CHAPTER XIII.

THE SENDING OF THE TOKEN.

At seven o’clock that same morning, Sir Philip had been aroused from his slumbers by Dakin.

“I beg your pardon, sir,” said the spy, “but I can’t help thinking Miss Cranstoun has somehow got away. You see, you have taken away the key of her room, and I can see a good way in through the keyhole. And the bed’s empty; it doesn’t look as if it had been slept in, and I can’t see any sign of her walking about the room.”

With a muttered execration, Sir Philip dismissed Dakin, and, hastily dressing himself, repaired to the door of Stella’s room and rapped several times sharply upon the panels. Getting no answer, he turned the key in the lock and called to her to come out, before throwing the door open, to find that the bird had flown.

It was easy enough to see how she had escaped. The window was wide open, and the ivy a little below torn and disarranged. Rage and alarm combined to give Sir Philip an extremely bad quarter of an hour, as he turned over in his own mind all possible places to which she might have gone, while his horse was bearing him toward the nearest gates of the Chase enclosure.

Sir Philip had no idea of Hilary’s detention at the inn, but as the hostlery was on the direct road to Grayling, from which town he surmised that Stella would take the train for London, he resolved to stop for a moment to inquire whether anything had been seen of her.

Hilary’s friend, the hostler, was holding the bridle of Black Bess at the entrance, when the Squire rode up on his gray hunter, and Sir Philip noticed at once that the mare carried a side-saddle.

“So you have lady visitors here, I see?” he said, pulling up his horse before the archway.

Jim the hostler’s sympathies were all with the lovers, and he recognized at once the necessity for putting the angry father off the scent.

“Not as I knows on, sir,” he answered, pulling his forelock.

“Then what is the meaning of that side-saddle?”

“I suppose the missis is going for a ride, sir,” the man answered, with an affectation of stupidity in his face and manner.

“What! on that horse? That isn’t one of your animals?”

“No, sir. It’s been left here by a gentleman for a day or two, and we’ve got to exercise it every day.”

Still Sir Philip did not appear satisfied, and the hostler was wondering whether he could not by some means convey a warning to the young couple in the coffee-room, when, as ill-luck would have it, his master, the landlord, came out into the courtyard at that identical moment, and in answer to Sir Philip’s point-blank inquiry as to whether he had seen Miss Cranstoun, blurted out that she was at that moment within the house, talking to a friend in the coffee-room.

The landlord was thinking of his lease, and not of Stella’s love affair, and he volunteered the further information that Miss Cranstoun had only been there about ten minutes, having borrowed Mr. Pritchard’s horse to go to Grayling and back.

This was the first intimation which the baronet received that Hilary was not in London, and it made instantly clear to him Stella’s disappearance from the Chase in the evening of the preceding day. She, his own daughter, Miss Cranstoun of the Chase, was actually carrying on a love affair at his very lodge gates, and making appointments with a farming adventurer at an inn on her father’s land, under the eyes of hostlers, and potmen, and farm laborers.

Rage almost choked him as he laid his hand on the door of the coffee-room, and the sight which met his eyes as he opened it was hardly calculated to assuage his anger. A superbly handsome young giant, with one arm in a sling, was seated close to Stella in a window-seat at the farther end of the room. It was easy enough to see that they were lovers. He was speaking eagerly, and she was hanging on his words, with her two hands clasped in one of his.

On Sir Philip’s entrance they started, and both of them rose to their feet; but Hilary still retained Stella’s hand.

Sir Philip carefully closed the door behind him, and came close up to the other two occupants of the room. In spite of the storm which raged within him, he was beyond everything anxious to avoid any scene by which his private affairs would become known to the people of the inn.

It was therefore in a voice so low as to be inaudible to any possible listeners outside the room that he addressed himself to Hilary, fixing him with his cold, glittering, light eyes as he spoke.

“What is your name?”

“Hilary Pritchard.”

“And what are you doing here with my daughter?”

“I have been asking her to marry me, Sir Philip!”

“You are not aware, then, that she is already engaged to be married to Lord Carthew, by whose want of judgment a fellow like you got introduced into a respectable house.”

“You have made some mistake, I think,” returned the young man, resolutely keeping his temper in the face of provocation. “Your daughter loves me, and she will never marry Lord Carthew.”

