CHAPTER IX.

THE GYPSY’S PROPHECY.

“Let me cross your hand with a bit of silver, my pretty lady! Let me tell your fortune, deary--all about the fair young gentleman you love so true, and the dark one you won’t have, for all his gold and rank.”

The words, uttered in a hoarse, croaking voice close to Stella’s ear, as she sped through the trees of the park in the darkness, made her start and utter a little cry of fright. The terms, too, were so strangely appropriate to her own circumstances that it seemed as though they were spoken in response to her thoughts. Turning in considerable alarm, she perceived a few steps behind her the small, bent form of a very old woman, in appearance almost a centenarian, wrapped in a hooded cloak of some dark woollen material. From under the scattered white locks straying over her wrinkled brow an extraordinarily brilliant pair of eyes gleamed out, belying her apparent decrepitude, and carrying out still further the weird and witch-like effect of her whole appearance as she stood before Stella, leaning heavily on a stick, with skinny, trembling fingers.

Stella Cranstoun possessed the instinctive reverence for age which exists in all generous-minded young people. The uncanny appearance of the old woman considerably startled her in her overwrought state of mind; but she easily forgot her temporary alarm in an unselfish fear as to what might befall the aged creature before her should Sir Philip chance to hear of her presence within his grounds.

“Are you a gypsy?” Stella asked, stopping short, and looking fixedly at the old woman.

“Ay, my deary; I’m a gypsy, sure enough. Old Sarah is a true Romany. But the Romanys are your friends, my pretty. You’ve got no call to be afraid of them.”

“Do you know who I am, then?” the young girl asked, fascinated in spite of herself by those strangely bright eyes.

Sarah Carewe burst into a hoarse, mirthless laugh, which reminded Stella more of a raven’s croak than of the ordinary way of expressing amusement.

“Do I know my Clare’s girl when I see her?” she asked. “My Clare, that died in my arms when you was a little, helpless baby. You’ve got her eyes, my pretty, and her face; for all you’re not so round and _dimber_ as she was in her prime.”

“You are making some mistake,” Stella said. “I am the daughter of Sir Philip Cranstoun, of the Chase. If you want money I will give you what I have about me with pleasure; but you must get out of the park as soon as possible, for my father is dreadfully bitter against tramps and gypsies, especially gypsies.”

An evil scowl contracted the hag’s white eyebrows.

“_Sallah!_” she muttered, under her breath; and although Stella did not understand her, she easily guessed that the expression conveyed a malediction. “He’s hard on us, is he? Let him wait a bit.” Then, changing suddenly to a wheedling tone, she begged again to be allowed to tell Stella’s fortune. In vain the girl pressed money upon her, and tried by warnings and entreaties to get rid of her, while she hurried on toward the house. Old Sarah was not to be shaken off, and professed herself fearless as to the consequences which might befall her if seen by one of Sir Philip’s keepers. Stella began to be seriously frightened at length lest the woman might come to some harm, knowing her father’s orders.

“Now, pray, take this half-sovereign,” she urged, “and go back out of the park at once. In a few seconds we shall be in sight of the house, and the dogs are trained to fly at any one who is not smartly dressed. And only yesterday Stephen Lee, one of the keepers, shot a gentleman, who was accidentally trespassing, in the shoulder, and wounded him very seriously.”

“Don’t I know, my pretty? And isn’t Stephen Lee son to my own daughter’s child, and am I not his old _mami_? He won’t hurt me, never fear. Cross my hand with the bit of gold, and I’ll go.”

In order to rid herself of her, as it was now close on the dinner-hour at the Chase, Stella let her soft white hand be clutched within Sarah’s lean fingers, and stood watching, impatient, and yet a little interested in spite of herself, as the gypsy took a box of matches and a dirty end of candle from her pocket, and peered into her victim’s palm under the lightly falling rain.

“I see a prison, my deary, and a marriage forced upon you--marriage with a dark gentleman, who loves you, dear, and who is a great lord; but your heart is given to the fair man. I see starvation and a death, and only one way of help for you.”

