CHAPTER V.

COMING CONFLICTS.

Margaret stood on one side of Hilary’s pillow, and her young mistress on the other, while the latter passed her slim fingers slowly and lightly about the wounded man’s fevered forehead.

As the old servant watched her standing there in her white gown, her pale sensitive face framed in blue-black hair, her black lashes lowered over her luminous eyes, and her mouth hard set in the supreme effort of will-power exercised over the troubled nerves of the patient, the thought came to Margaret that it was truly astonishing that any one could suppose Stella Cranstoun to be the daughter of Lady Gwendolen.

Old Margaret was a silent woman, gifted with but little imagination, and her knowledge of physiognomy was not sufficiently developed to enable her to realize in what special features of the girl before her the Cranstoun characteristics were grafted on the wild Carewe growth. To Margaret’s way of thinking, Stella was not so handsome as her mother, but “a deal more ladylike and amiable.” The first Lady Cranstoun’s eyes were of a brown so dark that it appeared almost black; until her last illness her figure and her handsome red mouth was a trifle coarse in outline. There was no coarseness in Stella’s face, but behind the eyes a light seemed to shine, telling of some strange force and fire within, kept in check by a determined will. Her touch was instinct with magnetism, and soon Hilary ceased his uneasy tossing of his head on the pillows and seemed to pass from a fevered nightmare into sweet and pleasant dreams.

Some one, he thought, some one very lovely, very tender, with dark blue eyes and dusky hair, was soothing and caressing him. He could not clearly see her face in his dream-fancies, but the feeling of her presence was delightful, and presently, half-waking from what seemed a feverish sleep, he heard her voice, sweet and rippling and sounding as though it came from a long way off, speaking to some one.

“You see, Margaret, my touch has soothed him to sleep. I wish he were not a lord.”

“That is just what would make your father like him, miss.”

“And just what would make me hate him as much as he hates me.”

“Why should he hate you?”

“Because I was the cause of his accident. I heard him speak so bitterly about me to his friend. Margaret, do you think he will soon get well?”

“Oh, yes. He’s only a bit weak and light-headed from loss of blood. This time three days he will be miles away.”

“And I shall never see him again. Well, I am sorry. I must go now; he seems to be sleeping quietly. Good-night, Margaret.”

For one moment more, Hilary felt her soft, cool finger-tips upon his eyelids; then he realized that she was gone, and nothing left to him but dreams of her.

“What is your name?” he asked of Margaret in the morning, while he was still pondering how much of his over-night dreams had been true.

“Margaret, my lord.”

“I wish you wouldn’t call me that,” he said, irritably and relapsed into silence.

Meantime, Lord Carthew had also spent the night in dreaming of Stella Cranstoun, and was looking eagerly forward to meeting her the next morning.

When the breakfast-gong summoned him, he was shown into a room of moderate size where the table was laid for two, and behind the tea-urn he found the fair Stella awaiting him, with Lady Cranstoun’s apologies for her absence.

“Mamma breakfasts in bed, if a cup of tea can be called breakfast, and Dr. Graham had to leave for London half an hour ago,” Stella explained, while Lord Carthew decided that by daylight, in blue serge with a collar and cuffs of point lace as her only ornaments, she seemed, if possible, even more desirable than in her riding-habit or her white silk evening-gown on the preceding day.

Questioned about his friend, Lord Carthew declared that Hilary had a good night and was certainly no worse.

“Very soon, indeed, he will be able to be moved, I believe,” he said.

“There need be no hurry about that,” she said hastily; and then, to his great joy, she blushed.

“I hope we may have the pleasure of meeting Sir Philip Cranstoun before we leave,” he observed presently, and at once noted how her face clouded at the mention of her father’s name.

“I don’t know when he will return,” she said, and at once dropped the subject.

A little questioning as to the way in which she spent her time elicited the fact that already that morning, so early as half-past six, Zephyr had been saddled, and had carried his mistress for half an hour’s canter in the park.

