Chapter VI: Disappointment

Wil Hamilton went directly to his father upon his return with Lady Elaine from the forest, and told him that he had won her for his wife, asking, as a mere matter of form--for, of course, he knew that he could make no objections--his sanction to the engagement.

It is needless to say that Sir Anthony received the news with delight, and offered his heartiest congratulations.

“It it a fine thing for you, Wil, my boy, not only to have won so lovely a bride, but with her so magnificent a fortune. Lady Elaine’s twenty thousand a year, together with your own expectations, will enable you to do about as you like for the remainder of your life,” he remarked, rubbing his smooth, plump hands together, with a satisfied smile.

Wil looked up at him and flushed hotly.

“I give you my word of honor, sir, I never once thought of her money,” he said, earnestly.

Sir Anthony laughed.

“Young love forgets a good many things,” his father returned, indulgently. “Nevertheless that does not alter the convenience of the matter. A purse full of gold is something not to be despised at any time.”

“I shall settle every pound upon her,” Wil Hamilton answered, proudly, and looking somewhat disturbed. The subject of Lady Elaine’s money jarred upon him, somehow. “And it will make no difference with me--it will not change my plans for the future in the least. I am just as ambitious to make a name and position for myself as I have ever been.”

“I am glad to hear that, Wil,” Sir Anthony responded, gravely, and with a look of pride and fondness at the manly, self-reliant fellow, “for I am ambitious for you; you are my only boy, and I want you to be heard from in the future. I want the name of Hamilton to continue to be honored for all time. But aside from all pecuniary benefit, I am very much pleased at your prospective marriage with Lady Elaine. As my ward I have admired her excessively--as a daughter I shall love her tenderly.”

“Thank you, sir,” Wil said, with glowing eyes, and shook his father’s hand with a warmth that amused that gentleman greatly.

Thus the matter was settled most happily for all parties, and the next morning the engagement was announced.

Sir Anthony did it in his happiest manner.

Going up to Lady Elaine, as soon as breakfast was over, he took the blushing girl by the hand, and, turning toward the household, remarked:

“My friends, I am so proud and happy that I cannot refrain from asking you to congratulate me upon the prospect of having another daughter in my house.”

Of course the family and friends gathered around Lady Elaine immediately, to offer congratulations and express their approbation; and for a while there was a perfect babel of good wishes, and rejoicing over the happy young couple.

Philip Paxton alone held aloof from this gay group. He gave one look of blank astonishment at the lovely girl, when Sir Anthony made this announcement; then, his face crimson with anger and disappointment, he abruptly turned and left the room.

The next time he met her alone he faced her with a bitter sneer.

“My faith in womankind has had a severe blow,” he said; “you told me, Lady Elaine, that your hand was pledged to no one.”

“I simply told Mr. Paxton the truth--I was betrothed to no one at that time,” she replied, but lifting her bright head with a haughty gesture, as if to warn him that she was not accountable to him for her actions.

“You have made a bad man of me,” he retorted, fiercely, a dark look on his handsome face; “you have changed my whole nature--if I become a hardened wretch--if my career is marked by reckless deeds and hardened acts, you will know what has caused it. You could have molded me like wax--with you as the guiding spirit of my life I could have been everything that was good and noble; but now--I believe I shall go to the devil just as fast as ever I can!”

Lady Elaine flushed crimson at this mad and reckless speech, yet there was much of pity in her heart for him. If he really loved her, as he professed to, his sufferings must be akin to Wil’s when he believed her lost to him, but for all that she felt that he had no right to address her in the way he had done.

“Mr. Paxton,” she returned, gently, yet with a dignity that awed him, “for all the evil which you may do in the future no one save yourself will in any way be responsible. You alone will be held accountable. No one can regret more than I the unfortunate circumstances of night before last, and I would gladly have saved you all the pain of that occasion had I been able to do so; but I hold myself guiltless of any wrong to you, for I never suspected, until that moment, that you entertained any other feelings save those of friendship toward me.”

“You must have been blind, then,” he muttered between his closely-shut teeth.

