowers," said Leonora, looking round expectantly at the captain.

"Ah, you needn't look round at him now. It is too late," said De Vere, wickedly. "When he came scrambling up the gang-plank, at the last moment, and didn't see you anywhere on deck, he was so overcome by his disappointment, to use the mildest phrase, that he threw the beautiful bouquet out into the sea."

"Ah! you did not, really, did you, Captain Lancaster?" exclaimed Leonora, regretfully.

"Yes; the flowers were beginning to droop," he replied, fibbing unblushingly; and then he arose and walked away from them, too much exasperated at De Vere's chaff to endure his proximity a minute longer.

He crossed over to the other side of the deck and stood there with his face turned from them, gazing out at the beautiful, foam-capped billows of old ocean with the golden track of the sunset shining far across the waves. There came to him suddenly the remembrance that he was homeward bound.

He was homeward bound. In a few days, or weeks at most, he should be at home; he should be at Lancaster Park; he should meet the girl his vixenish aunt had chosen for his future bride. He wondered vaguely what she would be like—pretty, he hoped; as pretty as—yes, as pretty as—Leonora West.

Her clear, sweet voice floated across the deck, the words plainly audible.

"You are both soldiers. How pleasant! I do so adore soldiers."

"You make me very happy, Miss West," cried De Vere, sentimentally, with his hand upon his heart.

"But not," continued Leonora, with a careless glance at him, "not in their ordinary clothes, you understand, Lieutenant De Vere. It is the uniform that delights me. I think it is just too lovely for anything."

De Vere, crushed to the earth for a moment, hastily rallied himself.

"I would give the half of my kingdom," he said, "if only I had gone traveling in my red coat."

"I wish you had," she replied. "But some day—after we get to England, I mean—you will let me see you in it, won't you?"

"Every day, if you like. I shall only be too happy," vivaciously.

"I'll be shot if you shall have an invitation to Lancaster Park, you popinjay!" Lancaster muttered to himself, in unreasonable irritation.

He moved away a little further from them, out of earshot of their talk, but he could not as easily divert his thoughts from them.

"How silly people can be upon occasion!" he thought. "How dare he get up a flirtation with Mrs. West's niece? She is wholly out of his sphere. Once she gets to England, I dare swear he will never be permitted to lay eyes on her again. He shall not make a fool of the child. She is but a child, and ignorant of those laws of caste that will trammel Mrs. West's niece in England. I will speak to him."

CHAPTER XII

That night when the girl had gone to her state-room, and the two men were alone on deck smoking their cigars in the soft spring moonlight, Lancaster said, rather diffidently:

"Oh, I say, De Vere, weren't you going the pace rather strong this evening?"

"Eh?" said the lieutenant.

"I say you oughtn't to try to flirt with little Leonora West. You were saying no end of soft things to her this evening. It isn't right. She's in my care, and I can't see her harmed without a word."

"Harmed? Why, what the deuce are you hinting at, Lancaster?" his friend demanded, hotly.

"Nothing to make you fly into a temper, Harry," Lancaster answered, gravely. "Nothing but what is done every day by idle, rich men—winning an innocent, fresh young heart in a careless flirtation, and then leaving it to break."

De Vere dropped his fine Havana into the waves and looked around.

"Look here, Lancaster," he said, "tell me one thing. Do you want Miss West for yourself?"

"I don't understand you," haughtily, with a hot flush mounting to his brow.

"I mean you are warning me off because you're in love with the little thing yourself? Do you want to win her—to make her my lady?"

"What then?" inquired Lancaster, moodily.

"Why, then, I only want an equal chance with you, that's all—a fair field and no favor."

They gazed at each other in silence a moment. Lancaster said then, with something like surprise:

"Are you in earnest?"

"Never more so in my life."

"Have you remembered that your family will consider it a mésalliance?"

"I am independent of my family. I have ten thousand a year of my own, and am the heir to a baronetcy."

"But you are rash, De Vere. You never saw Leonora West until to-day. What do you know of her?"

"I know that she is the fairest, most fascinating creature I ever met, and that she has carried my heart by storm. I know that if she is to be won by mortal man, that man shall be Harry De Vere!" cried the young soldier, enthusiastically.

There was silence again. The great ship rose and fell with the heaving of the waves, and it seemed to Lancaster that its labored efforts were like the throbbing of a heart in pain. What was the matter with him? He shook off angrily the trance that held him.

"Since you mean so well, I wish you success," he said.

"Thanks, old fellow. I thought at first—" said De Vere, then paused.

"Thought—what?" impatiently.

"That you were—jealous, that you wanted her for yourself."

"Pshaw! My future is already cut and dried," bitterly.