“I must fall in with her when she is alone,” he thought; “early in the morning or in byeways. She can be made, I am sure, to believe and to keep a secret, at any self-sacrifice.”
Once more his eye fell upon Helen, who was turning her dark, bright eyes upon the Duke, and electrifying him with her beauty, while she confused him by the smartness of her sallies.
“I will have her,” mused Lester Vane. “It may be a task surrounded with almost insuperable difficulties, but I will have her.”
Margaret Claverhouse Grahame divided her attentions between her plate and the young Duke. She had estimated Lester Vane at pretty much his value, and therefore did not trouble her head any more about him. She fastened her gray eyes upon the Duke as often as her dinner would admit, and she came to the same conclusion respecting him that Lester Vane had with her sister Helen.
“He must be mine. He is fat and awkward,” she thought, “but he is a duke, and I am born to bear the rank of a duchess.”
On the period appointed by etiquette for the ladies to retire arriving, the young ladies, led by Mrs. Grahame, quitted the apartment, to leave the gentlemen to their wine. They were now on much more familiar terms with each other, and, as the ladies retired, the Duke rising with the gentlemen, said to Helen—
“Weally, Miss Gwahame, I gwow evwy day moah and moah convinced that the wegulation which dwove the ladies fwom our society, though only faw a time, was absolutely bawbawous; and the pwesent fashion which pwescwibes a limit to the sepawation, an intwo-duction of the most admiwable kind. Believe me, I shall, with all wespect to my hospitable host, count the minutes until we join you in the dwawing woom.”
“And I!” exclaimed Lester Vane, in a tone of voice which compelled Helen to turn towards him; their eyes met—again she felt a strange, thrilling dread pass over her frame; she turned her eyes away.
“I am grateful!” she responded with a bow, and hastily quitted the room with her mother and sisters.
She did not enter the drawing-room, but ran into her own dressing-room, and, throwing herself in a chair, buried her face in a handkerchief.