The flush of happiness died out of his face. So then, after all, he only stood on a level with Stacy, the maid, in his goddess’s estimation. He drew just one step nearer to her.
“Juliet,” he said, in low, pained tones, “if you were not so exquisitely, so daintily beautiful, I could find it in my heart to say bitter things to you.”
He was right in his estimation of her beauty. She was lovely, with a grace that might well be called exquisite and dainty. To his fancy, as he stood there facing her, the exquisiteness and daintiness had never been more markedly apparent.
She was dressed in some light summer robe of the palest possible shade of mother-of-pearl green, a shade that threw into vivid relief the delicate colouring of her skin, the warm brown of her hair so tightly coiled around her small head. The upper panes of the window at which she stood were filled in with a mosaic of painted glass, whose varied tints the quivering morning sunlight threw like a changeful rainbow about her light draperies, and on the ground at her feet.
She gave a little sigh.
“I suppose, then, I am to understand that you would rather not be troubled with my requests?” she presently said.
He did not at once reply. He was still feasting his eyes on her loveliness, enjoying the beauty of lines and tints in a manner possible only to an artist or a poet.
“Your name by rights should have been Iris,” he said, at length, under his breath, and almost solemnly.
And forthwith his muse awakened, and began to sing in his ears some wonderful invocation to the rainbow messenger of the gods, which no doubt, in due course, would take its form in the orthodox iambics.
Juliet had to repeat her question before she could get it answered.
“Refuse!” he exclaimed. “Refuse you anything! Talk of the sea refusing to follow the moon before you talk of my refusing request of yours.”
“Oh, but there’s nothing half so complicated as tides and moons about what I want done,” said the girl, with a light laugh. “I only want an advertisement inserted in all the English and Continental papers—all the papers, that is, that ladies and gentlemen would be likely to read.”
The young man looked his astonishment. Then, recollecting the reputation which Juliet and Ida had for careless custody of their brooches and bracelets, asked:
“Is it emeralds or diamonds this time?”
“Neither,” answered Juliet. “And you must not ask me a single question. And, above all, you mustn’t let a single person know—no, not even your own mother—that either you or I have had anything to do with the advertisement. Promise me.”
“I promise a thousand times over. You may rely on me as you might—” He paused a moment, and then added, with as much of sarcastic bitterness as he was capable of levelling at his goddess: “On your maid Stacy.”
“Ah, you don’t know how much that says,” said Juliet, in no wise disconcerted. “Stacy was true as steel, and”—this added with a little laugh—“pliable as whalebone.”
“I’ll try and be the steel and whalebone combined,” he said, taking up his hat, as if ready to depart that very minute.
“Oh, please wait,” she exclaimed; “there’s no such hurry; I don’t want it inserted today, or tomorrow, but on the very day we leave town. I suppose you know that we go to Dering at the beginning of next week?”
Into the dim distance at once vanished all the pleasant meetings with his divinity at balls and theatres, dinners and garden-parties, which he was wont to say were his daily manna while he sojourned in the wilderness.
“Yes, I’ve teased father into it; I knew I should if I persevered. Peggy was furious at first—I knew it, because her manner grew so alarmingly sweet and insinuating; but it was all of no use. I told father that everything had lost its charm since Ida had married, that I was pining for country air, and, finally, that my boxes were packed, and that if they didn’t come with me I should start off by myself. That made them give in at once. I think they had visions of my turning the Hall upside down in their absence, inaugurating tennis-parties without chaperons, and so forth.”
“The beginning of next week!” was all that he could find to say, in a tone almost comic from its overweight of pathos.
“Yes. And the very day we leave town I want my advertisement to appear. Pray, pray don’t forget! It is most important. Yes, I know I haven’t told you yet what the advertisement is to be. I’ll write it down, so that there’ll be no mistake.”
She went to her father’s writing-table, and wrote on the back of an envelope just five words, which she handed to him.
Those five words were:
“Sub signo et sub rosa.
”
VIII
The “beginning of next week” saw Clive on his way back from Florence, and Lord Culvers and his family comfortably settled in their country house; but it brought never a word of tidings of or from the missing bride.
There could be no doubt about it, Lord Culvers was beginning to get seriously uneasy; his geniality of manner appeared to be departing from him; he began to grow silent and abstracted; he would fall occasionally into deep reveries, from which he would awaken with a start, and give short, sharp answers to anyone who chanced to address him.
Juliet also seemed to be losing a little of her brightness. During the last few days of their stay in town, she had taken interest in nothing save the preparations for their departure.
If the truth were told, their leaving town, after all, came as something of a relief to Lord Culvers. Wild and unreasonable as Juliet’s proposal had at first seemed to him, he was at heart uncommonly glad to get away from the embarrassing enquiries of a large circle of friends as to
