A Mad Love

He taught her himself to ride. There was one thing singular, every master who attended her was aware of a great hidden power within her, they said among each other that she was something wonderful – that the world would hear of her some day. There was an innate sense of power, a grand dramatic instinct, a keen sense of everything beautiful, noble and great. There were times when an electric flash of genius made them marvel.

"It is a thousand pities," said the music-master to himself, "that she has married a nobleman. If she had been dependent on her own exertions, I could have made her one of the finest singers in the world."

Again, the drawing-master said:

"If I had the training of Lady Chandos I would make her the finest artist in England."

None of them had discovered the real secret of her genius, or what was the true fire that every now and then seemed to brighten them all as it flashed over them.

A few weeks completely changed her; she had that keen, quick insight into everything, that wondrous tact and intelligence which make some women seem as though they were magicians.

When she went first to River View, she had some traces of her rustic training. Before six weeks had passed over it had all disappeared. Lord Chandos himself had taught her; her intonation and accent were clear and refined, her words well chosen, her expressions always poetical and full of grace; no one meeting her then could have told that she had spent her life in the rural shades of Rashleigh.

New beauty came to her with this development of mind; new, spiritual, poetical loveliness; and Lord Chandos, looking at his peerless young wife, felt always quite confident that when his mother saw her all would be well – she would be proud of her.

While Leone seemed to have gone straight to heaven, she could not realize that this was the same life she rebelled against with such fierce rebellion. Now the days were not long enough to hold in them all the happiness that fell to her share. The birds woke her with their singing; the sun with its shining; another beautiful day had dawned for her – a day that was full of beauty and love. They passed like a dream.

She took breakfast always with her husband; perhaps the happiest hour of the day was that. The windows of the pretty breakfast-room looked over a wilderness of flowers; the windows were always open. The soft, sweet summer air came in, parting the long, white curtains, bringing with it the breath of roses and the odor of a hundred flowers.

She looked as fresh and fair as the morning itself. Lord Chandos wondered more and more at her radiant loveliness. Her soul was awake now, and looked out of her dark eyes into the world she found so beautiful.

Then Lord Chandos went up to town for a few hours, while Leone took her different lessons and studied. They met again at lunch, and they spent the afternoon out-of-doors. An ideal life – an idyl in itself. Leone, while she lived, retained a vivid remembrance of those afternoons, of the shade of the deep woods, of the ripple of the river through the green banks, of the valleys where flowers and ferns grew, of the long alleys where the pleasant shade made a perfect paradise. She remembered them – the golden glow, the fragrance, the music of them, remained with her until she died. All the most pleasant times of our lives are dreams.

Then they dined together; and in the evening Lord Chandos took his beautiful young wife to the opera or the play, to concert or lecture.

"As soon as I am of age," he would say, "I shall take you on the Continent; there is no education we get like that we get by traveling one year on the Continent; and you will be at home on every subject, Leone," he would say; and Leone longed for the time to come.

"When I am of age," was his universal cry.

When Leone expressed any anxiety or sorrow over his separation from his parents, he would laugh and answer:

"Never mind, my darling, it will be all right when I am of age. Never mind, darling, you will have my mother asking for the pleasure of knowing you then – the tables will be turned; let the great world once see you, and you will be worshiped for your beauty, your grace, and your talent."

She looked wistfully at him.

"Do they love beauty so much in your world, Lance?" she asked.

"Yes, as a rule, a beautiful face has a wonderful influence. I have known women without a tithe of your beauty, Leone, rise from quite third-rate society to find a place among the most exclusive and noblest people in the land. Your face would win for you, darling, an entrance anywhere."

"The only thing I want my face to do," she said, "is to please your mother."

"And that, when she sees it, it is quite sure to do," replied the lover-husband.

"Lance," said Lady Chandos, "what shall we do if your parents will neither forgive us nor see us?"

"It will be very uncomfortable," said Lord Chandos; "but we shall have to bear it. It will not much matter so far as worldly matters are concerned; when I am of age I shall have a separate and very handsome fortune of my own. My mother will soon want to know you when you become the fashion – as you will, Leone."

So she dismissed the future from her mind. She would not think of it. She had blind reliance, blind confidence in her husband; he seemed so carelessly happy and indifferent she could not think there was anything vitally wrong. She was so unutterably happy, so wonderfully, thoroughly happy. Her life was a poem, the sweetest love-story ever written or sung.

