Marion Arleighs Penance | Page 4

cruel, Marion. You are so heroic and grand--so unlike other girls; you would not darken my solitary life for an absurd scruple--you would not refuse to see me, when the sight of you is the only sunbeam that cheers my life."
The beautiful face brightened at his words.
"You will write to me, Marion--and, darling, my heart lives on your words--they are ever present with me. When I read one of your letters it seems to me your voice is whispering, and that whisper makes the only music that cheers my day. Tell me in your letters once, and once again, that you will be my wife, that you will love me, and never care for any one else."
"I have told you so," she said; "but if the words please you, I will tell you over and over again, as you say. You know I love you, Allan."
"I know you are an angel!" cried the young man. "In all the wide world there is none like you."
Then he clasped the little white hands more tightly in his own, and whispered sweet words to her that brought a bright flush to her face and a love light to her eyes. She drooped her head with the coy, pretty shyness of a bird, listening to words that seemed to her all poetry and music.
It was a pretty love scene. The lovers stood at the end of an old-fashioned orchard; the fruit hung ripe on the trees--golden-brown pears and purple plums, the grass under foot was thick and soft, the sun had set, the dew was falling, and the birds had gone to rest.
The girl, standing under the trees, with downcast, blushing face and bright, clear eyes, was lovely as a poet's dream. She was not more than seventeen, and looked both young and childlike for that age. She had a face fair as a summer's morning, radiant with youth and happiness. Greuze might have painted her and immortalized her. She had a delicate color that was like the faint flush one sees inside a rose. She had eyes of the same beautiful blue as the purple heartsease, and great masses of golden-brown hair that fell in rich waves on her neck and shoulders.
She was patrician from the crown of her dainty head to the little feet; the slender, girlish figure was full of grace and symmetry, the white, rounded throat and beautiful shoulders were fit models for a sculptor. She had pretty white hands, with a soft, rose-leaf flush on the fingers. She was a lovely girl, fair, high-bred and elegant, and she gave promise of a most superb and magnificent womanhood. Such was Marion Arleigh on this June evening. The young man by her side was handsome after a certain style; the impression his face left upon every one was that he was not to be trusted; his dark eyes were not frank and clear, the thin lips were shrewd, with lines about them that betokened cruelty; it was a face from which children shrank instinctively, and women as a rule did not love. They stood side by side under the shade of an elder tree. Plainly as patrician was written on her beautiful face and figure, plebeian was imprinted on his. He was tall, but there was no high-bred grace, no ease of manner, no courteous dignity such as distinguishes the true English gentleman. His face expressed passion, but half a dozen meaner emotions were there as well. None were perceptible to the girl by his side. She thought him perfection and nothing else.
How comes Marion Arleigh, the heiress of Hanton, ward of Lord Ridsdale, one of the proudest men in England, and pupil of Miss Carleton, to be alone in the sweet, soft eveningtide with Allan Lyster, whose name was not of the fairest repute among men?
If Lord Ridsdale had known it, his anger would have been without bounds; if Miss Carleton had guessed it, she would have been too shocked ever to have admitted Miss Arleigh in her doors again. How came she there? It was the old story of girlish imprudence, of girlish romance and folly, of a vivid imagination and bright, warm poetical fancy wrongly influenced and led astray. Much may be forgiven her, for lovely Marion Arleigh, one of the richest heiresses in England, was an orphan. No mother's love had taught her wisdom. She had no memory of a mother's gentle warning, or sweet and tender wisdom. Her mother died when she was born, and her father, John Arleigh, of Hanton, did not long survive his wife. He left his child to the care of Lady Ridsdale--his sister--but she died when Marion was four years old, and Lord Ridsdale, not knowing what better to do, sent his little ward to school. He thought first of having