"Does your taste resemble mine, Lord Airlie?"

"I," interrupted Lord Airlie--"I like whatever you like, Miss Earle."

"Yourself best of all," whispered Lionel to Beatrice with a smile.

As Mr. Dacre walked home that evening, he thought long and anxiously about the two young girls, his kins-women. What was the mystery? he asked himself--what skeleton was locked away in the gay mansion? Where was Lord Earle's wife--the lady who ought to have been at the head of his table--the mother of his children? Where was she? Why was her place empty? Why was her husband's face shadowed and lined with care?

"Lillian Earle is the fairest and sweetest girl I have ever met," he said to himself. "I know there is danger for me in those sweet, true eyes, but if there be anything wrong--if the mother is blameworthy--I will fly from the danger. I believe in hereditary virtue and in hereditary vice. Before I fall in love with Lillian, I must know her mother's story."

So he said, and he meant it. There was no means of arriving at the knowledge. The girls spoke at times of their mother, and it was always with deep love and respect. Lady Helena mentioned her, but her name never pa.s.sed the lips of Lord Earle. Lionel Dacre saw no way of obtaining information in the matter.

There was no concealment as to Dora's abode. Once, by special privilege, he was invited into the pretty room where the ladies sat in the morning--a cozy, cheerful room, into which visitors never penetrated. There, upon the wall, he saw a picture framed a beautiful landscape, a quiet homestead in the midst of rich, green meadows; and Lillian told him, with a smile, that was the Elms, at Knutsford, "where mamma lived."

Lionel was too true a gentleman to ask why she lived there; he praised the painting, and then turned the subject.

As Lady Earle foresaw, the time had arrived when Dora's children partly understood there was a division in the family, a breach never to be healed. "Mamma was quite different from papa," they said to each other; and Lady Helena told them their mother did not like fashion and gayety, that she had been simply brought up, used always to quietness and solitude, so that in all probability she would never come to Earlescourt.

But as time went on, and Beatrice began to understand more of the great world, she had an instinctive idea of the truth. It came to her by slow degrees. Her father had married beneath him, and her mother had no home in the stately hall of Earlescourt. At first violent indignation seized her; then calmer reflection told her she could not judge correctly. She did not know whether Lord Earle had left his wife, or whether her mother had refused to live with him.

It was the first cloud that shadowed the life of Lord Earle's beautiful daughter. The discovery did not diminish her love for the quiet, sad mother, whose youth and beauty had faded so soon. If possible, she loved her more; there was a pitying tenderness in her affection.

"Poor mamma!" thought the young girl--"poor, gentle mamma! I must be doubly kind to her, and love her better than ever."

Dora did not understand how it happened that her beautiful Beatrice wrote so constantly and so fondly to her--how it happened that week after week costly presents found their way to the Elms.

"The child must spend all her pocket money on me," she said to herself.

"How well and dearly she loves me--my beautiful Beatrice!"

Lady Helena remembered the depth of her mother's love. She pitied the lonely, unloved wife, deprived of husband and children. She did all in her power to console her. She wrote long letters, telling Dora how greatly her children were admired, and how she would like their mother to witness their triumph. She told how many conquests Beatrice had made; how the proud and exclusive Lord Airlie was always near her, and that Beatrice, of her own fancy, liked him better than any one else.

"Neither Lord Earle nor myself could wish a more brilliant future for Beatrice," wrote Lady Helena. "As Lady Airlie of Lynnton, she will be placed as her birth and beauty deserve."

But even Lady Helena was startled when she read Dora's reply. It was a wild prayer that her child should be saved--spared the deadly perils of love and marriage--left to enjoy her innocent youth.

"There is no happy love," wrote poor Dora, "and never can be. Men can not be patient, gentle, and true. It is ever self they worship--self-reflected in the woman they love. Oh, Lady Helena, let my child be spared! Let no so-called love come near her! Love found me out in my humble home, and wrecked all my life. Do not let my bright, beautiful Beatrice suffer as I have done. I would rather fold my darlings in my arms and lie down with them to die than live to see them pa.s.s through the cruel mockery of love and sorrow which I have endured. Lady Helena, do not laugh; your letter distressed me. I dreamed last night, after reading it, that I placed a wedding veil on my darling's head, when, as it fell round her, it changed suddenly into a shroud. A mother's love is true, and mine tells me that Beatrice is in danger."

Chapter XXVII

"I have been abroad long enough," said Lord Earle, in reply to some remark made by Lady Helena. "The girls do not care for the sea--Beatrice dislikes it even; so I think we can not do better than to return to Earlescourt. It may not be quite fashionable, but it will be very pleasant."

"Yes," said Lady Earle; "there is no place I love so well as home. We owe our neighbors something, too. I am almost ashamed when I remember how noted Earlescourt once was for its gay and pleasant hospitality.

