Countess Vera 16

Countess Vera 16

"Yes, I mean all these things," she answers, looking at him with such

wide, frank, innocent eyes that he can find no room for doubt.

 

He is puzzled for a moment.

 

"I have deceived myself," he sighs, inly. "I thought she was learning

to love me."

 

"Lady Vera, I have been too hopeful," he says, manfully. "I have been

thinking of love while you dreamed only of friendship. But now that you

know my heart, will you not suffer me to woo you for my bride? I love

you so dearly I am sure I could make you happy."

 

Ah! the fathomless pain that comes into the dark eyes into which he

gazes so tenderly. He cannot understand it.

 

"I shall never marry, Captain Lockhart," she answers, in a low, pained

voice. "There is no use to woo me. I can never be yours."

 

"Never!" he echoes, with despair in his voice.

 

"I shall never marry anyone," she repeats, mournfully.

 

He looks at her with all his passionate heart in his eyes.

 

"Never is a terrible word, Lady Vera," he answers sadly. "Only think

how I love you. I have never loved anyone before in all my life, and

I shall never love anyone again. You are my first and last love. Only

think how terrible it is, how cruelly hard, for me to give up the hopes

of winning you for my own. You are so beautiful and noble, my dark-eyed

love. I have dreamed of kissing your small, white hands, your fair,

white brow, your golden hair, even your beautiful, crimson lips. I had

thought to win you for my very own, and now you strike dead every hope

by that cruel word, _never_. Oh, my darling, you are too young to say

you will never wed. What can you know of the needs of your own heart?

Let me teach you to love me."

 

"Ah, if he only knew the fatal truth," the tortured young heart moans

to itself, in the silence of its great despair. "If he knew that I am

already bound by a tie that I hate and loathe."

 

But she speaks no word, only to look up at him with pained, dark eyes,

and reiterate:

 

"I am very sorry I have caused you pain, Captain Lockhart, but I shall

never marry."

 

He rises and looks down at her with his handsome face grown strangely

pale and grave, his blue eyes dim and heavy.

 

"So be it, Lady Vera," he answers, folding his arms across his broad

breast. "You know what is best for you, but, ah, lovely one, if you

could know how sweet were the hopes you have slain this hour you could

not choose but weep over my saddened life."

 

She put up her white hand imploringly.

 

"Forbear, Captain Lockhart. You cannot guess what pangs are aching in

my breast or you would spare me your reproaches. Be pitiful and leave

me."

 

"Not here," he says, looking up and down the flowery lane. "Let me take

you back to the house, Lady Vera. We cannot trust these autumnal skies.

It may rain at any moment."

 

"As you will," she answers, wearily, and rising, retraces her steps by

his side. But this time they speak no word to each other and the fair

young countess flies up to her room, and flings herself down on her

couch to weep such tears as have never rained from those lovely eyes

before, for a great happiness and a great sorrow have come into her

life, as it were, together.

 

"For I love him," she moans to herself. "I love him, but as Heaven

sees me, I did not know it. It all came to me like a flash when he was

telling me how he loved me. Oh, God, what happiness is possible to me,

and yet beyond my reach."

 

She lies still weeping bitterly, and recalling in all its bitterness

that midnight marriage by the side of her dying mother.

 

"Oh! what a blind mistake it was," she weeps. "But for Leslie Noble

I might marry the man I love. I might go back to America with him. I

might tell him the story of my oath of vengeance, and he would help me

to find my enemy and punish her for her sin."

 

The day drags wearily. In the afternoon Vera goes down to the library

in search of something to read. Gliding softly in she finds it tenanted

by Captain Lockhart, who is busy over a fresh batch of papers from the

United States. He glances up as she is about withdrawing, and springs

to his feet with courteous grace.

 

"Pray do not let me frighten you, Lady Vera. I will take my budget of

papers, and be off," he exclaims.

 

"No, I do not wish to disturb you," she answers. "I am in search of

something to read myself."

 

"Pray take your choice from among my papers," he replies, gravely, but

kindly, and half-listlessly Lady Vera turns them over and selects one

at random.

