Set in Silver | Page 3

it weren't for complications, but there are several, the most formidable of which is a Young Man.
The Young Man is a French young man, and his name is Honor�� du Guesclin. He is a lieutenant in the army (Ellaline mentioned the regiment with pride, but I've forgotten it already, there was so much else to remember), and she says he is descended from the great Du Guesclin. She met him at Madame de Blanchemain's--you remember the Madame de Blanchemain who was Ellaline's dead mother's most intimate friend, and who lives at St. Cloud? Ellaline has spent all her holidays there ever since I've known her; but though I thought she told me everything (she always vowed she did), not a word did she ever breathe about a young man having risen over her horizon. She says she didn't dare, because I'm so "queer and prim about some things." I'm not, am I? But now she's driven to confess, as she's in the most awful scrape, and doesn't know what will become of her and "darling Honor��," unless I'll consent to help them.
She met him only last Easter. He's a nephew of Madame de Blanchemain's, it seems; and on coming back from foreign service in Algeria, or somewhere, he dutifully paused to visit his relative. Of course it occurs to me, did Madame de Blanchemain write and intimate that she would have in the house a pretty little Anglo-French heiress, with no inconvenient relatives, unless one counts the Dragon? But Ellaline says Honor��'s coming was quite a surprise to his aunt. Anyway, he proposed on the third day, and Ellaline accepted him. It was by moonlight, in a garden, so who can blame the poor child? I always thought if even a moderately good-looking young man proposed to me by moonlight, in a garden, I would say "Yes--yes!" at once, even if I changed my mind next day.
But Honor�� is very good looking (she has his picture in a locket, with such a turned-up moustache--I mean Honor��, not the locket), and so Ellaline didn't change her mind next day.
Not a word was said to Madame de Blanchemain (as far as Ellaline knows), for they decided that, considering everything, they must keep their secret, and eventually run away to be married; because Honor�� is poor, and Ellaline's an heiress guarded by a Dragon.
Well, through letters which E. has been receiving at a teashop where she and the other older girls go, rigorously chaperoned, twice a week, it was arranged to do the deed as soon as school should close; and if they could have carried out their plan, Ellaline would have been Madame du Guesclin before the Dragon could have appeared on the scene, breathing fire and rattling his scales. They were going to Scotland to be married (Honor��'s idea), as a man can't legally marry a girl under age in France without the consent of everybody concerned. Once she'd got away with him, and had had any kind of hole-in-the-corner wedding, Honor�� was of opinion that even the most abandoned Dragon would be thankful to sanction a marriage according to French law; so it could all be done over again properly in France.
I suppose this appealed immensely to Ellaline's love of intrigue and kittenish tricksiness generally. Anyway, she agreed; but young officers propose, and their superiors dispose. Honor�� was ordered off for a month's manoeuvres before he could even ask for leave; and as he's known to be destitute of near relatives, he couldn't rake up a perishing grandmother as an excuse.
What he did try, I don't know; but anyhow, he failed, and the running away had to be put off. That was blow number one, and could have been borne, without blow number two, which fell in the shape of a letter. It said that the wicked guardian was just about to start for home, and intended to pick up Ellaline on his way to England, as if she were a parcel labelled "to be kept till called for."
She's certain he won't let her marry Honor�� if he has the chance to say "no" beforehand, because he cares nothing about her happiness, or about her, or anything else except his own selfish ambitions. Of course, Ellaline is a girl who takes strong prejudices against people for no particular reason, except that she has a "feeling they are horrid"; but she does appear to be right about this man. He's English, and though Ellaline's mother was half French, they were cousins, and I believe her dying request was that he should take care of her daughter and her daughter's money. You would have thought that that must have softened even a hard heart, wouldn't you? But the Dragon's was evidently sentiment-proof, even so many years ago, when he must have been