"He is a poet and artist both," said his sister, with a little touch of pride that amused the heiress.

That was Miss Arleigh's first interview with her admirer, the second was, he a.s.sured her, for the sake of the picture--the third, that he might see how the picture was going on--the fourth, that she might see it completed--the fifth, because she found the flattery of his love so irresistible she could no longer do without it--the sixth, because she began to fall in love with him herself--and then she lost all count, she lived for those interviews, and nothing else.

"I want to impress one thing upon you," said Adelaide to her brother; "bear it always in mind. When you think you have made sufficient advances in her favor to ask her to marry you, do not rest satisfied with her spoken word, make her write it. It will be of no use to you unless you do that."

"Explain a little further, my wisest of sisters," said Allan.

"A written promise of marriage is the only security a man has. Women change like the wind, without rhyme or reason. But if you have her own word pledged to you, her promise of marriage written so that there shall be no mistake, then it will be worth a fortune to you."

"Even if she should refuse to fulfil"--

"You are not very worldly wise, Allan," said his sister with the slightest tinge of contempt in her voice. "If she fulfils it, all well and good. The very fact of having written it keeps a girl true when she should otherwise be false. But if she refuses to keep it, the remedy then is in your own hands."

"And that remedy is"--he began, but she interrupted him quickly.

"The remedy is, of course, an action at law; or what would be far more efficacious in her case, holding her letters as a means of getting money from her. A proud woman will sacrifice any amount of wealth rather than have such a thing known."

Marion Arleigh fell easily into the plot laid by those she considered her best friends.

CHAPTER VII.

It is not pleasant to trace the steps by which the simple credulous girl fell into the snare laid for her. She had sense and reason, but they were both overbalanced by romance--she saw only the ideal side of everything. The romance of this hidden love was delightful to her; she compared herself to every heroine in fiction, and found none of them in a more charming position that herself.

Allan's profession had something to do with romance; had he been a mere commonplace doctor or lawyer it would have been a different matter, but an artist--the halo of his art transfigured him in her eyes--thus to be capable of a deep and pa.s.sionate love such as he felt for her!

It was altogether like one of those romances that charmed her; and after a time she gave herself up entirely to her love.

By the skilful mamnagement of Adelaide Lyster their meetings became very frequent, and before long he had won from her a promise that she would love him all her life, and would consent to marry him. Even at that time, when she was most ecstatic, most carried away by the novelty and the romance, even then, if any sensible person had spoken to her, she would have understood more her position than she did now.

If anyone had said to her: "That man is not a hero, he is only a fortune hunter; he is not even an honorable man, or he would not seek to decoy you from your duty to bind you to an underhand agreement; instead of being honorable and a hero he is dishonorable and a rogue"--she had sense enough to have seen that. She understood enough of the laws of honor to know when they were broken. But this side of the question never occured to her. He was young, handsome, and an artist; he loved her so dearly that for love of her he was almost dying. She was rich and powerful; he had nothing but genius; he loved her so that her smile gave him life, her frown was death. It was pleasant, too, and most romantic, to escape from the thraldom of school to wander with him in the gray twilight through the old orchard and the green lanes; it was pleasant to feel in the depth of her heart a love that no one knew anything of--no one even understood. The scenery, viewed from its romantic side, charmed her.

They told her continually how great and n.o.ble, how generous she was, and she delighted in hearing it.

"You value genius more than money," Allan would say to her, "and you are right. G.o.d gives genius, men make money. You have the power of discriminating between them."

She began to look upon herself as something very superior indeed--something far excelling the ordinary run of girls. They flattered her until she hardly knew what was false and what was true.

She delighted in making pictures of the future; how she was to stoop from the height of her grandeur to raise him; how her wealth was, as it were, to crown his genius. They told her that the whole world would praise her for her n.o.ble generosity. That the rich heiress who forgot her wealth and became the artist's wife, would be honored wherever her name was known. They intoxicated her with romance, they bewildered her with flattery. And she was only seventeen, with no mother to speak one warning word to her.

