Only a Girl's Love. Garvice Charles
him, leaning her arm on his chair while he smoked his pipe – she had opened her lips to tell him of that sudden outburst of fury on the part of Lord Leycester – that passionate rage which proved all that the painter had said of his hot temper to be true, but she had found some difficulty in the recital which had kept her silent.
She had told him of her walk in the woods, had told him of her meeting with Lady Lilian, but of that passionate encounter between the two men she said nothing.
When Jasper had ridden on, pale and livid with suppressed passion, Lord Leycester had stood looking at her in silence. Now, as she sat looking into the gloaming, she saw him in her mind's eye still, his beautiful eyes eloquent with remorse and humility, his clear-cut lip quivering with the sense of his weakness.
"Will you forgive me?" he said, at last, and that was all. Without another word, he had offered to help her into the boat, help which Stella had disregarded, and had rowed her across to her uncle. Without a word, but with the same penitent, imploring look in his eyes, he raised his hat and left her – had gone home to the Hall, to his sister Lady Lilian, and to Lenore.
Ever since she had heard the name drop softly from Lady Lilian's lips it had rung in her ears. There was a subtle kind of charm about it that half fascinated, half annoyed her.
And now, leaning her head on her arm, and with her dark eyes fixed on the stars which glittered merrily in the sky, she put the question:
"Who is Lenore, uncle?"
He stirred in his chair and looked at her absently.
"Lenore, Lenore? I don't know, Stella, and yet the name sounds familiar. Where did you hear it? It's scarcely fair to spring a question like that on me; you might ask me who is Julia, Louisa, Anna Maria – "
Stella laughed softly.
"I heard it this morning, uncle. Lady Lilian told her brother as she left us that 'Lenore had come.'"
"Ah, yes," he said. "Now I know. So she has come, has she? Who is Lenore?" and he smiled. "There is scarcely another woman in England who would need to ask that question, Stella."
"No?" she said, turning her eyes upon him with surprise. "Why? Is she so famous?"
"Exactly, yes; that is just the word. She is famous."
"For what, uncle? Is she a great actress, painter, musician – what?"
"She is something that the world, nowadays, reckons far above any of the classes you have named, Stella – she is a great beauty."
"Oh, is that all!" said Stella, curtly.
"All!" he echoed, amused.
"Yes," and she nodded. "It seems so easy."
"So easy!" and he laughed.
"Yes," she continued; "so very easy, if you happen to be born so. There is no merit in it. And is that all she is?"
He was staggered by her sang froid for a moment.
"Well, I was scarcely fair, perhaps. As you say, it is very easy to be a great beauty – if you are one – but it is rather difficult if you are not; but Lenore is something more than that – she is an enchantress."
"That's better," remarked Stella. "I like that. And how does she enchant? Does she keep tame snakes, and play music to them, or mesmerize people, or what?"
The painter laughed again with great enjoyment at her naivete.
"You are quite a cynic, Stella. Where did you learn the trick; from your father, or is it a natural gift? No, she does not keep tame snakes, and I don't know that she has acquired the art of mesmerism; but she can charm for all that. First, she is, really and truly, very beautiful – "
"Tell me what she is like?" interrupted Stella, softly.
The old man paused a moment to light his pipe.
"She is very fair," he said.
"I know," said Stella, dreamily, and with a little smile; "with yellow hair and blue eyes, and a pink and white complexion, and blue veins and a tiny mouth."
"All wrong," he said, with, a laugh. "You have, woman-like, pictured a china doll. Lenore is as unlike a china doll as it is possible to imagine. She has golden hair it is true – but golden hair, not yellow; there is a difference. Then her eyes are not blue; they are violet."
"Violet!"
"Violet!" he repeated, gravely. "I have seen them as violet as the flowers that grow on the bank over there. Her mouth is not small; there was never yet a woman worth a fig who had a small mouth. It is rather large than otherwise, but then it is – a mouth."
"Expressive?" said Stella, quietly.
"Eloquent," he corrected. "The sort of mouth that can speak volumes with a curve of the lip. You think I exaggerate? Wait until you see her."
"I don't think," said Stella, slowly, "that I am particularly desirous of seeing her, uncle. It reminds we of what they say of Naples – see Naples and die! See Lenore and die!"
He laughed.
"Well, it is not altogether false; many have seen her – many men, and been ready to die for love of her."
Stella laughed, softly.
"She must be very beautiful for you to talk like this, uncle. She is charming too?"
"Yes, she is charming," he said, low; "with a charm that one is bound to admit at once and unreservedly."
"But what does she do?" asked Stella, with a touch of feminine impatience.
"What does she not?" he answered. "There is scarcely an accomplishment under the sun or moon that she has not at her command. In a word, Stella, Lenore is the outcome of the higher civilization; she is the type of our latest requirement, which demands more than mere beauty, and will not be satisfied with mere cleverness; she rides beautifully and fearlessly; she plays and sings better than one-half the women one hears at concerts; they tell me that no woman in London can dance with greater grace, and I have seen her land a salmon of twenty pounds with all the skill of a Scotch gillie."
Stella was silent a moment.
"You have described a paragon, uncle. How all her women friends must detest her."
He laughed.
"I think you are wrong. I never knew a woman more popular with her sex."
"How proud her husband must be of her," murmured Stella.
"Her husband! What husband? She is not married."
Stella laughed.
"Not married! Such a perfection unmarried! Is it possible that mankind can permit such a paragon to remain single. Uncle, they must be afraid of her!"
"Well, perhaps they are – some of them," he assented, smiling. "No," he continued, musingly; "she is not married. Lenore might have been married long before this: she has had many chances, and some of them great ones. She might have been a duchess by this time if she had chosen."
"And why did she not?" said Stella. "Such a woman should be nothing less than a duchess. It is a duchess whom you have described, uncle."
"I don't know," he said, simply. "I don't think anyone knows; perhaps she does not know herself."
Stella was silent for a moment; her imagination was hard at work.
"Is she rich, poor – what, uncle?"
"I don't know. Rich, I should think," he answered.
"And what is her other name, or has she only one name, like a princess or a church dignitary?"
"Her name is Beauchamp – Lady Lenore Beauchamp."
"Lady!" repeated Stella, surprised. "She has a title, then; it was all that was wanted."
"Yes, she is the daughter of a peer."
"What a happy woman she must be; – is she a woman or a girl, though. I have imagined her a woman of thirty."
He laughed.
"Lady Lenore is – is" – he thought a moment