LITMIR.BIZ

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      "I have to make a pudding," she said.

      He looked at the white arms, and then at her, with an intensified eagerness.

      "If you knew how beautiful the morning is—how grand the river looks—you would let the pudding go."

      Stella shook her head.

      He inclined his head, too highly bred to persist.

      "I am so sorry," he said, simply. "I am sorry now that I have gained my way. I thought that you would have come."

      Stella stood silent, and, with something like a sigh, put down the things and held out her hand; but as he took the finger which she gave him, his face brightened, and a light came into his eyes.

      "Are you still firm?"

      "I would not desert the pudding for anything, my lord," said Stella, naively.

      At the "my lord," a slight shade covered his face, but it went again instantly, as he said:

      "Well, then, will you come when the inevitable pudding is made? There," he said, eagerly, and still holding her hand he drew her to the window and pointed with his whip, "there's the place! It is not far—just across the meadows, and through the first gate. Do you see it?"

      "Yes," said Stella, gently withdrawing her hand.

      "And you will come?" he asked, his eyes fixed on hers with their intent earnestness.

      At that instant the word—the odious word—"infamous" rang in her ears, and her face paled. He noticed the sudden pallor, and his eyes grew dark with earnest questioning.

      "I see," he said, quietly, "you will not come!"

      What was it that moved her? With a sudden impulse she raised her eyes and looked at him steadily.

      "Yes, I will come!" she said.

      He inclined his head without a word, called to the dogs, and passed out.

      Stella stood for a moment looking after them; then she went into the kitchen—not laughing nor singing, but with a strange gravity; a strange feeling had got possession of her.

      She felt as if she was laboring under some spell. "Charmed" is an often misused word, but it is the right word to describe the sensation. Was it his face or his voice that haunted her? As she stood absently looking down at the table, simple words, short and commonplace, which he had used rang in her ears with a new meaning.

      Mrs. Penfold stood and regarded her in curious astonishment. She was getting used to Stella's quickly changing moods, but the sudden change bewildered her.

      "Let me do it, Miss Stella," she pleaded, but Stella shook her head firmly; not by one inch would she swerve from her cause for all the beautiful voice and noble face.

      In rapt silence she finished her work, then she went up-stairs and put on her hat and came down. As she passed out of the house and down the path, the mastiff leaped the gate and bounded toward her, and the next moment she saw Lord Leycester seated on a stile.

      He dropped down and came toward her.

      "How quick you have been," he said, "I thought a pudding was a mystery which demanded an immensity of time."

      Stella looked up at him, her dark brows drawn to a straight line.

      "You waited for me?" she said.

      "No," he said, simply, "I came back. I did not like to think that you should come alone."

      Stella was silent.

      "Are you angry?" he asked, in a low voice.

      Stella was silent for a moment, then she looked at him frankly.

      "No," she said.

      If she had but said "yes," and turned back! But the path, all beautiful with the bright coloring of Spring stretched before her, and she had no thought of turning back, no thought or suspicion of the dark and perilous land toward which she was traveling by his side.

      Already the glamour of love was falling upon her like the soft mist of a Summer evening; blindly, passively she was moving toward the fate which the gods had prepared for her.

CHAPTER VII.

       Table of Contents

      Side by side they walked across the meadows; the larks rising before them and soaring up to the heavens with a burst of song; the river running in silvery silence to the sea; the green trees waving gently in the Summer breeze; and above them the long stretching gray masonry of Wyndward Hall.

      Lord Leycester was strangely silent for some minutes since that "Are you angry?" and Stella, as she walked by his side, stooping now and again to gather a cowslip, glanced up at his face and wondered whether her uncle could be mistaken, whether they were not all deceived in thinking the quiet, graceful creature with the beautiful face and dreamy, almost womanly, soft eyes, wild and reckless, and desperate and altogether bad. She almost forgot how she had seen him on that first night of their meeting, with his whip upraised and the sudden fire of anger in his eyes.

      Presently he spoke, so suddenly that Stella, who had been lost in her speculations respecting him, started guiltily:

      "I have been wondering," he said, "how Mr. Etheridge takes the change which your presence must make in the cottage."

      Stella looked up with surprise, then she smiled.

      "He bears it with admirable resignation," she said, with that air of meek archness which her uncle found so amusing.

      Lord Leycester looked down at her.

      "That is a rebuke for the presumption of my remark?" he said.

      "No," said Stella.

      "I did not mean to be presumptuous. Think. Your uncle has lived the whole of his life alone, the life of a solitary, a hermit; suddenly there enters into that life a young and beau—a young girl, full of the spirit of youth and its aspirations. It must make a great change."

      "As I said," says Stella, "he bears it with pious fortitude." Then she added, in a lower voice, "He is very good to me."

      "He could not be otherwise," was the quiet response. "I mean that he could not be anything but good, gentle, and loving with any living thing. I have known him since I was a boy," he added. "He was always the same, always living a life of dreams. I wonder whether he takes you as a dream?"

      "A very substantial and responsible one, then," said Stella, with her little laugh. "One that lasts through the daytime."

      He looked at her with that strange intent look which she had learned that she could not meet.

      "And you?" he said.

      "I?" said Stella, though she knew what he meant.

      He nodded.

      "How do you like the change?—this still, quiet life in the Thames valley. Are you tired of it already? Will you pine for all the gayeties you have left?"

      Stella looked up at him—his eyes were still fixed on hers.

      "I have left no gayeties," she said. "I left a bare and horrid school that was as unlike home as the desert of Sahara is like this lovely meadow. How do I feel? As if I had been translated to Paradise—as if I, who was beginning to think that I was alone in the world I had no business to be in, had found some one friend to love——"

      She paused, and he, glancing at the black waistband to her white dress, said, with the tenderest, most humble voice:

      "I beg your pardon. Will you forgive me?—I did not know——"

      And his voice broke.

      Stella looked up at him with a

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