Countess Vera 11
"Pray do not go," Captain Lockhart says, persuasively, with the winning
tongue of a soldier. "The children have been eagerly expecting you. Do
not damp their pleasure. Rather let me withdraw."
"No, no," Lady Vera says, hastily, as he crosses to the door, her
haughtiness melting for the moment under his chivalrous manner. "We
will both stay--that is, I can only give the children a moment. I am
going to a ball."
"So am I, directly, with my sister and Sir Harry. It is very strange
Nella did not tell me she had a young lady guest. I am," smiling under
the brown mustache, "puzzled over your name."
"It is Vera Campbell," she answers, with a slight flush.
"_Lady_ Vera," pipes the prim nurse from her corner, obsequiously.
"Lady Vera," he says, with a bow and smile; then: "Thank you for the
favor. Mine is Philip Lockhart."
"Captain Phil," shouts Mark, anxious that his uncle shall abate no jot
of his soldierly dignity.
"He has brought us a great big box," Dot confides to Lady Vera,
triumphantly at this moment.
"Which I will leave him to open. My maid has not finished me yet,"
fibs Vera, and so makes her escape, leaving Captain Phil to the tender
mercies of his small relatives, who give him no peace until the heavy
box is unpacked, and its contents paraded before their dazzled and
rejoicing sight.
Meanwhile Vera secures her opera-cloak, and goes down to the
drawing-room, where the earl and Sir Harry are waiting for the ladies.
"Nella will be here in a moment," explains Sir Harry. "She has gone to
hurry up her brother, over whom the children are having no end of a
jollification. Oh, I forgot, you may not know whom I am talking about.
Lady Clive's brother arrived this evening, and will accompany us to
Lady Ford's ball."
Vera bows silently, and presently Lady Clive sails in, proudly, with
the truant in tow. Evening dress is marvelously becoming to the
handsome soldier. Involuntarily Vera thinks of Sir Launcelot:
"The goodliest man that ever among ladies sat in hall,
And noblest."
"Lady Vera, this is my brother, Captain Lockhart," Lady Clive begins,
with conscious pride; then pauses, disconcerted by the "still, soft
smile" creeping over either face.
"We have met before," Lady Vera explains, with, for her, unusual
graciousness. "Met before! Not in America?" cried Lady Clive,
bewildered.
"Oh, no," her brother answers, and Lady Vera adds, smiling: "In the
nursery, ten minutes ago."
So there is only the earl to introduce, and then they are whirled away
to Lady Ford's, where Captain Lockhart meets a score of last season's
friends, and to the surprise of Lady Vera, who is prejudiced against
almost anything American, he develops some of the graces of a society
man, even playing and singing superbly in a full, rich tenor voice.
"Yet, why should he have selected that old, _old_ song: 'The Banks of
Allan Water?'" Lady Vera asks herself, scornfully, "and when he sang:
"'For his bride a soldier sought her,'
why should he have looked so straight at _me_? It was not an
impertinent look, I own, but why should he have looked at me at all?"
But even to her own heart, Lady Vera will not own that her great
vexation is directed against herself because she has blushed vividly
crimson under that one look from Captain Lockhart's blue eyes, while
her heart has beat so strangely--with annoyance, she thinks.
"I foresee that I shall hate this American soldier," she muses, "and no
wonder at all when I shall be forced to see him every day. I wish now
that we had not accepted Lady Clive's invitation for the London season."
CHAPTER XI.
The day after Lady Ford's ball dawns cheerlessly. It is cool, and
the air is full of floating mists. The gentlemen determine to go out
anyhow. The ladies elect to remain at home. The glowing fire in the
library has more charms than the bleak, spring air.
"I am not surprised at Nella," says Captain Lockhart, leisurely
buttoning his overcoat. "_She_ was raised in America, and our ladies
do not walk much. But I have been told that English ladies walk every
morning, whether rain or shine. Are you false to the tradition, Lady
Vera?"
The color flies into her cheek at his quizzical glance, but she will
not tell him what she sees he does not know--that she has been raised
in America, too.
"I suppose so," she says, a little shortly, in answer to his question.
"Suppose you come with us for a turn around the square, my dear?"
suggests the earl.
"So I will," answers Lady Vera, determined to have Captain Lockhart see
that she is quite English in her habits.
She comes down in a moment covered almost to the pink tips of her ears
in rich velvet. To her dismay Earl Fairvale strolls forward in a fit of
absent-mindedness with Sir Harry, leaving her to be accompanied by the
American soldier. She sees no other course but to accept the situation.
"It is only for a few minutes at the worst," she thinks to herself.
So she walks on by his side, looking so pretty with the nipping wind
kissing her cheeks into a scarlet glow, that Captain Lockhart can
scarcely keep the admiration out of his eyes.
"The loveliest girl I have ever seen in my life," he mentally decides.
"But, by Jove! as cold and proud as an iceberg!"
"So you do not like Americans?" he says to her, regretfully, as they
turn a corner.
"No," curtly.
"Ah, but, Lady Vera, is that fair?" plaintively. "You do not know us,
yet you condemn us without a hearing. Mere English prejudice--is it
not?"
She looks around at the handsome face, full of fire and life, and the
sparkling blue eyes. The thoughtful gravity on the lovely face grows
deeper. The dark eyes flash.
"Captain Lockhart, you are talking of what you do not understand," she
says, impatiently.
"I beg your pardon, Lady Vera," he answers, flushing, "I spoke from
the merest impulse. I thought--since you are so very young--you could
not know my country well."
Lady Vera blushes, but holds her peace. Of course, somebody will tell
him her story soon--tell him that her mother was American, and that
she herself had spent seventeen years in his own native land. At least
he shall not hear it from her. She has a vague notion that it would
please him to know it, that the blue eyes whose sparkle she has already
learned to know, would light with pleasure at the knowledge.
Those eyes, how bright and keen they are. They seem to read one's
thoughts. Lady Vera finds her gaze drooping from them as they never
drooped before mortal man's before. Why? she asks herself.
"It is because he is so bold," she decides, vexedly. "He seems to be
trying to read one's inmost thoughts. I will show him that I am not
afraid of him."
Thereupon she lifts the dark eyes bravely to give him a cool society
stare, but in an instant they waver and fall before the glance they
have surprised in his. Just so the blue eyes had turned on her last
night, when he sang:
"On the banks of Allan Water,
When the sweet spring tide did fall,
Was the miller's lovely daughter,
Fairest of them all!
For his bride a soldier sought her,
And a winning tongue had he,
On the banks of Allan Water
None so gay as she."
"Why do you stare at me _so_?" she breaks out, angry with herself, and
with him.
He flushes, startled by her _brusquerie_.
"I beg your pardon--I did not mean to be rude," he answers, quietly.
"But, Lady Vera, a man must be blind not to look at _you_."
"Why?" she asks, still sharply.
"Because I think God made all beautiful things for the pleasure of
men's eyes," he answers, firmly, yet respectfully.
"Impertinent!" Vera says to herself, indignantly, and looks another way.
"Do you lay an embargo on my eye-sight as far as you are concerned,
Lady Vera?" he continues, after a moment.
"Yes," she replies, with her head still turned away.
"Then I shall try to obey you," he answers, calmly. "I will not even
see you when I can help it, but you must forgive me for saying that if
I should never see you again I shall never forget a single line of your face."
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