He thought a moment, his eyes resting on her face keenly.
"Perhaps, but I am not sure. I certainly used it as a play upon the word 'famous,' but I don't think even then that I did him an injustice. A man whose name is known all over the country—whose name is familiar as a household word—must be notorious either for good or evil, for wisdom or folly. Lord Leycester is not famous for virtue or wisdom. I cannot say any more."
Stella turned aside, a faint crimson dyeing her face, a strange thrill of pity, ay, and of impatience, at her heart. Why should he be so wicked, so mad and reckless—so notorious that even this self-satisfied young gentleman could safely moralize about him and warn her against making his acquaintance! "Oh, the pity of it—the pity of it!" as Shakespeare has it—that one with such a beautiful, god-look face, should be so bad.
There was a few moments' silence. Jasper Adelstone still stood with the picture in his hand, but glancing at Stella's face with covert watchfulness. For all his outward calmness, his heart was beating quickly. Stella's was the sort of beauty to make a man's heart beat quickly, or not at all; those who came to offer at her shrine would offer no half-measured oblations. As he watched her his heart beat wildly, and his small, bright eyes glittered. He had thought her beautiful at the party last night, where she had outshone all the other girls of the village as a star outshines a rushlight; but this morning her loveliness revealed itself in all its fresh purity, and he—Jasper Adelstone, the critical man of the world, the man whose opinion about women was looked upon by his companions in Lincoln's-inn and the bachelors' haunts at the West-end as worth having—felt his heart slipping from him. He put the picture down and approached her.
"You have no idea how beautiful and fresh the meadows are. Will you stroll down to the river with me?" he said, resolving to take her by surprise and capture her.
But he did not know Stella. She was only a school-girl—innocent and ignorant of the ways of men and the world; but, perhaps, because of that—because she had not learnt the usual hackneyed words of evasion—the ordinary elementary tactics of flirtation, she was not to be taken by surprise.
With a smile she turned her eyes upon him and shook her head.
"Thank you; no, that is impossible. I have all my household duties to perform, and that"—pointing to the sun with her white slim hand—"reminds me that it is time I set about them."
He took up his hat instantly, turning to hide the frown that knitted his brow and spoiled his face, and went up to the painter to say "good-morning."
Mr. Etheridge started and stared at him; he had quite forgotten his presence.