The Haunted Chamber - Margaret Wolfe Hungerford (latest books to read .TXT) 📗

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"A bond! I do not follow you," exclaims Florence, bewildered.

"Ah, you will not trust me; you will not confide in me!"

"I have nothing to confide," persists Florence, still deeply puzzled.

"Well, let it rest so," returns Adrian, now greatly wounded at her determined reserve, as he deems it. He calls to mind all Mrs. Talbot had said about her slyness, and feels disheartened. At least he has not deserved distrust at her hands. "Promise me," he entreats at last, "that, if ever you are in danger, you will accept my help."

"I promise," she replies faintly. Then, trying to rally her drooping spirits, she continues, with an attempt at a smile, "Tell me that you too will accept mine should you be in any danger. Remember, the mouse once rescued the lion!"--and she smiles again, and glances at him with a touch of her old archness.

"It is a bargain. And now, will you rest here awhile until you feel quite restored to calmness?"

"But you must not remain with me," Florence urges hurriedly. "Your guests are awaiting you. Probably"--with a faint smile--"your partner for this waltz is impatiently wondering what has become of you."

"I think not," says Adrian, returning her smile. "Fortunately I have no one's name on my card for this waltz. I say fortunately, because I think"--glancing at her tenderly--"I have been able to bring back the smiles to your face sooner than would have been the case had you been left here alone to brood over your trouble, whatever it may be."

"There is no trouble," declares Florence, in a somewhat distressed fashion, turning her head restlessly to one side. "I wish you would dispossess yourself of that idea. And, do not stay here, they--every one, will accuse you of discourtesy if you absent yourself from the ball-room any longer."

"Then, come with me," says Adrian. "See, this waltz is only just beginning: give it to me."

Carried away by his manner, she lays her hand upon his arm, and goes with him to the ball-room. There he passes his arm round her waist, and presently they are lost among the throng of whirling dancers, and both give themselves up for the time being to the mere delight of knowing that they are together.

Two people, seeing them enter thus together, on apparently friendly terms, regard them with hostile glances. Dora Talbot, who is coquetting sweetly with a gaunt man of middle age, who is evidently overpowered by her attentions, letting her eyes rest upon Florence as she waltzes past her with Sir Adrian, colors warmly, and, biting her lip, forgets the honeyed speech she was about to bestow upon her companion, who is the owner of a considerable property, and lapses into silence, for which the gaunt man is devoutly grateful, as it gives him a moment in which to reflect on the safest means of getting rid of her without delay.

Dora's fair brow grows darker and darker as she watches Florence, and notes the smile that lights her beautiful face as she makes some answer to one of Sir Adrian's sallies. Where is Dynecourt, that he has not been on the spot to prevent this dance, she wonders. She grows angry, and would have stamped her little foot with impatient wrath at this moment, but for the fear of displaying her vexation.

As she is inwardly anathematizing Arthur, he emerges from the throng, and, the dance being at an end, reminds Miss Delmaine that the next is his.

Florence unwillingly removes her hand from Sir Adrian's arm, and lays it upon Arthur's. Most disdainfully she moves away with him, and suffers him to lead her to another part of the room. And when she dances with him it is with evident reluctance, as he knows by the fact that she visibly shrinks from him when he encircles her waist with his arm.

Sir Adrian, who has noticed none of these symptoms, going up to Dora, solicits her hand for this dance.

"You are not engaged, I hope?" he says anxiously. It is a kind of wretched comfort to him to be near Florence's true friend. If not the rose, she has at least some connection with it.

"I am afraid I am," Dora responds, raising her limpid eyes to his. "Naughty man, why did you not come sooner? I thought you had forgotten me altogether, and so got tired of keeping barren spots upon my card for you."

"I couldn't help it--I was engaged. A man in his own house has always a bad time of it looking after the impossible people," says Adrian evasively.

"Poor Florence! Is she so very impossible?" asks Dora, laughing, but pretending to reproach him.

"I was not speaking of Miss Delmaine," says Adrian, flushing hotly. "She is the least impossible person I ever met. It is a privilege to pass one's time with her."

"Yet it is with her you have passed the last hour that you hint has been devoted to bores," returns Dora quietly. This is a mere feeler, but she throws it out with such an air of certainty that Sir Adrian is completely deceived, and believes her acquainted with his _tete-a-tete_ with Florence in the dimly lit anteroom.

"Well," he admits, coloring again, "your cousin was rather upset by the acting, I think, and I just stayed with her until she felt equal to joining us all again."

"Ah!" exclaims Dora, who now knows all she had wanted to know.

"But you must not tell me you have no dances left for me," says Adrian gayly. "Come, let me see your card." He looks at it, and finds it indeed full. "I am an unfortunate," he adds.

