Vera Nevill Part 23

His pulses beat hotly at the bare possibility of such a thing. To possess his Vera in so short a time seemed something too great and too wonderful to be true.

"Do not lose any more time," continued Helen, following up the impression she saw she had made upon him. "Speak to her this evening; get her to fix your wedding-day within the month; believe me, a man gets no advantage by putting things off too long; and there are dangers, too, in your case."

"Dangers! How do you mean?" he said, quickly.

"Oh, nothing particular--only she is very handsome, and she is young, and not accustomed, I dare say, to admiration. Other men may admire her as well as you."

"If they did, it could do her no harm," he answered, stiffly.

"Oh, no, of course not; but you can't keep other men from looking at her. When once she is your wife you will have her more completely to yourself."

Sir John made no particular answer to this; but when he had done dancing with Mrs. Romer, he led her back to her seat and thanked her gravely and courteously for her suggestions.

"You have done me a great service, Mrs. Romer, and I am infinitely obliged to you," he said, and then went his way to find Vera.

He was not jealous; but there was a certain uneasiness in his mind. It might be, indeed, true that others would admire and love Vera; others more worthy of her, more equally mated with her youth and loveliness; and he, he said to himself in his humility with regard to her, he had so little to offer her--nothing but his love. He knew himself to be grave and quiet; there was nothing about him to enchain her to him. He lacked brilliancy in manner and conversation; he was dull; he was, perhaps, even prosy. He knew it very well himself; but suppose Vera should find it out, and find that she had made a mistake! The bare thought of it was enough to make him shudder.

No; Mrs. Romer was a clever, well-intentioned little woman. She had meant to give him a hint in all kindness, and he would not be slow to take it.

What she had meant to say was, "Take her yourself quickly, or some one else will take her from you."

And Sir John said to himself that he would so take her, and that as quickly as possible.

Standing talking to her younger son, later on that evening, Lady Kynaston said to him, suddenly,

"Why does Vera wear peac.o.c.k's feathers?"

"Why should she not?"

"They are bad luck."

Maurice laughed. "I never knew you to be superst.i.tious before, mother."

"I am not so really; but from choice I would avoid anything that bears an unlucky interpretation. I saw her with you in the conservatory as I came downstairs."

Maurice turned suddenly red. "Did you?" he asked, a little anxiously.

"Yes. I did not know it was her, of course. I did not see her face, only her dress, and I noticed that it was trimmed with peac.o.c.k's feathers; that was what made me recognize her afterwards."

"That was bad luck, at all events," said Maurice, almost involuntarily.

"Why?" asked Lady Kynaston, looking up at him sharply. But Maurice would not tell her why.

Lady Kynaston asked no more questions; but she pondered, and she watched.

Captain Kynaston did not dance again with Vera that night, and he did dance several times with Mrs. Romer; it did not escape her notice, however, that he seemed absent and abstracted, and that his face bore its hardest and sternest aspect throughout the remainder of the evening.

So the ball at Shadonake came to an end, as b.a.l.l.s do, with the first gleams of daylight; and nothing was left of all the gay crowd who had so lately filled the brilliant rooms but several sleepy people creeping up slowly to bed, and a great _chiffonade_ of tattered laces, and flowers, and coloured sc.r.a.ps littered all over the polished floor of the ball-room.

CHAPTER XIV.

HER WEDDING DRESS.

Those obstinate questionings Of sense and outward things, Fallings from us, vanishings, Blank misgivings-- High instincts before which our moral nature Did tremble like a guilty thing surprised.

Wordsworth.

"Vera, are you not coming to look at it?"

"Presently."

"It is all laid out on your bed, and you ought to try it on; it might want alterations."

"Oh, there is plenty of time!"

"It is downright affectation!" says old Mrs. Daintree, angrily, to her daughter-in-law, as she and Marion leave the room together; "no girl can really be indifferent to a wedding dress covered with yards of lovely Brussels lace flounces; she ought to be ashamed of herself for her ingrat.i.tude to Lady Kynaston for such a present; she must really want to see it, only she likes playing the fine lady beforehand!"

"I don't think it is that," says Marion, gently; "I don't believe Vera is well."

"Fiddlesticks!" snorts her mother-in-law. "A woman who is going to marry ten thousand a year within ten days is bound to be well."

Vera sits alone; she leans her head against the window, her hands lie idle in her lap, her eyes mechanically follow the rough, gray clouds that rack across the winter sky. In little more than a week she will be Vera Nevill no longer; she will have gained all that she desired and tried for--wealth, position, Kynaston--and Sir John! She should be well content, seeing that it has been her own doing all along. No one has forced or persuaded her into this engagement, no one has urged her on to a course contrary to her own inclination, or her own judgment. It has been her own act throughout. And yet, as she sits alone in the twilight, and counts over on her fingers the few short days that intervene between to-day and her bridal morning, hot miserable tears rise to her eyes, and fall slowly down, one by one, upon her clasped hands. She does not ask herself why she weeps; possibly she dares not. Only her thoughts somehow--by that strange connection of ideas which links something in our present to some other thing in our past, and which apparently is in no way dependent upon it--go back instinctively, as it were, to her dead sister, the Princess Marinari.

"Oh, my poor darling Theodora!" she murmurs, half aloud; "if you had lived, you would have taken care of your Vera; if you had not died, I should never have come here, nor ever have known--any of them."

And then she hears Marion's voice calling to her from the top of the stairs.

"Vera! Vera! do come up and see it before it gets quite dark."

She rises hastily and dashes away her tears.

"What is the matter with me to-day!" she says to herself, impatiently.

"Have I not everything in the world I wish for? I am happy--of course I am happy. I am coming, Marion, instantly."

Upstairs her wedding dress, a soft cloud of rich silk and fleecy lace, relieved with knots of flowers, dark-leaved myrtle, and waxen orange blossoms, lies spread out upon her bed. Marion stands contemplating it, wrapt in ecstatic admiration; old Mrs. Daintree has gone away.

"It is perfectly lovely! I am so glad you had silk instead of satin; nothing could show off Lady Kynaston's lace so well: is it not beautiful?

you ought to try it on. Why, Vera! what is the matter? I believe you have been crying."

"I was thinking of Theodora," she murmurs.

"Ah! poor dear Theodora!" a.s.sents Marion, with a compa.s.sionate sigh; "how she would have liked to have known of your marriage; how pleased she would have been."

Vera looks at her sister. "Marion," she says, in a low earnest voice; "if--if I should break it off, what would you say?"

"Break it off!" cries her sister, horror-struck. "Good heavens, Vera!