Only One Love, or Who Was the Heir Part 84

He saw her in the gla.s.s before she saw him.

Tastefully and simply dressed, she looked, if anything, more beautiful than ever, but not so bright and restless; Jack noticed that. There was an undefinable change about her, just as if she had gone through some trouble, or had done battle with some grief.

Suddenly she looked round and saw him, and stopped; one hand holding a chair, her face going from white to crimson.

Jack rose.

"I've startled you; I'm very sorry."

Lady Bell recovered herself, and went to him with outstretched hand and a look in her dark eyes that she tried to keep out of them.

"Jack," she said, almost involuntarily.

"Yes, it's I; like the bad penny, back again, Lady Bell."

And he sat down and laughed.

She sank into a chair beside him, and looked at his careworn face.

"Where have you been?" she asked, softly.

"To America," said Jack.

"You have been ill?" she said, still more softly.

Jack nodded.

"Yes. I'm all right now. And you? You don't look quite the thing?"

"Do I not?" she said, with a smile. "I am quite well. And is that all you are going to tell me of your wanderings?"

"No. I'll tell you everything some other time," said Jack, quietly.

"You are not going away again, then?" she asked, looking at him, and then away from him.

Jack flushed.

"That depends," he said, quietly.

"Depends on what?" she asked.

"On you," he said.

Lady Bell started, and the crimson flush flooded her face and neck. Her lips trembled, and she looked away.

"On me?" she murmured, faintly.

"On you," said Jack, earnestly. "Lady Bell, I have come back to ask you to be my wife."

She was silent; her face turned from him, so that he could not see the tears that welled up in her eyes.

Jack took her hand.

"Lady Bell, I know that I am not worthy of you--know it quite well.

There isn't a man in the world who is; I, least of all. I know, too, what the world would say if you should answer 'Yes.' It will impute all sorts of base motives to me. But, as Heaven is my witness, it is not for your wealth that I ask you to be my wife. I am poor, and in all sorts of trouble; but if you were poorer than I am I would still ask you."

"You would?" she murmured.

"Yes," he said, quietly. "Yes, I can say that, though I tell you in the same breath that I am, at this moment, being hunted for money. And I think you will believe me."

She made a gesture of a.s.sent with her hand.

"Dear Lady Bell," he continued, "during the last few months I have been looking back to those happy days we spent together; and when a man's down with the fever he looks back with keen and wise insight into the turn of things, and knows when he was happy in the past, and with whom; and I swore that, if ever I pulled through and got back, I would ask you if you did not think we might be as happy in the future as in the past.

Dear Bell, I would try and make you happy. Will you be my wife?"

Trembling in every limb, she sat silent, and with averted face. Then, suddenly and yet slowly, she turned her eyes upon him--eyes full of ineffable love and sadness.

Slowly, softly, she put her other hand in his, and smiled at him.

"You ask me to be your wife, Jack?"

"I do," he said. "Your answer, dear Bell?"

"Is--No," she said.

Jack started, and his eyes fell before the deep love and tenderness in hers. He would have drawn his hand away, but she still held it gently.

"Do you ask me why, Jack? I will tell you. It is because you do not love me."

He looked up with a start, and turned pale.

Lady Bell shook her head gently.

"Do not speak--it is useless. Besides, you would not tell me a lie, Jack. Listen; I, too, have been looking back; I, too, have learned a lesson--a truth--while you have been away. And that truth is, that others may love as truly and deeply as myself; and that others may find it as impossible to forget----"

Jack, pale and agitated, stopped her.

"The past is buried," he said, hoa.r.s.ely--"let it rest."

"It is not buried--it cannot be. See! it revives--springs up, even without the mention of her name. Jack, you do not love me--you cannot; for all your love has been given, is still given, to Una."

"For Heaven's sake!" he implored, rising and pacing the room.

Lady Bell looked at him.

"Ah, how you love her still, Jack! See how right I was; and yet you would come to me."

And the tears fall slowly.