CHAPTER IX.

“I WILL POSSESS HIM OR DIE.”

Ismay Trelane stood alone in the great hall at Marchant’s Hold, immaculately dressed in tight-fitting, dark-green cloth that showed every curve of her slim body and seemed reflected in her strange eyes.

Her cheeks for once were flushed, and there was a curious light in the glance that she swept deliberately over the luxury around her and finally let rest on her own reflection in the old mirror that hung over the wide fireplace.

“All this for one girl!” she whispered. The scarlet of her lips paled with the tight pressure that drew them together. “And she has had it all her life! If I had had one-tenth of it and been brought up like her with white frocks in summer and good warm serge in winter, I might have been quite--a nice girl!” She laughed at her own image in the new clothes bought with Sir Gaspard’s money. But though she laughed, her heart was not merry. She had seen too much that morning of how rich and respectable people lived.

She had risen as early as she dared, too restless to stay in bed, and made a slow, careful progress through the big house, fresh from the housemaid’s dusters. The carpets, the silver, the carvings and tapestries, all so solid, so different from those flimsy London furnishings that had been her nearest approach to luxury, made her close her white teeth hard together. They had the same blood in their veins, Cristiane le Marchant and she, and the one had lived like this, while the other--Ismay sickened at the thought of her own neglected, hungry girlhood, that the price of one Turkey carpet might have made at least bearable.

“It isn’t fair,” she thought hotly, “but it’s the way they manage the world. And now I have a chance the world shall pay me all it owes. Shabby clothes that were too tight,” she checked off her list on her fingers airily, “one-quarter enough to eat, chilblains--I shall charge a good price for chilblains”--remembering her swollen purple fingers and her shame of them; “hateful girls who sneered at my stockings and the holes in them--they were generally all holes--and a mother who did not care whether I was alive or dead so that I was out of her way. I have all that to make up to myself, and I will do it with--Miles Cylmer.”

She started; she had all but spoken his name aloud, and standing behind her fresh as day was Cristiane le Marchant. Ismay’s veiled glance took her in swiftly. Her tailor-made serge was not new, but it looked as if she wore it every day; not like Ismay’s own, as if it were a new thing to be well dressed at breakfast.

“They told me you were down, so I hurried,” Cristiane said quickly. “I was afraid you might be starving, and I did not think you would ring for breakfast.”

“I always got up early at school,” said Ismay, her voice light and hard; “but I dare say I shall get over it. Mother is tired; she said I was to ask you if she might breakfast up-stairs.”

“Of course; I’ll send it up,” Cristiane said absently. “Come along and we’ll have ours,” linking her arm through the slender one that was as strong as steel, and never dreaming that Mrs. Trelane’s daughter had rejoiced exceedingly that a bad night had reduced her mother’s temper and complexions to an unpresentable state.

They had been two weeks at Marchant’s Hold, and never till now had Mrs. Trelane left the two girls together. It was not safe, while Ismay had that mad freak in her head about Cylmer, of Cylmer’s Ferry. A chance word, a too hard-pressed question, might in those early days have turned Cristiane’s growing liking for mother and daughter into jealous distrust--that liking on which their safety and peace depended. Mrs. Trelane worked harder to gain this one girl’s affection than she had ever done for that of all the men who had loved her. With almost superhuman cleverness she had warded off all mention of Cylmer’s name, for who knew what wild thing Ismay might say? Mrs. Trelane felt chilly as she remembered the ring of the girl’s voice that first day at Marchant’s Hold.

“If he belonged to all the saints in heaven, he should come to me at the end.”

It was no echo of her own voice, nor of Mrs. Trelane’s, and it made her shiver.

But this morning neuralgia made her forgetful; a chance sight some days since of some words in Cristiane’s letter to her father left to dry on the library table had soothed her soul to peace. She turned comfortably to sleep in her warm bed up-stairs, careless that Ismay was at last alone with her hostess.

Cristiane was almost hidden behind the high silver urn and the tea and coffee-pots. Ismay, as she began to drink her coffee, moved her chair so that she could see the lovely face under its crown of gold-red hair.

She waited till Thomas, the old butler, had supplied her with hot cakes and cold game, and taken himself silently out of the room. Then she laughed as she caught Cristiane’s eye.

“It is rather different from school here,” she observed frankly. “Do you think I might come and pinch you to see if you’re real?”

“Indeed I don’t,” retorted Miss Le Marchant. “But I don’t see why you didn’t like school. I found lessons with a governess very dull. Don’t you miss the girls?”

Ismay made a mental review of them; ugly, bad-mannered, eager to curry favors with the principal by carrying tales of the girl whose bills were unpaid.

“I hated them,” she returned candidly. “You would have, too. Some of them had warts on their hands and dropped their h’s.”

“Oh, don’t!” Cristiane gave a little shriek, and covered her ears. “Why did you stay there?”

Ismay caught the truth on her lips and kept it back.

