Chapter III: A Friend in Need

A week slipped by on magical wings.

Some delightful excursion, drive or entertainment was planned for every day, and the guests of Sir Anthony and Lady Hamilton were indeed a “gay party,” as Wil had prophesied they would be.

Had it not been for the two that were playing at cross purposes, there would have been nothing to mar the delight of any one.

If Arley Wentworth had only been Lady Elaine, with her title and twenty thousand a year, or if her position and fortune had been equal to hers, Philip Paxton would have bowed on worshiping knees at her shrine before that week was over.

He was bewitched and fascinated by her--she acquired a power over him as no one had ever won before; he never heard her voice without a thrill--she never came near him without his pulses leaped; the very sound of her light laugh and step--the rustle even of her dress was music to him.

But, alas! he had decreed that it would be folly for him to pass by the greater prize for the sake of a little love; he was ambitious for a brilliant future, which fortune and position would at once secure for him, and he could not afford to sacrifice it for the sake of a foolish sentiment, which, at the most, could only give him a little more domestic happiness; and perhaps, after all, he might learn to love Lady Elaine just as well if he should marry her; and he had made up his mind to accomplish this if possible, notwithstanding the confidential confession of his friend, and the wrong that he would thus do him.

“Wil is certain to be a rich man anyway--he will inherit all his father’s large property, and it would not be fair for him to have two such fortunes, while it is only by my wits and the hardest work that I am making my way along in the world.”

Thus he reasoned the matter with himself, shutting his eyes to the fact that he was betraying the confidence of his friend, using him dishonorably, and doing violence to the nobler feeling of his own nature.

But he did not progress very rapidly in his undertaking for, just as he would succeed in getting Lady Elaine nicely to himself, and perhaps right in the middle of a fine speech, something would be sure to interrupt them and break up their _tete-a-tete_.

But he never suspected that there was any “malice prepense” about it, or that Arley Wentworth was thwarting him in every possible way--that she was employing all her arts, and making herself so delightfully agreeable to him whenever the opportunity offered, just for the sake of keeping him from poaching on forbidden ground, and thus giving Wil the desire of his heart.

But it was so, nevertheless; she watched them unceasingly, and if she saw Philip about to seek Lady Elaine, she would instantly dart up to him, in her bright, bewitching way, upon some pretense or other, claim his attention, and draw him into conversation or some playful controversy, until Wil could capture his lady-love; then, laughing in her sleeve over her success, yet with a strange pain gradually creeping into her heart, she would suddenly remember some engagement, work, or errand, and slip away again, leaving him to his own devices.

“What is your opinion of Mr. Paxton?” she asked her one day, when, having dressed earlier than usual, she ran into Lady Elaine’s room to have a half-hour’s chat before dinner.

“I think he is very agreeable and intelligent,” Lady Elaine quietly replied.

“Yes--a trifle superior--a little above the generality of young men, isn’t he?” Arley asked, with a peculiar emphasis, and a covert glance at the fair face opposite her.

A delicate flush rose to the creamy cheek, and the lovely blue eyes were hidden beneath their white lids.

“Is he?” queried Lady Elaine, with an assumption of cool indifference that amused Arley exceedingly.

“I asked you to pass judgment upon him; but if you want my opinion of him I suppose I can give it, and of the other young gentlemen of our party, too,” she retorted, with a wicked gleam in her dark eyes. “I think he is very handsome. You seldom see such magnificent eyes in anybody; and he has such a finely-shaped head, so square and well-developed. Then look at the life and energy in his every movement. Why, if Fred Vane had one-half as much, what a man he would make with his opportunities. Then he--Mr. Paxton, I mean--is so cultivated and entertaining, he must have improved his time well while at Oxford; while as for Wil----”

She hesitated purposely, and the sly puss got just the reward she had been seeking.

“I’m sure, Arley, you are very unfair in your criticisms, especially when you are a guest in the home of Wil Hamilton. You should not draw odious comparisons,” Lady Elaine said, with a sudden flash of spirit, her eyes gleaming and darkening, until they looked like two purple, starry-hearted pansies, while a vivid spot of red burned on each cheek.

“Odious comparisons!” Arley repeated, drooping her lids to hide the dancing spirit in her own eyes. “I don’t think I’ve said anything very bad. I was merely expressing my admiration for the recent addition to our party, and--don’t you know? I was expected to admire him; for, if you remember Wil took special pains to impress his superiority upon me long before his arrival, and I’m sure I do not wish to be unappreciative or to disappoint anybody----”

“But you need not depreciate others for the sake of lauding him. Wil Hamilton, of all others, least deserves it,” interrupted Lady Elaine, with a heightening color.

“I depreciate Wil Hamilton!” cried mischievous Arley, with well-assumed astonishment. “My dear Elaine, you misunderstand me entirely--indeed, you did not even allow me to finish what I was going to say about him.”

“What were you going to say?” the fair girl asked, with a searching look at her friend’s dimpling face, and then dropping her telltale eyes.

“I was going to remark that, as for Wil, there was no use drawing any comparisons, for--he is without a peer in my estimation.”

A little smile of pleasure flitted over Lady Elaine’s sweet lips, the waxen lids fluttered over her downcast eyes, while a vivid blush suffused her fair face, burning up into the waves of golden hair above her forehead, and creeping down among the folds of snowy lace about her white throat.

