“Oh, part of his pride and independence, I suppose. Besides, why should he keep away? He doesn’t even know that I am going to be married to Miss Cranstoun.”
“Not when the fact has been announced in every society paper for the past fortnight?”
“I forgot that. But I repeat, little mother, his absence has nothing to do with my marriage, and his conduct in avoiding me hurts me very deeply—unless, indeed, it may arise from illness. But here we are within the Chase enclosure. Splendid timber, isn’t it?”
The Chase chapel had been unused, save as a lumber-room, for very many years. The Cranstouns were not a religious race, and the beautiful little mediæval building had been desecrated by being utilized alternately as a barn and a box-room. But for the masses of white flowers on the altar, there was no attempt at decoration, an omission accounted for by Lady Cranstoun’s recent death.
Round about the arched graystone doorway of the chapel the servants and retainers of the Chase were assembled, and a faint cheer went up as Lord Carthew helped his mother to descend from the carriage. The Squire was not popular with his tenants any more than with his domestics; he had an absolute genius, indeed, for making himself disliked by all classes among whom he moved. Still, he was all powerful in the district, and great interest was felt in the beautiful daughter whom hardly any one had ever seen outside the Chase enclosure. The crowd round the chapel doors was necessarily a comparatively small one, comprising, as it did, only the tenants of farms and cottages within easy distance of the house, and among them a little, wrinkled, aged woman, neatly dressed in a cotton gown, a shawl, apron, and large straw bonnet, was hardly noticed at first, each group supposing her to belong to some other in the party.
There was no way into the chapel save through the Norman archway, and to enter it from the house it was necessary to walk some yards along the terrace. Inside the little building, which smelt musty and disused, two clergymen were waiting: Canon Wrextone, who had been a college contemporary of Sir Philip Cranstoun, and the Rev. John Turner, of Grayling. The Canon was a stout, genial man of the world; the Vicar of Grayling, a pale, ascetic-looking man of middle age. In one of the few high oak pews, too, there sat his Grace the Duke of Lanark, the late Lady Gwendolen’s father, a tall, bent, old gentleman of seventy-five, in deep mourning, with the pallor of eld upon his face, which was almost as colorless as his snow-white hair.
The head of the house of Douglas had felt it to be his duty to grace by his presence the union of her whom he believed to be his daughter’s child with Lord Northborough’s heir, who himself had the extreme honor of being connected by marriage with the Douglas family. His duchess had not accompanied him, as she had an equally strong objection against the Chase and its master, and considered that a wedding so close on the heels of her daughter’s death was indecorous in the extreme. But Lord Northborough and the Duke were political allies, and the Earl had joined with Sir Philip in begging the favor of his presence. The old gentleman had therefore journeyed down, attended by his valet, who sat at some distance behind his master. The Duke was curious to see his granddaughter, of whose remarkable beauty he had heard with surprise. The Douglases had been plain for generations, and it seemed a little sacrilegious for a Douglas’ daughter to be beautiful.
But no eyes watched for the bride’s appearance more keenly than those of the little, wizened old woman in the neat cotton gown and straw bonnet. Her bent frame was actually quivering with excitement as she hung on her stick, with her piercing eyes fixed upon the entrance doors to the house through which the bride must pass on her way to the chapel. Stephen Lee, having received strict orders not to recognize his old relation, kept at some distance from her, attired, as were all the grooms, gamekeepers, stable and farmhands among the crowd, in his best clothes, and looking a handsome and attractive figure in his brown velveteen coat, smart corduroys, and gaiters.
In his secret heart he was profoundly angry, anxious, and unhappy. What did old Sarah mean by her promise to save Stella from a distasteful marriage, when here they were at the church doors, waiting for the girl to appear in her wedding-dress, and be married to this infernal whipper-snapper of a swell, whom he, Stephen, could have felled with one hand? What, too, had passed between Stella and Sarah in the course of that interview in the woods last night, and what was the meaning of that strange look he had seen in Stella’s eyes?
Sarah was up to some trick, that was certain, but of what nature he had no means of divining; meantime the chapel held already a duke, a countess, two ministers of the Church, and the young bridegroom, only waiting for Stella’s appearance to begin the ceremony.