[CHAPTER XI.]
Lord Trafford went down with Lord Selvaine to Belfayre next day. During the journey of a little over five hours Trafford was very thoughtful—he was never at any time very talkative, though he could on occasion be as bright and light-hearted as most young men—and he sat in his corner of the carriage with a magazine in his hand; but the page did not get turned very often.
Marry Miss Chetwynde! It was a momentous sentence. It meant so much. Some men regard marriage lightly; they look upon it as a necessity, a duty, more or less pleasant, which has to be performed, and there’s an end of it. But Trafford, Marquis of Trafford, was rather different to the ordinary run of men. With him marriage was a sacred thing, and a marriage without love a hideous business. If he could have married where he pleased, he would have asked Ada Lancing to be his wife. They had known each other since childhood; she had called him more than once, in girlish play, her husband. He was a modest man, without an ounce of vanity, but he suspected that she loved him. But he had known all along that a marriage with Ada Lancing was impossible.
She was the daughter of a Scotch peer, as poor as he was proud—and to those who can boast acquaintance with Scotch peers this will say a great deal.
If Trafford had been a wealthy man, if he had possessed, or was going to inherit, one fortieth of the wealth that used to flow into the Belfayre coffers, he would have asked Ada Lancing to be his wife long ago. Both she and he knew that it was impossible, and both of them must have foreseen that sooner or later Trafford would have to marry money.
But he had never had the inevitable fact brought home to him so plainly until last night. Lord Selvaine had, so to speak, driven the steel home.
Marry Miss Chetwynde!
Trafford recalled her as he gazed at the page that he certainly was not reading. He could not deny that she was very beautiful; indeed, he was ready to admit that she was the loveliest girl he had ever seen; Lord Selvaine had said that she was charming; and Trafford had not been insensible to the charm which lay in Esmeralda’s perfect self-unconsciousness and freshness. An atmosphere of the mountains, of the wide, free valleys from whence she had come, seemed to surround her. Her very movements, the turn of her head, the gestures of her shapely hand, were eloquent of the free, untrammeled life which she had lived. The frank, candid eyes looked up at him from the printed page, and seemed to look reproachfully, as if she knew the nature of the sordid bargain he was advised to offer her.
After all, it was very easy to say, “Marry Miss Chetwynde;” but was it so easy to accomplish? Would she marry him? He was a man of the world, and he knew that there were very few women who would refuse an offer of his hand, though it contained a coronet with the jewels missing; but perhaps this girl from the wilds was one of those few?
He threw the magazine away from him, and looked wearily out of the window. Lord Selvaine glanced at him pensively. Lord Selvaine never read during a journey, and was far too wise to bore himself and his companion by straining his voice in an attempt to talk through the rattle of the train. He smoked an occasional cigarette, and passed a portion of the time in peaceful slumber. Looking at him one would have imagined him to be the most innocent and unsophisticated, middle-aged young gentleman in the world; but his acute brain was hard at work, and it is scarcely too much to say that he was following every train of thought as it passed through Trafford’s mind.