CHAPTER VII.

A KISS TOO LONG.

“Alas, how easily things go wrong! A sigh too much or a kiss too long; There comes a mist and a blinding rain, And things are never the same again!”

Stella had never heard the verses, but something of the same thought entered into her mind as she drew back, pale and quivering, after that one passionate kiss interchanged between her and Hilary.

In one magical moment she had learned so much--had learned that she loved Hilary, that he loved her, and, moreover, that the thought of marrying her suitor of the morning, which up to now she had been able to cherish at least without aversion, had suddenly grown intolerable to her. All this had been taught her by a kiss, the first which ever a man had laid upon her lips.

With downcast eyes and rapidly beating heart, she stood now before Hilary, as he rose from the sofa and bent down toward her, holding both her little trembling hands in one of his.

“It was my fault,” he whispered, humbly. “Forgive me.”

“I--I have nothing to forgive,” the girl said, unsteadily, still without looking up. “I must go, Lord Carthew.”

“If I were really Lord Carthew,” he said, “there might be some excuse. But I am not. By a freak of my friend’s, we had changed names for a while when that accident happened to me. But I never intended the trick to continue. It is true that he begged me, as a favor, to keep silence on the subject, especially before you. But, after my folly and imprudence, I must confess the truth. I cannot masquerade any longer. Miss Cranstoun, try to forgive me.”

“I have nothing to forgive.”

“You see,” he went on, unheeding, letting her hands go, and standing at some distance from her, “I was half-dreaming--weakness, I dare say, proceeding from the ridiculous semi-invalid position I’ve been in during the last eighteen hours. Suddenly, on opening my eyes, I saw a face, a very lovely woman’s face, close to me. It seemed a part of my dreams; I did not stop to consider who she was, and I kissed her.”

“You thought it was some one else, then?”

“I did not say so. But will you forgive me?”

“I forgive you. I understand; I was only a part of your dream. Please tell me again what you were saying just now. I could not quite grasp it. What is your real name?”

“Hilary Pritchard. Here,” he continued, fumbling with one hand in his pocket, “here are cards, letters, and papers, to prove it. No one who knows the Northborough family could suppose that I belong to it. But Lord Carthew was my college chum, and I like him as well almost as one man can like another. I am all the more sorry because I have annoyed a lady whom I know he very greatly admires.”

“So it is Lord Carthew I have been talking to all last evening and this morning,” Stella observed, reflectively. “That explains a great deal.”

She broke off abruptly. What she really meant was that it explained the fact of her father’s acquiescence to the proposed marriage between herself and his younger guest; and also to the latter’s way of talking as though he were wealthy and heir to a title, as well as other points which had puzzled her.

The door of the sitting-room in which they stood was wide open, and Dakin, the housemaid, passed along the corridor, apparently without paying any particular attention to Stella and Hilary; but Stella disliked and distrusted the woman, and moved toward the door as Dakin made a great pretence of going down the staircase to the ground-floor.

“I will say good-by now, Miss Cranstoun,” said Hilary, in a constrained voice. “I shall be leaving the house almost immediately. May I leave it to you to make my apologies to Lady Cranstoun?”

“But you will stay to luncheon, surely?” Stella suggested. “It will seem so strange if you go like this. And besides, you are not nearly strong enough to be moved yet. You can hardly walk, and last night you were delirious, I know.”

“How do you know?”

She blushed deeply.

“I charm away mamma’s headaches,” she answered, in confusion. “I believe I have some kind of magnetism in my touch. So I asked Margaret to let me soothe you.”

“It was you, then. I woke out of a horrid nightmare, and felt your touch, and heard your voice.”

His tones vibrated with deep feeling, which he was trying vainly to suppress. Stella, on her part, was torn between a desire to escape and a longing to remain near him.

The first luncheon-gong rang out in the interval of silence. Stella held out her hand to him.

“Won’t you stay?” she asked.

“I cannot.”

He was holding her hand close, and through both their frames electric currents seemed to tingle. The very air about them was charged with electricity to them, so that both were quivering and excited.

They were standing near the open door, when suddenly Stella turned, laid her two small hands lightly upon Hilary’s sleeve, and looked up in his face, her own pale, but transfigured into more than its usual loveliness by passionate feeling.

“Was it only a dream?” she breathed rather than said. “Or do you love me?”

Mortal man could hold out in pride no longer. In an instant he had gathered her up in his arms, and was covering her cheeks, her eyes, and her lips with close, hot kisses, while he murmured incoherent words of love into her ear.

Only for one mad, never-to-be-forgotten moment did he hold her thus, she unresisting, clinging timidly to him, letting her soft lips meet his in answering passion.

Then he remembered all the difference between them, all the barriers, all the impossibilities. As in a flash he realized her father’s wrath, her mother’s astonishment, and the indignation of his loyal friend, Lord Carthew, and leading Stella gently to the door, he kissed her hands in token of farewell.

“Good-by,” he whispered. “I will write.”

