CHAPTER VII.

THREEFOLD DANGER.

“Mrs. Trelane is father’s second cousin; and she and her daughter are coming here for a visit; daddy has to go away, and he can’t take me, and he won’t leave me alone.”

Cristiane le Marchant leaned against the stem of a huge beech-tree that overhung the broad lake at Marchant’s Hold. The sunlight came through the leafless trees, and made the golden-red of her hair ruddier and more glorious in contrast; her cheeks had a soft rose that melted into creamy whiteness, and her eyes were very dark.

Mr. Cylmer looked at her. She was certainly provokingly cool.

“What are they like?” she asked curiously.

“It doesn’t matter; they are a nuisance in any case,” said her companion.

“Why?” she asked, but did not look at him.

“You never had a chaperon before,” he said dryly. “Oh! your father, I know, but a woman’s--different. I know she’ll be in the way.”

“In your way, Mr. Cylmer!” retorted Miss Le Marchant demurely, but her eyes flashed mischievously at him through her heavy lashes.

“Mr. Cylmer” kicked at the turf with vicious energy.

“You needn’t rub it in, Cristiane,” he said crossly. “I know you don’t care a button whether you see me alone or not.”

He was very young-looking for his twenty-eight years; very brown and big as he stood on the grass in his shooting-clothes. But he had not been born yesterday for all his debonair face; there was very little Mr. Cylmer had not done in this world; very little that his quick eye did not see through.

But all his worldly wisdom was wont to desert him when he found himself alone with Cristiane. He was her humble slave, and it never occurred to him that she would have valued him much more if she had known that Miles Cylmer, who was such an every-day sort of person to her, could have thrown his handkerchief to half the fine ladies in London, and had it snapped up on the second; or that every woman he knew adored him, from duchess to dairymaids.

To Cristiane le Marchant he was plain Miles Cylmer, who had been in and out of Marchant’s Hold all his life, and was to be regarded as a convenient or inconvenient elder brother, as things might happen.

“Come on,” she commanded practically, “I have to go to the house to meet them.”

“Is your father coming with them?”

He stood looking down at her, six feet and to spare, his keen hazel eyes full of annoyance, and his face quite grave. Had he not given up a whole day’s shooting to be near Cristiane le Marchant? And now, instead of a tête-à-tête with her, there would be two women to be disposed of; two strangers to spoil it.

“But your father’s coming with them,” he repeated, beginning to walk slowly--very slowly--toward the house.

“No, he isn’t!” Cristiane stopped short. “That’s what’s so funny about these visitors. Father has sent them here, and he doesn’t know how long he’ll be away, and he wrote me such a funny note.” And she pulled a letter out of her pocket.

“‘Write to me and tell me exactly what you think of Mrs. Trelane, if you like her or not,’ she read. ‘But try and make friends with her little daughter, for she needs a friend, and take time before you write. Only write me your candid opinion.’ There, what do you think of it? Why is this Mrs. Trelane so important, that I am to send daddy my ‘candid opinion.’ I can’t see any sense in it.”

“By George, I can, then!” was on the tip of Mr. Cylmer’s tongue, but he caught back the words in time. There could be only one meaning to the letter; Sir Gaspard must be thinking of marrying again.

Somehow Cylmer was unreasonably angry. From his earliest boyhood he had been wont to gaze at the portrait of Cristiane’s mother, that hung in Sir Gaspard’s room, with a wondering awe that any one could ever have been so beautiful; it made him angry now in his manhood that the husband she had loved should have dared to forget her.

“No, I can’t see any sense,” he said lamely; “only be sure you tell your father outright if you don’t like this Trelane woman. Otherwise he might ask her to stay on, or something----”

He jerked at his mustache irritably, quite unconscious how he was wronging poor innocent Sir Gaspard.

“I never would have thought Le Marchant the sort of man to marry again,” he thought gloomily. “I’ll see him as soon as he gets back, and tell him I--I want Cristiane. She sha’n’t have any stepmother about while there’s a roof at Cylmer’s Ferry!”

