Yes, if the Guido in the dining-room below was beautiful—if features of purest modelling, dark hazel eyes, and a clear complexion faintly flushed with delicate carnation—if sculptured eyelids, darkly fringed, a mouth half sad, half scornful, and dimples that showed momentarily in the mockery of a self-contemptuous smile—if these meant beauty, Laura Malcolm was assuredly beautiful. She was too true an artist not to know that this was beauty which smiled at her bitterly from the darkness of the glass.
“Perhaps I am not his style,” she said, with a little laugh. “I have heard Edward Clare say that of girls I have praised. ‘Yes, she is very well, but not my style,’ as if Providence ought to have had him in view whenever it created a pretty woman. ‘Not my style,’ Edward would drawl languidly, as much as to say, ‘and therefore a failure.’ ”
Every idea of John Treverton now remaining in Laura’s mind was a thought of bitterness. She was so angry with him that she could not give him credit for one worthy act or one honourable feeling. As nearly as a soul so generous could hate did she now approach to the sin of hatred.
This was her mood one day in the beginning of December, indeed it had been her mood always for the last three months; but in the leisure of her late solitude her anger had intensified. This was her mood as she walked in the garden, in the cold sunshine, looking at the pale prim faces of the fading chrysanthemums—the perky china asters lending the last touch of bright colour to the dying year—the languorous late roses, flaunting their sickly beauty, like ballroom belles who refused to bow their heads to the sentence of time. It was a morning of unusual mildness: the arrow point of the old-fashioned vane pointed southwest; the leaves of the evergreen oaks were scarcely ruffled by the wind; the tall Scotch firs, red and rugged columns topped by masses of swart foliage, stood darkly out against a calm, clear sky.
This garden was Laura’s chief delight in her loneliness. God had gifted her with that deep and abiding love of nature, which is perhaps one of His richest gifts. They who possess it can never be utterly joyless.
She had walked in garden and orchard for more than an hour, when she came back by the old yew tree arch, and, just in the spot where she had seen him more than half a year ago, she saw John Treverton standing again today.
What an unstable thing is a woman’s anger against the man she loves. Laura’s first feeling at sight of John Treverton was indignation. She was on the point of receiving him with crushing politeness, of freezing him with coldest courtesy, when she perceived that he looked ill and careworn, and was gazing at her with eyes full of yearning tenderness. Then she forgot her wrongs in one moment, and went up to him and gave him her hand, saying gently—
“What have you been doing with yourself all this time?”
“Knocking about London, doing very little good for myself or anyone else,” he answered frankly.
Then he seemed to lose himself in the delight of being with her. He walked by her side, saying never a word, only looking at her with fond, admiring eyes; as if she had come upon him suddenly, like a revelation of hitherto unknown loveliness and delight.
At last he found a voice, but not for any brilliant utterance.
“Are you really just a little glad to see me again?” he asked. “Remember, you promised me a welcome.”
“You have been in no haste to claim the fulfilment of my promise. It was made more than six months ago. You have had other welcomes in the meanwhile, no doubt, and have forgotten all about Hazlehurst Manor.”
“The Manor House, and she who occupies it, have never been absent from my thoughts.”
“Really; and yet you have stayed away so long. That looks rather like forgetfulness.”
“It was not forgetfulness. There have been reasons—reasons I cannot explain.”
“And do they no longer exist?”
“No,” he gave a long sigh, “they are at an end now.”
“You have been ill, perhaps,” speculated Laura, looking at him with a solicitude she could not wholly conceal.
“I have been far from well. I have been working rather harder than usual. I have to earn my bread, you know, Laura.”
“Have you any profession now that you have left the army?” asked Laura.
“I left the army six years ago. I have managed to live by my own labour since that time. My career has been a chequered one. I have lived partly by art, partly by literature, and have not succeeded in winning a name in either profession. That does not sound a brilliant account, does it? Its only merit is truth. I am nobody. Your generosity and my cousin Jasper’s will may make me somebody. My fate depends on you.”
This was hardly the tone of a lover. It was a tone that Laura’s pride would have resented had she not inwardly believed that John Treverton loved her. There is a subtle power in the love which keeps silence mightier than all love’s eloquence. A hand that trembles when it touches another, one swift look from loving eyes, a sigh, a tone, will tell more than an oration. John Treverton was the most reticent of lovers, yet his reserve did not offend Laura.
They went into the grave old house together, and sat down to luncheon, tête à tête, waited upon by Trimmer, the old butler, who had lived more than thirty years with Jasper Treverton, and had lifted Laura out of the carriage when his master brought her to the manor a delicate
