VIII HER ANSWER PSLEIGH had a distinguished visitor. their dishes to get a peep at him and to hear and tell how he looked, what he wore, what he had said, what he had done, and how he progressed with his courtship. From maid to mistress, from errand boy to merchant, feminine and masculine curiosity were the same. Even the venerable Dr. Bradford forgot writing on his next Sunday sermon and sat at his study window, musing on the strange inequalities of birth and fortune long after the young man rode by. For this big, handsome fellow of five and twenty was the elder son and heir of a famous statesman, recently deceased, and in his own right was no less a personage than the Right Honorable William Percy Neville Langdon, Earl of Throckmorton, Viscount Stadwick, Baron Muer, Baron Langdon, with some of the finest estates and one of the oldest and most illustrious pedigrees in the English peerage. He Though he registered at the Apsleighshire House, he dined quite as often with the Denmans. played tennis, rode, drove, or boated with Isabel almost daily, and she was so gracious to him that a darling hope began to revive in her father's heart. "I don't want to dictate, little girl," he said one day, drawing her upon his knees and kissing her. "It's all in your hands. That's the American way and the right way. He's a fine fellow, if he is an earl, and he'd be a good husband to you. You'd have the world at your feet, and if you should have a son, he and those who come after him would be almost princes. I'd hate to have you so far off, but, little girl, it 'sit's just about killing me to see you breaking your heart this way for my sake-trying to fight down your love for the other one." He tightened his arms around her, and, pressing her cheek to his, continued in a pleading voice: "You 're my joy and pride and life, little girl. You know I'd die, oh, so gladly, to make you happy. I'd do anything in the world for you, except one. I'm an old man-a great deal older for words you have said to me, my child. I 've done things that nothing but war against me would tempt me to do,-in war men are driven to things they loathe, -but I've never yet broken my pledged word. I promised my friends, who are true as steel to me,— gave them the word of John Denman,-that I'd win this fight for them, and I can't go back on that, even for my own little girl. Can't you be happy in any other way? Can't you put your father's enemy out of your heart? Can't you learn to love this fine, handsome, whole-souled young fellow, this great nobleman, who will make you one of the greatest ladies in Europe short of royalty itself?" She twined an arm about his neck, kissed his thin lips, and ran her fingers through his grizzled hair, as had been her wont from childhood. Her chin quivered and her voice was full of pain. "O papa," she pleaded, "don't ask me! I will if I can. I have tried-am trying; oh, you don't know how hard I'm trying!" When riding with the earl next day she came suddenly upon Craigin. Their eyes met for a single instant. In that instant she read two things, his inexorable purpose and his dumb agony of hopeless love, and every nerve and fiber of her being thrilled with sharp, sweet pain. "Tom said," she repeated to herself, "if he thought a course were right, he 'd follow it straight to death, and never flinch a hair; but he 's a thousand times braver and stronger than that, for he loves me a thousand times better than his own life, and he does n't flinch a hair even for love of me. I love him! I love him! I love him! I can't help it-I can't! I never can! And it 's killing us both." Yet she passed him without sign of recognition, and the next moment, challenging the earl to a race, she put her high-blooded Kentucky stallion to his utmost speed, sweeping up the broad avenue like a tornado, her habit fluttering in the breeze she made, with firm lips and flashing eyes, bearing herself like a queen born to the saddle. Again and again, as a proposal was trembling on the earl's lips, she evaded it and put him off-put him off till she could do so no longer. At last he forced a hearing and went straight to the point, his voice quivering with passion, blunt, almost brutal, in his direct ness. "Miss Denman-Isabel," he said, "you know I love you." There was agony in her face as she looked up to his. "You know I love you," he repeated. "Yes, I know it," she replied in a strained voice. "And I have loved you all these years." "I know it," she again replied. "It was my father's dying wish, it is my mother's, and I have your father's consent. Don't you-can't you-love me? Won't you be my wife?" She sat in silence; it might have been minutes-it seemed eternity to both. At length she arose and stood before him. The anguish had vanished from her face in the flush of her great sacrifice. Her choice was made. "I have had one strange, great gift from childhood," she said, "the gift of reading people as you read books. I have seen your heart from the beginning, and have known that your love for me was strong and pure and would not die. If your nature were selfish, cruel, cowardly, or base in any way, I would know it. You could not hide it from me. It is generous, brave, and loving. I know you better than you think possible. You are more than a nobleman: you are a noble man. I am a woman, and a woman's happiness, her very life, is marriage to a true man. I am but a woman, and the honors you wish to share with me appeal to me more strongly than you think. And I like you more than I ever liked any other man. But that is not love." "O Isabel, then I may wait and hope! It will be! it must be! it shall be! More than you ever liked any other man! That-that is all I hoped for, now." She raised her hand imploringly. "You have not heard me through. Forgive me if I have misled you even for an instant. God knows how I have tried to love you. When you have been about to speak I have put you off; time and again I have put you off, thinking that perhaps I might. If I have let you hope in vain, forgive me for the pain I have caused you, for I have longed to love you. It would have been, it would be now, more than life; it would be release from agony." "Release from agony? O Isabel!" "Yes, release from agony. If I marry you, I must pledge my word to love you. My father is a plain, self-made man, a brewer, but no word of belted knight was ever held more sacred than his. John Denman's daughter cannot take your love, your name, your title, and give you empty vows." "But, Isabel, I won't ask you to love me as I love you-not yet. I'll wait and hope." "I have not yet told you all. I love another man. I have tried to think I hated him; I have tried to hate him, but love is stronger than my will. The more I have tried to hate him, the more I have loved him. I love him with my whole heart and soul, with all my life, and he loves me, though he has never told me so in words; and I can never marry him, never speak to him. He is my father's enemy." With lifted head and shining eyes she stood before him. Then suddenly she turned, and, dropping on a sofa, sobbed as if her heart were broken. |