We must introduce the girls to our neighbors. I can foresee quite a cheerful winter."

"Let us get over the summer and autumn," said Ronald with a smile, "then we will look the winter bravely in the face. I suppose, mother, you can guess who has managed to procure an invitation to Earlescourt!"

"Lord Airlie?" asked Lady Helena.

"Yes," was the laughing reply. "It did me good, mother--it made me feel young and happy again to see and hear him. His handsome, frank face clouded when I told him we were going; then he sighed said London would be like a desert--declared he could not go to Lynnton, the place was full of work-people. He did not like Scotland, and was as homeless as a wealthy young peer with several estates could well be. I allowed him to bewilder himself with confused excuses and blunders, and then asked him to join us at Earlescourt. He almost 'jumped for joy,' as the children say. He will follow us in a week or ten days. Lionel will come with us."

"I am very pleased," said Lady Earle. "Next to you, Ronald, I love Lionel Dacre; his frank, proud, fearless disposition has a great charm for me. He is certainly like Beatrice. How he detests everything false, just as she does!"

"Yes," said Ronald, gravely; "I am proud of my children. There is no taint of untruth or deceit there, mother; they are worthy of their race. I consider Beatrice the n.o.blest girl I have ever known; and I love my sweet Lily just as well."

"You would not like to part with them now?" said Lady Earle.

"I would sooner part with my life!" he replied. "I am not given to strong expressions, mother, but even you could never guess how my life is bound up in theirs."

"Then let me say one word, Ronald," said his mother; "remember Dora loves them as dearly and as deeply as you do. Just think for a moment what it has cost her to give them up to you! She must see them soon, with your full consent and permission. They can go to her if you will."

"You are right, mother," he said, after a few minutes. "They are Dora's children, and she ought to see them; but they must not return to that farm house--I can not bear the thought of it. Surely they can meet on neutral ground--at your house, say, or in London; and let it be at Christmas."

"It had better be in London," said Lady Helena. "I will write to Dora, and tell her. The very antic.i.p.ation of it will make her happy until the time arrives--she loves the children so dearly."

And again a softened thought of Dora came to her husband. Of course she loved them. The little villa at Florence rose before him; he saw vividly, as though he had left it but yesterday, the pretty vine-shaded room where Dora used to sit nursing the little ones. He remembered her sweet patience, her never-failing, gentle love. Had he done right to wound that sad heart afresh by taking those children from her? Was it a just and fitting reward for the watchful love and care of those lonely years?

He would fain have pardoned her, but he could not; and he said to himself again: "In the hour of death! I will forgive her then."

The glowing August, so hot and dusty in London, was like a dream of beauty at Earlescourt. The tall trees gave grateful shelter, baffling the sun's warm rays; the golden corn stood in the broad fields ready for the sickle; the hedge-rows were filled with flowers. The beech trees in the park were in full perfection. Fruit hung ripe and heavy in the orchards. It was no longer the blossoming promise of spring, but the perfect glory of summer.

For many long years Earlescourt had not been so gay. The whole country-side rang with fashionable intelligence. The house was filled with visitors, Lord Airlie heading the list. Lionel Dacre, thinking but little of the time when the grand old place would be his own, was full of life and spirits.

Long arrears of hospitalities and festivities had to be repaid to the neighborhood. Beatrice and Lillian had to make their debut there.

Lady Helena decided upon commencing the programme with a grand dinner party, to be followed by a ball in the evening. Ronald said something about the weather being warm for dancing.

"We danced in London, papa," said Beatrice, "when the heat was so great that I should not have felt any surprise if the whole roomful of people had dissolved. Here we have s.p.a.ce--large, cool rooms, fresh air, a conservatory as large as a London house; it will be child's play in comparison with what we have gone through."

"Miss Earle is quite right," said Lord Airlie. "A ball during the season in London is a toil; here it would be nothing but a pleasure."

"Then a ball let it be," said Lord Earle. "Lillian, make out a list of invitations, and head it with Sir Harry and Lady Laurence of Holtham Hall. That reminds me, their eldest son, Gaspar, came home yesterday from Germany; do not forget to include him."

"Little Gaspar," cried Lady Helena--"has he returned? I should like to see him."

"Little Gaspar," said Lord Earle, laughing, "is six feet high now, mother. You forget how time flies; he is taller than Lionel, and a fine, handsome young fellow he is. He will be quite an acquisition."

Lord Earle was too much engrossed to remark the uneasiness his few words had caused. Lord Airlie winced at the idea of a rival a handsome man, and sentimental, too, as all those people educated in Germany are!

"I can not understand what possesses English people to send their sons abroad for education," he said to Beatrice--"and to Germany of all places in the world."

"Why should they not?" she asked.

"The people are so absurdly sentimental," he replied. "Whenever I see a man with long hair and dreamy eyes, I know he is a German."