"Why am I so happy?" she would ask herself at times; "why has Heaven given me so much? all I ever asked for – love and happiness?"

She did not know how to be grateful enough.

One morning in autumn, a warm, beautiful morning, when the sun shone on the rich red and brown foliage – they were out together on the fair river – the tide was rising and the boat floated lazily on the stream. Lady Chandos wore a beautiful dress of amber and black that suited her dark, brilliant beauty to perfection. She lay back among the velvet cushions, smiling as her eyes lingered on the sky, the trees, the stream.

"You look very happy, Leone," said Lord Chandos.

"I am very happy," she replied. "I wrote to my uncle yesterday, Lance. I should like to send him a box filled with everything he likes best."

"You shall, if it pleases you, my darling," he answered.

She leaned over the side of the boat watching the water, drawing her hand through the clear stream.

"Happy," she repeated, rather to herself than to him; "I can safely say this, that I have had so much happiness since I have been here that if I were wretched all my life afterward I should still have had far more happiness than falls to the lot of many people."

She remembered those words in after years; and she owned to herself that they had been most perfectly true.

The few months passed at River View had been most perfectly happy – no shade of care had come over her, no doubt, no fear – nothing that chilled the warmth of her love, nothing that marred its perfect trust. In some lives there comes a pause of silent, intense bliss just before the storm, even as the wind rests before the hurricane.

"You make me very proud, Leone," said Lord Chandos, "when you tell me of your happiness; I can only say may it be like the light of heaven, eternal."

CHAPTER XIV.

"TRUE UNTIL DEATH."

For some long months that case stood on the records. Every paper in England had some mention of it; as a rule people laughed when they read anything about it. They said it was a case of Corydon and Phyllis, a dairy-maid's love, a farce, a piece of romantic nonsense on the part of a young nobleman who ought to know better. It created no sensation; the papers did not make much of it; they simply reported a petition on the part of the Right Honorable the Earl of Lanswell and Lucia, his wife, that the so-called marriage contracted by their son, Lancelot, Lord Chandos, should be set aside as illegal, on account of his being a minor, and having married without their consent.

There was a long hearing, a long consideration, a long lawsuit; and it was, as every one had foreseen it would be, in favor of the earl against his son. The marriage was declared null and void – the contract illegal; there could be no legal marriage on Lord Chandos' side without the full and perfect consent of his parents.

When that decision was given, Lady Lanswell smiled. Mr. Sewell congratulated her on it. My lady smiled again.

"I may thank the law," she said, "which frees my son from the consequences of his own folly."

"Remember," said the lawyer, "that he can marry her, my lady, when he comes of age."

"I know perfectly well that he will not," replied the countess; but Mr. Sewell did not feel so sure.

The earl, the countess, and the solicitor sat together at Dunmore House, in solemn consultation; they were quite uncertain what should be the next step taken. Due legal notice had been given Lord Chandos; he had simply torn the paper into shreds and laughed at it – laughed at the idea that any law, human or divine, could separate him from his young wife; he took no notice of it; he never appeared in answer to any inquiry or summons; he answered no questions; the lawyer into whose hands he had half laughingly placed the whole matter had everything to do for him, and wondered at the recklessness with which the young lord treated the whole affair.

It was all over now; and the decree which had parted them, which severed the tie between them, had gone forth – the marriage was void and worth nothing.

The matrons of Belgravia who read it said it was perfectly right; there was no doubt that he had been inveigled into it; and if such a thing were allowed to go unpunished there would be no more safety for their curled darlings; they would be at the mercy of any designing, underbred girl who chose to angle for them.

Men of the world smiled as they read it, and thought Lord Chandos well out of what might have been a very serious trouble. Young people thought little about it; the Belgravian belles merely said one to another that Lord Chandos had been in some kind of trouble, but that his parents had extricated him. And then all comment ended; even the second day after the judgment was given it had been forgotten.

When the Countess of Lanswell held in her hands the letter which told her the desire of her heart was granted, and her son free, for a few moments she was startled; her handsome face paled, her hands trembled; it had been a desperate step, but she had won. She had the greatest faith in her own resources; she felt a certain conviction that in the end she would win; but for one moment she was half startled at her own success.

"Let us send for Lance here to Cawdor," she said to the earl, "while Mr. Sewell sees the girl and arranges with her. He must have carte blanche over money matters; whatever he thinks fit to mention I shall agree to. If a thousand a year contents her, I am willing."