The Baronets Bride | Page 5

born beneath this very roof."
"Right!" he said. "You know my age. But go on."
"Your boyhood you passed here--quiet, eventless years--with a commonplace mother and a dull, proud father. At ten, your mother went to her grave. At twelve, the late Sir Noel followed her. At thirteen, you, a lonely orphan, were removed from this house to London in the charge of a guardian that you hated. Am I not right?"
"You are. Pray go on."
"At fourteen, you went to Rugby to school. From that time until you attained your majority your life passed in public schools and universities, harmlessly and monotonously enough. At twenty-one, you left Cambridge, and started to make the grand tour. You were tolerably clever; you were young and handsome, and heir to a noble inheritance. Your life was to be the life of a great and good man--a benefactor to the human race. Your memory was to be a magnificent memento for a whole world to honor. Your dreams were wild, vague, and impracticable, and ended in--nothing."
Sir Jasper Kingsland listened and stared like a man in a dream. Achmet the Astrologer continued to read the palm with a fixed, stony face.
"And now the lines are crossed, and the trouble begins. As usual, a woman is at the bottom of it. Sir Jasper Kingsland is in love."
There was a pause. The baronet winced a little.
"It is in Spain--glowing, gorgeous Spain--and she is one of its loveliest children. The oranges and pomegranates scent the burning air, the vineyards glow in the tropic sun, and golden summer forever reigns. But the glowing southern sun is not more brilliant than the Spanish gypsy's flashing black eyes, nor the pomegranate blossoms half so ripe and red as her cheeks. She is Zenith, the Zingara, and you love her!"
"In the fiend's name!" Sir Jasper Kingsland cried, "what jugglery is this?"
"One moment more, my Lord of Kingsland," he said, "and I have done. Let me see how your love-dream ends. Ah! the old, old story. Surely I might have known. She is beautiful as the angels above, and as innocent, and she loves you with a mad abandon that is worse than idolatry--as only women ever love. And you? You are grand and noble, a milor Inglese, and you take her love--her crazy worship--as a demi-god might, with uplifted grace, as your birthright; and she is your pretty toy of an hour. And then careless and happy, you are gone. Sunny Spain, with its olives and its vineyards, its pomegranates and its Zenith the Gitana, is left far behind, and you are roaming, happy and free, through La Belle France. And lo! Zenith the forsaken lies prone upon the ground, and goes stark mad for the day-god she has lost. There, Sir Jasper Kingsland! the record is a black one. I wish to read no more."
He flung the baronet's hand away, and once more his eyes glowed like the orbs of a demon. But Sir Jasper Kingsland, pale as a dead man, saw it not.
"Are you man or devil?" he said, in an awe-struck tone. "No living mortal knows what you have told me this night."
Achmet the Astrologer smiled--a dire, dark smile.
"Man, in league with the dark potentate you have named, if you like. Whatever I am, I have truthfully told you the past, as I will truthfully tell your son's future."
"By palmistry?"
"No, by the stars. And behold!" drawing aside the curtain, "yonder they shine!"
"Take me to an upper room," the astrologer exclaimed, in an inspired tone, "and leave me. Destiny is propitious. The fate that ruled your son's birth has set forth the shining stars for Achmet to read. Lead on!"
Like a man in a dreamy swoon, Sir Jasper Kingsland obeyed. He led the astrologer up the grand sweeping staircases--up and up, to the very top of the house--to the lofty, lonely battlements. Cloudless spread the wide night sky; countless and brilliant shone the stars; peaceful and majestic slept, the purple sea; spotless white gleamed the snowy earth. A weird, witching scene.
"Leave me," said the astrologer, "and watch and wait. When the first little pink cloud of sunrise blushes in the sky, come to me. My task will have ended."
He waved him away with a regal motion. He stood there gazing at the stars, as a king looking upon his subjects. And the haughty baronet, without a word, turned and left him.
The endless hours wore on--two, three, and four--and still the baronet watched and waited, and looked for the coming of dawn. Faintly the silver light broke in the Orient, rosy flushed the first red ray. Sir Jasper mounted to the battlements, still like a man in a dazed dream.
Achmet the Astrologer turned slowly round. The pale, frosty sunrise had blanched his ever-white face with a livid hue of death. In one hand