CHAPTER XXI.

Stella hurried Frank across the meadows, a rather difficult task, as

he would insist upon talking, his teeth chattering, and his clothes

dripping.

"What a splendid fellow, Stella! What a happy girl you ought to be--you

are!"

"Perhaps I am," assented Stella, with a little smile; "but do you make

haste, Frank! Can't you run any faster? I'll race you to the lane!"

"No, you won't," he retorted cheerfully. "You run like a greyhound at

the best of times, and now I seem to have got a couple of tons clinging

to me, you'd beat me hollow. But, Stella! think of him plunging off the

beam! Many a man would have been satisfied to jump off the bank; if he

had, he wouldn't have saved me! He knew that; and he made nothing of

it, nothing! And that is the man they call a dandy and a fop!"

"Never mind what they call him, but run!" implored Stella.

"I don't know any other man who could have done it," he went on, his

teeth chattering; "and how friendly and jolly he was, calling me Frank

and telling me to call him Leycester! Stella, what a lucky girl you

are; but he is not a bit too good for you after all! No one is too good

for you! And he does love you, Stella; I could see it by the way he

looked at you, and you thought to hide it, and that I shouldn't see it.

Did you think I was a muff?"

"I think you will be laid up with a bad cold, sir, if you don't run!"

said Stella. "What will uncle say?"

Frank stopped short and his face paled; he seemed to shrink.

"My father must know nothing about it," he said. "Don't tell him,

Stella; I will get in the back way and change. Don't tell him!"

"But----" said Stella.

"No, no," he reiterated; "I don't want him to know. It will only

trouble him, and"--his voice faltered--"I have given him so much

trouble."

"Very well," said Stella. "But come along or you will be ill, and then

he must know."

This appeared to have the desired effect, and he took her hand and set

off at a run. They reached the lane, and were just turning into it,

when the tall, thin figure of Jasper emerged.

Both Stella and Frank stopped, and she felt his hand close in hers

tightly.

"Stella, here's that man Adelstone," he said, in a whisper of aversion.

"Must we stop?"

Jasper settled that question by raising his hat, and coming forward

with outstretched hand.

"Good-evening!" he said, his small, keen eyes glancing from Stella to

the boy, and taking in the fact of the wet clothes in a moment.

"What is the matter?"

"Nothing much," said Stella with a smile, and hurriedly. "My cousin has

fallen into the water. We are hurrying home."

"Fallen in the water!" said Jasper, turning and walking beside them.

"How did he manage that?"

Frank was silent, and Stella, with a little flush, said, gravely:

"We were on the water----"

"I was fishing from the weir," broke in Frank, pressing her hand,

warningly, "and I fell in; that is all."

There was something almost like defiance in the tone and the glance he

gave at the sinister face.

"Into the weir stream!" exclaimed Jasper, "and you got ashore! You must

be a good swimmer, my dear Frank!"

"I am--pretty well," said Frank, almost sullenly.

"Perhaps you had the waterman to help you," said Jasper, looking from

one to the other.

Then Stella, who felt that it would be better to speak out, said,

gravely:

"Lord Leycester was near, and leapt in and saved him."

Jasper's face paled, and an angry light shot from his eyes.

"How fortunate that he should happen to be near!" he said. "It was

brave of him!"

There was a suspicion of a sneer in the thin voice that roused the

spirit of the boy.

"It was brave," he said. "Perhaps you don't know what it is to swim

through a weir current, Mr. Adelstone?"

Jasper smiled down at the flushed, upturned face.

"No, but I think I should have tried if I had been lucky enough to be

in Lord Leycester's place."

"I'm very glad you weren't," said Frank, in a low voice.

"I am sure you would," said Stella, quickly. "Anyone would. Come,

Frank. Good-evening, Mr. Adelstone."

Jasper paused and looked at her. She looked very beautiful with her

flushed face and eager eyes, and his heart was beating rapidly.

"I came out hoping to see you, Miss Etheridge," he said. "May I come

in?"

"Yes, of course; uncle will be very pleased," she said. "But go in the

front way, please; we are going in at the back, because we don't wish

uncle to know. It would only upset him. You will not tell him, please?"

"You may always rely on my discretion," said Jasper.

Stella, still holding Frank's hand, dragged him into the kitchen, and

stopped Mrs. Penfold's exclamation of dismay.