“I think more than I have been blind,” she answered, with a vivid flush, as she looked back and remembered in how many ways she must have betrayed her deep and growing attachment for Wil, and yet he, the most interested of all, had failed to read her heart.

“Perhaps,” she added, more gently than she had yet spoken, “we have all been so absorbed in our own feelings that we have been blind to those of others. Mr. Paxton, believe me, I would like to continue to regard you as a friend for the sake of Wil, and----”

“Wil Hamilton and I can never be friends after this!” he cried, excitedly.

Lady Elaine’s eyes flashed a dangerous light, her lips curled with scorn at this cowardly speech.

“What were you going to say?” he queried, remembering that he had interrupted her.

“It does not matter,” she returned, with cold dignity; “but I think it is hardly the part of a gentleman to address a lady as you have addressed me to-day. I am in no way accountable to you, nor is Mr. Hamilton, for the compact which exists between us, and for you to assume that we have injured you thereby is a presumption for which I have no toleration.”

With these words she turned quickly away and left him to his own uncomfortable reflections.

He ground his teeth savagely as he watched her graceful figure moving swiftly down the walk where they had met, and finally vanished into the house.

“I am a blundering idiot,” he cried, fiercely, “or I should have held my tongue and not aroused her contempt for me in this manner. I shall have to take a new tack, or I shall make enemies of the whole family, and that I cannot afford to do, for there is no telling how much I may need their influence in the future.”

That afternoon’s mail brought him a letter which made him grow white as death, and swear deep and terrible oaths, though his lips had never in his life before been guilty of such profanity.

It informed him that a speculation in which he had been engaged had burst like a bubble, and the large amount of money which he had put into it was lost--gone forever.

“There goes three of the best years of my life! Curse the luck!” he cried, with exceeding bitterness, as he crushed the letter in his hands and paced his chamber like a caged animal.

He fought a fierce battle with himself over this loss for more than an hour, and at the end of that time he exclaimed, with sudden resolution:

“I vow I’ll do it! I am ruined, but if I could only have gained my point with Lady Elaine it would have made no difference. I should not have minded my loss at all. Why in time couldn’t she have bestowed her favor upon me rather than upon that fool of a boy, who will have money enough of his own? But ‘half a loaf is better than no bread at all,’ as the saying has it. I’ll see what headway I can make with the other one. I believe the girl likes me, or could be made to, if I exerted myself a trifle to be agreeable to her, and I’m sure she’s an enchanting little witch, and my fallen fortunes must be mended in some way. I swear I cannot submit to such arbitrary impoverishment, and begin way down at the bottom of the ladder again.”

Evening found Philip Paxton as smiling and serene as if there were no such things as poverty and disappointment in the world.

There was not a trace of the storm and bitterness which had raged within him during the day, upon his smooth brow nor in his clear, smiling eyes.

He met Wil as cordially as if he had not been the instrument of his shattered hopes, and the demons of jealousy and hatred still raging in his own heart.

“You’re in luck, my boy,” he said, clapping him heartily on the shoulder, as he came upon him standing alone upon the porch.

Wil looked up in surprise, and searched his friend’s face with a keen glance.

“I couldn’t offer my congratulations with the crowd this morning,” Philip went on; “but I hope they are none the less acceptable coming at this hour.”

“No,” Wil replied, his face lighting up as he grasped his friend’s hand warmly. “I was only afraid I should not have them at all. I feared that this might--might make feeling between us, for--of course I knew--I could not help seeing that you were interested in the same quarter,” he concluded, with some embarrassment.

“I was--I confess it, Wil; but--but of course only one could win, and the loser must make the best of it, I suppose.”

Some one came out and joined them just then, and Wil made no reply; but he was intensely relieved to find that there would be no rupture between them, and never suspected that the bitterness in Philip’s heart had been covered up from motives of policy.

Later in the evening he passed near where Lady Elaine was sitting, and stopping an instant before her, he said, in a low tone, intended only for her ear:

“My presumption was intolerable. I assure your ladyship I shall never cease to regret it.”