She droned the words monotonously, as though some inner force were dictating them to her, doubtless a trick of her trade, but none the less impressive to an imaginative young girl.

“Go on!” whispered Stella. “And pray make haste. I _must_ get home.”

“You must ask your own people to save you,” said the old woman, raising the forefinger of her right hand impressively. “Only the Romanys can help you. Trust no one else, and when despair comes, send this token to me--to old Sarah Carewe, that held you in her arms when you first opened your eyes on this wicked world.”

Suddenly blowing out the candle, she fumbled in her pocket, and then thrust into Stella’s hand what appeared to be a small silver coin strung on a piece of dirty red silk cord.

“When you want my help,” she said, “give this to Stephen Lee, and I will save you. You shall marry the man you love, and live a life of freedom and happiness, as a Romany _doxy_ should; and the black lord and the gray wolf may go hang together. Good-night, my pretty. _Beenship rat._ And remember old Sarah!”

She waved her shrivelled hand in token of parting benediction, and slunk away among the trees with a swiftness astonishing in a woman of her years, leaving Stella, with her brain filled by bewildering questions and ideas, to make the best of her way to the house.

The first dinner-bell had already rung as she entered her room to dress for dinner. The lady’s maid, who attended both upon her and Lady Cranstoun, was full of comments upon her moist dress and boots.

“Dear me, miss! how wet your things are! And you seem all flushed as though you had hurried. I do hope you won’t have taken a chill.”

Stella disliked the girl--a tall, shifty-eyed creature, with a retreating chin and a tendency to gossip, who had only been in Sir Philip’s service a short time.

“Don’t waste time in remarks, Ellen,” she said, quietly, “but help me into my white silk dress.”

Fortunately, she was able to enter the dining-room at a quarter past seven, on the last stroke of the gong, but by the peculiarly cold and evil gleam of Sir Philip’s eyes as they rested upon her she knew that he was already greatly angered against her. This she attributed to the fact of their conversation in the shrubbery that morning; but what she did not guess at was a certain short interview which had taken place between her father and the housemaid Dakin a few minutes before dinner, while Lady Cranstoun and Lord Carthew were still dressing for that meal.

Dakin knew that Sir Philip, who carried punctuality to an excess extremely uncomfortable for other people, would be in his study long before dinner; she therefore tapped at the door discreetly, and on being admitted, stated that she had “something to say which she thought Sir Philip might like to hear.”

She was a plain, sallow-faced woman of forty, with a slight cast in her dark eyes, and extremely quiet in dress and manner, and she stood, rolling a little corner of her snowy muslin apron over and over in her fingers while she spoke.

“It was before lunch, sir,” she said, in a low, apologetic voice. “I was passing along the corridor, when, as I was walking by the rooms of the young gentleman that was wounded, and that first of all called himself Lord Carthew, what did I see by accident, but----”

“Spare me all this circumlocution, Mrs. Dakin. You were spying, as I pay you to do, and you saw--what?”

“Only Miss Stella, sir, hugging and kissing the young gentleman,” returned Dakin, with humble vindictiveness.

“The young gentleman! What young gentleman?”

“Mr. Pritchard, sir, that got his arm shot. You didn’t see him, I think. He was very big and very handsome, and he was calling Miss Stella his dear and his darling, which, begging your pardon, sir, she seemed quite to like and encourage him.”

Sir Philip muttered an oath under his breath, and stamped his heel on the carpet.

“When did this happen?” he asked sharply. “Before or after her ride?”

“After, sir; oh, some time after. Miss Cranstoun had had time to change into her serge housedress. Indeed, it was just before luncheon, for it was the first luncheon-bell that gave them a fright. You see, sir, it was rather indiscreet, for they stood in the sitting-room quite near the door, which was wide open, so as I couldn’t help seeing them.”

“What happened then?”

