She was very silent as they walked home, where she was received with a tremendous fuss by everybody and made to change her things immediately.
In the house his attention to her was just as constant and unobtrusive. He was always near her to answer her questions—and they were innumerable—to fetch a book she had forgotten, to wrap her shawl round her when they went on the terrace after dinner. Every morning Barker brought her some choice flowers from the greenhouse—“From the marquis, miss!” From even an ordinary man such attentions would have had some effect upon any girl; but coming from a man like Trafford—handsome as a Greek god, and surrounded by the glamour of his lofty rank and position—a man who was regarded by all the place as a kind of prince—little wonder that they affected a warm, tender-hearted girl fresh from the wilds of Australia!
Slowly, unconsciously, she began to feel a kind of pleasure in having him near her, in listening to his musical voice, even in looking at his grave, handsome face. She did not know that love was growing, growing up within her heart. Did not know it even when he ran up to town for a few days, and she missed him, and felt as if something had gone out of her life.
She did not know, too, that they were all, excepting the duke, watching her and the progress of the marquis’s “courting.”
If she had known, she would have taken fright, like the deer in the park, which started at her approach. When Trafford came back from his short visit to London, he looked round the hall, where all but Esmeralda were gathered for afternoon tea, as if he missed something.
“Where is Miss Chetwynde?” he asked, quietly.
She came down the stairs before they could answer. She had watched his arrival from the window of her boudoir, and had remained for a few minutes—why, she could not have told; and as she gave him her hand, her lashes hid her eyes, and she felt that she was coloring.
“I am glad you have come back,” was all she said; and “Thank you, I am glad to get back,” was all he said. And the two little phrases were spoken in the quietest of conventional tones; but Esmeralda felt a strange thrill at the sound of the voice she had missed for two whole days.
On the following night there was a little dance. There were not many people, because most of the families were up in town for the season; but among them was a very beautiful girl, the daughter of Lord Chesterleigh—the man who had spoken to Trafford after the dinner the other night. She was a very fair specimen of a bright, light-hearted English girl, and Esmeralda “took” to her at once.