“My daughter is under age, sir, and her folly and inexperience would make her an easy prey to the wiles of a cad and an adventurer such as you. Luckily, I have interfered to save her good name. You entered my house on sufferance, and taking advantage of my absence, and of your friend’s foolish confidence in you, you presumed to make love to this young lady in much the same rough-and-ready style as you would adopt toward the haymakers and farmhands in your own rank of life. You, a nobody, a penniless, intending emigrant, dared to try to steal my daughter’s affections from your friend, to whom she had pledged them. I have no hesitation in saying that your conduct has been mean, cowardly, treacherous, and unmanly in the extreme. I would rather see my daughter dead than lowered by any association with a low-born and ungrateful pauper such as you.”

As he spoke, by a sudden movement he wrenched their hands asunder, and seizing that of his daughter’s within his own, began to move toward the door.

Hilary Pritchard had grown very pale under Sir Philip’s fierce invective, but he did not condescend to defend himself against the latter’s accusations.

“I hold you to your promise, Stella,” he said, quietly.

“I swear to you I will marry no one but you,” she returned.

One last, long look was interchanged between them, and then Stella was dragged from the room by her father, who had pulled her hand through his arm, and who, as soon as he reached the courtyard, gave orders in an unconcerned voice that the side-saddle should be changed from Black Bess to a horse belonging to the inn, the loan of which he required for an hour or two.

“I fear we shall be late for breakfast,” he said, turning to his daughter with an assumption of geniality, and speaking in a raised tone of voice so that he might be overheard by all within range. “Stella, you managed to get through your business in Grayling with wonderful celerity. I never expected to find you back here so soon. I am glad we found Mr. Pritchard none the worse for his unlucky accident.”

Stella disdained to act up to his pretence of fatherly affection. It was nothing to her if the whole world knew that she loved Hilary Pritchard and that her father had come to part them. Sir Philip’s family pride was, from her point of view, equally incomprehensible and ridiculous. So she stood by his side, he detaining her hand in his arm with a grasp which, while it affected to be fatherly, was really vindictive and painful to bear, and which she endured with a set, white face, blazing eyes, and tightly compressed lips.

In much the same fashion they rode away, she sitting straight upon her horse, staring before her, unheeding the friendly talk he affected to address to her. But Jim the hostler noticed that all the while he spoke Sir Philip’s fingers touched his daughter’s bridle-rein.

“He’s a brute, that’s what _he_ is, for all his soft sawder,” was Jim’s comment.

More than once during the ride home a mad longing seized Stella to escape from her father’s tyranny. But Sir Philip’s gray would easily have outstripped in speed the sorry hack upon which she was mounted, even if her father’s hand had not held her bridle. Every cruel and bitter taunt which his brain could conceive was hurled at her on their progress between the inn and the Chase. But no words could provoke a response from her. She was trying to remind herself that he was her father, and that even if she could not love him she must at least endeavor not to hate him.

At the doors of the house she sprang from her horse and ran swiftly up the stairs to Lady Cranstoun’s room. Her stepmother was still in bed, sitting up, wrapped in a white woollen shawl, drinking her coffee. She had not quite recovered from the strain of the preceding day, and Dr. Graham had prescribed complete rest and freedom from all excitement.

“I was wondering you had not come to say good-morning to me,” she said, “but Margaret said Sir Philip had locked you in your room. Was that true?”

“Don’t let’s talk of him, dear,” returned the young girl, kissing her affectionately, and kneeling down at the bedside, caressing one of her hands. “Let’s try to think he doesn’t exist.”

“Something has happened!” exclaimed the poor lady, apprehensively. “You are dreadfully pale, and your hands are quivering. There are tears in your eyes, too. Tell me, Stella, quickly, what is the matter?”

“It is nothing,” she answered. “I am overtired after a bad night. That is all.”

“It was not true--what you said last night in fun--about not marrying Lord Carthew, was it, dear?”

“No; it was not true.”

Sir Philip’s voice broke sharply in upon their talk. He had entered the room unperceived, and was standing on the other side of the bed.

Stella rose at sight of him, but remained with her arm round Lady Cranstoun.

“The marriage will take place in the second week of May,” Sir Philip proceeded, fixing a threatening glance upon his daughter.

“I am so glad; oh, I am so glad, my dear, dear child!”

Stella did not speak. She dared not at the moment undeceive her or banish from her face that unwonted look of happiness and hope.

