Captain Kyd Volume I Part 7

"I shall not compromise you in the least. There shall be no syllable of concession on your part mentioned; let me manage it my own way, and see if you do not love each other the better for it yet?"

"Coz!" she cried, placing her fore finger on her mouth reprovingly, yet pleased and smiling with the first dawnings of bright returning hope.

"I am glad to see you smile once more, and I am resolved you shall yet be happy," added Grace, who had shown that, beneath the light current of gayety that usually characterized her, there was a flow of deep and generous feeling; and that, with all her thoughtless levity, she was susceptible both of the sincerest attachment and of the warmest friends.h.i.+p. Her words conveyed the germe of hope to the breast of her cousin. Her confident manner inspired confidence; and the happy Kate, giving herself up to the direction of the sanguine feelings her language and presence had caused to spring up in her sinking heart, became all at once a different being.

"If I am happy in the way you mean, I shall owe it all to you," she said, kissing her. "Now for your plan, my sweet diplomatist."

"Now for my plan, then. That Lord Robert has gone home very angry indeed, there can be no question. Now, when a lover is angry, justly, with his mistress, he will be ever ready to meet her, not only half, but the whole, of the way, to bring about a reconciliation. When he has no right to be angry with her, and is so foolish as to be so, how much the more readily then will he be brought to her feet! There is a spice of argument for you. Now, as Lord Robert has no cause in the world to be offended with you, it follows that he has every cause in the world to induce him to acknowledge his offence, and ask pardon therefor on the very first opportunity. Now all that he wants cheerfully to do this, it appears to me, is the a.s.surance that, after such a philippic as that with which you were pleased to send him off, he will be received graciously."

"But how, if I should be inclined to be gracious, sage cousin of mine, is Lester to know it?"

"That will very easily be brought about, I think. Let me see!" and she seemed to muse very profoundly for a few seconds. "Ha! I have it. I will borrow that curious locket he gave you--"

"Locket, Grace--Lord Robert gave me!" repeated Kate, colouring, and looking out of the lattice as if some interesting object had at that moment drawn her attention.

"Yes," replied Grace, dryly, and with a look of the most provoking positiveness.

"It is no use, I see, to conceal anything from you, mischief! How _did_ you know he gave it to me?"

"Young ladies are not wont to take from their bosoms a boughten trinket, and slyly kiss it a hundred times a day, and--"

"Grace, Grace!" cried Kate, attempting to stop her saucy speech.

"And sleep with it under their pillow."

"Cousin Grace!"

"I have done," she said, quietly.

"You well may be. Oh, if I do not wish you had a lover, that I could repay you in kind!"

"Perhaps I have!" was the imperturbable rejoinder of the maiden.

"I dare say fifty whom you call so. Among the gay Oxford gallants, the heiress of a coronet could not be without admirers; but oh, if I knew only of one _lover_ who could set that little heart of yours a trembling!"

"You forget your locket, cousin," said the other, gravely.

"What shall be done with it, Grace?"

"Send it to Lester, with this message: '_He who returns this gift of love to her who sends it, shall with love be met_.' Now is not that very pretty, and as it should be?"

"What a wild creature! Would you have me send such a message to Lester, child? He would think me jesting with him."

"No, never. Is it not just what you want to say--what you feel--what you wish, above all things, he should know you feel?"

"Yes, indeed, Grace," she replied, with the most ingenuous navete.

"Then it shall go. Give me the token. Nay, part not with it so reluctantly; 'twill soon be back, with a prize worth a thousand of it.

Give it me, coz. Nay, then, kiss it! and so will I."

"No, you shall not!" cried Kate, with laughing earnestness.

"Oh, I _do_ hope _I_ never shall be in love!" said Grace, getting possession of the locket. "Here is pencil and paper. Can you write by this moonlight? Lovers, methinks, should write by no other light." She spread the paper on the window as she spoke.

"Write! what do you mean, Grace?" exclaimed Kate, with surprise.

"I mean for you to put down, in your nicest hand, my gem of a message to Robert."

"Never, Grace. What will he think of me?"

"He will think you love him very much."

"Just what I don't wish him to think," she said, with singular decision.

"Was there ever!" cried Grace, holding up both hands. "Well, this love is an odd thing! What instinctive coquetry! Like John Milton's Eve,

'All conscious of your worth, You would be woo'd, and, not unsought, be won.'

I don't understand this disguising love under a show of coldness--seeming to hate where the heart pants and glows with devotion.

Oh, if this be love, I'll none of it. Here is the pencil, and there is a fair sheet, and the moon is patiently holding her silver lamp for you; will you write?"

"I will, to gratify you, cousin Grace;" she said, taking the pencil and placing her fingers lightly on the paper which lay in the window.

"To please _me_! very well, be it so. Who could have believed, a quarter of an hour ago, that I should have had to coax you to send a line to Robert Lester! You may well hide your telltale face."

Kate bent her head over the gilded sheet and began to write, or, at least, to make characters with her pencil, when Grace, impatient at her slow progress, looked over her shoulder and exclaimed,

"Why, what are you writing? _Lester Robert, Robert Lester, Robert Lester, Lester Rob--._"

Kate glanced at what she had written, hastily run her pencil through it, and said, with a mortified laugh,

"I had forgotten what to write."

"And so put down what was deepest in your memory," said Grace, with a vexatious air. "Now take this fair page, and write as I repeat:

"'_He who shall bring again this gift of love to her who sends it, shall with love be met._'

"Is it written?"

"Letter for letter."

"And you will find that each letter will act as a charm. Never so few monosyllables as I have strung together here held so much magic."

"Who will be its bearer?" Kate now inquired in a lively tone.

"I will find a Mercury both sure and swift," she said, folding the locket in the billet.

This _gage d'amour_ was oval in shape, of plain gold, with a chased rim, a little raised, enclosing an azure field, on which, in exquisite enamel, were inlaid the crests of Lester and Bellamont, joined together by two clasped hands: beneath was the sanguine motto,