He did not tell her that he had telegraphed for his friend to come, much less that he wanted him to act as his second in a duel. But Jack Tennant's blow was one that Earle's fiery heart would never forgive without an apology. He had determined to challenge him, and he would not ask any of the young men in Rosemont to carry the message. He wanted Lord Chester.
He believed that Ethel held the young nobleman's heart; he did not dream of danger to the fair young sister whose waist he clasped with a loving arm as she stood by him on the piazza while he told Norah to prepare the finest rooms in the house for the coming guest.
And there was no hint of a tragedy or sorrow in the balmy air, nor in the sunset sky where the rosy tints faded to purple, and the full moon rose over the sharp outline of the distant hills and flooded the world with its silver glory.
Precious did not speak one word, but her heart thrilled with a silent rapture as pure as the moonlight flooding the world with light.
"I shall see him—I can thank him with my own lips for saving my life," she thought happily, and at night she sat alone at her window when Norah believed she was asleep, thinking of the morrow, when Ethel's lover was coming.
She thought of Ladybird too, and her romantic fancies and hero-worship.
"It was a strange fancy that Lord Chester might some day be my lover," she mused, and added, with an unconscious sigh: "Perhaps—he—might—have been—only that he loved Ethel first!"
Did a shadow from the nearing future fall over that young dreaming heart—some prescience of the pathetic truth of the poet's plaint:
"Of all sad words of tongue or pen,
The saddest are these: 'It might have been!'"
She sat long by the open window watching the beautiful night with solemn, wide blue eyes, and a strange sadness crept over her spirit, a loneliness never felt before. Tears came at last, tears, and low, soft sobs.