To Stella the blow was terrible, overwhelming. The tie between her and her step-mother, as she now knew her to be, had been extremely strong, cemented by unselfishness on both sides, the girl patiently giving up the greater portion of her day in attendance and nursing, and the woman keeping silent about her sufferings, lest she might too greatly sadden her young companion. Such faults and foibles as Lady Cranstoun possessed, her intense timidity and cowardice, her limited intelligence, and excessive pride of birth, were but trifling when weighed against her kindly and affectionate nature. Stella’s own mother, had she lived, could not possibly have shown more sympathy and affection toward her child, whom she would probably have tormented by her violent and jealous nature.
Lord Carthew’s heart was deeply touched by the sight of Stella’s grief. He had no opportunity of speaking to her between the time of leaving the house and his attendance at Lady Cranstoun’s funeral four days later. Even then he did not see her. She was utterly prostrated by grief, Sir Philip informed him, and he did not think fit to add that from the hour of Lady Cranstoun’s death, the girl had been kept a close prisoner, the maid Ellen or Dakin sleeping in her room, which had been changed, so that no escape by the window was possible.
“I think the sooner you marry her and take her away with you the better,” Sir Philip said, as the two men were returning in the mourning-coach from the scene by the Cranstoun vault in Grayling Cemetery after the ceremony. “The poor child has cried herself ill; she will scarcely eat, and refuses to leave the house. I am really growing extremely anxious about her. Your letters are the only things that seem to give her any pleasure, although, as she says, she hasn’t the heart to answer them yet.”
As a matter of fact, Lord Carthew’s letters had been opened and read by Sir Philip on their arrival each day, and subsequently laid upon the dressing-table of Stella, for the amusement, apparently, of Dakin and Ellen, since the lady to whom they were addressed had never so much as touched one of them. They were good letters, too; full of affection and intelligence, if a little didactic in tone; too good by far to be wasted upon a cynical man of the world and two uneducated female spies.
“I am almost afraid for her reason,” continued Sir Philip. “A change of surroundings is imperative, so the doctor tells me. The attachment between mother and daughter was so great that the blow is proportionately heavy. In fact, my dear Carthew, it is now the twentieth of April, and I propose that the marriage, which, of course, will be strictly private, should take place at the date originally fixed—the tenth of May. It was her poor mother’s last wish, as you know, and under such circumstances should have with us the weight of a command.”
To this suggestion Lord Carthew agreed warmly. He was greatly disappointed at not seeing his fair fiancée, but was to some extent soothed by a fictitious message, brought to him by her maid Ellen, to the effect that Miss Cranstoun was so ill that she had not risen that day, but that she sent her love and asked him to excuse her.
Just for the few minutes while Ellen was repeating these words to Lord Carthew, in her master’s presence, having been previously taught them by Sir Philip himself, Stella was left alone in her bedroom, the door of which was carefully locked, and the window securely barred. It was her first moment of solitude since Lady Cranstoun’s death, and as luck would have it, Stephen Lee was standing on the terrace immediately beneath her window, which was situated in a turret on the third floor of the building.
For the past four days, although Stella knew it not, Stephen had taken every possible opportunity of hanging about the house, the serious illness of one of the collies—an illness so opportune for his plans that he might be almost suspected of having some hand in it—forming an excellent excuse for loitering near the house, young Stephen being renowned for his success as a horse and dog doctor.
As soon, therefore, as Stella’s pale face was pressed against her prison bars, her eyes fell upon the handsome, swarthy countenance and black beard of the young gamekeeper, and the words spoken by old Sarah, the gypsy fortune-teller, flashed back into her mind.
The hag had sworn to her that the “Romanys” were her friends, her people, and that they would help her to escape, if escape were necessary. At the time, her words seemed mere incomprehensible jargon, and her allusions to “Clare,” and assertions that Stella was “Clare’s child,” had seemed the idle chatter of a woman whose wits were wool-gathering in second childhood.