“Go upstairs and find out quietly if she’s in her room now.”
He almost trembled with apprehension during the few minutes of Dakin’s absence. Her news had very seriously disturbed him, coming as it did after Stella’s defiant declaration in the shrubbery that she would never marry Lord Carthew. Her words, taken by themselves, had affected him but little; but in conjunction with the fact that she had had the audacity and the folly to choose a lover for herself, they became very serious indeed. Was it possible that she had already actually eloped with this farmer’s son, whom she had only met for the first time yesterday evening? Was all his cunning concealment of her mother’s humble origin to be wasted if once the wild gypsy blood in her had a chance of asserting itself? Was his name to be disgraced, after the pains he had taken to clear it from all possible taint of his miserable first marriage? That old gypsy hag, when she cursed him before the court-house eighteen years ago, had prophesied that his children should bring disgrace upon his name. Were her words coming true already?
The housemaid’s entrance set his fears at rest for the time.
“I listened outside the bedroom door, sir,” the woman said, “and Ellen was dressing Miss Cranstoun, and remarking that her serge gown and her boots are wet. So she must have been out walking.”
Sir Philip was puzzled. Could the fellow be hanging about the grounds still? he wondered. But if he wished to make love to Stella, why had he, hampered as he was by a wounded limb, already left the shelter of the Chase?
“Understand,” he said, to the woman, sternly, “I am extremely annoyed that you should have let Miss Cranstoun give you the slip this afternoon. Every movement of hers must be watched at this point and reported tome. Either you or the lady’s maid, Ellen, must dog her footsteps everywhere. She must never be again allowed to leave the house alone.”
At dinner Lord Carthew informed his host that he was much disturbed by a letter he had just read which had been left for him by his friend.
“I dropped into his sitting-room a little before luncheon,” he explained, “and found him lying, fully dressed, asleep on the sofa. I didn’t like to disturb him, and half hoped to see him at lunch. After lunch, I was so pleasantly employed talking to Lady Cranstoun, chiefly about you, Miss Stella, that the afternoon flew by I can’t tell how. Then when I went just now to see my friend, I found that he had flown, leaving only a note in which he asks me to make his excuses to Lady Cranstoun, and to thank her for her kindness, but that as he is quite well, he will not trespass upon it any longer, but will at once return to London, where a doctor of his acquaintance will soon set him up again.”
“Mr. Pritchard left a note for me also,” put in Lady Cranstoun, “in which he said much the same thing. It seems so curious that he should have been our guest, and yet that I have never seen him. But I very much hope that he will come to no hurt through making a move so suddenly. He is a very dear friend of yours, is he not?” She turned to Lord Carthew with almost an affectionate touch in her manner. She was slightly flushed this evening, and her pale blue eyes positively shone. It had always been a subject of dread with her lest her beloved Stella should be forced into some marriage totally distasteful to her by her father’s tyranny. But her short interview with Stella that morning, and her long talk with Lord Carthew in the afternoon, had convinced her that here was the ideal husband for her daughter—rich, titled, a connection of her own, and at the same time intellectual, generous, affectionate, and of a singularly high character. His manner to her was perfect. After so many wretched years of slighting and snubbing and terrorizing which she had patiently endured from her husband, the gentle deference and kindly sympathy of Lord Carthew came to her as something altogether new and delightful. If only she herself at Stella’s age had had the good fortune to secure the affection of such a man, she felt that her lot would have been different indeed. Knowing something, too, of the volcanic depths of Stella’s nature, of her determination, her impulsiveness, and her powers of loving and hating in what seemed to poor Lady Cranstoun an exaggerated and incomprehensible degree, her motherly heart was the more rejoiced that a man of originality and evident force of character had seen fit to throw the handkerchief to her.
What Lady Cranstoun, unfortunately, altogether failed to take into account was that strange magnetism which occasional members of opposite sexes exercise over each other, not always with the happiest results. Beautiful, luckless Clare Carewe had aroused such a passion in the breast of even the cold and calculating Sir Philip twenty years ago, and at the present moment Sir Philip’s daughter was consumed by just such an unreasoning and overwhelming love for Hilary Pritchard, who, after all, had done little more than look into her eyes, speak somewhat disparagingly about her, catch her in his arms in that one mad embrace, and then leave the house, apparently without the wish or the intention to see her again. Hilary had neither rank, nor fortune, nor family; he was not Lord Carthew’s equal in intelligence, nor was he a man of such original and large-minded views. He had sometimes flirted with nice and pretty girls of his acquaintance, but he had seldom devoted much thought to any woman, a good run to hounds being in his opinion far better than the most fascinating courtship, and no woman in the world the equal of his mare, Black Bess.