“She will be mine,” he said to himself, when any cold or cruel doubts came to him; “she will be mine because she let me kiss her lips, and that kiss was a solemn betrothal.” There came to his mind the words of a beautiful, quaint old German ballad, “Schön Rothant,” wherein a lover says: “Every leaf in the forest knows that I have kissed her lips.”
“She will be mine,” he cried aloud. “I would work for her twice seven years, as Jacob did. I would be content to love her my whole life through, satisfied if in death she rewarded me with but one smile. I love her so that if I lay dead with green grass and forest leaves heaped over me and she came to my grave and whispered my name, I should hear her.”
The Aldens were a quick, passionate race. They did nothing by halves. They knew no limit, no bound, no measure to their loves or hates. With many men love is a pastime, a pleasing, light occupation, a relief from the severity of daily toil. With others it is deeper and more serious—yet one life holds many; but with men of Sir Ronald’s stamp it is life or death, rapture or despair, highest happiness or deepest woe.
For one whole week his suspense lasted. He rode over every day to Leeholme, and every evening returned with the one question still unasked, for the park was full of visitors and Lady Hermione always engaged.
At length he resolved to write. He said to himself that he could not bear another week such as this past had been; that even despair itself would be easier to bear than suspense. He smiled as he said the words, feeling sure there would be neither suspense nor sorrow for him.
CHAPTER XIV.
A THUNDERBOLT.
It is seldom that a tragedy happens all at once; there are circumstances that lead up to it. These circumstances are seldom as exciting as the tragedy itself. The details of what happened before the strange, sad story of Lady Alden’s death thrilled all England, are necessary, though not exciting, in order to make other events understood.
Sir Ronald decided upon writing to Lady Hermione. He made one last effort; he rode over to Leeholme one beautiful August morning, when the golden corn stood in huge sheafs in the meadows, and the fruit hung ripe on the orchard walls. It was just as usual. Lady Hermione was in the grounds with a party of young people. Lady Lorriston told him, and he could not do better than join them; they were planning a visit to the Holy Well at Longston. Sir Ronald went out into the pleasure grounds, and there, under the spreading, fragrant shade of a large cedar, he saw a group that would have charmed Watteau—fair-faced girls with their lovers, beautiful women over whose stately heads more summer suns had shone, and, in the midst of all, Lady Hermione.
“Here is Sir Ronald,” said one of the voices. Then he joined the group under the cedar tree, and Lady Hermione greeted him with a few measured words. How was he to know that her heart was beating wildly; that her whole soul was moving in its deepest depths by the pleasure of seeing him? Then the conversation became general. He waited more than an hour. He saw plainly there was no chance for even five minutes with his ladylove that day.
“I will go home and write to her,” he said to himself; then he held her white hand in his own a minute while he said good-by, and a flood of hope rushed warm and sweet through his heart when he noted the rose-leaf flush and the trembling lips.