She fled; and Mr. Pinchook rose and gathered his papers together.
“Yes, it’s all right,” he said, cynically. “She buys her coronet with a million. Humph! I hope she has made a good bargain!”
[CHAPTER XIX.]
Esmeralda did not understand in the least. An ordinary girl, brought up in London society, would have grasped the whole thing and known that she was being married for her money. But Esmeralda was not only innocent but, measuring the marquis by her own standard, would have deemed him incapable of anything ignoble.
Where ignorance is bliss ’tis folly to be wise. And she was blissfully happy! She understood now why she had turned away from Norman Druce that night by the stream: she had not loved him. She loved Trafford, and she loved him with the fullness of a girl’s pure love, as sweet as it is unfathomable.
For a day or two she seemed living in a dreamland, in which she could think of nothing but her new and strange happiness. The folk at Belfayre, much as they had already admired her, were struck by the expression of her face, the strange, deep light in her wonderful eyes, and Lilias looked and spoke to her almost shyly, as if Esmeralda’s happiness were something sacred.
But presently Esmeralda remembered Three Star, and remembered it with a feeling near akin to remorse.
“I must write to Varley—Varley Howard, my guardian,” she said to Trafford, one morning. “I must tell him all—all that has happened.”
“Yes, certainly,” said Trafford, to whom the facts and companions of her past always seemed misty and almost mythical. “Do you think he would come and pay us a visit? Ask him. We should all be glad to see him; glad to see any friend of yours, Esmeralda.”