“And if Sir Harold had approved, do you think you could learn to love me?” whispered the young earl softly, his eager breath fanning the girl’s cheek.
Neva’s silence was interpreted as a favorable answer.
“Before my father died,” said Lord Towyn gently, “he told me that it had long been his wish and that of Sir Harold to unite the two families in our marriage. Sir Harold was in India at the time of my father’s death, and was not likely, at that distance from home, to have contracted an aversion to me, or to have formed other plans for your future. You see, I am right, Neva, and now I claim to be considered as your suitor. May it not be?”
“Oh, Arthur,” the girl murmured, sorely perplexed, “I—”
The story trembled on her lips, but she did not give utterance to it, for at that critical moment Rufus Black entered the conservatory, and came up the flower-bordered aisle, with an unmistakable displeasure upon his melancholy face.
Neva started guiltily at his approach, as if she had been wronging him or her dead father in listening to Lord Towyn’s avowals of love. But although she moved away from the young earl, she paused under a tropical rose-tree, and began to gather roses, and her two suitors hovered about her, each recognizing in the other a rival.
They were presently joined by Neva’s third lover, Craven Black. The last-named looked moodily and jealously at his son and the young earl, and devoted himself so closely to the heiress that, with a feeling of annoyance, Neva presently proposed a return to the drawing-room.
A glance of jealous anger from the eyes of Lady Wynde greeted Craven Black as he reentered the presence of his betrothed. The baronet’s widow began to entertain a suspicion of the disaffection of her lover.
Sir John Freise was the first to propose a departure, and the horses were ordered, and he, with Mr. Atkins and Lord Towyn, took their leave.
Craven Black exchanged a few whispered words with Lady Wynde, appointing an interview for the next morning, and then also departed with his son.