“But they have everything to do with it, from my point of view,” he said, standing before her, and looking steadfastly into her face. “I don’t expect or hope that you will love me yet. But if you will marry me, I will engage that you shall be a great deal happier than you are now.”
“That might easily be, now that Sir Philip has returned.”
She spoke half under her breath, and as it were involuntarily, and then stood a few moments, reflecting. Lord Carthew was a little, a very little, shorter than she, and even such a fancy-free maiden as Stella had her ideals of the man she might some day grow to love. Like most very young girls’ ideals, he was of exaggerated height and length of limb. Lord Carthew was of pale and sallow complexion, in spite of the fact that he usually enjoyed excellent health. Gazing at him thus in the sunlight, and regarding him for the first time in the light of a possible husband, Stella noted that his deep-set, intelligent eyes were of a greenish-gray, and set too near together in his head for beauty or symmetry. Herself a brunette, she admired fair, florid skins and light hair in others. Lord Carthew was clean-shaved, and Stella’s conventional ideal invariably wore a golden mustache, similar to the one on the face of the wounded man upstairs. Lord Carthew’s upper lip was long, and his lower jaw slightly protruded. To a student of physiognomy, his mouth and chin clearly indicated an intense loyalty and fidelity in love and friendship, combined with a bull-dog obstinacy and tenacity of purpose, and his whole face denoted unusual intelligence, will, and power of loving.
But Stella was a young girl of eighteen, and saw none of these things. Her feminine instinct taught her that this man was an honorable gentleman, but what she particularly noted with dissatisfaction was that, in moments of repressed excitement, as in the present instance, Lord Carthew’s eyes and eyebrows twitched in a nervous fashion peculiar to some oversensitive temperaments.
Her survey over, she turned away with a half-sigh. Why was not this man, who loved her, more like that other man, who disliked her? But the next moment she tried to put that thought away as humiliating. She was certain Lord Carthew would be very good to her, and to her mamma also. And oh! to be free from Sir Philip’s sneering, and bullying, and hectoring!
“Only tell me one thing,” Lord Carthew said at last. “Have I a rival?”
Stella flushed deeply, but answered on the instant.
“No, no! How could you possibly have? I have hardly spoken to a man before, except Sir Philip, and the doctor, and my teachers. No, it isn’t that I love any one else, but—but——”
“But you don’t love me? Well, that would be impossible. There is nothing about me to make a beautiful young girl fall in love at first sight. But, my dear Miss Cranstoun, you have certainly beauty enough for two!”
She laughed and blushed with pleasure. She had so far in her life had hardly any compliments.