Falconer looked at him fixedly.
"Go to her and see. Wait, my lord. I love her as dearly--more dearly, perhaps, G.o.d knows!--than you do. She would be mine at a word."
Drake stood motionless, his face white and set.
"But that word will never be spoken by me. So I prove my love. Prove yours, my lord, and go to her!"
Drake tried to speak, but could not. His hand closed over Falconer"s for a moment, then he hurried from the room and went down the stairs.
d.i.c.k was lounging in the porch with a cigarette, and he stared at Drake"s hurried appearance, at his white, set face.
"Where is Nell? Where is your sister?" Drake demanded.
"Heaven only knows! She went out when you came in. She"s in the wood, I should think."
Drake strode down the path and into the wood. His brain was on fire. She was free--they were both free! There was heaven in the thought!
Nell was seated at the foot of one of the big elms, and heard his quick, firm steps. She looked up, and would have risen and flown, but he was upon her before she could move--was upon her, and in some strange, never-to-be-explained way had got her hand in his.
"Nell--Nell!" was all he could say, as he knelt beside her and looked into her eyes.
CHAPTER x.x.xVI.
At the pa.s.sionate "Nell! Nell!" at the grasp of his hand, the blood rushed to Nell"s face, and her breath came painfully. She was startled and not a little alarmed. Why was he kneeling at her feet, why did he call upon her name with the appeal of love, the note of entreaty, in his voice? He was no longer Drake Vernon, but the Earl of Angleford, the promised husband of Lady Lucille.
The color left her face, and she drew her hand from his and shrank away from him, so that she almost leaned against the tree.
He half rose and looked at her penitently, and with something like shame for his vehemence. Indeed, he had rushed from the lodge in search of her, remembering nothing, thinking of nothing, but the fact that they were both free. But now he realized how suddenly he had come upon her, how great a shock his pa.s.sionate words, his excited manner, must have been to her.
"Forgive me!" he said, still on one knee; "forgive me! I have frightened you. I forgot."
Nell tried to still the throbbing of her heart, to regain composure; but she could not speak. He rose and stood before her, his eyes fixed on her, eloquent with love and admiration. She had never seemed more beautiful to him than at this moment. Her face was thinner and paler than it had been in the happy days at Shorne Mills, but it had grown in beauty, in that spiritual loveliness which replaces in the woman that which the girl loses. The gray eyes were pure violet now, and fuller and deeper, as they mirrored the soul which had expanded in the bracing atmosphere of sorrow and trial.
He had fallen in love with an innocent, unsophisticated girl; he was still more pa.s.sionately in love with her now that, a girl still in years, she had developed into glorious, divine womanhood. His eyes scanned her face hungrily, yet reverently, as he thought: Was it possible that he had once kissed those beautiful lips, had once heard them murmur "I love you?" And was it possible that he might again hear those magic words? His soul thirsted for them. It seemed to him that if he were to lose her now, if she were to send him away, life would not be worth having, that nothing remained for him in the future but misery and despair. To few men is it given to love as he loved the girl before him, and in that moment he suffered an agony of suspense which might well have caused the recording angel to blot out the follies of his past life.
But he must not frighten her, he must not drive her away from him by revealing the intensity of his pa.s.sion.
So his voice was calm, and so low that it was little more than a whisper, as he said:
"I have come in search of you; I have something to say that I hope, I pray, you will hear. Won"t you sit down again?" and he motioned to the place where she had been seated.
But Nell shook her head and remained standing, her hands clasped loosely before her, her eyes downcast.
"What is it, Lord Angleford?" she said, in a voice as low as his. "I--I want to go back to the lodge."
"Wait a few minutes," he said imploringly. "I will not keep you long. I have just left the lodge. He--Mr. Falconer--is all right; he will not mind--will not miss you for a few minutes. And I must speak to you. All my happiness, my future, depends on it--upon you!"
"Ah, let me go!" she said, almost inaudibly; for at every word he spoke her heart went out to him, and she was tempted to forget that he was no longer her lover, but the betrothed of Lady Lucille. Whatever he said, she must not forget that!
"No; it is I who will go, when I have spoken, and if you tell me," he said gravely. "When you sent me away last time I went--I obeyed you. I promise to do so now if you send me away again. Nell--ah! I must call you so. It is the name I think of you by, the name that is engraven on my heart! Nell, I want to ask you if there is no hope of my recovering my lost happiness. Do you remember when I told you that I loved you, there at Shorne Mills? I told you I was not worthy of you. Even then I was deceiving you."