Then he shut the door, and finding herself alone in the corridor, dazed and agitated, Stella fled to her own room, and kneeling down before an arm-chair by the fire, buried her face in her hands, to enact in imagination the scene again which she had just gone through, to thrill with ecstasy as she recalled Hilary’s kisses, to blush until her delicate skin seemed scorched as she remembered her own timid response, and to long with every fibre of her being for the moment when she would see him again.

She knew full well now what even to herself she would not own, she hardly understood before, that from the moment when that man of superb figure and perfect face had laid his hand upon Zephyr’s bridle on the preceding evening, and looked into her eyes, she had loved him, and that but for that she would hardly have braved her father’s anger by insisting upon Hilary’s removal to the Chase.

She had believed that he positively disliked her, and had secretly reproached herself for letting her thoughts dwell so persistently upon a man who scorned her. Only during the past ten minutes had she learned the truth, that against his will he loved her as passionately as she loved him. That one glorious fact outweighed all other considerations in her mind. As to Lord Carthew, he was as completely forgotten as though he had never existed. His intelligence, his kindly sympathy, his interesting talk, were of no more account in her eyes than his wealth and title. The strain of wild gypsy blood in her veins was showing itself fully now. She loved as gypsy natures can, with a passionate self-abandonment, counting the world and all that it contains of no value when compared with the love of the one person existing who could make life worth living.

Yet she was a Cranstoun, too--trained in habits of strict self-control from her infancy; and when the second summons to luncheon came, she sprang up instinctively, smoothed her hair, looked at herself fixedly in the glass, and hoped that others would not notice the strange glow in her cheeks and light in her eyes, and went down to lunch in her plain serge gown, her eyes like two dancing stars, and her mouth all tremulous with smiles.

It was almost with a start that she came face to face with Lord Carthew, and realized that he was staying in the house. Lady Cranstoun glanced at her nervously. She was a few minutes late, and Sir Philip never overlooked the least unpunctuality. To-day, however, to her great astonishment, he made no comment upon it. He and Lord Carthew seemed to get on unusually well together; both had travelled a good deal in Europe, the former unaccompanied by his wife and daughter, and they naturally fell to discussing the various hotels at which they had stayed.

Stella was heartily glad that no part of the conversation devolved upon her. She sat in her usual place at the head of the table, Lady Cranstoun not being equal to any of the duties of hostess, mechanically doing all that was required of her, and all the time wondering whether Hilary had left the house yet, how he would stand the journey in his weak condition, whether by any chance she should see him again before his departure, and if not, how soon he would write to her. Lord Carthew noticed the brightness of her eyes and her absent-minded expression, and with a thrill of joy hoped it might arise from her half-given promise to himself. His interview with her father had been short, but characteristic of both men.

He had followed the dreaded gray wolf into his vast library, surrounded by well-filled oaken bookcases, and had watched him take his accustomed place with his back to the fire, sarcastic, and critical.

“Sir Philip,” Lord Carthew had begun, plunging at once into his subject, as he seated himself deliberately in a deep arm-chair, “first, I must thank you for the hospitality extended to my friend and myself since yesterday evening. You have no doubt heard of my friend’s unlucky accident, entirely the result of our trespassing in your grounds. Next, I must inform you that while out riding this morning, I made your daughter an offer of marriage.”

“Indeed, Mr.--Pritchard, I think the name is?”

“No, that is not my name, but that of my friend upstairs. To please a whimsical fancy of my own, we had changed names for the nonce during our travels. My name is Lord Carthew, and my father, Lord Northborough, is connected with Lady Cranstoun’s family.”

“May I ask if you are in the habit of going about under an _alias_?”

“I don’t think I have ever had occasion to use any name but my own until yesterday. The point is, that as Miss Cranstoun expressed an indifference to titles which almost amounted to hostility, I took advantage of the fact to continue the jest, and to do my wooing in the name of my old college friend, whose people are gentlemen farmers in Yorkshire.”

“Very romantic,” sneered Sir Philip. “May I ask whether this ‘Lord of Burleigh’ style of courtship won my daughter’s heart?”

“I could not say that. Miss Cranstoun has known me a few hours only, and I am not possessed of those graces and attractions which charm at first sight. But at least she did not repel me, and even promised to think about the matter, subject, of course, to your approval.”

It was difficult for Sir Philip to keep all signs of his satisfaction from his hard and impassive face.

“I will tell you plainly, Lord Carthew,” he said, after a moment’s pause, “that after what you have told me, I shall require better proofs of your identity than your bare word if you wish me to consider you in the light of a suitor to my daughter’s hand. We Cranstouns are, as you may know, among the oldest, absolutely the oldest families in England, and on her mother’s side my daughter is granddaughter to the Duke of Lanark. I do not think my daughter is especially attached to me, although she is most devoted to my wife. But she has been brought up in habits of the strictest obedience, and would not think of encouraging any admirer without my full sanction. Had you been this Mr. Pritchard you were pleased to personate, I should most certainly have never given it.”

