"What rubbish it all is--this love-making, marrying, and giving in marriage!" he said, at last, impatiently, to himself. "I'll think no more about these young folks' affairs--let them make or mar their happiness in their own way. I'll think of my work and nothing else--I've neglected it a good deal of late, I fancy. I must make up for lost time now." And sitting down at his table, he turned over the papers upon it, and took up a quill pen. But he did not begin to write for some minutes.

He sat frowning at the paper, biting the feathers of his pen, drumming with his fingers on the table. And after a time he muttered to himself, "If any man harms Lesley, I'll wring his neck--that's all;" which did not sound as though he were giving to his literary work all the attention that it required.

As to Lesley, she would have given a great deal at that time for a counsellor of some kind. The old feeling of friendlessness had come back to her. Her aunt was absorbed by her own affairs, her father looked at her with unquiet displeasure in his eyes. Oliver Trent had proved himself a false friend indeed. Ethel was a little reserved with her, and she had sent Maurice Kenyon away. There was n.o.body else to whom she could turn for comfort. True, she had made many acquaintances by this time: her father's circle was a large one, and she knew more people now than she had ever spoken to in her quiet convent days. But these were all acquaintances--not friends. She could not speak to any one of these about Maurice Kenyon, her lover and her friend. Once or twice she thought vaguely of writing to her mother about him; but she shrank from doing so without quite knowing why. The fact was, she knew her mother's criticism beforehand: she expected to be reproached with having broken her compact in the spirit if not in the letter; and she did not know how to justify herself. Maurice had taken his dismissal as final, and she had not meant him to do so. Now, if ever, the girl wanted a friend who would either encourage her to explain her position to him, or would do it for her. Lady Alice would not fill this post efficiently. And Lesley, in her youthful shamefaced pride, felt that nothing would induce her to make her own explanation to Maurice. It would seem like asking him to ask her again to marry him--an insupportable thought.

So she went about the house pale and heavy-eyed, trying with all her might to throw herself into her father's schemes for his club, writing a little now and then, occupying herself feverishly with all the projects that came in her way, but bearing a sad heart about with her all the time. She was not outwardly depressed--her pride would not let her seem melancholy. She held her head high, and talked and laughed more than usual. But the want of color and brightness in her face and eye could not be controlled.

"You pale-faced wretch," she said to herself one Sat.u.r.day evening, as she stood before her gla.s.s and surveyed the fair image that met her eye; "why cannot you look as usual? It must be this black dress that makes me so colorless: I wish that I had a flower to wear with it."

Mr. Brooke and his sister were holding one of their frequent Sat.u.r.day evening parties, when they were "at home" to a large number of guests.

Lesley was just about to go downstairs. Her dress was black, for she was in mourning for her grandfather; and it must be confessed that the sombre hue made her look very pale indeed. The wish for a flower was gratified, however, almost as soon as formed. Kingston entered her room at that moment carrying a bouquet of flowers, chiefly white, but with a scarlet blossom here and there, which would give exactly the touch of color that Lesley's appearance required.

"These flowers have just come for you, ma'am," Kingston said quietly.

Her subdued voice, her pale face, and heavily shadowed eyes, did not make her a cheerful-looking messenger; but Lesley, for the time being, thought of nothing but the flowers.

"Where do they come from, Kingston?" she asked, eagerly.

"I was only to say one word, ma'am--that they came from over the way."

There was no want of color now in Lesley's face. Her cheeks were rose-tinted, her eyes had grown strangely bright. "Over the way." Of course that meant Maurice. Did not he live over the way?--and was there any one else at the Kenyons' house who would send her such lovely flowers?

If he sent her flowers, she reflected, he could not have yet ceased to care for her, although she had behaved so badly to him--in his eyes, at least. The thought gave her courage and content. Perhaps he was coming that night--he had a standing invitation to all the Brookes' evening parties--and when he came he would perhaps "say something" to her, something which she could answer suitably, so as to make him understand.

She did not know how pretty she looked as she stood looking down at her flowers, the color and smile and dimples coming and going in her fair young face in very unwonted confusion. But Mary Kingston noted every change of tint and expression, and was surprised. For the little mystery was quite plain to her. It was not Mr. Kenyon who sent the flowers at all. Mr. Kenyon was too busy a man to buy bouquets. It was Oliver Trent who had sent them, for Kingston had herself seen him carrying the flowers and entrusting them to a commissionnaire with a message for Miss Brooke. She believed, too, that Lesley knew from whom they came. But she was not sufficiently alert and interested just then to make these matters of great importance to her. She did not think it worth her while to say how much she knew. With a short quick sigh she turned away, and expected to see her young mistress quit the room at once, still with that happy smile upon her face. But Lesley had heard the sigh.