She drew nearer to the tree, and put her hand against it for support.
"I was masquerading as Drake Vernon. I concealed my real name and rank; but I had no base motive in doing so. I was sick of the world, and weary of it and myself, and I longed to escape the maddening notoriety which hara.s.sed me. And then, when I thought--ah, no! I won"t say thought, for; I know that then, then, Nell, you loved me!"
Her lips quivered, but she kept the tears back bravely.
"Then it seemed so precious a thing to know that you should have loved me for myself alone, that you were not going to marry me for my rank and position, as many another girl would have done, that I was tempted to play the farce to the end. It was folly, but the G.o.ds punish folly more surely and quickly than they punish crime. The night that you discovered I had deceived you, I had resolved to tell you the truth and beg your forgiveness. But it was too late. Most of our good resolutions come too late, Nell. You had learned that I had deceived you; you had learned that I was not worthy to win and hold the love of a pure and innocent girl, and you sent me away."
She raised her eyes and glanced at him, half bewildered. Was it possible that he thought that was her only reason for breaking the engagement?
"You were right, Nell. I think you would be right if you sent me away now; but I am daring to hope that you won"t do so. It is but the shadow--the glimmer of a hope, and yet I cling to it, for it means so much to me--so much!"
There was silence for a moment, then he went on:
"I left Shorne Mills that day, and I sailed in the _Seagull_, determined that I would accept your sentence, that I would never hara.s.s or worry you, that, if it were possible, you should never be troubled by the sight of me. But, Nell, though I left you, I carried your image with me in my heart. I tried to forget you, but I could not. I have never ceased to love you; not for a single day have you been absent from my mind, not for a single day have I ceased to long for you!"
She looked at him again, wonder and indignation dividing her emotion.
There was truth in his accents, in his eyes. Had he forgotten Lady Lucille?
"There was no more wretched and unhappy man on G.o.d"s earth than I was at that time," he went on. "Nell, if you had been called upon to find a punishment heavy enough for the deceit which I practiced, I do not think you could have hit upon a heavier one. For I could not be rid of my love for you. I could not forget your sweet face; your dear voice haunted me wherever I went, and I moved like a man under a curse, the curse of weariness and despair."
His voice almost broke, and he put his hand to his forehead as if he still felt the weight of the weary months.
"Then came the news of my uncle"s sudden death; but when I had got over my grief for him--he had been good to me, and I was fond of him!--even then I could find no pleasure in the inheritance which had fallen to me.
Of what use was the t.i.tle and the rest of it, if all my happiness was set upon the girl I had lost forever? I came home to do my duty, in a dull, dogged fashion, came home with the conviction that I should not be able to rest in England, that I should have to take to wandering again.
I loved you still, Nell, but I hoped--see, now, I tell you the truth!--that I might at least get some peace, might learn to deaden my heart. And then, as the Fates would have it, I find you here, and----"
He paused for a moment and caught his breath.
"Hear that you were going to marry another man."
Nell started slightly, and the color rose to her face. She had forgotten Falconer!
"That was the last drop in my cup of misery. Somehow, I had always thought of you as the little girl of Shorne Mills, as--as--free. I had not reflected that it was inevitable that some other man should admire and love you. You see, you--you still, in some strange way, seemed to belong to me, though I knew I had lost you!"
No words he could have uttered could have touched her more sharply and deeply than this simple avowal. She turned her head aside so that he might not see the quivering of her lips, the tenderness which sprang into her eyes.
"That was the hardest blow of all that Fate had dealt me, Nell. It almost drove me mad to know that you once loved me, and yet that you were to be the wife of another man! It made me mad and desperate for a time, then I had to face it, as I had faced my loss of you. But, Nell----"
He paused again, and ventured to draw a little nearer to her; but as she still shrank from him, and leaned against the tree, he stopped short and did not venture to take her hand.
"Now I have just left Mr. Falconer, I have heard from his own lips that there is no engagement, that----Oh, Nell! It was the knowledge that you were still free that sent me to you just now, that made me cry out to you as I did! I love you, Nell, more dearly, more truly, if that be possible, than I did! Won"t you forgive me the folly which made you send me away from you? Won"t you let me try and win back your love?"
There was silence, broken only by the rustle of the leaves in the summer breeze, by the note of a linnet singing in the branches above their heads.