He looked doubtfully at the girl as she walked on before him. If only he dared stoop and kiss those soft gold waves that were swept upward from the back of her neck: dared to say he loved her from the crown of her golden head to the tips of her little shoes.

“Cristiane,” he said, “I want to speak to you. Do you know you have never said you were sorry that these people were coming; never said you would miss our long, happy days together?”

“But I won’t,” she said calmly: “you’ll be here. You’re not going to die, or anything, are you?”

She had turned round to him as she spoke, and her violet-gray eyes were raised to his, her rose-colored lips parted in a mockery that stung for all its sweetness.

Two hands that were light and yet hard as iron were laid on her shoulders before she knew it. Miles Cylmer’s face, with a strange, sweet pity on it that she had never seen there, was bent down to hers.

“Cristiane, little girl, I want you to promise me something. If anything goes wrong with you--will you come to me?”

“What do you mean, Miles?” she said soberly. “What could go wrong--while I have father?”

His hands were hard on her shoulders.

“I don’t know--but I love you, and somehow I’m afraid for you.”

He spoke stumblingly--in his outraged pity that he thought was love--how could he keep his raging pulse quiet? How could he make this child, who did not love him, come to his heart?

“Can’t you care a little, sweetheart?” he whispered. “Can’t you marry me?”

Marry him, Miles Cylmer, who was like a brother?

“I--I don’t think I could, Miles,” Cristiane said slowly. “I----”

“Try.” His face was close to hers, she could feel his breath, sweet and warm, on her cheek. Was this Miles, who had never even thought of making love to her? Why, he was trembling!

With a sudden, wild rebellion the girl tore herself away from him.

“Don’t touch me,” she panted. “Marry you--I would as soon marry Thomas the butler; I’ve known him from a child, too!”--with angry scorn.

Cylmer, very white and quiet, let his hands drop to his sides.

“All right,” he said quietly, “we won’t speak of it. And I won’t come over any more--after to-day.”

“You needn’t.” She was struggling with tears. She did not know why. “I--I wish you’d go home now!”--stamping her foot.

“I will; but I’m going up to see these daughters of Heth first,” he returned quietly.

“Don’t dare to ask me to marry you again,” she cried childishly, “because I don’t like it! And you’re not to stay to tea now--or come here any more till I ask you.”

“I will not. I shall let Thomas try his luck.”

Mr. Cylmer’s voice was not without temper. He marched beside her over the dun, wintry grass in silence, turning many things in his mind.

“Oh!” cried Cristiane angrily, “there they are now, on the terrace. Daddy said I was to be certain to meet them when they came, and I’m not there, and it’s all your fault!”

She hurried on to the great stone terrace that lay full in the wintry sunshine. Two women stood there, both tall and slender, both dressed in black. Cristiane was running now to join them, and a strange superstitious feeling made Cylmer quicken his steps after her. Somehow it was ominous--uncanny; the girl in all her youth and purity hurrying toward those strange women in black.

“God only knows when she’ll get rid of them!” Cylmer growled, with more truth than he knew.

As he neared them, Ismay, with a quick glance at his approaching figure through the thick, spotted net of her veil, turned quietly and went into the house.

Who was this whose walk, whose face, she knew so well, even though it was only once in her life that she had seen them?

She looked sharply round the great, dim hall. It was empty, the servants had gone. From its shelter, dark after the sun outside, the girl peered carefully out through the wide crack of the hall door.

Oh! if it were he, how should she meet him? Would he know her? And what would he say?

Her heart fairly stood still as she looked with her very soul in her eyes through the crack to the group inside. And then it bounded with a rapture that was pain.

It was he--the man himself for whose sake she had been loath to leave London lest she might miss the chance sight of his face in the streets! Thirstily she drank in the strong beauty of his face, whose clear-cut lines were stamped on her heart. Not a thread of his shooting-tweeds, his dull-red tie, was lost on her. Her delicate hands were clenched hard in her smart new gloves as she stared--for who was he, and what was he doing here alone with this golden-haired girl?