Lady Cranstoun kissed her affectionately, and then as though nerving herself for a great effort, and timidly retaining the girl’s hands in hers, she addressed her husband.

“I have not told you before, Philip,” she began, “in fact, I have not had an opportunity, that while you were away, feeling that I might die any minute, I sent to town for my father’s lawyer.”

“Without consulting _me_?”

“Yes. You see, there is that legacy of my Uncle Charles, which I came into last year----”

“Well?”

“It isn’t very much--only five thousand pounds, in fact--but I have left it by will to Stella when she attains the age of twenty-one. You see, the estates being entailed, I did not like the idea of my little girl being without pocket-money. And it will be a nice little sum for herself when she marries Lord Carthew.”

Sir Philip was for the moment struck dumb with surprise and indignation. That his colorless, obedient wife should dare in his absence to make a will, leaving money away from him to his rebellious daughter, struck him as a most unwifely and outrageous liberty, and the desire to sting and humiliate both his wife and daughter became too strong to be resisted.

“_Your_ little girl!” he repeated, with a hard laugh. “Haven’t you grown out of that silly delusion yet? _Your_ child died years ago, as a weakly, miserable baby. That girl beside you, to whom you are so anxious to will your money, is no relation to you, but simply the daughter of my first wife, who died at her birth, exactly three months before I married you.”

“Philip! Stella! It is not true--say it is not true!” gasped Lady Cranstoun.

“How can you be so cruel?” exclaimed the young girl, turning in passionate reproach upon her father. “Don’t worry, and don’t listen, mamma, dear. You know that I am yours, and that I love you!”

“Your dutiful affection is not without its reward,” sneered Sir Philip. “Five thousand pounds is certainly a great deal more than you would ever get from _me_. But it is time this mother and daughter nonsense was done away with, except for the purpose of giving the girl a more respectable ancestry than she could show as the daughter of a gypsy. Where did you suppose she got her beauty from? You Douglases have always been an ugly, high-cheekboned race. There is nothing of the Douglas about _her_.”

Lady Cranstoun was moaning as if in pain, and her pale eyes had a hunted, terrified expression as she turned them helplessly from her husband to Stella.

“Not my child,” she whispered. “Not--my--child!” and as the words left her lips, she fell backward in Stella’s arms, cold and motionless, to all appearance dead already.

“You have killed her!” the latter cried, as she vainly tried to restore animation to the still figure, and for a few moments Sir Philip believed, not without a momentary pang of self-reproach, that she was right. Gradually, however, under Dr. Graham’s care, consciousness returned, but only feebly; and throughout the morning she fell from one fainting-fit into another. Stella never left her for a moment, and everything that skill and care could do was done to prolong the faint flicker of life within her wasted frame. A heart specialist was telegraphed for from London, and Lord Carthew, who had intended leaving for town early in the day, having heard no word of Hilary’s presence in the vicinity, delayed his journey until he could hear the doctor’s verdict.

It was unfavorable in a high degree. Lady Cranstoun was, so the great man agreed with Dr. Graham, slowly dying, and could not possibly last through the night. Toward evening she suddenly appeared to rally, recognized and spoke to Stella, and asked in a clear, distinct voice for Lord Carthew. When the young man came, she gave him her hand, and drew his toward that of Stella, which rested on the coverlet beside her.

“Be--very good--to her,” she murmured; and so, still occupied with thoughts for Stella’s future, she closed her eyes and fell asleep, never to open them on this world again.

To Stella the blow was terrible, overwhelming. The tie between her and her step-mother, as she now knew her to be, had been extremely strong, cemented by unselfishness on both sides, the girl patiently giving up the greater portion of her day in attendance and nursing, and the woman keeping silent about her sufferings, lest she might too greatly sadden her young companion. Such faults and foibles as Lady Cranstoun possessed, her intense timidity and cowardice, her limited intelligence, and excessive pride of birth, were but trifling when weighed against her kindly and affectionate nature. Stella’s own mother, had she lived, could not possibly have shown more sympathy and affection toward her child, whom she would probably have tormented by her violent and jealous nature.

