Chapter XI: In the Conservatory

In an atmosphere of drooping acacias, little palms, curious ferns, cacti, and other exotics in tubs and pots, where the light was subdued by the greenery overhead and around, and where the plashing of a beautiful bronze fountain alone broke the stillness, for in the nook of that great conservatory to which Sir Redmond Sleath had successfully drawn Ellinor alone, the music of the band and the merry voices of the garden party were scarcely heard, they were seated together on a blue velvet lounge; and he, having possessed himself of her fan, was slowly fanning her, while he hung admiringly over her--a process to which she submitted with a soft, dreamy smile in her speaking hazel eyes; while with every motion of the fan the ripples of her fine dark hair were blown slightly to and fro.

Certainly a short intimacy had put these two on terms of familiarity, for he said, as he ceased to fan her, and settled down on the lounge by her side, with one arm, casually, as it were, thrown along the back thereof,

'I am not a stranger to you now.'

His voice was pleasantly modulated as he stooped over her, and looked down on her drooping eyelashes.

'Oh, no--not now,' replied Ellinor.

'I am so happy to hear you admit this.'

'Why?'

Ellinor felt her question to be foolish, as it was a leading one.

'Can you ask me?' said Sir Redmond, in a still lower voice, and venturing; to touch--just to pat--her hand; 'there are many persons whom we may know for years, and yet find them somehow strangers, but it is not so with you and I.'

He now took her hand in his, and saw that it was delicately white--for she had drawn a glove off--and felt soft as velvet; he saw, too, that her white-veined eyelids with their long lashes drooped under his earnest gaze, and that her red lips quivered. Was he actually influencing her already? He could scarcely believe it, even with all his unparalleled assurance.

She glanced nervously round her.

'Do not be alarmed, dear girl--darling Ellinor, let me say,' whispered Sleath, in his most honeyed accents, for who was to call him to account for his impertinence, if impertinence it really was? 'I shall be content to wait--to wait and win your love, if you will but let me hope. Some day--say one day you will listen to me, and I shall tell you more freely, more boldly how I love you--how I shall make you my own!'

Ellinor trembled as she listened to these stilted phrases that came so glibly from his tongue--how often he had said them to others she little knew; and--even Robert Wodrow apart--she had never played with a man's heart as Sleath was now playing with hers.

He said much more, running on in the same inflated style, feeling quite a zest in the, to him, well-nigh worn-out game of love-making; and Ellinor listened. She was far from being a fool, yet she failed to realise that his tones were very second-hand indeed, and that the real expression of his blue eyes, if triumphant, was also false.

Her voice trembled so that she made no response, and the flowers in the breast of her dress rose and fell with the quickened beating of her fluttered and, we are sorry to say, happy heart.

A conviction troubled her, nevertheless, and would not be put aside--that he would master her and compel her to love him blindly by the mere force of his--practised--will, and she strove to resist it.

'You are over-confident, though flattering me, Sir Redmond,' said she, a little defiantly at last.

'And what does that prove?'

'That you are not, perhaps, what you really profess to be--in love.'

'With you?'

'Yes,' she replied, in a breathless voice.

'Have you ere this learned what love is?'

'I know what it should be like--timid and diffident,' she replied, uneasily, as her thoughts flashed sorrowfully to poor studious Robert Wodrow.

'You fear I do not love you?' he asked, reproachfully.

'I do not fear it.'

'Look into my eyes.'

She did look, and her own lowered, for she saw that which so often passes for love with the unthinking or unwary--deep and burning passion; and again she glanced nervously around her, but felt impelled to remain where she was. Sir Redmond detected the motion, and, misconstruing it, said, with a contemptuous smile that was too subtle for her to perceive,

'You and that--a--Mr. Robert Wodrow were sweethearts, as it is called, when you were children, I have heard.'

'Indeed!'

'Well?'

'The very reason, if true, that we should wish to be no more to each other,' replied Ellinor, with some annoyance, remembering certain angry and bitter speeches of Robert's when last they met and parted, and some of his dark looks within the last hour.

Sir Redmond was radiant at this response. She drew on her gloves, and was about to rise, when he detained her, and, drawing her suddenly towards him, boldly kissed her, not once, but twice!

She grew very pale, and drew back, and felt as if about to weep.

'Why do you shrink from me, Ellinor?' he asked, with tenderness, while detaining her hands.

'I do not shrink; but--but all this has been so sudden.'

'Listen to me, dearest--dearest Ellinor. With all your artistic tastes, you must of course appreciate pretty things?'

'I do,' she replied, tremblingly, not knowing what was coming next.

'Do you admire this?' he asked, drawing from a pocket and unclasping a scarlet morocco case, on the blue satin lining of which there reposed a necklace of virgin gold, with a locket attached, studded with coral and diamonds, both miracles of the jeweller's art.

'It is lovely!' exclaimed the girl.

