As to marriage, Hilary had no wish for such a binding and fettering arrangement for many years to come. There was the Canadian legacy to be made into a profitable investment first. In time, no doubt, a wife and children would be nice to come home to on winter evenings, but he had scarcely ever regarded even their remote possibilities except as so much more or less ornamental and expensive furniture in his future homestead.
He had not meant to fall in love with Stella Cranstoun. Nothing was, in fact, further from his thoughts than to fall in love with anybody. Against his will, her personality affected him, and from the moment when he laid his hand upon her bridle-rein until he parted from her in the corridor, through all the physical pain of his wound, the thought of her beauty haunted his mind, try as he would to cast it out. She was altogether unsuited to him, and marriage with her would be impossible. What was there in common between the granddaughter of a Duke, the child of one of the proudest men in England, and himself, the son of a plain yeoman, of neither family nor fortune?
Stella, of course, could not guess that this was her lover’s state of mind, but something of it she gathered from Lord Carthew’s talk when, in answer to Lady Cranstoun’s inquiry as to whether Hilary was a particular friend of his, he said, warmly:
“I am extremely attached to him. I attribute his sudden departure to-day to his intense independence of character, which he sometimes carries even to an aggressive extent. He was very angry over what he chose to consider as the false position in which he was placed by my whim in changing names with him, for which trick I have not yet sufficiently apologized to you or to Miss Cranstoun.”
He turned eagerly to Stella as he spoke, but she rewarded him only by a frigid bend of the head.
“I have already told you,” he went on, a little chilled by her manner, “of my disgust at the snobbishness of those people who, because of my superior rank, loaded me with attentions, and almost ignored the existence of my handsome friend. At a house where we recently visited, four pretty girls, set on, I suppose, by their parents, hardly so much as talked to him, and made a dead set at me. Now, this was ridiculously unnatural, for my friend is the most superbly handsome man I have ever seen, a giant in height, and one of the finest athletes in the University, with a face, too, which cannot fail to attract women, to whom, however, I must own, he is extremely indifferent.”
“Your friend, then,” interposed Sir Philip, who was keenly watching the effect of this talk upon his daughter, “has no intention of marrying at present, I presume?”
“So far from it,” Lord Carthew returned, “he has not the slightest wish to settle down in matrimony for many years to come. He has the bad taste, indeed, not to think about women at all; which is, perhaps,” he added, with a laugh, “considering Hilary’s remarkable natural advantages, a very good thing for us plain little fellows.”
CHAPTER X.
FATHER AND DAUGHTER.
Lord Carthew spoke as he did of his friend’s prospects and intentions with perfect frankness and loyalty, never for one moment suspecting the effect which his words might produce in the mind of Stella Cranstoun.