"Frank has had an accident, Mrs. Penfold. Yes, he fell in the river.

I'll tell you all about it afterward; but he must change his things at

once--at once. Run up, Frank, and get into the blanket----"

"All right," he said; then, as he went out of the room, he took her by

the arm.

"Don't let that man stay, Stella. I--hate him."

"My dear Frank!"

"I hate him! What did he mean by sneering at Lord Leycester?"

"He doesn't like Lord Leycester," said Stella.

"Who cares?" exclaimed Frank, indignantly. "Curs are not particularly

fond of lions, but----"

Stella would hear no more, but pushed him up the stairs with anxious

impatience; then she went into the studio. As she neared the door she

could hear Jasper Adelstone's voice. He was talking to her uncle,

and something in the tone struck her as peculiar, and struck her

unpleasantly.

There was a tone of familiarity, almost of covert power in it that

annoyed her.

With her hand on the door she paused, and it seemed to her as if she

heard him speak her name; she was not sure, and she would not wait, but

with a little heightened color she opened the door and entered.

As she did so Jasper laid his hand upon the old man's arm as if to call

his attention to her entrance, and the painter turned round with a

start, and looking at her intently, said, with evident perplexity:

"A mere girl--a mere girl, Jasper!" and shaking his head, resumed his

work.

Jasper stood a moment, a smile on his face, watching Stella from the

corner of his eyes; then he said, suddenly:

"I have been admiring your roses, Miss Stella, and breaking the last

commandment. I have been coveting them."

"Oh!" said Stella. "Pray take any you like, there are such numbers of

them that we can spare them; can we not, uncle?"

As usual, the painter took no notice, and Jasper, in a matter-of-fact

voice, said:

"Do you mind coming out and telling me which I may cut? I only want

one or two to take to London with me, to brighten my dull rooms."

"Certainly," said Stella, moving toward the window. "Are you going to

London?"

He muttered something and followed her out, his eyes taking in the

lithe grace of her figure with a hungry wistfulness.

"Now then," said Stella, standing in the middle of the path and waving

her hand:

"Which shall it be, white rose or red?" and she smiled up at him.

He looked at her for a moment in silence. She had never appeared to

him more beautiful than this morning; there was a subtle light of

hidden joy shining in her eyes, a glow of youthful hope about her face

that set his heart beating with mingled pleasure and pain--delight in

the beauty which he had sworn should be his, pain and torture in the

thought that another--the hated Lord Leycester--had already looked upon

it that morning.

Even as he stood silently regarding her, a bitter suspicion smote

through his heart that the joyousness which shone from the dark eyes

had been set there by Lord Leycester. He bit his lip and his face went

pale, then with a start he came close to her.

"Give me which you please," he said. "Here is a knife."

Stella took the knife heedlessly and carelessly. There was no

significance in the deed; she did not know that he would attach any

importance to the fact that she should cut the rose and give it to him

with her own hand; if she had so understood it she would have dropped

the knife as if it had been an adder.

In simple truth she was not thinking of him--scarcely saw him; she was

thinking of that lover, the god of her heart, and seeing him as he

swam through the river foam. For she was scarcely conscious of Jasper

Adelstone's presence, and in the acuteness of his passion he almost

suspected it.

"White or red?" she said, knife in hand.

He glanced at her.

"Red," he said, and his lips felt hot and dry.

Stella cut a red rose--a dark red rose, and with a little womanly

gesture put it to her face; it was a little girlish trick, all

unthinking, unconsciously done, but it sent the blood to the heart of

the man watching her in a sudden, passionate rush.

"There," she said; "it is a beauty. They speak of the roses of

Florence, but give me an English rose, Florentine roses are fuller than

these, but not so beautiful--oh, not so beautiful! There," and she held

it out to him, without looking at him. If she had done so, she would

have surely read something in the white constrained face, and small,

glittering eyes that would have warned her.

He took it without a word. In simple truth he was trying to restrain

himself. He felt that the time was not ripe for action--that a word

of the devouring passion which consumed him would be dangerous, and

he whispered to himself, "Not yet! not yet!" But her loveliness, that

touch of the rose to his face, overmastered his cool, calculating

spirit.

"Thank you," he said at last; "thank you very much. I shall value it

dearly. I shall put it on my desk in my dark, grim room, and think of

you."

Then Stella looked up and started slightly.

