Lady Anna

"How can I tell? Mine are not."

"It is no question of manners, sweetheart, between you and me. It has not come to that, I hope. Do you wish for any change, – as regards me?"

"Oh, no."

"As to my love, there can be no change in that. If it suits your mother to be disdainful to me, I can bear it. I always thought that it would come to be so some day."

There was but little more said then. He asked her no further question; – none at least that it was difficult for her to answer, – and he soon took his leave. He was a passionate rather than a tender lover, and having once held her in his arms, and kissed her lips, and demanded from her a return of his caress, he was patient now to wait till he could claim them as his own. But, two days after the interview between Lord Lovel and his love, he a second time contrived to find her alone.

"I have come again," he said, "because I knew your mother is out. I would not trouble you with secret meetings but that just now I have much to say to you. And then, you may be gone from hence before I had even heard that you were going."

"I am always glad to see you, Daniel."

"Are you, my sweetheart? Is that true?"

"Indeed, indeed it is."

"I should be a traitor to doubt you, – and I do not doubt. I will never doubt you if you tell me that you love me."

"You know I love you."

"Tell me, Anna – ; or shall I say Lady Anna?"

"Lady Anna, – if you wish to scorn me."

"Then never will I call you so, till it shall come to pass that I do wish to scorn you. But tell me. Is it true that Earl Lovel was with you the other day?"

"He was here the day before yesterday."

"And why did he come."

"Why?"

"Why did he come? you know that as far as I have yet heard he is still your mother's enemy and yours, and is persecuting you to rob you of your name and of your property. Did he come as a friend?"

"Oh, yes! certainly as a friend."

"But he still makes his claim."

"No; – he says that he will make it no longer, that he acknowledges mamma as my father's widow, and me as my father's heir."

"That is generous, – if that is all."

"Very generous."

"And he does this without condition? There is nothing to be given to him to pay him for this surrender."

"There is nothing to give," she said, in that low, sweet, melancholy voice which was common to her always when she spoke of herself.

"You do not mean to deceive me, dear, I know; but there is a something to be given; and I am told that he has asked for it, or certainly will ask. And, indeed, I do not think that an earl, noble, but poverty-stricken, would surrender everything without making some counter claim which would lead him by another path to all that he has been seeking. Anna, you know what I mean."

"Yes; I know."

"Has he made no such claim."

"I cannot tell."

"You cannot tell whether or no he has asked you to be his wife?"

"No; I cannot tell. Do not look at me like that, Daniel. He came here, and mamma left us together, and he was kind to me. Oh! so kind. He said that he would be a cousin to me, and a brother."

"A brother!"

"That was what he said."

"And he meant nothing more than that, – simply to be your brother?"

"I think he did mean more. I think he meant that he would try to love me so that he might be my husband."

"And what said you to that?"

"I told him that it could not be so."

"And then?"

"Why then again he said that we were cousins; that I had no nearer cousin anywhere, and that he would be good to me and help me, and that the lawsuit should not go on. Oh, Daniel, he was so good!"

"Was that all?"

"He kissed me, saying that cousins might kiss?"

"No, Anna; – cousins such as you and he may not kiss. Do you hear me?"

"Yes, I hear you."

"If you mean to be true to me, there must be no more of that. Do you not know that all this means that he is to win you to be his wife? Did he not come to you with that object?"

"I think he did, Daniel."

"I think so too, my dear. Surrender! I'll tell you what that surrender means. They perceive at last that they have not a shadow of justice, or even a shadow of a chance of unjust success in their claim. That with all their command of money, which is to be spent, however, out of your property, they can do nothing; that their false witnesses will not come to aid them; that they have not another inch of ground on which to stand. Their great lawyer, Sir William Patterson, dares not show himself in court with a case so false and fraudulent. At last your mother's rights and yours are to be owned. Then they turn themselves about, and think in what other way the prize may be won. It is not likely that such a prize should be surrendered by a noble lord. The young man is made to understand that he cannot have it all without a burden, and that he must combine his wealth with you. That is it, and at once he comes to you, asking you to be his wife, so that in that way he may lay his hands on the wealth of which he has striven to rob you."

"Daniel, I do not think that he is like that!"

"I tell you he is not only like it, – but that itself. Is it not clear as noon-day? He comes here to talk of love who had never seen you before. Is it thus that men love?"

"But, Daniel, he did not talk so."

"I wonder that he was so crafty, believing him as I do to be a fool. He talked of cousinship and brotherhood, and yet gave you to know that he meant you to be his wife. Was it not so?"