Lord Carthew’s heart was deeply touched by the sight of Stella’s grief. He had no opportunity of speaking to her between the time of leaving the house and his attendance at Lady Cranstoun’s funeral four days later. Even then he did not see her. She was utterly prostrated by grief, Sir Philip informed him, and he did not think fit to add that from the hour of Lady Cranstoun’s death, the girl had been kept a close prisoner, the maid Ellen or Dakin sleeping in her room, which had been changed, so that no escape by the window was possible.

“I think the sooner you marry her and take her away with you the better,” Sir Philip said, as the two men were returning in the mourning-coach from the scene by the Cranstoun vault in Grayling Cemetery after the ceremony. “The poor child has cried herself ill; she will scarcely eat, and refuses to leave the house. I am really growing extremely anxious about her. Your letters are the only things that seem to give her any pleasure, although, as she says, she hasn’t the heart to answer them yet.”

As a matter of fact, Lord Carthew’s letters had been opened and read by Sir Philip on their arrival each day, and subsequently laid upon the dressing-table of Stella, for the amusement, apparently, of Dakin and Ellen, since the lady to whom they were addressed had never so much as touched one of them. They were good letters, too; full of affection and intelligence, if a little didactic in tone; too good by far to be wasted upon a cynical man of the world and two uneducated female spies.

“I am almost afraid for her reason,” continued Sir Philip. “A change of surroundings is imperative, so the doctor tells me. The attachment between mother and daughter was so great that the blow is proportionately heavy. In fact, my dear Carthew, it is now the twentieth of April, and I propose that the marriage, which, of course, will be strictly private, should take place at the date originally fixed--the tenth of May. It was her poor mother’s last wish, as you know, and under such circumstances should have with us the weight of a command.”

To this suggestion Lord Carthew agreed warmly. He was greatly disappointed at not seeing his fair _fiancée_, but was to some extent soothed by a fictitious message, brought to him by her maid Ellen, to the effect that Miss Cranstoun was so ill that she had not risen that day, but that she sent her love and asked him to excuse her.

Just for the few minutes while Ellen was repeating these words to Lord Carthew, in her master’s presence, having been previously taught them by Sir Philip himself, Stella was left alone in her bedroom, the door of which was carefully locked, and the window securely barred. It was her first moment of solitude since Lady Cranstoun’s death, and as luck would have it, Stephen Lee was standing on the terrace immediately beneath her window, which was situated in a turret on the third floor of the building.

For the past four days, although Stella knew it not, Stephen had taken every possible opportunity of hanging about the house, the serious illness of one of the collies--an illness so opportune for his plans that he might be almost suspected of having some hand in it--forming an excellent excuse for loitering near the house, young Stephen being renowned for his success as a horse and dog doctor.

As soon, therefore, as Stella’s pale face was pressed against her prison bars, her eyes fell upon the handsome, swarthy countenance and black beard of the young gamekeeper, and the words spoken by old Sarah, the gypsy fortune-teller, flashed back into her mind.

The hag had sworn to her that the “Romanys” were her friends, her people, and that they would help her to escape, if escape were necessary. At the time, her words seemed mere incomprehensible jargon, and her allusions to “Clare,” and assertions that Stella was “Clare’s child,” had seemed the idle chatter of a woman whose wits were wool-gathering in second childhood.

But now all that was changed. The key to the mystery was in Stella’s possession, and her cheeks flushed and her heart beat high with excitement and hope as she recalled the fact that her mother had escaped out of Sir Philip’s power back to her own people, if it was only to die, and that she, Stella, might well do the same. Old Sarah had told her what to do if she needed her help. She had but to place within the hands of Stephen Lee that little old coin, slung on a piece of red silk string, which she still carried about her, and succor would most certainly come.

In an instant she had made a rapid gesture to Stephen, whose eyes were upturned to her window. He glanced quickly round, and nodded; then noted, with the keen eye of a man who spent his life out of doors, the direction taken, in falling, by the little medal as it was cast down by Stella’s hand, caught it in his fingers, slipped it in his pocket, and walked leisurely away, as though nothing had happened.

Stella had just time to close the window and retire from its vicinity, when the maid Ellen returned. Her presence and that of Dakin were detestable to Stella, who could not even weep for Lady Cranstoun’s death free from their curious and vulgar gaze, nor would she ever exchange a word with either of them.

To-day, for the first time, buoyed up by this new hope of escape, she seemed indifferent to the woman’s presence.

Her hope lay in the gypsies, and with all the wild gypsy element in her blood, she was longing to be free.