"Oh!" she said, hurriedly. "You would like some more perhaps? Pray take

what you would like," and she held out the knife, and looked upon him

with a sudden coldness in the eyes that should have warned him.

"No, I want no more," he said. "All the roses that ever bloomed would

not add to my pleasure. It is this rose from your hand that I value."

Stella made a slight movement toward the window, but he put out his

hand.

"Stay one moment--only a moment," he said, and in his eagerness he put

out his hand and touched her arm, the arm sacred to Leycester.

Stella shrank back, and a little shudder swept through her.

"What--what is it!" she asked, in a low voice that she tried to make

calm and cold and repressive.

He stood, shutting and opening the knife with a nervous restlessness,

as unlike his calm impassability as the streaming torrent that forces

its way through the mountain gorge is like the lake at their feet; his

eyes fixed on her face with anxious eagerness.

"I want to speak to you," he said. "Only a few words--a very few words.

Will you listen to me? I hope you will listen to me."

Stella stood, her face turned away from him, her heart beating,

but coldly and with fear and repugnance, not as it had beat when

Leycester's low tones first fell upon her ear.

He moistened his lips again, and his hand closed over the shut knife

with a tight clasp, as if he were striving to regain self-command.

"I know it is unwise. I feel that--that you would rather not listen to

me, and that I shall do very little good by speaking, but I cannot.

There are times, Stella----"

Stella moved slightly at the familiar name.

"There are times when a man loses self-control, when he flings prudence

to the winds, or rather, lets it slip from him. This is one of those

moments, Stella--Miss Etheridge; I feel that I must speak, let it cost

me what it may."

Still silent, she stood as if turned to stone. He put his hand to his

brow--his white, thin hand, with its carefully trimmed nails--and wiped

away the perspiration that stood in big beads.

"Miss Etheridge, I think you can guess what it is I want to say, and I

hope that you will not think any the less of me because of my inability

to say it as it should be said, as I would have it said. Stella, if you

look back, if you will recall the times since first we met, you cannot

fail to know my meaning."

She turned her face toward him for a moment, and shook her head.

"You mean that I have no right to think so. Do you think that you, a

woman, have not seen what every woman sees so quickly when it is the

case--that I have learned to love you!"

The word was out at last, and as it left him he trembled.

Stella did not start, but her face went paler than before, and she

shrank slightly.

"Yes," he went on, "I have learned to love you. I think I loved you

the first evening we met; I was not sure then, and--I will tell you

the whole truth, I have sworn to myself that I would do it--I tried to

fight against it. I am not a man easily given to love; no, I am a man

of the world--one who has to make his way in the world, one who has an

ambition; and I tried to put you from my thoughts--I tried hard, but I

failed."

He paused, and eyed her watchfully. Her face was like a mask of stone.

"I grew to love you more day by day--I was not happy away from you.

I carried your image up with me to London--it came between me and my

work; but I was patient--I told myself that I should gain nothing by

being too rash--that I must give you time to know me, and to--to love

me."

He paused and moistened his lips, and looked at her. Why did she not

speak--of what was she thinking?

At that moment, if he could but have known it, she was thinking of her

true lover--of the young lord who had not waited and calculated, but

who had poured the torrent of his passionate love at her feet--had

taken her in his arms and made her love him. And as she thought, how

small, how mean this other man seemed to her!

"I gave you mine--I meant to give you more," he continued; "I want to

do something worthy of your love. I am--I am not a rich man, Stella--I

have no title--as yet----"

Stella's eyes flashed for a moment, and her lips closed. It was an

unlucky speech for him.

"No, not yet; but I shall have riches and title--I have set my mind

on them, and there is nothing that I have set my mind on that I have

not got, or will not get--nothing!" he repeated, with almost fierce

intensity.

Still she did not speak. Like a bird charmed, fascinated by a snake,

she stood, listening though every word was torture to her.

"I have set my mind on winning your love, Stella. I love you as few men

love, with all my heart and soul. There is nothing I would not do to

win you, there is nothing I would--pause at."

A faint shudder stole through her; and he saw it, and added, quickly:

"I would do anything to make you happy--move heaven and earth to see

you always smiling as you smiled this morning. Stella, I love you! What

have you to say to me?"

He stopped, white and seemingly exhausted, his thin lips tightly

compressed, his whole frame quivering.