"It is Lenore, Leycester."
He drew away from her, so that her arm fell from his shoulder, and looked her full in the face.
Before him rose the proud, imperial figure, before him stood the lovely face of Lenore, with its crown of golden hair, and its deep, eloquent eyes of violet, and beside it, hovering like a spirit, the face of his girl-love.
The violet eyes seemed to gaze at him with all the strength of conscious loveliness, seemed to bend upon him with a glance of defiance, as if they said—"I am here, waiting: I smile, you cannot resist me!" and the dark, tender eyes beside them seemed to turn upon him with gentle, passionate pleading, praying him to be constant and faithful.
"Lenore!" he said, in a low voice. "Mother, ought you to have said this?"
She did not shrink from his almost reproachful gaze.
"Why should I hesitate when my son's happiness is at stake?" she said, calmly. "If I saw a treasure, some pearl of great price, lying at your feet, and felt that you were passing it by unnoticed and disregarded, should I be wrong in speaking the word that would place it in your grasp? Your happiness is my—life Leycester! If ever there was a treasure, a pearl of great price among women, it is Lenore. Are you passing her by? You will not do that!"
Never, since he could remember, had he seen her so moved. Her voice was calm and even, as usual, but her eyes were warm with an intense earnestness, the diamonds trembled on her neck.
He stood before her, looking away beyond her, a strange trouble at his heart. For the first time he saw—he appreciated, rather—the beautiful girl whom, as it were, she held up to his mental gaze. But that other, that girl-love whose lips still seemed to murmur, "I love you, Leycester!" What of her!
With a sudden start he moved away.