“And tell me what you would like to do after breakfast,” she said. “Would you care to see the curiosities of the Chase--old pictures, and old armor, and old tapestries? Or would you like to quietly study the books in the library or smoking-room, with a cigar? Or would you like a ride or drive in the neighborhood?”

“If you haven’t had enough of riding, I should be very glad of a mount, if you and Zephyr will be so kind as to accompany me. The fact is, my friend and I have left our horses at an inn in a village close by, and I am fearful as to how they may be treated if left longer to the landlord’s tender mercies.”

“I shall not be more than a few minutes putting my habit on, and it will be so nice to have some one to ride with,” she said with a charming smile, as she left the room.

Mental pictures arose again in his mind. He imagined her riding in the Row beside him, the “mad viscount” and his lovely bride, every man there envying him his newly found treasure. Not only would she outshine every woman there in beauty, but also in the management of her horse. He pictured his friends and acquaintances clamoring for an introduction, and Stella talking to them with her sweet seriousness and total absence of coquetry and affectation. He longed, like any romantic schoolboy, for her love, which he set himself with all his heart and all his intellect to win.

She, for her part, liked him immensely. She had seen very few men, and she did not think him ugly by any means, but most interesting looking. She could not divine that as she accepted his aid to spring into her saddle, the mere contact of her slim foot, resting birdlike, in his hand, sent a quiver of delight through the young man’s frame. His manner appeared so unemotional, his face so unmoved, that she never once suspected the passion for her which was taking hold of his entire mind and soul. Nor while she talked freely and gayly to him about the tenantry and the country round, could _he_ guess that before her eyes all the while there seemed to flit the remembrance of a bronzed and handsome face, the brows contracted in pain, the strong white teeth gnawing the lip under the drooping golden mustache, and the short brown curls disordered on a shapely head against the white pillow.

So they rode and talked, under the pale green leaves that were bursting into a delicate lace-work on the branches overhead, happy together to all outward seeming, but at cross purposes in reality; he thinking that she listened and understood, she believing him merely friendly, and wishing she could change his sympathetic kindness for the cold disapprobation of that other one who had been wounded through her folly.

From the darker shadows of the undergrowth a pair of malevolent eyes followed them.

“What is she talking so free and smiling with that ugly swell for?” Stephen Lee asked himself. “Bad luck to the day when he and that hulking giant trespassed into these grounds. I wish I’d ’a’ killed him and this chap, too.”

Down in his fierce heart, Stephen Lee cherished a secret passion for his beautiful young mistress, the existence of which she never once suspected. Unknown to her, his destiny was influenced by hers, and he was the means of communicating news concerning her at stated times to some birds of evil omen who were sometimes to be found at nightfall hovering within the confines of Cranstoun woods. Sir Philip would have been furious indeed could he have guessed that a member of the hated gypsy tribe had been for five years earning his living in his service; yet such was the case. The handsome, black-bearded young keeper, known as Stephen Lee, and one of the best men on the Cranstoun estates, was a true Romany, and hated his master with a hatred to the full as bitter as Sir Philip cherished against the entire gypsy tribe.

Yet at this moment, as he watched Stella and Lord Carthew ride by laughing and talking gayly, Stephen found himself wishing Sir Philip home again.

“The gray wolf would soon put a stop to this,” he said. “If it was the other chap, the lord, he might forgive it. I know right enough he means to try and marry her to some tip-top swell. But old Sarah will see her way to prevent that, I reckon.”

He was muttering to himself, when a hard, rasping voice, speaking in low tones immediately behind him, made him start in surprise.

“Is that the friend of the man you shot?”

Sir Philip himself stood among the brushwood, attired in a light tweed suit, as cool and unmoved as though he had not been absent from home for more than a month. The accident had only taken place on the preceding evening, and Stephen judged by the small handbag that Sir Philip was carrying, and by the direction from which he was coming, that he had not been home. Yet already he was quite well acquainted with what had taken place in the woods on the preceding evening. But Stephen Lee had long before this suspected some system of spying by which the master of the Chase contrived to inform himself of the doings of his household in his absence, and he was not therefore much surprised by Sir Philip’s question, to which he responded, after his wont, in a civil monosyllable:

“Yes, sir.”

“This is the man called Pritchard?”

“Yes, sir.”

“How is Lord Carthew?”

“Better.”

“Did you shoot him accidentally?”

“Partly.”

“Explain yourself.”

“You have often told me to keep off tramps and trespassers and such like,” the man answered, with a forced and rather sullen civility. “Lord Carthew stopped Miss Cranstoun’s horse and seemed to be annoying her. I fired to frighten him and he got hurt.”

“Ah!”

Sir Philip paused for a moment. His eyes followed the retreating figures of Lord Carthew and Stella as, with their heads inclined together in converse, they rode on together to a bend in the avenue between the trees. Then he turned to Stephen, his face set and mask-like as usual.

“You were only obeying orders,” he said, and threw the man half a crown.

The gypsy picked it up and glowered after his employer as the latter bent his steps towards the house.

“I’ll drink to your destruction in this world and the next,” he said; “but I’m hanged if I can make out what you are up to. Old Sarah will understand, perhaps. She’s a match in cunning even for _you_.”

All this time Lord Carthew was learning from Stella’s lips all that there was to tell of her life as it was lived on the surface. She was seventeen last Christmas, she told him, and she believed it to be true, ignoring that first year of life which she had passed in London as the unloved child of a gypsy mother. For months past she had been trained in the correct way of bowing, kissing the Queen’s hand, and backing out of the royal presence over her train by a duly qualified lady, who had attended at the Chase in order to impart to her this highly necessary instruction, and she made Lord Carthew laugh by her lively description of these lessons.

“Don’t you feel horribly nervous about it?” he asked.

She turned her large black eyes upon him in surprise.

“Oh, no, not in the least,” she answered. “All this London trip I should look forward to eagerly, I think, but for leaving poor mamma, and--and for something else.”

He saw by the sadness in her look and the way in which she shut her mouth fast that some especially anxious thought connected with this stay in London troubled her.

“Won’t you tell me what is the other thing?” he asked, gently. “You have already said you regard me as a friend, and it will be a relief to you to tell me your worries, since you say you have never any one to speak to.”

“I don’t know quite how to put it,” she said, as she meditatively stroked her horse’s neck and ears with her whip. “It seems so egotistical to be boring you with so much about myself. But this season, this presentation to the Queen, and the balls and parties that will follow, for which I have been trained so long, what will it all mean in the end, but that I am to show off my graces and accomplishments and wear smart clothes, so that I may attract an offer of marriage? And if any come, there will be no question of love or liking on my part; my father’s intention is just to hand me over to the best bidder. The Chase is gloomy and dreary and prison-like, and I am often very lonely; but it is a thousand times better than to be married to the man who has the highest title and the largest fortune among those who may condescend to take notice of me,” she went on, bitterly. “Why, if I could stoop to such a marriage, there would not be a scullery-maid at the Chase, or a cottager on my father’s property, who would not have the right to despise me!”

“But you might meet some one among these men of rank and wealth whom you might like,” suggested Lord Carthew. “Having a title and money doesn’t absolutely debar any one from being capable of inspiring love.”

“I suppose it is my training and my contradictory nature,” she said, “but I must own that the fact of a man wearing a title would be a reason with me for having a strong prejudice against him to start with.”

“Isn’t that rather unfair?”