“We had no money for a better school; mother never knew how horrid it was,” she said quietly. “The nastiest thing about it was that all the first class were in love with some dreadful man or other; one used to be wild about the postman. I hate men.”

“I don’t know any,” Cristiane said calmly, taking a large bite of muffin, with her white teeth showing in a faultless half-circle.

“What!” Ismay exclaimed. “Why, there was a lovely young man here the first day we came.”

Cristiane reddened.

“That was only Miles Cylmer,” she said scornfully. “I’ve known him for ages, but he is about as exciting as--as Thomas!” remembering her own comparison of Mr. Cylmer to that worthy man. “He’s only a neighbor, and a friend of father’s.”

“Oh!” said Miss Trelane demurely. “He is good-looking.”

“I never noticed him especially. He is often here when father is at home.”

The other girl made a mental comment, but she only said:

“I suppose he wouldn’t come when you were alone?”

Cristiane reflected. Miles had not been near her for a week, and, in spite of her guests, she had missed him.

“He has more amusing things to do, I dare say,” she said smartly. It was so silly of Miles not to come just because she had refused him; selfish, too, for there was a distinct blank in her afternoon rides without him.

Ismay smiled.

“I believe you were horrid to him and told him not to come,” she observed shrewdly. “Now, weren’t you?”

“I don’t take enough interest in him,” said the other loftily. “I don’t take any interest in any one but father. I wish he would come home.” She looked out of the window, where the morning sun streamed in, over the wide stretch of wintry park and great beech-trees. “This is a hunting-morning; would you like to drive to the meet?”

“I can’t leave mother,” was the answer. It would never do to have Miles Cylmer see her seated in Cristiane’s high dog-cart for the first time since that night in London. Somehow or other, she must manage to meet him first alone. And as yet she had no idea even where he lived.

“I suppose you can’t,” Cristiane assented disappointedly. “I will ride over then by myself, but that’s dull.”

“Haven’t you any near neighbors?”

Both girls stood by the window as Ismay spoke.

“Only Miles Cylmer, and he hunts,” said Cristiane crossly. “Besides, even he lives four miles off, that much nearer to the meet than we do. It’s seven miles to Stoneycross by that road you see there,” pointing to a glimpse of a highway that was just visible on the side of a hill far across the park.

“Then he’s of no use.” Ismay turned into the room again to hide the change in her face. Hurrah! she had got her bearings at last. If she had to wait all day at his gate she would see him face to face this very afternoon.

“You won’t be dull if I go out and leave you alone? You see, I am used to riding every day. But it is stupid for you,” said Cristiane.

“Dull! I’m never dull.” Miss Trelane’s face wore that strange smile that was so full of years and knowledge, her back still turned safely to her hostess. Dull, with the prospect before her of hunting down Miles Cylmer! She turned with quick, lovely grace. “Come, and I’ll help you into your habit,” she cried; “I’m much cleverer than your maid.”

“I think you’re wonderful; how you do your own hair as you do is beyond me,” Cristiane said, as they went up-stairs.

They were nearly of a height, and she ran her hand up the wonderful flaxen waves that rippled up from the nape of Ismay’s white neck.

The girl frowned sharply.

“It’s hateful hair.” She moved her head away from the gentle hand. In any case, she hated to be touched, and it was unbearable from a simple little fool like Cristiane, who took her and her mother for decent ladies. “Hateful! Some day I shall dye it,” and she slipped from the other girl’s side and was up-stairs like a flash.

Yet two hours after she was coiling and twisting that hair she had said was hateful, with a care that made it look like golden threads shot with silver. The dark-green, velvet toque she set on it made its strange sheen more lovely; the green cloth coat with its velvet collar set off to perfection the milk-white beauty of her face. As she turned from the glass to draw on her gloves her scarlet lips parted in a smile of triumph. Queer as her beauty was, it would move the heart of a man more than Cristiane’s roses and cream, or there was no truth in her glass.

“Let me see,” she reflected, “four miles to Cylmer’s Ferry--he will be at the meet and following the hounds--if they find a fox it will be three o’clock or so before he gets home, perhaps later. There’s heaps of time, but I had better get off before Cristiane gets home, or she might be kind enough to go with me.”

She bestowed no thought on the suffering parent she had been unable to leave, nor had she visited her all the morning. The atmosphere of Mrs. Trelane’s room, where scents fought with the smell of menthol, had no charms for her daughter. The only pause she made was in the empty dining-room, where the table was laid for lunch. The silver epergne was piled with forced peaches and hothouse grapes, a bread-tray full of crisp dinner rolls adorned the sideboard among a multitude of cold meats.

Miss Trelane stuffed two peaches into her pocket, inserted some cold chicken that was ready cut between the halves of two rolls, calmly wrapped up her spoils in a napkin, tucked them into her muff, and departed unnoticed.

“Wonderfully convenient, living like this,” she reflected, with a sweet little grin. “Otherwise, Mr. Cylmer might have caused me to go forth hungry.”