“She is a noble girl—she is a splendid girl!” Mr. Richards returned, tears in his own eyes, and his heart full of remorse over the life Star had led since she came into his house. “She will make you the best little wife in the world. God bless you both!”
Lord Carrol saw that he was sincere, and began to suspect where all the trouble lay regarding Star. He was inclined to think, and rightly, that jealousy or ill-will on the part of the petted Josephine and her proud mother was the cause of her unpleasant position in the family; but he inwardly resolved that it should be entirely different in the future, or she should not remain there.
But he had been absent a long time from the gay company in the drawing-room, and, feeling assured that he could not see his darling that night, he returned to it, trying to wait with patience for what the morrow would bring him.
CHAPTER XIX.
MALICIOUS FALSEHOODS.
As soon as Mr. Richards and his distinguished guest left the music-room, a white hand parted the curtains from the window, and a blanched, distorted face appeared in the aperture.
It belonged to Mrs. Richards, who had, as before mentioned, been a listener to all that had transpired. Seeing that no one was in sight, she stepped softly inside, for the window was a long one, reaching to the floor, and sank back into a chair, the picture of a woman whom a fierce passion had exhausted.
She had chanced to be out upon the veranda when Lord Carrol had entered the music-room and requested a “few moments’ conversation” with her husband, and feeling, with a thrill of delight, that the most important moment of Josephine’s life had come, she drew near to listen, as she supposed, to his lordship’s proposal for her hand.
Her emotions can better be imagined than described when instead she heard the story which the young man told her husband, and learned that Star, the despised and neglected waif, had secured the prize which she had so coveted for her brilliant daughter.
A perfect tornado of wrath, jealousy, and hate raged within her heart as she heard his praises of her, and his manly confession of love for her, with the intention of making her his wife.
Star, the beggar maid, as she had always regarded her, the burden reproach of her life, the wife of a peer of England!