“He said he would write, sir, and then he kissed her again, and she him; and they said good-by. And during luncheon he went away, after giving me orders not to tell any one he had gone until an hour or two had passed, and half a sovereign. And he gave a pound to Margaret, and two letters, one for Lady Cranstoun, and one for Lord Carthew.”

“Have they received those letters yet?”

“I placed them on the dressing-tables in Lady Cranstoun’s and in Lord Carthew’s rooms, sir. But neither of them went upstairs after lunch until just now to dress for dinner.”

“No letter was left for Miss Cranstoun, then?”

“Not so far as I know, sir. Directly after lunch Miss Cranstoun went out in the grounds for a short time. Then she came back to her own room, but she wasn’t there at six o’clock, as I found out from her maid, who couldn’t tell me what had become of her.”

“Go upstairs and find out quietly if she’s in her room now.”

He almost trembled with apprehension during the few minutes of Dakin’s absence. Her news had very seriously disturbed him, coming as it did after Stella’s defiant declaration in the shrubbery that she would never marry Lord Carthew. Her words, taken by themselves, had affected him but little; but in conjunction with the fact that she had had the audacity and the folly to choose a lover for herself, they became very serious indeed. Was it possible that she had already actually eloped with this farmer’s son, whom she had only met for the first time yesterday evening? Was all his cunning concealment of her mother’s humble origin to be wasted if once the wild gypsy blood in her had a chance of asserting itself? Was his name to be disgraced, after the pains he had taken to clear it from all possible taint of his miserable first marriage? That old gypsy hag, when she cursed him before the court-house eighteen years ago, had prophesied that his children should bring disgrace upon his name. Were her words coming true already?

The housemaid’s entrance set his fears at rest for the time.

“I listened outside the bedroom door, sir,” the woman said, “and Ellen was dressing Miss Cranstoun, and remarking that her serge gown and her boots are wet. So she must have been out walking.”

Sir Philip was puzzled. Could the fellow be hanging about the grounds still? he wondered. But if he wished to make love to Stella, why had he, hampered as he was by a wounded limb, already left the shelter of the Chase?

“Understand,” he said, to the woman, sternly, “I am extremely annoyed that you should have let Miss Cranstoun give you the slip this afternoon. Every movement of hers must be watched at this point and reported tome. Either you or the lady’s maid, Ellen, must dog her footsteps everywhere. She must never be again allowed to leave the house alone.”

At dinner Lord Carthew informed his host that he was much disturbed by a letter he had just read which had been left for him by his friend.

“I dropped into his sitting-room a little before luncheon,” he explained, “and found him lying, fully dressed, asleep on the sofa. I didn’t like to disturb him, and half hoped to see him at lunch. After lunch, I was so pleasantly employed talking to Lady Cranstoun, chiefly about you, Miss Stella, that the afternoon flew by I can’t tell how. Then when I went just now to see my friend, I found that he had flown, leaving only a note in which he asks me to make his excuses to Lady Cranstoun, and to thank her for her kindness, but that as he is quite well, he will not trespass upon it any longer, but will at once return to London, where a doctor of his acquaintance will soon set him up again.”

“Mr. Pritchard left a note for me also,” put in Lady Cranstoun, “in which he said much the same thing. It seems so curious that he should have been our guest, and yet that I have never seen him. But I very much hope that he will come to no hurt through making a move so suddenly. He is a very dear friend of yours, is he not?” She turned to Lord Carthew with almost an affectionate touch in her manner. She was slightly flushed this evening, and her pale blue eyes positively shone. It had always been a subject of dread with her lest her beloved Stella should be forced into some marriage totally distasteful to her by her father’s tyranny. But her short interview with Stella that morning, and her long talk with Lord Carthew in the afternoon, had convinced her that here was the ideal husband for her daughter--rich, titled, a connection of her own, and at the same time intellectual, generous, affectionate, and of a singularly high character. His manner to her was perfect. After so many wretched years of slighting and snubbing and terrorizing which she had patiently endured from her husband, the gentle deference and kindly sympathy of Lord Carthew came to her as something altogether new and delightful. If only she herself at Stella’s age had had the good fortune to secure the affection of such a man, she felt that her lot would have been different indeed. Knowing something, too, of the volcanic depths of Stella’s nature, of her determination, her impulsiveness, and her powers of loving and hating in what seemed to poor Lady Cranstoun an exaggerated and incomprehensible degree, her motherly heart was the more rejoiced that a man of originality and evident force of character had seen fit to throw the handkerchief to her.