Without waiting for her to reply, he bowed and passed on, while Lady Elaine thought, with a glance of pity:

“Poor fellow! His disappointment made him forget himself.”

But a change had come over Arley Wentworth since the engagement of her friend had been announced.

Hitherto she had always been the first to notice and hail the appearance of Philip Paxton in the drawing-room, and nearly always managed by some pretty pretext or other, to claim his attention, and, by her light badinage and repartee, keep him chained to her side until Wil could secure Lady Elaine to himself.

When, however, the engagement was announced that morning, she had shot one furtive, triumphant glance at the discomfited suitor, and then heaved a sigh of relief, which had in it something of pain as well.

“Well, my strategic campaign is at an end, and I am glad of it. I don’t believe I could have kept it up much longer,” she said; and there was a worn, weary expression on her young face, which, had any one seen it, might have led to suspect that, perhaps, she had sustained some wounds in the battle herself.

But when Lady Elaine went upstairs, she ran into her room with a radiant face.

“You darling!” she cried, winding her arms about her waist, and giving her a delightful little hug. “So you’ve struck your colors at last! Here I have been manœuvring for this very thing for a long time, and mentally scolding you for your obstinacy all the while.”

“My obstinacy?” Lady Elaine cried, blushing with confusion, though a happy smile wreathed her red lips.

“Yes, your obstinacy. You persisted in keeping aloof from Wil unless he almost forced himself upon you; and then you would receive the attentions of Mr. Paxton, though it made Wil perfectly wretched, and, besides all that, when it was expressly understood that he was to be my especial cavalier. Where were your eyes, that you could not see that your handsome lover was nearly distracted with envy and jealousy?”

“Arley, Arley, do stop that unruly tongue of yours, or I shall begin to think that some one else is nearly distracted with envy and jealousy,” Lady Elaine retorted, laughing.

Arley Wentworth blushed a fiery crimson.

“I don’t care what any one thinks now that it is all settled between you and Wil,” she said defiantly. “I knew from the first,” she ran on, “that he was over head and ears in love with you, and that his life would be ruined if he lost you, and besides----”

“Besides what, dear?” her companion asked, as she hesitated and looked up at her, archly.

“I knew that you loved him, and I thought it too bad that a lovely romance should be spoiled just for the want of a little manœuvring; yes, I will confess it now,” she continued, in reply to Lady Elaine’s look of surprise, “I have interposed in every way to help you and Wil along--I pounced upon your would-be knight whenever I saw him approaching you ‘with malice aforethought,’ and bore him away a captive, bound with invisible chains; I assure you, you have no idea what an accomplished strategist I have grown to be during the last three or four weeks. You were right the other day--I did set a little trap for you, and you fell into it charmingly. If I had found that you did not love Wil, I should, of course, have allowed matters to go on as they would, and Philip Paxton might have won you and welcome if he could. But it is a load off my mind to have the thing settled, and just as it should be, too. I know you will be delightfully happy, for Wil is a jewel, and you’re another; so take my blessing, and joy go with it forever.”

The gay girl had rattled this off with a nervous merriment which was very unnatural, and as soon as she had finished she gave her fair companion a hasty kiss, and then bounded out of the room without giving her any opportunity to reply.

But if Lady Elaine could have seen her five minutes later, stretched upon her bed, in an abandonment of passionate weeping, she would have wondered more than ever at her mood.

But the storm was not of long duration. Arley Wentworth was very proud, and she was not long in resenting the weakness that had made her weep.

She started suddenly up, her face one sheet of flame.

“I will not be a fool,” she cried, clenching her small hands, and lifting her head defiantly, “if I could steep my thoughts in oblivion I would do it. At all events I will not ‘wear my heart upon my sleeve for daws to peck at’--that is a very new sentiment,” she added, with a bitter smile, “but it appears to be a very apt quotation for my case.”

She went to her basin and dashed the cold water over her flushed face, bathing it until she had removed all traces of her recent tears; then dressing herself with unusual care, she went gayly down to dinner, and was so charming and brilliant that she was the very life of the party throughout the evening.