Winsome Winnie and other New Nonsense Novels | Page 6

fright, turned to her rescuer, and
saw before her the form and lineaments of the Unknown Stranger, who
had thus twice stood between her and disaster. Half fainting, she fell
swooning into his arms.
"Dear lady," he exclaimed, "rouse yourself. You are safe. Let me
restore you to your home!"
"That voice!" cried Winnifred, resuming consciousness. "It is my
benefactor."
She would have swooned again, but the Unknown lifted her bodily up
the steps of her home and leant her against the door.
"Farewell," he said, in a voice resonant with gloom.
"Oh, sir!" cried the unhappy girl, "let one who owes so much to one
who has saved her in her hour of need at least know his name."
But the stranger, with a mournful gesture of farewell, had disappeared
as rapidly as he had come.
But, as to why he had disappeared, we must ask our reader's patience
for another chapter.

CHAPTER VI
THE UNKNOWN
The scene is now shifted, sideways and forwards, so as to put it at
Muddlenut Chase, and to make it a fortnight later than the events
related in the last chapter.
Winnifred is now at the Chase as the guest of the Marquis and
Marchioness. There her bruised soul finds peace.
The Chase itself was one of those typical country homes which are, or
were till yesterday, the glory of England. The approach to the Chase lay
through twenty miles of glorious forest, filled with fallow deer and wild
bulls. The house itself, dating from the time of the Plantagenets, was
surrounded by a moat covered with broad lilies and floating green scum.
Magnificent peacocks sunned themselves on the terraces, while from
the surrounding shrubberies there rose the soft murmur of doves,
pigeons, bats, owls and partridges.
Here sat Winnifred Clair day after day upon the terrace recovering her
strength, under the tender solicitude of the Marchioness.
Each day the girl urged upon her noble hostess the necessity of her
departure. "Nay," said the Marchioness, with gentle insistence, "stay
where you are. Your soul is bruised. You must rest."
"Alas," cried Winnifred, "who am I that I should rest? Alone, despised,
buffeted by fate, what right have I to your kindness?"
"Miss Clair," replied the noble lady, "wait till you are stronger. There is
something that I wish to say to you."
Then at last, one morning when Winnifred's temperature had fallen to
ninety-eight point three, the Marchioness spoke.
"Miss Clair," she said, in a voice which throbbed with emotion,
"Winnifred, if I may so call you, Lord Muddlenut and I have formed a

plan for your future. It is our dearest wish that you should marry our
son."
"Alas," cried Winnifred, while tears rose in her eyes, "it cannot be!"
"Say not so," cried the Marchioness. "Our son, Lord Mordaunt
Muddlenut, is young, handsome, all that a girl could desire. After
months of wandering he returns to us this morning. It is our dearest
wish to see him married and established. We offer you his hand."
"Indeed," replied Winnifred, while her tears fell even more freely, "I
seem to requite but ill the kindness that you show. Alas, my heart is no
longer in my keeping."
"Where is it?" cried the Marchioness.
"It is another's. One whose very name I do not know holds it in his
keeping."
But at this moment a blithe, gladsome step was heard upon the
flagstones of the terrace. A manly, ringing voice, which sent a thrill to
Winnifred's heart, cried "Mother!" and in another instant Lord
Mordaunt Muddlenut, for he it was, had folded the Marchioness to his
heart.
Winnifred rose, her heart beating wildly. One glance was enough. The
newcomer, Lord Mordaunt, was none other than the Unknown, the
Unaccountable, to whose protection she had twice owed her life.
With a wild cry Winnifred Clair leaped across the flagstones of the
terrace and fled into the park.
CHAPTER VII
THE PROPOSAL
They stood beneath the great trees of the ancestral park, into which
Lord Mordaunt had followed Winnifred at a single bound. All about

them was the radiance of early June.
Lord Mordaunt knelt on one knee on the greensward, and with a touch
in which respect and reverence were mingled with the deepest and
manliest emotion, he took between his finger and thumb the tip of the
girl's gloved hand.
"Miss Clair," he uttered, in a voice suffused with the deepest yearning,
yet vibrating with the most profound respect, "Miss
Clair--Winnifred--hear me, I implore!"
"Alas," cried Winnifred, struggling in vain to disengage the tip of her
glove from the impetuous clasp of the young nobleman, "alas, whither
can I fly? I do not know my way through the wood, and there are bulls
in all directions. I am not used to them! Lord Mordaunt, I implore you,