The Baronet's Bride Part 11

CHAPTER VII.

AFTER TEN YEARS.

"I have said it, and I mean it; they ought to know me well enough by this time, G.o.dsoe. I'd transport every man of them, the poaching scoundrels, if I could! Tell that villain d.i.c.k Darkly that the first time I catch him at his old tricks he shall follow the brother he makes such a howling about, and share his fate."

Sir Everard Kingsland was the speaker. He stood with one hand, white and shapely as a lady's, resting on the glossy neck of his bay horse, his fair, handsome face, flushed with anger, turned upon his gamekeeper.

Peter G.o.dsoe, the st.u.r.dy gamekeeper, standing before his young master, hat in hand, looked up deprecatingly.

"He takes it very hard, Sir Everard, that you sent his brother to Worrel Jail. His missis was sick, and two of the children had the measles, and Will Darkly he'd been out o' work, and they was poor as poor. So he turns to and snares the rabbits, and--"

"G.o.dsoe, are you trying to excuse this convicted poacher? Is that what you stopped me here to say?"

"I beg your pardon, Sir Everard; I only wanted to warn you--to put you on your guard--"

"To warn me--to put me on my guard? What do you mean? Has that villainous poacher dared to threaten me?"

"Not in my hearing, sir; but others say so. And he's a dark, vindictive brute; and he swore a solemn oath, they say, when his brother went to Worrel Jail, to be revenged upon you. And so, Sir Everard, begging your pardon for the freedom, I thought as how you was likely to be out late to-night, coming home from my lord's, and as Brithlow Wood is lonesome and dark--"

"That will do, G.o.dsoe!" the young baronet interrupted, haughtily. "You mean well, I dare say, and I overlook your presumption this time; but never proffer advice to me again. As for Darkly, he had better keep out of my way. I'll horsewhip him the first time I see him, and send him to make acquaintance with the horse-pond afterward."

He vaulted lightly into the saddle as he spoke.

The brawny gamekeeper stood gazing after him as he ambled down the leafy avenue.

"His father's son," he said; "the proudest gentleman in Devonshire, and the most headstrong. You'll horsewhip d.i.c.k Darkly, Sir Everard! Why, he could take you with one hand by the waist-band, and lay you low in the kennel any day he liked! And he'll do it, too!" muttered G.o.dsoe, turning slowly away. "You won't be warned, and you won't take precaution, and you won't condescend to be afeard, and you'll come to grief afore you know it."

The misty autumn twilight lay like a veil of silver blue over the peaceful English landscape; a cool breeze swept up from the sea over the golden downs and distant hills, and as Sir Everard rode along through the village, the cloud left his face, and a tender, dreamy look came in its place.

"She will be present, of course," he thought. "I wonder if I shall find her as I left her last? She is not the kind that play fast and loose, my stately, uplifted Lady Louise. How queenly she looked at the reception last night in those velvet robes and the Carteret diamonds!--'queen rose of the rose-bud garden of girls.' She is my elder by three round years at least, but she is stately as a princess, and at twenty-five preserves the ripe bloom of eighteen. She is all that is gracious when we meet, and my mother has set her heart upon the match. I have half a mind to propose this very night."

She was an earl's daughter, this stately Lady Louise, but so very impoverished an earl that the young Devonshire baronet, with his ancient name and his long rent-roll, was a most desirably brilliant match.

She was down on a visit to her brother, Lord Carteret, and had made a dead set at Sir Everard Kingsland from the hour she had met him first.

He was on his way to Lord Carteret's now. There was a dinner-party, and he was an honored guest; and Lady Louise was brilliant, in the family diamonds and old point lace, once more.

She was in the drawing-room when he entered--her stately head regally uplifted in the midst of a group of less magnificent demoiselles--a statuesque blonde, with abundant ringlets of flaxen lightness, eyes of turquoise blue, and a determined mouth and chin.

Sir Everard paid his respects to his host and hostess, and sought her side at once.

"Almost late," she said, with a brilliant, welcoming smile, giving him her dainty little hand; "and George Grosvenor has been looking this way, and pulling his mustache and blushing redder than the carnations in his b.u.t.ton-hole. He wants to take me in to dinner, poor fellow, and he hasn't the courage to do it."

"With your kind permission, Lady Louise, I will save him the trouble,"

answered Sir Everard Kingsland. "Grosvenor is not singular in his wish, but I never gave him credit for so much good taste before."