“My friend is a gentleman, sir,” returned Lord Carthew, coldly; “and a man of such high character and superb appearance that any girl might well fall in love with him, and any father be proud to be connected with him.”

“In that case, you must pardon me for saying so, but are you not committing an error of judgment in taking him with you when you go wife-hunting?”

The bitterness of the sarcasm, reflecting as it did upon his undistinguished appearance, stung Lord Carthew for one moment only, and he winced. Then, recovering himself, with an easy smile, he answered that fortunately for him Mr. Pritchard was not a marrying man, and proposed, indeed, shortly to leave England and seek his fortune out West. In the mean time he should be glad to know whether Sir Philip had any objection to offer against him, Lord Carthew, in the character of candidate for his daughter’s hand.

“My parents are extremely desirous that I should at once marry some lady of birth and beauty,” he continued. “My father intends settling fifteen thousand a year and a house in town upon me as soon as my choice is made. But I have hardly ever hoped to see my ideals all realized so perfectly as they are in your lovely and charming daughter.”

The two men having come to a thorough understanding, it was hard to say which was the more eager to hurry on the marriage. Even the strongest and hardest of men, to all appearance, usually have one weak spot, one touch of human foolishness about them, and in Sir Philip Cranstoun’s mind there lingered always a haunting fear lest the old gypsy woman’s prophecy of disgrace and shame to be brought upon him by his descendants might some day be verified. Over his wife he exercised the same unquestioned, domineering authority as over the servants of his household; but he had long ago recognized the proud, dumb protest in his daughter’s obedience, and had realized that she inherited something of his own will-power, together with a capability for passionate resentment and other qualities at the existence of which he could but guess.

He was all the more relieved at the thought that she would, by her brilliant marriage with the future Earl of Northborough, at once retrieve the mistake he himself had made twenty years ago in wedding Clare Carewe, and relieve his mind from all lurking anxiety on her account. Lord Carthew was evidently a man of originality and strength of purpose; even Sir Philip, who cherished a chronic contempt for nearly all his kind, was compelled to recognize this, and he congratulated himself heartily on his own sagacity in keeping as secret, even from herself, his daughter’s half humble origin.

After luncheon Lord Carthew, instead of joining his host in the smoking-room, repaired to the drawing-room, which Stella quitted almost as soon as he entered.

He noted her action, and erroneously attributed it to her natural modesty and shyness in not wishing his offer of marriage to be discussed before her mother. But in truth, Stella was not thinking of him at all. She merely wished to be alone that she might think over the emotions of the morning, and she had hardly given a moment’s thought to Lord Carthew and his proposal after that brief but momentous interview with Hilary Pritchard.

It was easy enough, so Lord Carthew found, to win Lady Cranstoun’s approval of the match. Seating himself near her sofa, he told her in a few well-chosen words of his love for her daughter, and the ruse he had practised in pleading his cause in his friend’s name.

“I can never understand my dear Stella’s extraordinary objections against wealth and position!” exclaimed Lady Cranstoun. “For my part I am delighted about the whole affair. I thought from the moment when I first saw you that you had the Douglas eyes. Do you know, with her strange opinions, I have always been nervous as to whom Stella would marry? She is so utterly unlike ordinary girls, you see, and I am the more relieved that it has all turned out so well.”

“You really think she will have me, then?”

“Certainly I do,” returned Lady Cranstoun, opening her pale blue eyes in surprise. “Of course, as she says, she has not known you long enough to love you; but she has a very high regard for you, and you seem to have similar tastes. She even--I hope I am not betraying her confidence--but she even asked me if I should like to go for a voyage with you after you were married, and drew a most charming picture of the deck of a ship with all of us assembled there.”

A faint color came into the poor lady’s face as she spoke. The prospect of leaving the Chase, and her husband’s cold, tyrannical dislike, seemed to momentarily restore her lost youth and health. Lord Carthew was delighted at her encouraging words.

“There is no breach of confidence,” he said. “Your daughter said as much to me. I think I may consider myself as the happiest man in England at this moment.”

Meanwhile, under the trees of the same shrubbery where her grandfather, Hiram Carewe, was shot down and murdered nineteen years before, Stella Cranstoun walked, with feet that seemed hardly to touch the ground, her thoughts absorbed by Hilary. She would not think of the future. The fact that he loved her should be enough for her for one happy day at least, until she could hear from him.

Turning into a fresh glade, where the branches overarched above her, she came unexpectedly face to face with her father. The flush died from her cheeks, the light from her eyes. She bowed coldly and would have passed on, when he barred her progress with his arm.

“Wait!” he said. “I have something to ask you. What is this about a proposal of marriage made to you this morning by a Mr. Hilary Pritchard?”

She looked at him scornfully. She knew quite well that he was trying to deceive her.

“You have been misinformed,” she said. “The gentleman who asked me to marry him was Viscount Carthew.”

“And what was your answer?”

“I have not yet given it. But it will most certainly be ‘No!’”