Page:Littell's Living Age - Volume 132.djvu/412

404 being. But to show that to her servant would be to betray herself — the more that he seemed the painter's friend.

"I will ask Lord Liftore to go and see the portrait, and if he thinks it like I will buy it," she said. "Mr. Lenorme is certainly very clever with his brush."

Malcolm saw that she said this not to insult Lenorme, but to blind her groom, and made no answer.

"I will ride there with you to-morrow morning," she added in conclusion, and moved on.

Malcolm touched his hat and dropped behind. But the next moment he was by her side again: " I beg your pardon, my lady, but would you allow me to say one word more?"

She bowed her head.

"That woman Caley, I am certain, is not to be trusted. She does not love you, my lady."

"How do you know that?" asked Florimel, speaking steadily, but writhing inwardly with the knowledge that the warning was too late.

"I have tried her spirit," answered Malcolm, "and know that it is of the devil. She loves herself too much to be true."

After a little pause Florimel said, "I know you mean well, Malcolm, but it is nothing to me whether she loves me or not. We don't look for that nowadays from servants."

"It is because I love you, my lady," said Malcolm, "that I know Caley does not. If she should get hold of anything your ladyship would not wish talked about ——"

"That she cannot," said Florimel, but with an inward shudder. "She may tell the whole world all she can discover."

She would have cantered on as the words left her lips, but something in Malcolm's look held her. She turned pale, she trembled: her father was looking at her as only once had she seen him — in doubt whether his child lied. The illusion was terrible. She shook in her saddle. The next moment she was galloping along the grassy border of the heath in wild flight from her worst enemy, whom yet she could never by the wildest of flights escape; for when, coming a little to herself as she approached a sand-pit, she pulled up, there was her enemy — neither before nor behind, neither above nor beneath nor within her: it was the self which had just told a lie to the servant of whom she had so lately boasted that he never told one in his life. Then she grew angry. What had she done to be thus tormented? She, a marchioness, thus pestered by her own menials — pulled opposing directions by a groom and a maid! She would turn them both away, and have nobody about her either to trust or suspect.

She might have called them her good and her evil genius; for she knew — that is, she had it somewhere about her, but did not look it out — that it was her own cowardice and concealment, her own falseness to the traditional, never-failing courage of her house, her ignobility and unfitness to represent the Colonsays — her double-dealing, in short — that had made the marchioness in her own right the slave of her woman, the rebuked of her groom.

She turned and rode back, looking the other way as she passed Malcolm.

When they reached the top of the heath, riding along to meet them came Liftore — this time to Florimel's consolation and confortcomfort [sic]; she did not like riding unprotected with a good angel at her heels. So glad was she that she did not even take the trouble to wonder how he had discovered the road she went. She never suspected that Caley had sent his lordship's groom to follow her until the direction of her ride should be evident, but took his appearance without question as a lover-like attention, and rode home with him, talking the whole way, and cherishing a feeling of triumph over both Malcolm and Lenorme. Had she not a protector of her own kind? Could she not, when they troubled her, pass from their sphere into one beyond their ken? For the moment the poor weak lord who rode beside her seemed to her foolish heart a tower of refuge. She was particularly gracious and encouraging to her tower as they rode, and fancied again and again that perhaps the best way out of her troubles would be to encourage and at last accept him, so getting rid of honeyed delights and rankling stings together, of good and evil angels and low-bred lover at one sweep. Quiet would console for dulness, innocence for weariness. She would fain have a good conscience toward society — that image whose feet are of gold and its head a bag of chaff and sawdust.

Malcolm followed, sick at heart that she should prove herself so shallow. Riding Honor, he had plenty of leisure to brood.