'I am glad you like it, for it is yours.'

'Mine!' said the girl, in a breathless voice, as she felt herself grow pale, and recognised the costliness of the jewel, but scarcely knowing what she did or what she said, while a curious mixture of dumb joy in her new lover and remorse for the former one seized her.

She heard hurried and passionate words poured into her ear; she felt the firm, warm clasp of Sir Redmond's hands on hers as he begged permission to clasp the necklet round her slender throat, while yieldingly she turned towards him, and deftly--he was not unused to episodes such as this--as he touched her soft, white skin, he clasped it on, his eyes glowing with fire and animation as he bent over her sweet little face.

The latter was pale rather than flushed, and her mobile lips were quivering as he pressed his to them, pursuing his advantage with all the courage, skill, and tact his past rascally experience had given him; while the force of his sudden love, if it scared, also delighted Ellinor, though the upbraiding and set visage of Robert Wodrow seemed to rise between them.

'One day I shall see the family diamonds of the house of Sleath sparkling on your brow and bosom, love,' said he, kissing her eyes, as gravely as if the said house of Sleath had come in with the European rabble of the Conqueror. 'And you promise to be mine, Ellinor?' he added, pressing her close to him.

'Yes,' she replied, in a scarcely audible whisper.

'There are some men who can love several women in succession--or imagine they do so. I am not one of these, believe me, darling! I have never--could never have done that. You, Ellinor, are the first love of my heart--my first and only one!'

How he talked, this man who knew well what passion was, but never loved, and the girl was too truthful generally herself to doubt; so her heart throbbed as his honeyed words fell on her willing ear.

'And so, love, we shall soon be made one now,' he whispered, with another caress.

After a time she said, timidly and blushingly,

'You will tell--you will talk with Dr. Wodrow about all this, Redmond?'

'How delicious to hear my name on your lips! But--Dr. Wodrow--why--is he a relation?'

'Why then--what then?'

'He is a kind of guardian; papa, on his deathbed, bequeathed Mary and me to his care.'

'Consult him--impossible!' said Sir Redmond, whose face darkened. 'Why should we condescend to consult that old pump with the Sabbath-day face, when our own hearts agree? Besides, if my uncle, from whom I have great expectations, knew that I had married a Scotch girl--he has such curious prejudices----'

'Your uncle?' queried Ellinor, timidly.

'I have, unfortunately, an old and strangely-tempered relation in that degree. He is dying under an incurable disease, and probably cannot live out this winter--certainly not next spring. I am the heir to all his estates, and it is his fancy that I should marry into a family of title--'

'Otherwise?'

'I shall lose every shilling--every one!'

'Poor man! If the end is so near, surely we can wait, Redmond--nay, of course, we must wait,' she added, coyly and fondly.

'I cannot wait, my love for you will not permit me, yet I am, though well enough off, not so rich that I can afford to lose a great inheritance. Could we--can we--but keep our marriage from his knowledge? But we will talk of all this another time, darling. I am too hasty, too impetuous, with you. People are coming this way. Take my arm; let us go!'

And he led her out into the sunlighted lawn in such a state of bewilderment that but for the chain and locket, of which, to avoid explanations, she divested herself, she would have deemed the whole episode a dream.

So 'the song was sung, the tale was told, and the heart was given away.'

Ellinor, on rejoining her friends, looked about her, and felt somewhat of a relief that she could nowhere see Robert Wodrow, who, as we have said, had abruptly taken his departure, and even amid the splendour of Sir Redmond's proposal--for a splendid one it seemed to poor Ellinor--an emotion of reproach for unloyalty to Robert Wodrow, the first and early lover of her girlish life, rose up in her mind.

While her soul was yet loaded with the memory of that, to her, most naturally great episode in the conservatory, on which all her future life was to turn, we may wonder what she would have thought had she overheard a few bantering words that passed between Sir Redmond Sleath and the Honourable Blanche Galloway as they were looking towards her and evidently talking about her, while Mrs. Wodrow, who was near, strained her ears to listen.

'A wife, you say? No, my dear Miss Galloway; I can't afford such a luxury in these times, and consequently cannot be a marrying man, unless----'

'Unless what?'

'I found one facile enough to have me, and with the necessary amount of acreage, coalpits, money in the Funds, or elsewhere.'

'If so, why are you so attentive in that absurd quarter, where there is no money certainly?' asked the lady, pointing to Ellinor with her fan.

'Why, indeed!' thought Mrs. Wodrow, exasperated about her son Robert.

Sir Redmond paused.

'Why?' asked the young lady again, categorically.

'_Pour passer le temps_,' replied Sir Redmond, with one of his insolent smiles, as he twirled out the ends of his tawny moustachios.

Mrs. Wodrow did not hear his answer, though she saw the expression of his face; and at this reply Miss Galloway smiled triumphantly and disdainfully while slowly fanning herself.