Wife in Name Only Part 30

"You can send her if you will, Norman."

Was it his fancy, or did he really, as he stood at the door, hear a deep, heart-broken sigh? Did her voice, in a sad, low wail, come to him--"Norman, Norman!"

He turned quickly[5], but she seemed already to have forgotten him, and was looking through the open window.

Was it his fancy again, when the door had closed, or did she really cry--"Norman!" He opened the door quickly.

"Did you call me, Philippa?" he asked.

"No," she replied; and he went away.

"I do not understand it," he thought; "there is something not quite right. Philippa is not like herself."

Then he went in search of Lady Peters, whom he bewildered and astonished by telling her that it lay in her power to make him the happiest of men.

"That is what men say when they make an offer of marriage," she observed; "and I am sure you are not about to make one to me."

"No; but, dear Lady Peters, I want you to help me marry some one else.

Will you go to the d.u.c.h.ess? She will tell you all about it."

"Why not tell me yourself?" she asked.

"She has better powers of persuasion," he replied, laughingly.

"Then I am afraid, if so much persuasion is required, that something wrong is on the _tapis_," said Lady Peters. "I cannot imagine why men who have beautiful young wives go yachting. It seems to me a terrible mistake."

Lord Arleigh laughed.

"The duke's yachting has very little to do with this matter," he said.

"Lady Peters, before you listen to the d.u.c.h.ess, let me make one appeal to you. With all my heart I beseech you to grant the favor that she will ask."

He bent his handsome head, and kissed her hand, while emotion rose to the lady's eyes.

"Is it something for you, Lord Arleigh?" she asked.

"Yes," he replied, "for my own unworthy self."

"Then I will do it if possible," she replied.

But when the d.u.c.h.ess of Hazlewood had told her what was needed, and had placed the whole matter before her, Lady Peters looked shocked.

"My dear Philippa," she said, "this is terrible. I could not have believed it. She is a lovely, graceful, pure-minded girl, I know; but such a marriage for an Arleigh! I cannot believe it."

"That is unfortunate," said her grace, dryly, "for he seems very much in earnest."

"No money, no rank, no connections, while he is one of the finest matches in England."

"She is his ideal," was the mocking reply. "It is not for us to point out deficiencies."

"But what will the duke say?" inquired her ladyship, anxiously.

"I do not suppose that he will be very much surprised. Even if he is, he will have had time to recover from his astonishment before he returns.

The duke knows that 'beauty leads man at its will.' Few can resist the charm of a pretty face"

"What shall I do?" asked Lady Peters, hopelessly. "What am I to say?"

"Decide for yourself. I decline to offer any opinion. I say simply that if you refuse he will probably ask the favor of some one else."

"But do you advise me to consent, Philippa?" inquired Lady Peters, anxiously.

"I advise you to please yourself. Had he asked a similar favor of me, I might have granted or I might have refused it; I cannot say."

"To think of that simple, fair-faced girl being Lady Arleigh!" exclaimed Lady Peters. "I suppose that I had better consent, or he will do something more desperate. He is terribly in earnest, Philippa."

"He is terribly in love," said the d.u.c.h.ess, carelessly, and then Lady Peters decided that she would accede to Lord Arleigh's request.

Chapter XXIII.

More than once during the week that ensued after his proposal of marriage to Madaline, Lord Arleigh looked in wonder at the d.u.c.h.ess. She seemed so unlike herself--absent, brooding, almost sullen. The smiles, the animation, the vivacity, the wit, the brilliant repartee that had distinguished her had all vanished. More than once he asked her if she was ill; the answer was always "No." More than once he asked her if she was unhappy; the answer was always the same--"No."

"You are miserable because your husband is not here," he said to her one day, compa.s.sionately. "If you had known how much you would have missed him, you would not have let him go."

There was a wondrous depth of pain in the dark eyes raised to his.

"I wish he had not gone," she said; "from the very depths of my heart I wish that." Then she seemed to recover her natural gayety. "I do not know, though, why I should have detained him," she said, half laughingly. "He is so fond of yachting."

"You must not lose all your spirits before he returns, Philippa, or he will say we have been but sorry guardians."

"No one has ever found fault with my spirits before," said the d.u.c.h.ess.

"You are not complimentary, Norman."

"You give me such a strange impression," he observed. "Of course it is highly ridiculous, but if I did not know you as well as I do, I should think that you had something on your mind, some secret that was making you unhappy--that there was a struggle always going on between something you would like to do and something you are unwilling to do. It is an absurd idea, I know, yet it has taken possession of me."

She laughed, but there was little music in the sound.

"What imaginative power you have, Norman! You would make your fortune as a novelist. What can I have to be unhappy about? Should you think that any woman has a lot more brilliant than mine? See how young I am for my position--how entirely I have my own way! Could any one, do you think, be more happy than I?"

"No, perhaps not," he replied.

So the week pa.s.sed, and at the end of it Lady Peters went with Madaline to St. Mildred's. At first the former had been unwilling to go--it had seemed to her a terrible _mesalliance_, but, woman-like, she had grown interested in the love-story--she had learned to understand the pa.s.sionate love that Lord Arleigh had for his fair-haired bride. A breath of her own youth swept over her as she watched them.

It might be a _mesalliance_, a bad match, but it was decidedly a case of true love, of the truest love she had ever witnessed; so that her dislike to the task before her melted away.