"Oh, Kingston," she said, laying her hand on the woman's arm, "I wish you would not sigh like that!"

"I beg your pardon, ma'am; I did not mean to annoy you."

"I don't mean _that_: I mean it for your own sake. You seem so sad about something--you have been sad so long!"

"I've had a sad life, Miss Lesley."

"But there is surely some special sadness now?"

"Yes," said the woman slowly. "Yes, that is true. I've--lost--a friend."

She put a strong emphasis on the word "lost," and paused before and after uttering it, as if it bore a peculiar meaning to her. But Lesley took the word in its ordinary sense.

"I am very sorry," she said. "It must be very terrible, I think, when one's friends die."

She stood silent for a minute--a shadow from Kingston's grief troubling the sweetness of her fair face. It was the maid who broke the silence.

"Excuse me, ma'am; I oughtn't to have troubled you with my affairs to-night, just when you're enjoying yourself too. But it's hard sometimes to keep quiet."

Moved by a sudden instinct of sympathy, Lesley turned and kissed the woman who served her, as if she had been a sister. It was in such ways that she showed her kinship with the man who had written "The Unexplored." Lady Alice, in spite of all her kindness of heart, would never have thought of kissing her ladies' maid.

"Don't grieve--don't be sorrowful," said Lesley. "Perhaps things will mend by and by."

"Ah, my dear," said Kingston, forgetting her position, as Lady Alice would have said, while that young, soft kiss was warm upon her cheek, "the dead don't come back."

And when Lesley had gone downstairs, with the white and scarlet bouquet in her hand, Mary Kingston sat down and wept bitterly.

It was not the first time that Lesley had spoken words of consolation to her; but on this occasion her gentleness had gone home to Mary Kingston's heart as it had never done before. After weeping for herself for a time, she fell to weeping for Lesley too, for it seemed inevitable to her that Lesley should suffer before very long. She believed that Lesley was in love with Oliver, and that for this reason only had she refused Maurice Kenyon, which shows that Lesley had kept her own secret very well.

"I'd do anything to keep her from harm," said Mary Kingston, with a pa.s.sionate rush of grat.i.tude towards the girl for her kindly words and ways. "Francis Trent brought me grief enough, G.o.d knows; and if she's going to throw herself away on Oliver, she'll have her heart broke sooner than mine. For I've been used to sorrow all my days; and she--poor, pretty lamb--she don't know what it means. And Miss Brooke all taken up with her medicine-fads, and Mr. Brooke only a _man_, after all, in spite of his goodness; and my lady, her mother, far away and never coming near her--if anybody was friendless and forlorn, it's Miss Lesley. Only me between her and her ruin, maybe! But I'll prevent it,"

said the woman, rising to her feet with a strange look of exaltation in her sunken eyes: "I'll guard her from Oliver Trent as I couldn't guard my own sister, poor la.s.s! I'll see that she does not come to any harm, and if he means ill by her I'll shame him before all the world, even though I break more hearts than one by it."

And then she roused herself from her reverie, and went downstairs, where she knew that her presence was required in the tea-room. Scarcely had she entered it, when she made a short pause and gave a slightly perceptible start. For there stood Ethel Kenyon, with Oliver Trent in attendance. She had not thought that he would come to the house; a rumor had gone about that he had quarreled with Mr. Brooke; yet there he was, smiling, bland, irreproachable as ever, with quite the look of one who had the right to be present. He was holding Ethel's fan and gloves as she drank a cup of tea, and seemed to be paying her every attention in his power. Ethel, in the daintiest of costumes, was laughing and talking to him as they stood together. _She_ was quite unconscious of any reason for his possible absence. Mary Kingston gave them a keen glance as she went by, and decided in her own mind that there was more in the situation than as yet she had understood.

Oliver was playing a bold game. His marriage was fixed for the following Tuesday. From Mr. Brooke's att.i.tude in general towards the Kenyons, he felt sure that Caspar would not place them in any painful or perplexing situation. He would not, for instance, refuse to welcome Oliver to his house again, if Oliver went in Ethel's company. Accordingly, the young man put his pride and his delicacy (if he had either--which is doubtful) in his pocket, and went with his affianced wife to Mr. Brooke's Sat.u.r.day evening party.

"For I will see Lesley again," he said to himself, "and if I do not go to-night I may not have the opportunity. If she would relent, I would not mind throwing Ethel over--I could do it so easily now that Francis has disappeared. But I would give up Ethel's twenty thousand, if Lesley would go with me instead!"

