Countess Vera 14

Countess Vera 14

Lady Vera smiles assent. Fresh flowers are brought to her room every

morning, and they tell her the children send them. But there are only

three children, and always four bouquets. Vera asks no questions but

she knows that the fourth one is always the largest and sweetest.

To-day it is of crimson rose-buds, mixed with heliotrope and pansies,

for there is always some blending of her favorite flower.

 

"You do not know how much we miss you from our home circle," the

charming Lady Clive resumes, vivaciously. "You must not leave us when

you get well, dear. Make your home with us until you get settled for

life. You will be so lonely if you try to live alone with a chaperon.

Won't you promise to stay?"

 

"I will think of it," Lady Vera answers, gratefully, while tears rise

to her dark eyes.

 

Lady Clive comes to sit with her often, sending away the prim nurse,

and installing herself in her place. She chats vivaciously, retailing

bits of society gossip, telling of all the great people who have left

cards of condolence for the young countess, of the lovers who are all

_desoles_ over her illness; of Sir Harry's regret and the children's

clamorous despair. But, strange to say, she utterly forgets the

existence of her brother, Captain Lockhart, or, perhaps, deems the

subject uninteresting to her guest.

 

He has gone away, Lady Vera tells herself; yet she, in some vague way,

feels that he has not. She hears a step in the hall outside her door

sometimes--a manly step that is not Sir Harry Clive's, but which has

a firm, remembered ring in it that has power to send the warm blood

flying from her heart to her face.

 

When she is well enough to sit up in her white dressing-gown, lying

back in a great, cushioned arm-chair, the children are admitted to see

her. They spend a noisy five minutes with their friend, then the nurse

bundles them out, closing the door on their clamorous tongues, but not

so quickly but that Countess Vera catches Mark's disgusted dictum in

the hall:

 

"Oh, Uncle Phil! Vera isn't a bit pretty any more. Her face is all

white and thin, and her eyes are _so_ big."

 

So he is here. Her subtle intuitions had been right.

 

Impulsively she turns to the prim old nurse.

 

"Open that door, and ask Captain Lockhart to come in here."

 

He comes, eager, smiling, filled with wonder, yet outwardly calm.

 

"You are very kind; you permit me to share the children's treat," he

says. "May I----" then he pauses, confused.

 

"Look at me? yes, do," she says, crimsoning painfully. "I want you to

tell me--is it true what Mark said--that I am not pretty any more?"

 

The blue eyes meet hers with the old, strange look that always made her

heart beat against her will.

 

"Mark is a little dunce," he answers, smiling. "He has no eye for

anything but roses. I assure you, Lady Vera, that you are as beautiful

in your pallor and delicacy as you were in health. More beautiful to

me," he adds, his voice falling slightly lower "because now you are

kind."

 

"Kind!"

 

She arches her dark brows slightly in surprise.

 

"Yes," he answers. "Did you not know how I have been longing for a

sight of your face, Lady Vera? But I dared not ask, and now you allow

me to see you of your own free will. You cannot guess how much I thank

you."

 

His voice trembles with feeling. The countess, blushing in spite of

herself, tries to make light of it all.

 

"I did not think of _les proprietes_ when I called you in here," she

stammers. "My vanity was so alarmed by Mark's terrible speech that I

forgot everything. I think you must go now."

 

But he lingers.

 

"Won't you come down into the library?" persuasively. "We could all

amuse you there. You could lie on the sofa with a warm shawl over you,

and we would read aloud to you, or sing, or play--whatever pleased you

most. It must be dull for you here with your sick fancies. Will you

come?"

 

What an atmosphere of cheerfulness he has brought into the sick-room.

 

Lady Vera's heart that has lain numb and chill, and hopeless in her

breast so long, seems to warm itself to life again in the sunlight of

his smile.

 

"I will go, if Lady Clive thinks it prudent," she declares.

 

Lady Clive--that astute general--on being consulted, puts on the

gravest face over her well-pleased mind, and declares that Lady

Vera may venture to-morrow, perhaps, and so gives Captain Lockhart

twenty-four hours of the pleasures of anticipation, which philosophers

declare exceed those of reality.

 

With to-morrow begins a love-idyl, one of the sweetest ever enacted,

perhaps, and the most innocent, for Lady Vera is unconscious of it all,

nor dreams that love is near. Captain Lockhart is no bold nor intrusive

lover. He does not weary Lady Vera with his company or attentions,

oftener than not leaving her to the companionship of his sister. But

when he enters the room it is always brighter for his coming; when

he reads, the volume gains a new interest; when he sings, she lies

with closed eyelids, and wonders why she had ever fancied she would

dislike this pleasant, agreeable gentleman, with his handsome face, his

scholarly mind and chivalrous manner.