She pledged herself to be Allan Lyster's wife when she came of age. He told her he would rather forego all claim to her wealth, marry her at once, and leave her guardian to act as he thought best; but she, though delighted to find him free from the least taint of anything mercenary, refused to run the risk of losing her fortune.

"Would you really," she said to him one day, "love me as much if I were quite poor, as you do now?"

"Would I! Oh, Marion, what a question to ask me! The only drawback to my love is that hateful fortune; if it were not for that I would marry you at once. Ah, you should find out what I loved you for, sweet. I would work for you night and day. I would move the whole world to find for my darling that which she would require."

And the girl in her simplicity believed him, and thought herself the most fortunate among woman to have won a love for herself that had in it no taint of this world.

So they flung the glamor of love and flattery around her, until she lost the keen perception of right and wrong that would have saved her.

She promised to be Allan Lyster's wife. When he had won that promise from her, he pretended to think better of it.

"I am wrong to ask you, Marion; I am selfish, I ought not even wish you to share my lot."

She asked him why, raising her sweet eyes to his face.

"Why, because when you go out into the great world peers and princes will woo you, my darling; the n.o.blest in the land will sue for your favor, and you, who might have been a d.u.c.h.ess, will repent loving and caring for one so poor and obscure as I am. I can give you no t.i.tle."

"You can give me what I value more," she said. "You can give me true and disinterested love."

He did not forget his sister's advice, that he should have that promise in writing. One evening--it was August then, when the fruit hung ripe on the trees--he told her, with many sighs, that he should not see her again for some days.

"How am I to live through them, Marion, I do not know; now when I wake, my first thought is that I shall see you; all the world seems so fair and life so bright, because I shall see you. What will happen to me when the morning sun brings no such delight?"

She was young and simple enough to feel very much touched with his words; the old idea of having his life in her hands never left her.

"Grant me a favor," he said. "I shall have no energy for work unless you promise it: Write to me every night and in your letters tell me, sweet, that which I love best to hear, that you will marry me."

So to make him happy, to give him life and energy for his work, she wrote to him every evening, and, remembering his request, in each one of those letters she repeated her promise to marry him.

This is no overstrained story, it is no exaggeration; hundreds of men have acted as Allan Lyster did, and hundreds will act so in the future.

When girls have once mastered the grand lesson that all secrecy--all concealment is wrong, they will have taken the only precaution possible to save themselves.

So matters went on until the continued secrecy began to prey upon Marion's mind; then she made an appeal to Allan with which our story opens. He did his best to argue with her, and he sent a note to his sister, telling her the bright, bonnie bird they had ensnared was growing restive under constraint.

No doubts ever came to her. Youth is the age of romance; youth imperatively demands love and poetry. She had found both and was perfectly satisfied. She believed honestly that she loved him very dearly; it never occurred to her that the greatest charm really was the excitement of having to plan interviews and arrange her letters so as to escape detection; it never occured to her that if she had been like other girls of her age in society, and so enabled to judge of people, so far from loving him and making a hero of him, he would have been distasteful to her. She had had no opportunities of being able to judge.

Lord Ridsdale's only idea was to keep her at school as long as possible, in order to escape further trouble. She had never been in the society of gentlemen, and her head was full of romance and poetry.

Therefore she fell an easy victim to the artist and his sister. She was ready to believe he was a great hero, because he was handsome; that he was all that could be n.o.ble and generous, because he talked poetry.

True, she began to dislike the concealment, but it never struck her that she disliked it because the whole affair was growing tiresome to her.

She had talked it over and over again with him--how they must wait until she was twenty-one, then they would be married and go to live at Hanton.

"You will like Hanton," she said. "It is old, gray and picturesque; the woods are beautiful, there is a river running through them."

"I shall like any place that I could share with you," he replied. "When shall you leave this place, Marion?"

"At Christmas, I expect. But, Allan, shall we never see each other until I am twenty-one?"

"I hope so," he replied. "You do not know where you will live?"

"No, that is not decided. Lord Ridsdale says I cannot go to Hanton alone, and I know that I cannot live at his house."

"But go where you will, Marion, you will write to me and see me sometimes?"