It was not the first time that Lesley had spoken words of consolation to her; but on this occasion her gentleness had gone home to Mary Kingston's heart as it had never done before. After weeping for herself for a time, she fell to weeping for Lesley too, for it seemed inevitable to her that Lesley should suffer before very long. She believed that Lesley was in love with Oliver, and that for this reason only had she refused Maurice Kenyon, which shows that Lesley had kept her own secret very well.
"I'd do anything to keep her from harm," said Mary Kingston, with a passionate rush of gratitude towards the girl for her kindly words and ways. "Francis Trent
brought me grief enough, God knows; and if she's going to throw herself away on Oliver, she'll have her heart broke sooner than mine. For I've been used to sorrow all my days; and she—poor, pretty lamb—she don't know what it means. And Miss Brooke all taken up with her medicine-fads, and Mr. Brooke only a man, after all, in spite of his goodness; and my lady, her mother, far away and never coming near her—if anybody was friendless and forlorn, it's Miss Lesley. Only me between her and her ruin, maybe! But I'll prevent it," said the woman, rising to her feet with a strange look of exaltation in her sunken eyes: "I'll guard her from Oliver Trent as I couldn't guard my own sister, poor lass! I'll see that she does not come to any harm, and if he means ill by her I'll shame him before all the world, even though I break more hearts than one by it."
And then she roused herself from her reverie, and went downstairs, where she knew that her presence was required in the tea-room. Scarcely had she entered it, when she made a short pause and gave a slightly perceptible start. For there stood Ethel Kenyon, with Oliver Trent in attendance. She had not thought that he would come to the house; a rumor had gone about that he had quarreled with Mr. Brooke; yet there he was, smiling, bland, irreproachable as ever, with quite the look of one who had the right to be present. He was holding Ethel's fan and gloves as she drank a cup of tea, and seemed to be paying her every attention in his power. Ethel, in the daintiest of costumes, was laughing and talking to him as they stood together. She was quite unconscious of any reason for his possible absence. Mary Kingston gave them a keen glance as she went by, and decided in her own mind that there was more in the situation than as yet she had understood.
Oliver was playing a bold game. His marriage was fixed for the following Tuesday. From Mr. Brooke's attitude in general towards the Kenyons, he felt sure that Caspar would not place them in any painful or perplexing situation. He would not, for instance, refuse to welcome Oliver to his house again, if Oliver went in Ethel's company. Accordingly, the young man put his pride and his delicacy (if he had either—which is doubtful) in his pocket, and went with his affianced wife to Mr. Brooke's Saturday evening party.
"For I will see Lesley again," he said to himself, "and if I do not go to-night I may not have the opportunity. If she would relent, I would not mind throwing Ethel over—I could do it so easily now that Francis has disappeared. But I would give up Ethel's twenty thousand, if Lesley would go with me instead!"
Little did he guess that only on the previous night had he been recognized and remembered by that missing brother, whose tottering brain was inflamed almost to madness by a conviction of deliberate wrong; or that this brother was even now upon his track, ready to demand the justice that he thought had been denied him, and to punish the man who had brought him to this evil pass! Wild and mad as were the imaginings of Francis Trent's bewildered mind, they boded ill to his brother Oliver whenever the two should meet.
Meanwhile, Ethel's lover, with a white flower in his button-hole, occupied the whole evening in leaning idly against a wall, and feasting his eyes on the fair face and form—not of his betrothed, but—of Lesley Brooke.