"You shall know to-night--at the dance," she said. The dance was given by the Duchess of Arran.
CHAPTER XXIV
If Joan had succeeded in fascinating Lord Vansittart until his passion dominated him to the extinction of all his ordinary interests in life, while she was mysteriously enwrapped in an unaccountable gloom--a gloom which hid her natural charms, her bright, ready wit, her spontaneity, her sympathetic responses to the moods of others, as a thick mist hides a beautiful landscape--in her new gaiety and sudden joyousness she simply intoxicated him.
As he sat opposite her at dinner, he gazed fatuously at her in her pink glory, her sweet face shining above the roseate robe as the morning star above the sunrise-tinted clouds--and wondered at the magnificence of the fate dealt out to him by fortune. When they were driving to Arran House--Sir Thomas by his betrothed, and he squeezing in his long figure on the opposite seat--he felt that to sit at her feet and worship her was more happiness than he deserved. What of being her husband? Of possessing this delightful being for his very own--half of himself?
His mood, half deprecatory, half triumphant, but wholly joyful, seemed reflected in the brilliant atmosphere of Arran House, as he followed Sir Thomas, who had Joan on his arm, through the hall--where heavy rose-garlands wreathed the pillars, casting their rich, luscious perfume profusely upon the air--up the rose-decorated staircase to the draped entrance to the ballroom, where the duchess stood, a picture in rose moire and old point lace, the kindly little duke at her elbow, receiving her guests, but detaining the newly-betrothed for a few warmly-spoken words of congratulation. The ballroom floor was already sprinkled with couples dancing the second valse of the programme.
"Now we belong to each other publicly as well as in private, you must dance all, or nearly all, your dances with me," said Vansittart, in tones of suppressed emotion, as he gazed at her white throat, encircled with his first gift--a necklet of topaz and pearls with parure en suite; then, with a longing, searching look into her eyes. Half fearful lest the old enigmatic horror should still be lurking there, his heart gave a throb of delight as those sweet brown orbs gazed innocently, fearlessly, yet with a passionate abandon into his.
"Let us join the others--shall we?" he said. She nodded slightly--a trick of hers--and encircling her slight waist with his arm, he made one of the slowly gyrating throng.
To Joan that dance was like a new, delicious dream. To feel the one she loved as she had never imagined it was in her to love, near her, was in itself an abiding joy. But to have lost the awful burden--her secret link to another--to be relieved of the weight of fear lest she should really be a criminal--that, mingled with the delight of being the betrothed bride of her beloved, was in itself an earthly heaven.
The valse over, they betook themselves to a couple of chairs placed invitingly under a big palm. But Vansittart yearned to be alone with her; or, at least, where they could talk unobserved. In spite of his pervading joy, there was just one discordant note sounding in his mind; there was one gleam of anxiety anent the cause of the almost miraculous change in Joan's mood, from darkest night to sunlit noonday.
"It was a pretty idea of the duchess, was it not, darling, to decorate with roses in our honour?" he said caressingly, as he took her bouquet and inhaled its delicate sweetness. "The flower of love! But--well, of course you know the story of the rose? It seems to me that that also may not be without its meaning in our case. It was through a bad member of my sex, was it not, that you had so much to endure? Why, dearest, forgive me for alluding to it. I thought you would not mind!"