Arley, observing it, laughed outright and clapped her dimpled hands with glee at these signs of the state of her friend’s heart. Then, leaning suddenly forward, she kissed her on the forehead.

“My beautiful ‘Lily of Mordaunt,’ you are a darling,” she said. “You are pure and true to your heart’s core; you are loyal, you are brave, and if I am ever in need of a friend, I know that you will not fail me.”

How vividly she recalled that assertion two years later!

Lady Hamilton was to give a large dinner party that evening to a number of her friends in the county, and there were also several distinguished people from London invited.

Lady Elaine was very glad of the presence of these visitors, for they would serve to shield her somewhat from observation, and she was too conscious of her recently discovered secret to wish to be at all conspicuous.

She had chosen for the occasion a dress of pure white, of some soft, gauzy material, and unrelieved by an atom of color, save a cluster of dark, waxen-green leaves, which she had fastened at her throat with a single diamond, that glittered among them like a huge drop of dew.

“Mademoiselle is perfect,” her maid had cried, when her toilet was completed; “there will be no one below one-half so lovely.”

“Hush, Nanette! you must not flatter me,” her mistress said, with a reproving smile. “I know,” she added, “that you have taken a great deal of pains with my dress, and it is beautiful--it pleases me very much; but I have no doubt there will be far richer toilets here to-night than mine.”

“There will be no one so lovely,” persisted Nanette, while her admiring eyes rested affectionately upon that fair face and symmetrical figure reflected in the full-length mirror.

It was a little late when she entered the drawing-room; she had waited purposely, hoping to be able to slip in among the crowd very quietly and thus escape observation.

But, as it happened, this brought upon her the very thing that she had wished to avoid.

As the curtains to one of the arches of the drawing-room parted to admit the peerless girl, there was a momentary hush, and almost every eye was fixed upon her with surprise and admiration, for she made an entrancing picture there in her white trailing robes against the warm, rich crimson of the curtains.

But after the first heart-throb of dismay, as she saw the sea of faces turned toward her, she passed to the side of Annie Hamilton, who was assisting her mother to do the honors of the occasion.

Wil, at the opposite side of the room, beholding her, felt his heart bound within him with mingled exultation and pain--exultation over her surpassing loveliness and pain lest something would cause him to fail to win her.

“She is like a stately Calla in her beauty; but her spirit, so sweet and pure, is like the fragrance of the water lily,” he breathed, while an almost unconquerable desire possessed him to clasp her to him and bear her away from the sight and sound of every one, and pour forth the burning love that was consuming him.

“Who is that beautiful girl?” everybody asked; and they were greatly surprised on being told that she was Sir Anthony’s ward and the daughter of the Duke of Mordaunt, and then eagerly pressed forward for introductions.

“Jer-i-co!” ejaculated a young sprig of nobility, who was honoring the occasion with his presence, “won’t she make a sensation when she comes out? Twenty thousand a year! Ah, won’t there be a fluttering among the birds of prey when that bit of news becomes known?” and he immediately began to flutter his own feathers, and to edge toward the object of his admiration, to be presented.

Philip Paxton flushed to his very brow as he too watched her enter the room.

“I never dreamed that any one could be so exquisitely lovely,” he said. “She is not so sprightly and entertaining as the Wentworth Rose,” he added, his eye wandering to where Arley stood, and who was also in white--simple white tulle, with dashes of scarlet verbenas in its graceful drapery, and a bunch of them in her white gloved hands.

She was as bright and cheery as some happy bird, and he sighed as he looked at her.

“I wish she had more of Arley’s spirit and wit,” he continued, his glance returning to Lady Elaine, “but,” as he caught sight of that costly glittering gem among the green leaves--it was one of the Mordaunt diamonds, of which there were many and worth a fortune in themselves--“but I shall marry her if I can.”

As it happened, it fell to him to take her out to dinner, and owing to the excitement of the occasion, and something, perhaps, to the admiration which she had excited, and of which she could not fail to be conscious, she was unusually bright and animated. She chatted and laughed almost as freely and merrily as Arley herself, who was bewitching the son of an earl as fast as ever she could; though she had frowned threateningly and cast a look of commiseration at poor Wil when she saw Lady Elaine upon Philip Paxton’s arm, while he, Wil, had to take down a spinster of forty, who wore corkscrew curls and was otherwise frightful in a toilet of mulberry and green.

The dinner was, apparently, a brilliant success, and the guests in their happiest humor.

No one, save Arley, perhaps, suspected the pain and passion that were raging in the breast of Sir Anthony’s heir, while he covertly watched his love glow and brighten in the presence of her attendant, as he had never seen her do before.

“Shall I learn to hate my dearest friend?” he fiercely asked himself, as he saw him bend almost fondly toward his companion and whisper words which brought a more vivid color to her cheek, and made her droop her white lids in maidenly confusion.

He grew so furiously jealous and disturbed that, as soon as the ladies had withdrawn, he excused himself from the table and stole away out of the house, and out of the sound of the mirth and laughter of the gay company.

He wanted to be alone a while; he needed to calm his excited nerves and to try and exorcise, if possible, the spirit of evil that was rising up and taking possession of him.

He wandered down to the lake, his head bared to the cool evening breeze, for his brow was hot and feverish; and here loosing his wherry, he leaped into it and pushed off from the shore for a hard row in the moonlight.