What Lady Cranstoun, unfortunately, altogether failed to take into account was that strange magnetism which occasional members of opposite sexes exercise over each other, not always with the happiest results. Beautiful, luckless Clare Carewe had aroused such a passion in the breast of even the cold and calculating Sir Philip twenty years ago, and at the present moment Sir Philip’s daughter was consumed by just such an unreasoning and overwhelming love for Hilary Pritchard, who, after all, had done little more than look into her eyes, speak somewhat disparagingly about her, catch her in his arms in that one mad embrace, and then leave the house, apparently without the wish or the intention to see her again. Hilary had neither rank, nor fortune, nor family; he was not Lord Carthew’s equal in intelligence, nor was he a man of such original and large-minded views. He had sometimes flirted with nice and pretty girls of his acquaintance, but he had seldom devoted much thought to any woman, a good run to hounds being in his opinion far better than the most fascinating courtship, and no woman in the world the equal of his mare, Black Bess.

As to marriage, Hilary had no wish for such a binding and fettering arrangement for many years to come. There was the Canadian legacy to be made into a profitable investment first. In time, no doubt, a wife and children would be nice to come home to on winter evenings, but he had scarcely ever regarded even their remote possibilities except as so much more or less ornamental and expensive furniture in his future homestead.

He had not meant to fall in love with Stella Cranstoun. Nothing was, in fact, further from his thoughts than to fall in love with anybody. Against his will, her personality affected him, and from the moment when he laid his hand upon her bridle-rein until he parted from her in the corridor, through all the physical pain of his wound, the thought of her beauty haunted his mind, try as he would to cast it out. She was altogether unsuited to him, and marriage with her would be impossible. What was there in common between the granddaughter of a Duke, the child of one of the proudest men in England, and himself, the son of a plain yeoman, of neither family nor fortune?

Stella, of course, could not guess that this was her lover’s state of mind, but something of it she gathered from Lord Carthew’s talk when, in answer to Lady Cranstoun’s inquiry as to whether Hilary was a particular friend of his, he said, warmly:

“I am extremely attached to him. I attribute his sudden departure to-day to his intense independence of character, which he sometimes carries even to an aggressive extent. He was very angry over what he chose to consider as the false position in which he was placed by my whim in changing names with him, for which trick I have not yet sufficiently apologized to you or to Miss Cranstoun.”

He turned eagerly to Stella as he spoke, but she rewarded him only by a frigid bend of the head.

“I have already told you,” he went on, a little chilled by her manner, “of my disgust at the snobbishness of those people who, because of my superior rank, loaded me with attentions, and almost ignored the existence of my handsome friend. At a house where we recently visited, four pretty girls, set on, I suppose, by their parents, hardly so much as talked to him, and made a dead set at me. Now, this was ridiculously unnatural, for my friend is the most superbly handsome man I have ever seen, a giant in height, and one of the finest athletes in the University, with a face, too, which cannot fail to attract women, to whom, however, I must own, he is extremely indifferent.”

“Your friend, then,” interposed Sir Philip, who was keenly watching the effect of this talk upon his daughter, “has no intention of marrying at present, I presume?”

“So far from it,” Lord Carthew returned, “he has not the slightest wish to settle down in matrimony for many years to come. He has the bad taste, indeed, not to think about women at all; which is, perhaps,” he added, with a laugh, “considering Hilary’s remarkable natural advantages, a very good thing for us plain little fellows.”