Stella’s wedding morn was clear and fair. Scarcely a cloud marred the blue clearness of the sky, and the sun shone bright upon the bridegroom as he drove with his mother from Grayling Station in the carriage sent from the Chase to meet them. Lord Northborough had been unable to attend the ceremony, owing to a sudden Parliamentary crisis and impending change of Ministry. But Lady Northborough made up by her vivacity and high spirits for her husband’s absence. She was a typical American, highly educated, witty, fascinating, and sympathetic. She was not beautiful, but always exquisitely dressed, and dainty as a Dresden china statuette. This morning, in silver-gray brocade and rare old white lace, she looked a little picture as she chattered and smiled at her son during the drive.
“I’m just mad with anxiety to see your lovely Stella,” she was saying. “I’m so glad you are going to marry a beauty. I do love pretty women.”
“There isn’t the slightest doubt about Stella’s beauty, mother; but I’m afraid you’ll think she looks terribly delicate. She has been wearing herself to a shadow, crying over her mother’s death. There seems to be no sympathy at all between her and her father. The man is made of cast-iron. But Stella’s prettiness is her least charm. She is so frank and innocent, so naïve, and at the same time so refined; her face is as pure as a child’s, and yet as tender as a woman’s; but if I once begin, I shall rhapsodize over her until we reach the house. She has been bought up in the most conventual manner; even Tennyson has been kept from her, and she listened to the ‘Lady of Shalott’ as a child does to a fairy-tale. She has herself lived like that; shut up, as the Lady of Shalott was, among dreams. It is by that name that I like to think of her.”
“Fanciful boy!” his mother murmured, fondly tapping his cheek lightly with her gloved fingers. “How can people consider you hard and sarcastic? Only your little mother understands you as you really are.”
“Dear little mother! But one thing disappoints me. I can find no trace of Hilary Pritchard. He has not returned to his rooms in town, nor is he at his Yorkshire home. In the state he was in, with a gunshot wound in his shoulder, his disappearance is the more inexplicable.”
“Don’t you think,” Lady Northborough suggested, with her fine woman’s instinct, “that he, too, may have fallen a victim to the charms of your beautiful Miss Cranstoun, and that that may be his reason for stopping away?”
“Quite impossible,” her son answered, decidedly. “He had taken a most unaccountable dislike against her at first sight.”
“Ah! That sounds bad!”
“And he saw nothing of her. He left the very day after his arrival, while every one was having luncheon, rather than stay an hour longer in the house, although he was not fit to travel.”
“Mysterious conduct on his part, wasn’t it?”