A wild jealousy caught her at the heart with a pain that was bodily. If he were coming in, she dared not meet him under the eyes of her mother and Cristiane le Marchant. She turned and fled swiftly into the first room she saw; it was deserted and fireless, they would not come there. And yet, while she hid, she would have given the life from her breast to meet those grave, sweet eyes again with hers.

Cylmer had scarcely noticed that the younger of the two strangers had gone; he did not even look at the door through which she had vanished as he stepped to Cristiane’s side with an involuntary instinct of protectiveness.

The girl grudgingly introduced him, as one might a troublesome child.

“My cousin, Mrs. Trelane,” she said. She did not even mention Cylmer’s name.

Mrs. Trelane bowed graciously; if she had not been excited and preoccupied at meeting Gaspard le Marchant’s daughter, on whom her stay in safety and security at Marchant’s Hold depended, she might have seen that Cylmer bent on her an uncomfortably searching stare.

But Cristiane had turned toward him.

“Good-by,” she said hastily; “so sorry you can’t come in.” And before he could answer she had swept Mrs. Trelane into the house.

Mr. Cylmer was dismissed in disgrace.

Yet, as he turned away, he scarcely thought of it.

“Now, what,” he said to himself, “does that woman remind me of? I never saw her before.” Yet the carriage of her head, her long throat, was somehow familiar; and as he thought there came to him the sudden vision of a little rose-colored room, full of a haunting scent of bitter almonds.

“What nonsense!” he thought irritably. “Why should Sir Gaspard’s cousin remind me of poor Abbotsford?” And then he stopped short, annoyingly conscious that he must be making a fool of himself.

For he remembered now that Mrs. Trelane had held a handkerchief in her hands. He had smelled that smell of bitter almonds in reality; the woman and her handkerchief reeked of peach-blossom. And yet he was puzzled--and might have been more so had he known whose strange green eyes had peered at him through the crack of a sheltering door.

The woman in his thoughts was standing just then in her bedroom at Marchant’s Hold, with her hostess beside her.

“You must be tired,” Cristiane said; “do come to dinner in a tea-gown. We shall be alone, for there was no one I could have asked to meet you except Miles Cylmer, whom you saw just now.”

“Miles Cylmer!” Mrs. Trelane turned her back sharply, in her sudden sick surprise.

“Mr. Cylmer, of Cylmer’s Ferry. He lives near, and he comes very often when father is at home.”

A new self-consciousness born of the afternoon kept the girl from looking at her guest.

“Come down,” she said abruptly, “when you’re ready.”

The door had hardly closed behind her before Ismay, in the next room, heard herself called.

“What is it?” she asked, standing in the doorway. “Are you ill?”

For Mrs. Trelane was sitting down as if her strength were gone, gazing straight before her as one who sees a ghost.

“Ismay,” she said, “that man who was here this afternoon, do you know who he is?”

The girl hesitated; had her mother known more than she knew about her visit to the Palace Theater?

“Do I know his name?” she parried. “No--why?”

Mrs. Trelane rose, staggered, and sat down again.

“I can’t look,” she said. “Open the door into the passage and see if that girl has gone. Quick!”

“It’s all right,” Ismay said, after a contemptuous survey. “Why? I don’t see why you’re looking as if you were going to be seasick.”

“Look here,” Mrs. Trelane said roughly, “do you remember the Abbotsford business? This man who was here to-day is Cylmer, of Cylmer’s Ferry.”

It was Ismay’s turn to stare with haggard eyes.

“You don’t mean it?” she cried fiercely, but with the low voice of caution. “You don’t mean to say that we’ll have to get out of here?” How could she not have known him that day in Onslow Square?

“I don’t know,” moaned the woman. A shudder shook her like a leaf. “Did he look at me, or anything? I was too taken up--with the girl. I didn’t notice”--her words coming in jerks. “Could you see from where you were?”

“Yes,” said the girl frankly; “he stared at you like anything.”