"Mr. Grosvenor is more at home in the hunting-field than the drawing-room, I fancy. Apropos, Sir Everard, I ride to the meet to-morrow. Of course you will be present on your 'bonny bay' to display your prowess?"

"Of course--a fox-hunt is to me a foretaste of celestial bliss. With a first-rate horse, a crack pack of hounds, a 'good scent,' and a fine morning, a man is tempted to wish life could last forever. And you are only going to ride to the meet, then, Lady Louise?"

"Yes; I never followed the hounds, I don't know the country and I can't ride to points. Besides, I am not really Amazonian enough to fancy a scamper across the country, flying fences and risking my precious neck."

"I must own that, to me, a lady never looks less attractive than in a hunting-field, among yelping hounds, and shouts, and cheers, and cords and tops, and scarlet coats."

"That comes of being a poet and an artist; and Sir Everard Kingsland is accused of being both. You want to fancy us all angels, and you can not reconcile an angelic being with a side-saddle and a hard gallop.

Now, I don't own to being anything in the Di Vernon line myself, and I don't wish to be; but I do think a pretty girl never looks half so pretty as when well mounted. You should have seen Harrie Hunsden, as I saw her the other day, and you would surely recant your heresy about ladies and horse-flesh."

"Is Harrie Hunsden a lady?"

"Certainly. Don't you know her? She is Captain Hunsden's only daughter--Hunsden, of Hunsden Hall, one of your oldest Devon families.

You'll find them duly chronicled in Burke and Debrett. Miss Hunsden is scarcely eighteen, but she has been over the world--from Quebec to Gibraltar--from Halifax to Calcutta. Two years of her life she pa.s.sed at a New York boarding-school, of which city her mother was a native."

"Indeed!" Sir Everard said, just lifting his eyebrows. "And Miss Hunsden rides well?"

"Like Di Vernon's self."

"Is your Miss Hunsden pretty? and shall we see her at the meet to-morrow?"

"Yes to both questions; and more than at the meet, I fancy. She and her thorough-bred, Whirlwind, will lead you all. Her scarlet habit and 'red roan steed' are as well known in the country as the duke's hounds, and her bright eyes and dashing style have taken by storm the hearts of half the fox-hunting squires of Devonshire."

She laughed a little maliciously. Truth to tell, not being quite sure that her game was safely wired, and dreading this Amazonian Miss Hunsden as a prospective rival, she was nothing loath to prejudice the fastidious young baronet beforehand, even while seeming to praise her.

"I am surprised that you have not heard of her," she said. "Sir Harcourt Helford and Mr. Cholmondeley actually fought a duel about her, and it ended in her telling them to their faces they were a pair of idiots, and flatly refusing both. 'The Hunsden' is the toast of the country."

Sir Everard shuddered.

"From all such the G.o.ds deliver us! You honor Miss Hunsden with your deepest interest, I think, Lady Louise?

"Yes, she is such an oddity. Her wandering life, I presume, accounts for it; but she is altogether unlike any girl I ever know. I am certain," with a little malicious glance, "she will be your style, Sir Everard."

"And as I don't in the least know what my style is, perhaps you may be right."

Lady Louise bit her lip--it was a rebuff, she fancied, for her detraction. And then Lady Carteret gave that mysterious signal, and the ladies rose and swept away in billows of silk to the drawing-room, and the gentlemen had the talk to themselves "across the walnuts and the wine."

To one gentleman present the interim before rejoining the ladies was unmitigatedly dull, even though the talk ran on his favorite topics---horse-flesh and hunting. He was in love, he thought complacently, and Lady Louise's eyes had sparkled to-day and her smiles had flashed their bewildering brightness upon him more radiantly than ever before.

"How pleased my mother will be!" Sir Everard thought. "I will ask Lady Louise this very night. An earl's daughter--though a bankrupt--is a fitting mate for a Kingsland."

Lady Louise sat at the piano, the soft light falling full on her pale, statuesque face, and making an aureole around her fair, shapely head.

Sir Everard Kingsland crossed over and stood beside her, and Lord and Lady Carteret exchanged significant glances, and smiled.

It was a very desirable thing, indeed; they had brought Louise down for no other earthly reason; and Louise was playing her cards, and playing them well.

If Sir Everard had one taste stronger than another it was his taste for music, and Lady Louise held him spell-bound now. She played, and her fingers seemed inspired; she sung, and few non-professionals sung like that.