 

Captain Lockhart places a chair for her and returns to his reading,

thinking that the best way to place her at her ease. His heart yearns

over the beautiful, pale, suffering face, but he does not dream of her

sorrow, and he has no right to comfort her, so he turns his glance

away, and, looking round again a little later, sees that Countess Vera

has quietly swooned away in her chair, and that the American newspaper

has slipped from her lap to the floor.

 

With a startled cry that brings Lady Clive rushing into the room, he

springs to his feet. Lady Vera's swoon is a long and deep one, and

they wonder much over its cause, but no one dreams that the American

newspaper has caused it all. Yet the listless gaze of the unhappy

girl roving over the list of deaths in a Philadelphia paper has found

one line that struck dumb, for a moment, the sources of life in their

fountains. It was only this:

 

"Died, at his residence on Arch street, on the 19th instant _Leslie

Noble_."

 

 

 

 

CHAPTER XVI.

 

 

Lady Vera waking from her long and death-like swoon, wakens also to

a dream of happiness. The terrible incubus that weighed upon her so

heavily is lifted from her heart. The loveless fetter that bound her is

snapped asunder. Leslie Noble, whose very name has been a shuddering

horror to her for more than two years, is dead, and she is free--free!

What exquisite possibilities of happiness thrill her heart at the very

thought!

 

She keeps her room that evening, pleading weariness as an excuse for

not appearing at dinner. She wants time to think over the joyful change

in her prospects before she meets Captain Lockhart again. She is

scarcely herself now. Such a strange, tremulous, passionate happiness

is thrilling through her heart as makes her nervous with its intensity.

Little shafts of fire seem thrilling through her veins. Love, which

she had thought never to experience, has taken up its dwelling in her

heart, and every nerve thrills with its unspeakable rapture.

 

"And I was so blind, I thought it only friendship!" the fair young

countess murmurs to herself, with a happy smile playing around her

lips. "How happy he will be when I tell him that I love him, and that

I will be his wife! It cannot be wrong for me to marry him. I am sure

he will help me to my vengeance when I tell him of the oath I swore by

my father's death-bed. Dear Philip, how grand and handsome he is! He is

the noblest of men!"

 

Lady Clive, having privately questioned her brother as to Vera's

fainting fit, and received no satisfaction, is at her wits' end! Why

this terrible swoon, when she had deemed Lady Vera well and strong

again?

 

She wonders even more when the young girl appears at breakfast the next

morning. Never had the young countess appeared so enchantingly lovely.

Clothed in a delicate, white morning dress, with purple pansies at her

throat and waist, and all her glorious golden hair floating loosely

about her perfect form, with a blush of happiness on her cheeks, and

the shy light of tenderness in her splendid eyes, it seemed to all as

if her peerless beauty had received a new dower of glory. All wondered,

but none knew that the threatening cloud that had overshadowed her life

so long had rolled away, and that it was the new light of hope that

made her face so radiant.

 

"You look unusually well, my dear. There is no trace of your illness

left this morning," Lady Clive exclaims, with her usual charming good

nature, as Lady Vera glides into her seat.

 

A blush and smile of acknowledgement from the young girl. She glances

shyly under her long lashes at Captain Lockhart, who is her _vis-a-vis_

at table. But the handsome soldier, after one slight glance and a

courtly bow, does not seem to see her. Miss Montgomery, who sits next

him, absorbs his attention this morning. She is a belle and beauty,

and has long angled for Captain Lockhart. Seeing Lady Vera so gay and

smiling, he resolves not to damp her pleasure by a sight of his own

grave, troubled face, so he lends himself assiduously to the coquette's

efforts to amuse him, succeeding so well in his plan that she is

completely blinded, and murmurs to herself with sudden bitterness:

 

"He is flirting with Miss Montgomery to show me how little he cares for

my rejection. Ah, well, if he is satisfied, I am!"

 

So the first seeds of pride are sown in her heart by a coquette's petty

arts.

 

"Alas! how slight a cause may move

Dissension between hearts that love!"

 

"I had meant to win him back to my side," she thinks, with a sudden

sigh. "I would not have told him so in so many words, but I thought to

let him see that I repented after all, and that--I love him! I fear me

I am too late after all. Oh, that he had not spoken yesterday. If only he had waited until to-day!"