“Lilias, this is ‘Varley,’ my dear, dear guardian! We’ve torn him away from his beloved Three Star by sheer force and brought him over to England in chains.”
“They can knock them off now, Lady Lilias,” said Varley; and the gallant little speech, uttered in his languid, drawling way, and with “the Varley smile,” won Lilias’s heart on the spot.
“I’ve heard so much about you, Mr. Howard,” she said.
“Don’t you believe all you hear, Lady Lilias,” he said. “This is the land of justice; give me a fair trial.”
They were all talking at once, and were still talking when Lady Wyndover arrived, and the excitement was kept going by her meeting with Esmeralda; and it was not until they were seated at dinner that they were able to catch their breath, so to speak. Indeed, Esmeralda, for one, could scarcely realize that she was back—at home—that the horrible past was buried, and that a future, glowing with the sunlight of happiness, lay before her. She looked round the familiar objects of the magnificent rooms doubtingly, and it was only when her eyes rested upon the handsome and well-browned face of her husband that she could realize that the ugly corner on life’s road-way had been turned, and that she was on “the pathway of flowers.”
It was not only a happy but also a boisterous party, for Trafford seemed to have regained his youth in Three Star, and he laughed and talked in so light-hearted a manner that once or twice Lord Selvaine looked at him with as much astonishment as he ever permitted himself. Varley’s presence, too, added a zest to the gathering, and Lord Selvaine remarked in an under-tone to Esmeralda:
“You are quite right to admire your guardian, my dear; he is one of the most charming men it has ever been my fortune to meet, and that Three Star, or any number of stars, should have been permitted to monopolize him, is worse than wicked—it is absurd.”
Perhaps the least talkative of the party was Norman; but though he did not say overmuch, like the well-known bird belonging to the mariner, he thought the more. He was seated next to Lilias, and his eyes were eloquent enough if his lips were silent. She felt his eyes upon her, and now and again her own sunk and the color would rise to her face; and once, when his hand touched hers, she trembled outright. Indeed, she seemed curiously nervous, and her nervousness increased when a little while after dinner he came to her and asked her if she would be kind enough to show him whether there was any place in the fernery in which they could put some orchids which he had brought home. She rose, still very nervous and with downcast eyes, and Norman leading her to the remotest part of the fernery, apparently forgetting all about the orchids, seized her hand, and with an abruptness which he had no doubt acquired in the wilds of Australia, said, with half-bold, half-fearful eagerness:
“Lilias, I can’t put it off any longer. I love you, dearest! Will you be my wife?”
Lilias ought to have retreated and affected surprise, even if she did not feel it—for that is the proper mode of receiving such a “stand-and-deliver” style of proposal—but, being quite as much in love with him as a maiden ought to be, she looked straight into his ardent eyes, and said, with a little gasp: