"And who allowed you to risk your life like that?" asks the duke, with simple amazement. His sister before she married was not permitted to cross the threshold without a guardian at her side. This girl is a revelation.
"No one," says Mona. "I had no need to ask permission for anything. I was free to do what I wished."
She looks up at him again with some fire in her eyes and a flush upon her cheeks. Perhaps some of the natural lawlessness of her kindred is making her blood warm. So standing, however, she is the very embodiment of youth and love and sweetness, and so the duke admits.
"Have you any sisters?" he asks, vaguely.
"No. Nor brothers. Only myself.
""I am all the daughters of my father"s house, And all the brothers too!""
She nods her head gayly as she says this, being pleased at her apt quotation from the one book she has studied very closely.
The duke loses his head a little.
"Do you know," he says, slowly, staring at her the while, "you are the most beautiful woman I ever saw?"
"Ah! so Geoffrey says," returns she, with a perfectly unembarra.s.sed and pleased little laugh, while a great gleam of tender love comes into her eyes as she makes mention of her husband"s name. "But I really am not you know."
This answer, being so full of thorough unconsciousness and childish _naivete_, has the effect of reducing the duke to common sense once more, and of making him very properly ashamed of himself. He feels, however, rather out of it for a minute or two, which feeling renders him silent and somewhat _distrait_. So Mona, flung upon her own resources, looks round the room seeking for inspiration, and presently finds it.
"What a disagreeable-looking man that is over there!" she says: "the man with the s.h.a.ggy beard, I mean, and the long hair."
She doesn"t want in the very least to know who he is, but thinks it her duty to say something, as the silence being protracted grows embarra.s.sing.
"The man with the mane? that is Griffith Blount. The most objectionable person any one could meet, but tolerated because his tongue is so awful.
Do you know Colonel Graves? No! Well, he has a wife calculated to terrify the bravest man into submission, and last year when he was going abroad Blount met him, and asked him before a roomful "if he was going for pleasure, or if he was going to take his wife with him." Neat, wasn"t it? But I don"t remember hearing that Graves liked it."
"It was very unkind," says Mona; "and he has a hateful face."
"He has," says the duke. "But he has his reward, you know: n.o.body likes him. By the by, what horrid bad times they are having in your land!--ricks of hay burning nightly, cattle killed, everybody boycotted, and small children speared!"
"Oh, no, not that," says Mona. "Poor Ireland! Every one either laughs at her or hates her. Though I like my adopted country, still I shall always feel for old Erin what I could never feel for another land."
"And quite right too," says Lauderdale. "You remember what Scott says:
""Breathes there the man, with soul so dead, Who never to himself hath said, This is my own, my native land!""
"Oh, yes, lots of "em," says Mr. Darling, who has come suddenly up beside them: "for instance, I don"t believe I ever said it in all my life, either to myself or to any one else. Are you engaged, Mrs.
Geoffrey? And if not, may I have this dance?"
"With pleasure," says Mona.
Paul Rodney, true to his word, has put in an appearance, much to the amazement of many in the room. Almost as Mona"s dance with Nolly is at an end, he makes his way to her, and asks her to give him the next.
Unfortunately, she is not engaged for it, and, being unversed in polite evasions, she says yes, quietly, and is soon floating round the room with him.
After one turn she stops abruptly, near an entrance.
"Tired?" says Rodney, fixing his black, gloomy eyes upon her.
"A little," says Mona. It is perhaps the nearest approach to a falsehood she has ever made.
"Perhaps you would rather rest for a while. Do you know this is the first time I have ever been inside the Towers?" He says this as one might who is desirous of making conversation, yet there is a covert meaning in his tone. Mona is silent. To her it seems a base thing that he should have accepted the invitation at all.
"I have heard the library is a room well worth seeing," goes on the Australian, seeing she will not speak.
"Yes; every one admires it. It is very old. You know one part of the Towers is older than all the rest."
"I have heard so. I should like to see the library," says Paul, looking at her expectantly.
"You can see it now if you wish," says Mona, quickly, the thought that she may be able to entertain him in some fashion that will not require conversation is dear to her. She therefore takes his arm, and leads him out of the ballroom, and across the halls into the library, which is brilliantly lighted, but just at this moment empty.
I forget if I described it before, but it is a room quite perfect in every respect, a beautiful room, oak-panelled from floor to ceiling, with this peculiarity about it, that whereas three of the walls have their panels quite long, without a break from top to bottom, the fourth--that is, the one in which the fireplace has been inserted--has the panels of a smaller size, cut up into pieces from about one foot broad to two feet long.
The Australian seems particularly struck with this fact. He stares in a thoughtful fashion at the wall with the small panels, seeming blind to the other beauties of the room.
"Yes, it is strange why that wall should be different from the others,"
Mona says, rather glad that he appears interested in something besides herself. "But it is altogether quite a nice old room, is it not?"
"It is," replies he, absently. Then, below his breath, "and well worth fighting for."
But Mona does not hear this last addition; she is moving a chair a little to one side, and the faint noise it makes drowns the sound of his voice. This perhaps is as well.
She turns up one of the lamps, whilst Rodney still continues his contemplation of the wall before him. Conversation languishes, then dies. Mona, raising her hand to her lips, suppresses valiantly a yawn.
"I hope you are enjoying yourself," she says, presently, hardly knowing what else to say.
"Enjoying myself?--No, I never do that," says Rodney, with unexpected frankness.
"You can hardly mean that?" says Mona, with some surprise.
"I do. Just now," looking at her, "I am perhaps as near enjoyment as I can be. But I have not danced before to-night. Nor should I have danced at all had you been engaged. I have forgotten what it is to be light-hearted."
"But surely there must be moments when----"
"I never have such moments," interrupts he moodily.
"Dear me! what a terribly unpleasant young man!" thinks Mona, at her wits" end to know what to say next. Tapping her fingers in a perplexed fashion on the table nearest her, she wonders when he will cease his exhaustive survey of the walls and give her an opportunity of leaving the room.
"But this is very sad for you, isn"t it?" she says, feeling herself in duty bound to say something.
"I dare say it is; but the fact remains. I don"t know what is the matter with me. It is a barren feeling,--a longing, it may be, for something I can never obtain."
"All that is morbid," says Mona: "you should try to conquer it. It is not healthy."
"You speak like a book," says Rodney, with an unlovely laugh; "but advice seldom cures. I only know that I have learned what stagnation means. I may alter in time, of course, but just at present I feel that