The Baronet's Bride Part 19

It was an hour before the doctor came--another before he left the sick man's room. As he departed, Harriet Hunsden glided into the apartment where the young men waited, white as a spirit.

"He is out of danger; he is asleep. Pray leave us now. To-morrow he will be himself again."

It was quite evident that she was used to these attacks. The young men bowed respectfully and departed.

Sir Everard was in little humor, as he went slowly and moodily homeward, for his mother's lecture.

"There is some secret in Captain Hunsden's life," he thought, "and his daughter shares it. Some secret, perhaps, of shame and disgrace--some bar sinister in their s.h.i.+eld; and, good heavens! I am mad enough to love her--I, a Kingsland, of Kingsland, whose name and escutcheon are without a blot! What do I know of her antecedents or his? My mother spoke of some mystery in his past life; and there is a look of settled gloom in his face that nothing seems able to remove. Lord Ernest Strathmore, too--he must come to complicate matters. She is the most glorious creature the sun s.h.i.+nes on; and if I don't ask her to be my wife, she will be my Lady Strathmore before the moon wanes!"

CHAPTER XII.

MISS HUNSDEN SAYS "NO."

Sir Everard found his mother primed and loaded; but she nursed her wrath throughout dinner, and it was not until they were in the drawing-room alone that she went off. He was so moodily _distrait_ all through the meal that he never saw the volcano smoldering, and the Vesuvian eruption took him altogether by surprise.

"Your conduct has been disgraceful!" Lady Kingsland pa.s.sionately cried--"unworthy of a man of honor! You pay Lady Louise every attention; you make love to her in the most _p.r.o.nonce_ manner, and at the eleventh hour you desert her for this forward little barbarian."

Sir Everard opened his eyes in cool surprise.

"My dear mother, you mistake," he said, with perfect _sang froid_.

"Lady Louise made love to me!"

"Everard!"

Her voice absolutely choked with rage.

"It sounds conceited and foppish, I know," pursued the young gentleman; "but you force me to it in self-defense. I never made love to Lady Louise, as Lady Louise can tell you, if you choose to ask."

"You never asked her in so many words, perhaps, to be your wife. Short of that, you have left nothing undone."

Sir Everard thought of the dinner-party, of the moonlit balcony, of George Grosvenor, and was guiltily silent.

"Providence must have sent him," he thought, "to save me in the last supreme moment. Pledged to Lady Louise, and madly in love with Harriet Hunsden, I should blow out my brains before sunset!"

"You are silent," pursued his mother. "Your guilty conscience will not let you answer. You told me yourself, only two days ago, that but for George Grosvenor you would have asked her to be your wife."

"Quite true," responded her son: "but who knows what a day may bring forth? Two days ago I was willing to marry Lady Louise--to ask her, at least. Now, not all the wealth of the Indies, not the crown of the world could tempt me."

"Good heavens!" cried my lady, goaded to the end of her patience; "only hear him! Do you mean to tell me, you absurd, mad-headed boy, that in one day you have fallen hopelessly in love with this hare-brained, masculine Harriet Hunsden?"

"I tell you nothing of the sort, madame; the inference is your own.

But this I will say--I would rather marry Harriet Hunsden than any other woman under heaven! Let Lady Louise take George Grosvenor. He is in love with her, which I never was; and he has an earl's coronet in prospective, which I have not. As for me, I have done with this subject at once and forever. Even to you, my mother, I can not delegate my choice of a wife."

"I will never receive Harriet Hunsden!" Lady Kingsland pa.s.sionately cried.

"Perhaps you will never have the opportunity. She may prefer to become mistress of Strathmore Castle. Lord Ernest is her most devoted adorer.

I have not asked her yet. The chances are a thousand to one she will refuse when I do."

His mother laughed scornfully, but her eyes were ablaze.

"You mean to ask her, then?"

"Most a.s.suredly."

She laughed again--a bitter, mirthless laugh.

"We go fast, my friend! And you have hardly known this divinity four-and-twenty hours."

"Love is not a plant of slow growth. Like Jonah's gourd, it springs up, fully matured, in an hour."

"Does it? My son is better versed in amatory floriculture than I am.

But before you ask Miss Hunsden to become Lady Kingsland, had you not better inquire who her mother was?"

The baronet thought of the letter, and turned very pale.

"Her mother? I do not understand. What of her mother?"

"Only this"--Lady Kingsland arose as she spoke, her face deathly white, her pale eyes glittering--"the mother is a myth and a mystery. Report says Captain Hunsden was married in America--no one knows where--and America is a wide place. No one ever saw the wife; no one ever heard Miss Hunsden speak of her mother; no one ever heard of that mother's death. I leave Sir Everard Kingsland to draw his own inferences."

She swept from the room with a mighty rustle of silk. A dark figure crouching on the rug, with its ear to the keyhole, barely had time to whisk behind a tall Indian cabinet as the door opened.

It was Miss Sybilla Silver, who was already a.s.serting her prerogative as amateur lady's-maid.

My lady shut herself up in her own room for the remainder of the evening, too angry and mortified for words to tell. It was the first quarrel she and her idolized son ever had, and the disappointment of all her ambitious hopes left her miserable enough.

But scarcely so miserable as Sir Everard. To be hopelessly in love on such short notice was bad enough; to have the dread of a rejection hanging over him was worse; but to have this dark mystery looming horribly in the horizon was worst of all.

His mother's insinuations alone would not have disturbed him; but those insinuations, taken in unison with Captain Hunsden's mysterious illness of the morning, drove him nearly wild.

"And I dare not even ask," he thought, "or set my doubts at rest. Any inquiry from me, before proposing, would be impertinent; and after proposing they would be too late. But one thing I am certain of--if I lose Harrie Hunsden, I shall go mad!"

While he tore up and down like a caged tiger, the door softly opened and his sister looked in.

"Alone, Everard?" she said, timidly, "I thought mamma was with you."

"Mamma has just gone to her room in a blessed temper," answered her brother, savagely. "Come in Milly, and help me in this horrible sc.r.a.pe, if you can."

"Is it something about--Miss Hunsden?" hesitatingly. "I thought mamma looked displeased at dinner."

"Displeased!" exclaimed the young man, with a short laugh; "that is a mild way of putting it. Mamma is inclined to play the Grand Mogul in my case as she did with you and poor Fred Douglas."

"Oh, brother!"

"Forgive me, Milly. I'm a brute and you're an angel, if there ever was one on earth! But I've been hectored and lectured, and badgered and bothered until I'm fairly beside myself. She wants me to marry Lady Louise, and I won't marry Lady Louise if she was the last woman alive.

Milly, who was Miss Hunsden's mother?"