“I suppose it is; but I have had that formula that I was being educated solely with a view to marrying ‘well,’ and adding extra lustre to the name of Cranstoun dinned into me until I have revolted against it. And I know that after this season, when I am to be taken out and dressed, and inspected by eligible London bachelors, there will be terrible quarrels between my father and me, which will worry and terrify poor mamma beyond measure. You see, Mr. Pritchard,” she said, turning to him with that sweet, frank smile he had already learned to love, “I am indeed talking to you as though I had known you all my life. I dare say it is a good deal what you told me about your leaving England so very shortly which makes me so ready to confide in you. It seems much easier to be frank with a friend whom one may not see again for many years; and then when I heard you tell mamma your people were just yeoman farmers, and that you had nothing in wealth or position to be proud of, I warmed to you at once, and quite longed for a talk with you. The very name of Cranstoun and the expressions ‘old family,’ ‘county family,’ ‘blue blood,’ ‘rank, title, wealth, position, and ancestry,’ somehow produce a feeling of intense annoyance in me. I have been so much trained and preached to, in fact,” she concluded, laughing, “that at heart I have reverted to the savage, and that ideal of my father’s of which he constantly speaks as my vocation in life, to marry some man of brilliant position and fortune, is so detestably repugnant to me that I would far rather kill myself than submit to it.”

He listened, deeply interested, but a little puzzled. The romantic novelty of her sentiments amused and attracted him by their dissimilarity from the point of view taken of such subjects by the ordinary young Englishwoman of good education and good family, who is usually quite as anxious as her parents and guardians to make what is called “a good match,” and who only hopes that her future husband may be presentable enough for her to like him.

The clew to the mystery of Stella’s character Lord Carthew did not possess. As much as an emotional woman can dread and hate a man and a system, so strongly had Stella’s mother hated and feared Sir Philip Cranstoun and the aristocratic lords of the soil of whom he was a representative, and a very strong measure of the same rebellion, the same hatred, she had transmitted to her daughter. So that it necessarily came about that Stella tried not to think about Hilary Pritchard because she believed him to be Lord Carthew, while her heart and sympathies went readily out to Lord Carthew, whom she believed to be an altogether poor and undistinguished person.

This was exactly the state of mind in which her father, Sir Philip, desired to find her. The far-seeing Baronet had some time ago set himself to the task of investigating the means and position of certain eligible bachelors among the aristocracy whom Stella was likely to meet in London. And among these, few had a fairer record in the matter of eligibility than Claud Edward Clayton Bromley, Viscount Carthew, heir to the Earl of Northborough.

That horrible blot, the introduction of the gypsy Carewe element into the annals of the Cranstouns, might well be wiped out by such an alliance. Sir Philip’s keen eyes had noted what his daughter’s had totally failed to observe, the intensity of Lord Carthew’s regard as he turned toward Stella on his horse and drank in her words. As to what the girl’s sentiments in the matter were, that did not trouble Sir Philip for one moment. She had only been admitted into his household on suffrage, he told himself, a wretched infant, born in a hovel, and brought to his house by beggars. He did not know, so he argued, that she was even his wife’s child at all. When he said this, however, he lied, for the girl’s resemblance to her mother was very striking. In any case, it was not for her own sake, but to save her noble stepmother’s reason, that baby Stella was taken from her hiding-place in London and brought up in her father’s house. And a hundred times a day Sir Philip punished her for her lost mother’s pride and passionate temper.

If she liked flowers and she planted them, orders were given for them to be uprooted and destroyed. A Miss Cranstoun must not soil her hands by gardening. No servant that she liked was allowed to be about her, and in her growing girlhood books that she seemed to enjoy were invariably taken away. These petty tyrannies Stella had endured for years in proud silence. It was as though she had been reserving her strength for some great struggle which was one day to take place, and to alter for all time the relations between herself and her father. For a long time she had felt it, as it were, hovering in the air, and that it would be upon the subject of her marriage she had no doubt. Only, she supposed that the trip to London would be the starting point for their quarrel, nor could she guess that this kindly new friend, who rode beside her and listened with such sympathetic interest to her little troubles, would be closely associated with the crucial conflict which was shortly to wage between herself and her father.