CHAPTER I.
"It cannot be that you are about to be married!" exclaimed Jack Westbrook passionately as he held the girl's hands half forcibly and gazed into her shrinking eyes; "I will not believe it—even from your own lips."
But the girl, silent and sad, hesitated to reply.
The glory of an April sunset lay over all the sweet Kentish landscape; a little tarn between two white chalk cliffs shone like molten gold, with black coots swimming, and the pearly clouds reflected on its surface; the emerald green buds were bursting in their beauty in the coppice and hedgerows, where the linnet and the speckled thrush were preparing their nests; the unclosing crocus and the drooping daffodil were making the cottage gardens gay; and every where, there were coming "fresh flowers and leaves to deck the dead season's bier."
It was a period of the opened year when unconsciously the human heart feels hopeful and happy, even the hearts of the old and the ailing; but the souls of those two who lingered, near the old Saxon lichgate, roofed with ancient thatch and velvet moss, and by the old worn stile that led to the village church of Craybourne, were sad indeed; they were on the eve of parting, and—for ever!
"It cannot be, Laura, that you are about to be married, after all," repeated Jack Westbrook, a soldier-like young fellow, not much over five and twenty, dark, handsome and clad in that kind of grey tweed suit, which looks so gentlemanly when worn by one of good bearing and style, and such Jack certainly was.
"It is but too true—too true, Jack," replied Laura, while her tears fell fast, and she strove to release her trembling hands from her lover's passionate clasp.
Laura Wenlock was more than merely handsome; in her soft face there was a singular and piquante charm, a loveliness that was more penetrating and of a higher order than mere regularity of feature, as its expression varied so much—a charm that would have delighted an artist, while it would have baffled his powers to reproduce it. Her eyes were violet blue; her hair was auburn, shot with gold, and ruddy golden it seemed ever in the sunshine.
"You don't mean to say that you are about to marry for money?" said Westbrook impetuously.
"Far from it, Jack—oh! don't think so meanly—so basely of me," urged Laura piteously.
"What then?"
"With money—sounds different, doesn't it, Jack, dear?" said the girl with a sob and a sickly smile.
Westbrook gnawed his thick brown moustache, and eyed her gloomily, then almost malevolently and, anon; pleadingly, for his fate was in her hands.
"From all I have heard," said he, "I feared it would come to this; but oh, no, no, surely it cannot be—that I am now to lose you!"
"It must be; the fatal papers have already been prepared."
"The settlements!"
"Yes; debts beyond what we could ever have anticipated, have overtaken my father, and you know that his vicarage here at Craybourne is a poor one, Jack, a very poor one, and his poverty would be the ruin of my two brothers. My marriage will be the saving of them all—the Colonel is so rich."
"Philip Daubeny, of Craybourne Hall?"
"Yes," replied Laura, with averted eyes
"I saw him struck down by the sun on the march between Jehanumbad and Shetanpore; and I would, with all my heart, he were there still!"
"Don't say so, Jack," urged the girl; "Colonel Daubeny is good, and brave, and generous—oh, most generous! God knows, Jack, if you would take me as I am, without a shilling, I would become your wedded wife to-night," added Laura, blinded with tears; "but you want me to wait for you, Jack, and I cannot wait, for the fate of those over there—at home—is in my power," continued Laura, turning towards the old thatched vicarage, the lozenged casements of which were glittering in the sunshine between the stems of the trees.
"To wait, of course," said he, huskily, and relinquishing her hands in a species of sullen despair; "I have but little to live on just yet, since I had to sell out of the Hussars after that infernal loss on the Oaks, and, of course, I cannot supply you with equipages and luxuries as Daubeny can do. But do have patience with me, Laura."
"I cannot—I cannot!" wailed the girl; "the dreadful why I have told you a thousand times."
"You never loved me truly."
"You wrong me; no one has ever been more dear to me than you, Jack."
He laughed bitterly.
"Yet you will marry Philip Daubeny? Have you thought how shameful is a mercenary marriage?"
"I have, indeed, God knows how deeply, how bitterly and prayerfully, in the silent night, when none could see my tears, save Him! Take back your ring, dear Jack, and let us part friends;" and drawing the emblem from her tiny finger, she touched it with her trembling lips, and restored it to him.
"Friends!" he exclaimed, bitterly and scornfully, while in his fine dark eyes there shone a flash of light, where evil seemed to rival love and sorrow, as he flung the golden hoop, with its pearl cluster, into the tarn, and left her without another word or glance! He strode away down the sequestered path that led to the churchyard stile, crushing, as if vengefully, under his feet the wayside flowers, the tender blossoms and sprays of spring; and the girl watched him till his retreating figure disappeared in the shady vista of the lane.
Then she interlaced her slender fingers over her auburn hair and cast her eyes upwards, full of sorrow and intense compunction for the pain she had been compelled to inflict; but there was no despair in her expression, nor was there in her heart, we hope.
"God bless you, dear—dear Jack; you will forget me in time. All is over now!" she murmured.
But the memory of Westbrook's harassed face, and the winning sound of his voice haunted her in the hours of the night as she lay feverish, restless, in a passion of bitter weeping; and full of sad and terrible thoughts, tossing from side to side, sleepless on her pillow.