Later in the day he called at the Winans mansion, and Ethel received him alone. Her mamma was too ill and nervous to see any one.
Never had the queenly Ethel looked more charming. No shade of anxiety dimmed the dark radiance of her eyes. She had slept long and late, and when she awoke and heard that Precious was not yet found she laughed and said that she was sure that her sister had eloped with some handsome young man, and would be coming home in a few days from her bridal tour, with her husband, to ask papa's forgiveness.
And she repeated this to Lord Chester when he expressed solicitude over her sister's fate.
"I am not at all uneasy, my lord," she cried lightly; "I think it very likely that Precious has eloped with one of her tutors. Papa had several young men coming here to teach my sister music, and drawing, and dancing. Of course her French governess was always present. But she scarcely understood a word of English, so it was easy enough for one of them to make love to her if he wished, and Precious was just the kind of pretty, willful simpleton to fall in love with a nobody and marry him."
A keen, inexplicable pain tore the young man's heart at those words, and it seemed to him that Ethel's levity amounted to heartlessness. He looked gravely at her with his dark-gray eyes, and it seemed to him that there was something lacking in her beauty that he had not missed last night, but he did not realize as yet that the change was in himself.
He would have denied it if any one had taxed him with being in love with a girl whom he knew only by her portrait.
Only last night he had adored charming Ethel Winans. It was only her mother's interruption that had prevented him from laying his heart and title at her feet. The words had trembled on his lips while he looked at her with his heart in his eyes.
Why did he not speak to-day?
The opportunity was very favorable, for it was but seldom he could find the brilliant belle alone.
And Ethel's languid air, just touched with the softness of love, was very inviting. It was just the gentle mood in which a girl is likely to accept a proposal.