Joining her by the door, he gripped her arm in his fingers as he had done in the morning. The pain of his clutch was intense, but she never winced under it.
“It is my duty to tell him, Sir Philip,” she said, as though she were addressing a stranger.
“Go to your room at once, and do not presume to leave it until you have my permission.”
“As you please. But as soon as I meet Lord Carthew, he shall hear every word.”
Baffled and furious, he released his hold on her arm, and following her upstairs, he watched her enter her own room, and drawing out the key, turned it on the outside, and slipped it into his pocket. He had totally miscalculated the effect upon her of the announcement he had made. He imagined that it would lower her pride to the dust, and break down once and forever her opposition to his will. But she had gone from the study with head erect and flashing eyes; and so far from dreading lest the secret of her humble birth should become known, she had instantly decided upon sharing it with the last person in the world who ought to be made aware of it.
More than ever it was necessary to hurry on this match with Lord Carthew. In such a spirit as that in which Stella now found herself, it was impossible to say what reckless step she might take. On returning to the drawing-room, therefore, Sir Philip pretended to read a newspaper, while his two guests finished their game, and he afterward contrived, in the course of a short talk with Lord Carthew, to strongly encourage that young gentleman’s hopes, and indeed to turn them to certainties.
“I have been having a little talk with my daughter,” he began, as the gentlemen sipped their grog and enjoyed a parting smoke before retiring for the night. “She is quite willing that the wedding shall take place during the second week in May. I haven’t a doubt that this house is extremely lonely for Stella, and that in her secret heart she is overjoyed at the thought of leaving it. The only difficulty is that she has never been separated from her mother, and I rather fancy that that is what she wanted to speak to you about just when I came up and interrupted her.”
“I shall be delighted if Lady Cranstoun will come with us when we set up housekeeping in town,” Lord Carthew answered, his plain face radiant with happiness. “I will talk over all arrangements with my mother when I go up to town to-morrow. I ought to go up early, because I am really anxious about my friend Hilary. Dr. Graham has been declaring how extremely rash it was for him to leave the shelter of your roof at present, and I am most anxious to find out whether he has suffered any ill effects from the journey.”
Lord Carthew retired to his room that night with a light heart, which not even the recollection of the palmist Kyro’s prediction could depress. “A passionate love affair, a hasty marriage, followed speedily by overwhelming misfortunes,” such were the terms of the prophecy made for his future a few weeks before. But now, in the belief that he had secured at least the warm friendship and willing consent of a lovely, high-born, fascinating, and gifted bride, Claud felt that he could laugh such gloomy predictions to scorn. Stella liked him, and would soon grow to love him, for Lord Carthew fully believed, as do so many men, that love is a plant which can be induced to grow in any woman’s heart with proper care and trouble.
Not for one moment did he suspect that the beautiful girl whom he hoped so shortly to make his wife was at that moment pacing up and down the boards of her bedchamber, completely dressed, with all idea of slumber banished from her mind, and her head in a whirl of passionate and rebellious thoughts, of which not one was devoted to him.