"I think," says Dora, with the prettiest hesitation, "if you are sure it would not be an unkind thing to do, I could scratch out this name"--pointing to her partner's for the coming dance.

"I am not sure at all," responds Sir Adrian, laughing. "I am positive it will be awfully unkind of you to deprive any fellow of your society; but be unkind, and scratch him out for my sake."

He speaks lightly, but her heart beats high with hope.

"For your sake," she repeats softly drawing her pencil across the name written on her programme and substituting his.

"But you will give me more than this one dance?" queries Adrian. "Is there nobody else you can condemn to misery out of all that list?"

"You are insatiable," she returns, blushing, and growing confused. "But you shall have it all your own way. Here"--giving him her card--"take what waltzes you will." She waltzes to perfection, and she knows it.

"Then this, and this, and this," says Adrian, striking out three names on her card, after which they move away together and mingle with the other dancers.

In the meantime, Florence growing fatigued, or disinclined to dance longer with Dynecourt, stops abruptly near the door of a conservatory, and, leaning against the framework, gazes with listless interest at the busy scene around.

"You are tired. Will you rest for awhile?" asks Arthur politely; and, as she bends her head in cold consent, he leads her to a cushioned seat that is placed almost opposite to the door-way, and from which the ball-room and what is passing within it are distinctly visible.

Sinking down amongst the blue-satin cushions of the seat he has pointed out to her, Florence sighs softly, and lets her thoughts run, half sadly, half gladly, upon her late interview with Sir Adrian. At least, if he has guessed her secret, she knows now that he does not despise her. There was no trace of contempt in the gentleness, the tenderness of his manner. And how kindly he had told her of the intended change in his life! "Their paths would lie far asunder for the future," he had said, or something tantamount to that. He spoke no doubt of his coming marriage.

Then she begins to speculate dreamily upon the sort of woman who would be happy enough to be his wife. She is still idly ruminating on this point when her companion's voice brings her back to the present. She had so far forgotten his existence in her day-dreaming that his words come to her like a whisper from some other world, and occasion her an actual shock.

"Your thoughtfulness renders me sad," he is saying impressively. "It carries you to regions where I can not follow you."

To this she makes no reply, regarding him only with a calm questioning glance that might well have daunted a better man. It only nerves him however to even bolder words.

"The journey your thoughts have taken--has it been a pleasant one?" he asks, smiling.

"I have come here for rest, not for conversation." There is undisguised dislike in her tones. Still he is untouched by her scorn. He even grows more defiant, as though determined to let her see that even her avowed hatred can not subdue him.

"If you only knew," he goes on, with slow meaning, regarding her as he speaks with critical admiration, "how surpassingly beautiful you look to-night, you would perhaps understand in a degree the power you possess over your fellow-creatures. In that altitude, with that slight touch of scorn upon your lips, you seem a meet partner for a monarch."

She laughs a low contemptuous laugh, that even makes his blood run hotly in his veins.

"And yet you have the boldness to offer yourself as an aspirant to my favor?" she says. "In truth, sir, you value yourself highly!"

"Love will find the way!" he quotes quickly, though plainly disconcerted by her merriment. "And in time I trust I shall have my reward."

"In time, I trust you will," she returns, in a tone impossible to misconstrue.

At this point he deems it wise to change the subject; and, as he halts rather lamely in his conversation, at a loss to find some topic that may interest her or advance his cause, Sir Adrian and Dora pass by the door of the conservatory.

Sir Adrian is smiling gayly at some little speech of Dora's, and Dora is looking up at him with a bright expression in her blue eyes that tells of the happiness she feels.

"Ah, I can not help thinking Adrian is doing very wisely," observes Arthur Dynecourt, some evil genius at his elbow urging him to lie.

"Doing--what?" asks his companion, roused suddenly into full life and interest.

"You pretend ignorance, no doubt"--smiling. "But one can see. Adrian's marriage with Mrs. Talbot has been talked about for some time amongst his intimates."

A clasp like ice seems to seize upon Miss Delmaine's heart as these words drop from his lips. She restrains her emotion bravely, but his lynx-eye reads her through and through.

"They seem to be more together to-night than is even usual with them," goes on Arthur blandly. "Before you honored the room with your presence, he had danced twice with her, and now again. It is very marked, his attention to-night."

As a matter of fact Adrian had not danced with Mrs. Talbot all the evening until now, but Florence, not having been present at the opening of the ball, is not in a position to refute this, as he well knows.

"If there were anything in her friendship with Sir Adrian, I feel sure Dora would tell me of it," she says slowly, and with difficulty.

"And she hasn't?" asks Arthur, with so much surprise and incredulity in his manner as goes far to convince her that there is some truth