Page:Once a Week Jun to Dec 1864.pdf/174

 30, 1864.] lift the veil from our dearest feelings! Lucy, I say, we have loved each other.”

She did not answer, but she did not lift her face from its sheltering place on his breast. The moment of rapture, shadowed forth in her dreams, had come!

“I was not conscious until to night, ten minutes ago, that my name had been made free with, as it appears it has been, in connection with Helen Vaughan’s. Lucy,” he resumed, “I swear to you that I have not willingly given cause for it; I swear to you that I have had no love for her, or thought of love. I certainly have been brought much into contact with her, for you have estranged yourself from me since you came, and the idle hours of this place have hung upon my hands; but I cast my thoughts back and ask how far it has been my fault, and I believe I can truly say”—he paused with a quaint smile—“that I have been more sinned against than sinning. Lucy, when I have been walking by her side, my heart has wished that it was you: in conversing with her, I longed for your voice to answer me. Will you forgive me?”

Forgive him? ay. Her heart answered, if words failed. He bent his face to hers in the hushed night:

“Believe me, Lucy, I love you as few men can love; I picture to myself the future, when you shall be mine; my cherished wife, the guiding-star of my home; my whole hopes, my love, my wishes are centered in you. You will not reject me? My darling, you will not reject me!”

How little likely she was to reject him, he contrived to gather. And the twinkling stars shone down on vows, than which none sweeter or purer had ever been registered.

“Lucy, you will waltz with me now?”

She dried her happy tears; and, as she returned to the room to take her place with him in the dance, she laughed aloud. The contrast between that time and this was so great! Miss Helen Vaughan and the little viscount whirled past them, and Frederick darted a saucy glance into Lucy’s eyes. It made hers fall on her blushing cheeks.

Lady Jane Chesney had arrived when they reached home. After Lucy had retired for the night, Lady Oakburn opened her mind to Jane; she could not rest until she had told her all—how that Frederick and Lucy were in love with each other. Jane at first looked very grave: the Chesney pride was rising.

“I could not help it,” bewailed the countess in her contrition. “I declare to you, Lady Jane, often as Frederick Grey came to us in Portland Place, that I never for a moment thought or suspected love was arising between him and Lucy. Our great intimacy with the Greys, and Sir Stephen’s attendance as a medical man, must have blinded me. I would give the world—should this be displeasing to you—to recall the past.”

“Nay, do not blame yourself,” said Jane kindly. “It is very probable that I should have seen no further than you. Frederick Grey! It is not the match altogether that Lucy should make.”

“In some respects it is not.”

Jane remained silent, communing with her self, her custom when troubled or perplexed. Presently she looked at Lady Oakburn. “Tell me what your opinion is. What do you think of it?”

“May I tell it freely?”

“Indeed I wish you would,” was Jane’s answer. “You have Lucy’s welfare at heart as much as I have.”

“Her welfare and her happiness,” emphatically pronounced Lady Oakburn. “And the latter I do fear is now bound up in this young man. In regard to him, as a suitor for her, there are advantages and disadvantages. In himself he is all that can be desired, and his prospects are very fair; Sir Stephen must be a rich man, and there’s the baronetcy. On the other hand, there’s his profession, and his birth is wholly inferior; and—forgive me for saying it, Lady Jane—the Chesneys are a proud race.”

“Tell me what your own decision would be, were it left to you.”

“I should let her have him.”

Jane paused. “I will sleep upon this, Lady Oakburn, and talk with you further in the morning.”

And when the morning came, Jane, like a sensible woman, had arrived at a similar decision. The first to run up and greet her as she quitted her chamber, was the little lord. Jane took him upon her knee in the breakfast-room, and turned his face upwards.

“He does not look ill, Lady Oakburn.”

“I have no real fears for him,” replied the countess “In a few years I hope he will have acquired strength. Frank, tell sister Jane what Sir Stephen says.”

“Sir Stephen says that mamma and Lucy are too fidgety over me; that if I were a poor little country boy, sent out in the corn-fields all day to keep the crows off, with only brown bread and milk for food, I should be all right,” cried Frank, looking up to his sister. Jane smiled, and thought it very probable Sir Stephen was in reason.

“Do you know, sister Jane, what I mean to be when I grow up a big man?” he continued. “I mean to be a sailor.”