 

"It is very pleasant having such a friend," she thinks, within her

innocent, unconscious heart. "I was so lonely losing dear papa, and

having not one true heart to turn to in my sorrow."

 

A remembrance of her oath of vengeance comes into her mind, and a

troubled look sweeps over the fair, young face. It weighs upon her like

a burden--the legacy of hate her dying father has left her. How shall

she ever keep her vow?

 

"Shall I go to America and seek my enemies who are so securely hidden

away that even detectives cannot find them?" she asks herself. "Or

shall I lie passive and wait? and when found, how shall I strike Marcia

Cleveland's cruel heart?"

 

Alas! poor Vera, if you only knew the dreadful truth. If you only

guessed how, in wounding your enemy's heart, you must fatally stab your

own, you might pray to die now while the pulses of life are low, ere

life became a living death. Well for us that:

 

"Heaven from all creatures hides the book of fate."

 

And the pretty idyl goes on. Lady Vera's morbid thoughts are drawn out

of herself, and lifted to a higher plane by Philip Lockhart's cheerful,

active mind. The weeks round into a month, and she is almost well

again. The color and roundness of youth have come back to her cheek,

the light of a strange, new, unconscious happiness is dawning in the

darkness of her eyes.

 

 

 

 

CHAPTER XIV.

 

 

Far away from the spot where Countess Vera broods over her oath of

vengeance, in far America, away in the green heart of the langourous

south, is the white marble palace where Mrs. Cleveland and her daughter

dwelt, hidden from the knowledge of the man they had wronged, and who

had sworn to bring home to them the ruin they had wrought.

 

To-day, a lovely morning in the autumn of that summer in which the

Earl of Fairvale died, Mrs. Cleveland comes out on the piazza of her

stately southern home, with a frown upon her brow. Behind her, in the

magnificent saloon she has just quitted, high words are raging.

 

"You never loved me, or you would do as I wish you," wails the weak

voice of Ivy to her husband, as, dissolved in tears, she flings herself

upon a costly sofa.

 

"I begin to think I never did, but all the same you and your mother

have ruined me by your cursed extravagance. I have not a thousand

dollars to my name in bank. This place will have to be sold and we can

live on the proceeds a little longer, perhaps," Leslie Noble answers,

in a sharp, high-pitched voice, as he strides up and down the floor,

cursing within his heart the weak fancy that had led him to marry this

shrewish creature.

 

"Ruined! I do not believe one word of it!" Mrs. Noble breaks out,

starting up and glaring at him with her pale, blue eyes. "It is a

falsehood you have trumped up to keep from taking mamma and me to

Europe where our hearts are just breaking to go! You know very well we

have not spent a fortune in the little year and a half we have been

married. We couldn't have done it."

 

"We _have_ done it, anyhow," he answers, sullenly. "It was no difficult

manner, considering the way in which you and your mother have forced me

to live. Furniture fit for a palace, jewels costly enough for a queen,

entertainments costing thousand of dollars, recklessly repeated over

and over. We are at the end of the line at last, and you may yet have

to take in washing for a living."

 

"You brute!" she exclaims, flashing him a glance of wrath and scorn.

"To begrudge us the pleasant time we have had! I did not know you could

be so mean and stingy! Of course I knew that your bachelor uncle in

Philadelphia--the one you are named for--would leave you his money

when he died. I wish he would die now. He's mortally slow about it. I

should think he must be a hundred years old."

 

"Good God, Ivy! what a heartless and mercenary woman you are!" her

husband cries, stormily. "That poor old man, my uncle, who never harmed

living soul, how dare you wish for his death? Upon my soul, I am

tempted to write to him to leave his money to some orphan asylum or art

gallery just to disappoint your hopes."

 

"You would not dare!" she sobs, hysterically.

 

"Try me too far, and see what I will not dare," he answers,

threateningly, and she stops her sobbing and looks up, fearfully, at

the dark, handsome face bent sternly upon her with two smouldering

fires in his gloomy black eyes.

 

It is not as handsome and refined a face as Leslie Noble could boast of

two years ago. There are lines of dissipation on it. There is a certain

hardness and coarseness upon it, as if engendered by ill-nature and the

free indulgence of evil passions. Association with such a woman as Ivy

Cleveland would naturally bring that look into a man's face. Coarse, selfish, and unprincipled herself, she has dragged the man's weak,easily-moulded nature down upon a level with her own.