A Woman Martyr

by Alice M. Diehl

"Yes, my boy--and I think you know I was deuced disappointed that she was such a silly little idiot!" warmly returned Sir Thomas.

"Well, I have some reason to flatter myself that if every one will only let everything alone, and will not interfere, I have a very good chance of making her Lady Vansittart!" He looked boldly at Joan's uncle.

"My dear boy, no one has the slightest wish to interfere! What do you mean?" asked Sir Thomas briskly.

Vansittart sighed, and shrugged his shoulders. "My dear Sir Thomas, your niece is a very extraordinary girl," he slowly said. "Once married, she will, I believe, settle down to be more like other people in her ideas, which at present are extravagance itself! But I will tell you this much--the man who refuses to fall in with them will never call her wife! Now, what am I to do? Am I to appear to outrage you by not deferring to your opinions and feelings in regard to our engagement and consequent marriage, or am I not? Dearly, passionately as I love her, I would rather give her up than behave dishonourably to you and Lady Thorne!"

"Good Lord, what nonsense!" cried Sir Thomas with a short laugh. "D'ye think I don't know that Joan is so soaked in romantic folly that she isn't capable of one single, reasonable, common-sense idea? Go on and prosper, old boy! You have my blessing upon whatever method of courtship you think best to adopt, even if it is to roll her in the mud and kick her, or climb up to her window in the middle of the night and carry her off down a rope-ladder! Upon my word, I am jolly glad that I am not the fool that every one thinks me, when I stick to it that Joan has read that Shelley and Swinburne rot until she can't tell black from white! Make her your wife your own way, Vansittart, and it shan't make any difference in her dowry, here's my hand on it!"

After such trust on the part of the man who had the giving of his beautiful niece, Vansittart continued his arrangements for the fulfilment of Joan's wishes, feeling as if treading on air.

The day of Lady C----'s garden party was showery at first. But at noon out had come a brilliant June sun, and the rain had only succeeded in freshening the rich foliage and luxuriant flowers of Wrottesley Lodge, on the Thames--a somewhat older house than the usual run of riverside dwellings can lay claim to be.

The party on the top of the coach were extremely lively. But Joan sat silent. The beauty of the day was not for her. The summer breeze stirred the chestnut blossoms and diffused their perfume until the air was honeyed with it--the suburban gardens were gay with their beds of summer bloom. As they drove into the road where the gables of Wrottesley Lodge peeped up among the sombre pines and firs which screened the house from the vulgar gaze, the Thames came in sight, its wavelets dancing in the sunlight. All seemed careless happiness--even a boy with a white apron and basket on his arm stood whistling gaily as he watched the four-in-hand tool into the drive. Only Joan's heart seemed like a stone in her breast, and all around was to her a ghastly mockery--with that wretched hopelessness flooding her young soul.

Vansittart had arrived early, been welcomed, fussed with, and introduced to specially charming girls by his amiable hostess. But their society talk was to him like the chatter of the apes he had seen in the jungles--he gazed at their pretty patrician features and wondered where the beauty was which, with other things, had gone to make them successes of the season. When he caught sight of Sir Thomas' well-known team of roans, he muttered an excuse to the girl he was talking to, and hurried off to help his beloved to alight.

There was a bustle--Joan was almost the last to descend the ladder. How exquisite was that high-bred little foot, he thought, in the white shoe and delicate silk-lace stocking--already he was giving lavish secret orders for a whole trousseau to be on board the yacht for her use--there must be still more costly stockings and slippers to clad those dear, pretty feet! How lovely she looked altogether--her slight, beautifully curved form draped in a thin muslin robe dotted with purple heartsease, with silken sheen showing beneath--a big black hat with feathers and pansies crowning her proud little golden head! But when he met the startled, awe-stricken, "lost" look of those great eyes, it was as if some one had given him an ugly blow on the chest.