She had called at the Hortons’, accompanied by Lord Avondale. Ethel begged to be excused, pleading weariness, and remained in her room. The English lord seemed anything but dejected at Ethel’s not wishing to see him, and, with his pipe, he strolled leisurely down the graveled walk toward the lake. A sense of proprietorship came to him as he walked back and forth in a contemplative mood. A wedding portion in good government bonds had already been formally agreed upon.
“By Jove! I wish the affair were coming off to-morrow,” mused Avondale, as he knocked the ashes from his brier-root pipe and refilled and lighted it afresh. “Those beastly hot winds have left the landscape deucedly barren. The recent rains brightened it up a bit; otherwise it would be unendurable. It’s a blooming country, I must say. This little lake and woods surrounding Ethel’s home are about the only sights worth seeing.” He laughed a little, and repeated the name of Ethel. “It sounds odd, quite odd,—and yet—” He did not audibly finish the sentence, but went on walking and smoking in a most self-satisfied way.
Ethel was in a listless mood. Her betrothal to Lord Avondale, however, while far from her own wish of making, was gradually becoming less terrible to contemplate. After all, it would be a change, and what did it matter? Jack had long ago forgotten her, while Hugh had deserted her at the first test.
In the meantime, a rather animated conversation was going on in the parlors below, between Ethel’s mother and Lucy Osborn.
“There is another matter,” Mrs. Osborn was saying, “that is unfortunate, to say the least. It has disturbed me quite a little.”
“Nothing serious, I hope,” exclaimed Mrs. Horton, as she looked anxiously into the pretty face opposite her.
“Not necessarily serious, but very annoying,” replied Mrs. Osborn. “Now, don’t let it worry you, Mrs. Horton, but Doctor Redfield is in Meade.”
“Impossible!” exclaimed Mrs. Horton, in great astonishment.
“Yes, I saw him last evening while driving with Lord Avondale. He was walking down the street with Mr. Stanton. It is rather deplorable that he should have turned up just at this time. There is no mistaking his broad shoulders and blond mustache.”
Mrs. Horton was seriously perplexed and noticeably agitated, while Lucy Osborn fidgeted about in her chair, as she remembered the part she had played in Ethel’s correspondence. She secretly wondered if Doctor Redfield had preserved that letter written over Mrs. Horton’s signature. It made her nervous to contemplate the possibly humiliating results of an investigation. Her almost reckless relations with Lord Avondale placed her in a position, however, that compelled her to go on doing his bidding, until the farce of his marriage to the American heiress was consummated. She was tired, alike, of the spiritless behavior of Ethel and the silly ambition of Mrs. Horton for an English alliance. True, it afforded Lucy Osborn a way of escape from the monotony of frontier life, and, at the same time, placed her on English soil with a firmer footing, she fancied, than ever before, and this thought was milk on which she fed her famishing ambition. That Ethel, in time, would become insanely jealous, or possibly would have ample reason to be so, if appearances counted for anything, she did not doubt. Her self-assurance, however, told her that she could easily call Lenox Avondale to her when his honeymoon with Ethel was over, and her beauty would compel him to be her champion. Another thought slipped in unbidden, and it made her shudder a little; the thought was this,—what would become of her when her beauty of face and figure was gone?