Little did he guess that only on the previous night had he been recognized and remembered by that missing brother, whose tottering brain was inflamed almost to madness by a conviction of deliberate wrong; or that this brother was even now upon his track, ready to demand the justice that he thought had been denied him, and to punish the man who had brought him to this evil pa.s.s! Wild and mad as were the imaginings of Francis Trent's bewildered mind, they boded ill to his brother Oliver whenever the two should meet.

Meanwhile, Ethel's lover, with a white flower in his b.u.t.ton-hole, occupied the whole evening in leaning idly against a wall, and feasting his eyes on the fair face and form--not of his betrothed, but--of Lesley Brooke.

CHAPTER XXVIII.

IN MR. BROOKE'S STUDY.

Caspar Brooke's dingy drawing-room looked cheerful enough that night, filled by a crowd of men and women, and animated by the buzz of constant talk and movement. It was a distinguishing characteristic of his parties that they were composed more of men than of women; and the guests were often men or women who had done something in the world, and were known for some special excellence in their work. Lesley generally enjoyed these gatherings very much. The visitors were shabby, unfashionable people sometimes: they had eccentricities of dress and manner; but they were always interesting in Lesley's eyes. Literary men, professors, politicians, travelers, philanthropists, faddists--these were the folk that mostly frequented Caspar Brooke's parties. Neither artists nor musicians were largely represented: the flow of talk was rather political and literary than artistic; and on the whole there were more elderly people than young ones. As a rule, Oliver Trent was not disposed to frequent these a.s.semblies: he shrugged his shoulders at them and called them "slow," but on this occasion he was only too glad to find admittance. It was at least a good opportunity for watching Lesley, as she pa.s.sed from one group to another, doing the duties of a.s.sistant-hostess with grace and tact, giving a smile to one, a word to another, entering into low-toned conversation, which brightened her eyes and flushed her fair cheek, with another. Oliver thought her perfection.

Beside her stately proportions, Ethel seemed to him ridiculously tiny and insignificant, and her sparkling prettiness was altogether eclipsed by Lesley's calmer beauty. He was not in an amiable mood. He had steeled himself against the dictates of his own taste and conscience, to encounter Caspar Brooke's cold stare and freezing word of conventional welcome, because he longed so intensely for a last word with Lesley; but he was now almost sorry that he had come. Lesley seemed utterly indifferent to his presence. She certainly carried his flowers in her hand, but she did not glance his way. On the contrary, she anxiously watched the door from time to time, as if she awaited the coming of some one who was slow to make his appearance. Who could the person be for whom she looked? Oliver asked himself jealously. He had not the slightest suspicion that she was watching for Maurice Kenyon. And Maurice Kenyon did not come.

It was his absence that, as the evening wore on, made the color slip from Lesley's cheeks and robbed her eyes of their first brightness. A certain listlessness came over her. And Oliver, watching from his corner, exulted in his heart, for he thought to himself--

"It is for me she is looking sad; and if she will but yield her will to mine, I will win and wear her yet, in spite of all who would say me nay."

It was a veritable love-madness, such as had not come upon him since the days of his youth. He had had a fairly wide experience of love-making; but never had he been so completely mastered by his pa.s.sion as he was now. The consideration that had once been so potent with him--love of ease, money, and position--seemed all to have vanished away. What mattered it that to abandon Ethel Kenyon at the last moment would mean disgrace and perhaps even beggary? He had no care left for thoughts like these. If Lesley would acknowledge her love for him, he was ready to throw all other considerations to the winds.

"Sing something, Lesley," her father said to her when the evening was well advanced. "You have your music here?"

Oh, yes, Lesley had her music here. But she glanced a little nervously in Oliver's direction. "I wonder if Ethel would accompany me," she said.

She shrank nervously from the thought of Oliver's accompaniments.

But Oliver was too quick for her. He moved forward to the piano as soon as he saw Caspar Brooke's eye upon it. And with his hand on the key-board, he addressed himself suavely to Lesley.

"You are going to sing, I hope? May I not have the pleasure of accompanying you?"

Lesley could not say him nay, but she also could not help a glance, half of alarm, half of appeal, towards her father. Mr. Brooke's face wore an expression which was not often seen upon it at a social gathering. It was distinctly stormy--there was a frown upon the brow, and an ominous setting of the lips which more than one person in the room remarked.

"How savage Brooke looks!" one guest murmured into another's ear. "Isn't he friendly with Trent?" And the words were remembered in after days.

But nothing could be said or done to hinder Oliver from taking his place at the piano, for Lesley did not openly object, and her father could not interfere between her and his own guest. So Lesley sang, and did not sing so well as usual, for her heart failed her a little, partly through vexation and partly through disappointment at Maurice Kenyon's disappearance, but she gave pleasure to her hearers, in spite of what seemed to herself a comparative failure, and when she had finished her song, she was besieged by requests that she would sing once more.