“Get me a drink,” the elder woman said slowly. “There’s brandy in my bag.”

She swallowed it, and sat silent, with closed eyes. The color crept back into her lips, and she lifted her head and looked at her daughter.

“I’m making a fool of myself,” she ejaculated. “He never saw me, never heard of me, any more than any one else did when there was all that trouble. But it was that very Miles Cylmer who was Abbotsford’s dearest friend, and strained every nerve to find out who the woman was that--that was at the bottom of it.”

Her eyes dilated till they looked black in her colorless face. Ismay stared at her mother.

“Do you think he ever saw that photograph I made you go back and get, when you--found him?” she asked sternly. “If he did, you may have trouble. He looked a determined sort of man, dogged, you know. But he’s the handsomest man I ever laid eyes on!”

“What does it matter what he looks like, if he is that Cylmer?” Mrs. Trelane cried angrily. “I talk about life and death, and you go on about the man’s looks. What do they matter to you?”

“A great deal.” The girl’s eyes glittered very green to-night. “The minute I saw him I meant to marry him. Do you suppose I’d take pains to make him like me if he were ugly?”

“I know you wouldn’t; not to save me from anything,” Mrs. Trelane returned bitterly. She had good reason to know that no power on earth could force Ismay to be civil.

“But you’re talking nonsense,” she went on. “As things are, we must try to keep the man from coming here. You can’t dare to try your hand on him; we must steer clear of him.”

“And set him wondering why we should try to avoid him? No, no! Let me alone. Only try to throw your mind back. Did he get into Abbotsford’s room before you had taken away that picture?”

She looked like an accusing judge at her mother, cowering on the sofa under her eyes.

“Oh, Ismay!” the woman cried wretchedly, “I don’t know, I don’t know. I went back for it--I was just taking it--when there was a noise. I got behind a curtain. Some one came in, and went out again, without noticing--Abbotsford”--her voice low, tremulous with weeping. “I took the photograph and got out of the house somehow. I didn’t meet any one. I must have been at home an hour before any one--found Abbotsford.”

“Then why should you be so idiotic?”--jumping up in her relief. “It could not have been Cylmer who came in----”

“It was. He said so afterward.”

“Well, he didn’t see you. As for the photograph, he couldn’t have noticed it enough to know you by. You would have been ruined if you had not gone back and got it, though!”

“It was providential.” Mrs. Trelane breathed freer.

“It was what?” cried Ismay. She went into a paroxysm of low laughter. “Providence--and you! But I think you’re all right--you forgive my smiling? I think he just stared at you because you and I are probably in his way here; that was all. Only I wouldn’t let him see you in a white evening gown; that might remind him.”

“I wish I had never seen Abbotsford.” Mrs. Trelane’s tears had washed channels in her powder. She looked wan and old where she sat. “I bore the brunt--and Marcus has the diamonds.”

“And we’re well out of it at that,” Ismay rejoined significantly. “For at last I hope we’re rid of him. He’ll never find us here.”

“He’d find us in our graves,” said the woman. “And you’ve got to manage him. Don’t go and get into any mad pursuit of Mr. Cylmer, for if Marcus caught you at it----”

She paused, for Ismay was standing over her in a rage.

“Marcus!” she said scornfully. “What do I care for your Marcus? I am not bound to him; it is you that need fear him, not I! And as far as you are concerned, what do I owe you? You neglected me, cast me off, and when I came back to you, that madness about Lord Abbotsford came on you. I told you not to go that day--I knew there would be trouble--and now it may be going to ruin my whole life.”

“What do you mean? You’re talking nonsense. And, considering you’ve only seen Cylmer through the crack of a door, you’re pretty certain of him,” cried her mother sneeringly.

Ismay drew a long breath.

“I’ve seen him before--never mind where,” she said.

“And he may be Cristiane’s property,” was the angry warning.

Ismay flung up her handsome head.

“He may belong to all the saints in heaven,” she said, with her voice hard as ice, “but he will come to me in the end.”