The Courting of Lady Jane | Page 6

out of the open windows of the large house; the full moon made the grounds about it almost as bright as the rooms. He stepped up on the piazza and looked in at the swaying couples. Lady Jane, beautiful in pale blue mull, drifted by in her young host's arms. She was flushed with dancing; her hair had escaped from its usual calm. He hardly recognized her. As he looked out toward the old garden, he caught a glimpse of a flowing white gown, a lace scarf thrown over a head whose fine poise he could not mistake.
A young man passed him with a filmy cr��pe shawl he knew well. The colonel stepped along with him.
"You are taking this to Mrs. Leroy?"
"Yes, colonel, she feels the air a little."
"Let me relieve you of it," and he walked alone into the garden with the softly scented cobweb over his arm.
She was standing in an old neglected summer-house, her back to the door. As he stopped behind her and laid the soft wrap over her firm white shoulders, she turned her head with a startled prescience of his personality, and met his eyes full. He looked straight into those soft gray depths, and as he looked, searching for something there, he knew not what, troubled strangely by her nearness and the helpless surrender of her fastened gaze, a great light burst upon him.
"It is you! it is you!" he said hoarsely, and crushing her in his arms, he kissed her heavily on her yielding mouth.
For a moment she rested against him. The music, piercingly sweet, drove away thought. Then she drew herself back, pushing him blindly from her.
"No, no, no!" she gasped, "it is Lady! You are mad--"
"Mad?" he said quickly. "I was never sane till now. When I think of what I had to offer that dear child, when I realize to what a farce of love I was sacrificing her--oh, Alice dearest, you are a woman; you must have known!"
She raised her head; an unquenchable triumph smiled at him.
"I did know!" she cried exultantly. Suddenly her whole expression changed, her head sank again.
"Oh, Lady, my child, my baby!" she moaned, all mother now, and brokenhearted.
"You must never tell her, never!" she panted. "You will forget; you--I will go away--"
"It is you who are mad, Alice," he said sternly. "Listen to me. For all these weeks it has been your voice I have remembered, your face I have seen in imagination in my house. It is you I have missed from us three--never Lady. It is you I have tried to please and hoped to satisfy--not Lady. Ever since you told me you would not spend the winter with us I have been discontented. Why, Alice, I have never kissed her in my life--as I have kissed you."
She grew red to the tips of her little ears, and threw him a quick glance that tingled to his fingers' ends.
"You would not have me--oh, my dear, it is not possible!" he cried.
She burst into tears. "I don't know--I don't know!" she sobbed. "It will break her heart! I don't understand her any more; once I could tell what she would think, but not now."
"Hush! some one is coming," he warned her, and taking her arm he drew her out through a great gap in the side of the little house, so that they stood hidden by it.
"Then I will tell him to his face what I think of him!" said a young man's voice, angry, determined, but shaking with disappointment. "To hold a girl--"
"He does not hold me--I hold myself!" It was Lady's voice, low and trembling. "It is all my fault, Jack. I bound myself before I knew what--what a different thing it really was. I do love him--I love him dearly, but not--not--No, no; I don't mean what you think--or, if I do, I must not. Jack, I have promised, don't you see? And when I thought that perhaps he didn't care so much, and asked him--oh, I told you how beautifully he answered me, I will never hurt him so, never!"
"It is disgusting, it is horrible; he is twenty-five years older than you--he might be your father!" stormed the voice.
"I--I never cared for young people before!"
Could this be Lady, this shy, faltering girl? Moved by an overmastering impulse, the man behind the summer-house turned his head and looked through the broken wall.
Lady Jane was blushing and paling in quick succession: the waves of red flooded over her moved face and receded like the tide at turn. Her eyes were piteous; her hair fell low over her forehead; she looked incredibly young.
"Of course," said the young man bitterly, "it is a good match--a fine match, You will have a beautiful home and everything you want."
She put out her hands appealingly.