Star turned and regarded her accuser in perfect amazement. She could scarcely credit her sense of hearing.
How did Mrs. Richards know anything about her meetings with Lord Carrol, alias Archibald Sherbrooke, or of her interest in him? And who had represented it in this disgraceful light?
“This young man,” the cunning woman went on, “is no other than Lord Carrol, who, for the month that we were at Long Branch, paid the most devoted attention to Josephine, and accepted our invitation here with the intention, as we supposed, of formally declaring himself to her and securing her father’s consent to their marriage.”
A convulsive tremor ran through every fiber of the young girl’s being as she stood there and listened to this artful tale, and Mr. Rosevelt, who still held her hand, was sensible of it, and wondered what it could all mean.
He had not a suspicion that Lord Carrol and the handsome young artist whom he so admired were one and the same, but he knew that something must be very wrong to move Star so and make her look so deathly white.
“You look astonished,” Mrs. Richards said, “and well you may, and your surprise will increase when I have told you all.”
“I am sure,” he answered, glancing from one to the other, “that there must be some mistake.”
“There is no mistake,” replied his niece, coldly, and fixing a merciless glance upon Star, “for Lord Carrol has just had an interview with my husband, during which he told him the whole story. He says his first meeting with Stella was caused by an accident, and that she appeared so bright and intelligent that whenever he met her afterward he spoke with her and treated her kindly. He did not even have the least idea where she lived until to-night, after dinner. He went out for a quiet smoke, when she presented herself before him, accused him of coming here as Josephine’s lover, and denounced him as a traitor in the strongest terms and most unmaidenly manner, and telling him, greatly to his surprise, that she was an inmate of the house where he was a visitor. Of course, after such a denouement, he could do no other way than to seek Mr. Richards and explain everything, lest this rash girl should, out of a spirit of revenge and disappointment, destroy all his prospects with Josephine.”
It was a cunningly distorted story, and Star, as she listened to it, bowed her head and covered her face with her hands, while a low cry of despair broke from her lips.
She had not dreamed that the man whom she had learned to love, who, with his open, handsome face, his frank, manly ways, had won her deepest respect, her strongest affections, could be guilty of so cowardly an act as to betray her thus.