It was a beautiful morning toward the end of August; the balmy sweetness of spring had given way to the glowing radiance of summer. The golden corn waved in the fields, the hedge rows were filled with wild flowers, the fruit hung ripe in the orchards.
Nature wore her brightest smile. The breakfast room at Earlescourt was a pretty apartment; it opened on a flower garden, and through the long French windows came the sweet perfume of rose blossoms.
It was a pretty scene--the sunbeams fell upon the rich silver, the delicate china, the vases of sweet flowers. Lord Earle sat at the head of the table, busily engaged with his letters. Lady Earle, in the daintiest of morning toilets, was smiling over the pretty pink notes full of fashionable gossip. Her delicate, patrician face looked clear and pure in the fresh morning light.
But there was no smile on Ronald's face. He was wondering, for the hundredth time, how he was to tell his father what he had done. He longed to be with his pretty Dora; and yet there was a severe storm to encounter before he could bring her home.
"Ah," said Lady Earle, suddenly, "here is good news--Lady Charteris is positively coming, Rupert. Sir Hugh will join her in a few days. She will be here with Valentine tomorrow."
"I am very glad," said Lord Earle, looking up with pleasure and surprise. "We must ask Lady Laurence to meet them."
Ronald sighed; his parents busily discussed the hospitalities and pleasures to be offered their guests. A grand dinner party was planned, and a ball, to which half the country side were to be invited.
"Valentine loves gayety," said Lady Earle, "and we must give her plenty of it."
"I shall have all this to go through," sighed Ronald--"grand parties, dinners, and balls, while my heart longs to be with my darling; and in the midst of it all, how shall I find time to talk to my father? I will begin this very day."
When dinner was over, Ronald proposed to Lord Earle that they should go out on the terrace and smoke a cigar there. Then took place the conversation with which our story opens, when the master of Earlescourt declared his final resolve.
Ronald was more disturbed than he cared to own even to himself.
Once the words hovered upon his lips that he had married Dora.
Had Lord Earl been angry or contemptuous, he would have uttered them; but in the presence of his father's calm, dignified wisdom, he was abashed and uncertain. For the first time he felt the truth of all his father said. Not that he loved Dora less, or repented of the rash private marriage, but Lord Earle's appeal to his sense of the "fitness of things" touched him.
There was little time for reflection. Lady Charteris and her daughter were coming on the morrow. Again Lady Earle entered the field as a diplomatist, and came off victorious.
"Ronald," said his mother, as they parted that evening, "I know that, as a rule, young men of your age do not care for the society of elderly ladies; I must ask you to make an exception in favor of Lady Charteris. They showed me great kindness at Greenoke, and you must help me to return it. I shall consider every attention shown to the lady and her daughter as shown to myself."
Ronald smiled at his mother's words, and told her he would never fail in her service.
"If he sees much of Valentine," thought his mother, "he can not help loving her. Then all will be well."
Ronald was not in the house when the guests arrived; they came rather before the appointed time. His mother and Lady Charteris had gone to the library together, leaving Valentine in the drawing room alone. Ronald found her there. Opening the door, he saw the sleeve of a white dress; believing Lady Earle was there, he went carelessly into the room, then started in astonishment at the vision before him. Once in a century, perhaps, one sees a woman like Valentine Charteris; of the purest and loveliest Greek type, a calm, grand, magnificent blonde, with clear, straight brows, fair hair that shone like satin and lay in thick folds around her queenly head--tall and stately, with a finished ease and grace of manner that could only result from long and careful training. She rose when Ronald entered the room, and her beautiful eyes were lifted calmly to his face.
Suddenly a rush of color dyed the white brow. Valentine remembered what Lady Earle had said of her son. She knew that both his mother and hers wished that she should be Ronald's wife.
"I beg your pardon," he said hastily, "I thought Lady Earle was here."
"She is in the library," said Valentine, with a smile that dazzled him.
He bowed and withdrew. This, then, was Valentine Charteris, the fine lady whose coming he had dreaded. She was very beautiful--he had never seen a face like hers.
No thought of love, or of comparing this magnificent woman with simple, pretty Dora, ever entered his mind. But Ronald was a true artist, and one of no mean skill. He thought of that pure Grecian face as he would have thought of a beautiful picture or an exquisite statue. He never thought of the loving, sensitive woman's heart hidden under it.
