CHAPTER XXVIII.

A WOMAN RESOLVED.

Mattie Brace stood at the farm gate: she was looking impatiently up and down the road, and a sudden light flashed in her face as she caught sight of Doris. The beautiful face seemed to flash like light from beneath the gloom of green trees.

"Doris," cried Mattie, almost impatiently, "I have been looking everywhere for you. There is a whole roll of newspapers from London; they are directed to you, and I know the writing--it is Mr. Leslie's. I am sure they contain notices of your picture. Make haste--I am longing to see them."

Doris looked up with a shyness quite new to her.

"I am coming," she replied. "Where is Earle?"

She hesitated as she asked the question. There were no depths in her nature; she did not even understand regret--of remorse she had not the slightest conception; yet even she felt unwilling to look in the face of the man who loved her.

"Where is Earle?" she repeated.

"He has not returned from Quainton yet," replied Mattie; and the two girls entered the house together.

On the table of the little sitting-room lay a roll of newspapers, addressed to Miss Doris Brace. The beautiful lips curved with scorn as she read the name aloud.

"Doris Brace!" she said. "Fate must have been deriding me to give me such a name."

But Mattie made no reply; she had long since ceased to answer similar remarks.

Then Mrs. Brace, seeing the sitting-room door open, went in to look at what was going on. Doris looked up at her with a bright laugh.

"I am in a newspaper, mother," she said, "only imagine that!"

Mrs. Brace sighed, as she generally did in answer to Doris. The girl was far above her comprehension, and she owned it humbly with a sigh.

"What do they say, I wonder? Oh, there is a letter from Mr. Leslie!" She opened it hastily, then read aloud:

"MY DEAR MISS BRACE,--Need I tell you my picture is the great success of the season? All London is talking about it--the papers are filled with its praise. See how much I have to thank you for! There is even a greater honor than all this praise in store; the queen has signified her gracious desire to purchase my picture! My fortune is made; the face that made sunshine at Brackenside will now shine on the walls of a royal palace. No one admires it more than your sincere friend,

"GREGORY LESLIE."

"There!" cried the girl, triumphantly, "the queen--even the queen is going to buy me!"

"Not you, child," said Mrs. Brace, rebukingly--"only your picture."

"It is all the same thing; the queen must have admired, or she would not have wished to purchase it."

"Gregory Leslie is a grand artist," said Mattie. "Surely some merit is due to him."

Doris laughed, as she always did at her sister's admonitions.

"If he had painted you, my dear," she said, laughingly, "I do not think the queen would have bought the picture."

Mattie made no reply, knowing well that in all probability it was true.

Then Doris opened the papers, and read the critiques one after another; they were all alike--one rapture of praise over the magnificent picture. "'Innocence' is the great picture of the day," said one. Another asked: "Where had Mr. Leslie found the ideally beautiful face so gloriously placed on canvas? Had he drawn it from the rich depths of glowing fancy, or had he seen a face like it?" Another paper told how the queen had purchased the picture, and foretold great things for the artist.

"It is _really_ true," said Doris. "I shall be in a palace. Oh, Mattie! I am so sorry that no one will know it is a picture of me; they will admire my portrait, and no one will see me. I should like to go to the queen and say: 'That is my picture hanging on your palace wall.'"

"She would not speak to you," said Mrs. Brace, who took all things literally.

"Hundreds of beautiful faces are placed upon canvas every day," said Mattie; "and I do not suppose any one cares for the models they are painted from."

"I wish I were my own picture," sighed Doris. "I would a thousand times rather hang upon a palace wall than live here."

Then she suddenly remembered how uncertain it was, after all, whether she should be here much longer; in the excitement of reading so much in her own praise, she had almost forgotten Lord Vivianne. As she remembered him her face grew burning red.

"I am glad you have the grace to blush," said Mattie. "You are so vain, Doris, I should be afraid that your vanity would lead you astray."

"No matter where I go my picture will be safe," was the flippant reply.

And then the little council was broken up. Mrs. Brace went away to tell Mark of her fears. Mattie did not care to hear any more self-laudation, and Doris was left alone. Her face flushed, her pulse thrilled with gratified vanity; her heart seemed to expand with the keen, passionate sense of her own beauty.

"If every earthly gift had been offered to me," Doris thought, "I should have chosen beauty. Rank and wealth are desirable; but without a face to charm they would be worth little, and beauty can win them even if one be born without them. I shall win them yet, because men cannot look at me without caring for me."

And as she stood by the little rose-framed window there came to her a passionate longing that her beauty should be seen and known, that it should receive the homage and praise due to it. She, who was fair enough to win the admiration of a queen--she, on whose face royal eyes would dwell so often, and with such great delight!

"I wonder," she thought to herself, "if any of the royal princes will be likely to see that picture. One of them might admire it, and then, if he saw me, admire me."

There was no limit to her ambition, as there was none to her vanity. Had she been asked to share a throne, she would have consented as to a right. Vision after vision of dazzling delight came to her as she stood in the humble sitting-room that was the great delight of Mrs. Brace's heart; life flushed and thrilled in every vein. Doris held out her hands with a yearning cry for that which seemed so near, yet so far from her; the thousand vague possibilities of life rose before her. What could she not win with her beauty--what could not her beauty do for her.

Then Mrs. Brace came in again on business cares intent, holding several pieces of calico in her hands.

"Doris," she said, "I have been thinking that as you will perhaps soon be married to Earle, I may as well order a piece of gray calico for you when I order one for ourselves."

Down went the brilliant vision! The queen who admired her face, the palace where her picture would hang, the glorious prospect, the dream that had no name, the sweet, wild fancies that had filled every nerve--they faded before those prosaic words like snow in the sun!

"Marriage and gray calico! gray calico and Earle!" She turned with a quick, impatient gesture, almost fierce in its anger.

"Oh, mother! you do say such absurd things," she said; "you annoy me."

"Why, my dear? What have I said? You will want gray calico. You cannot be married from a respectable home like this, and not take a store of house linen with you."

"House linen!" repeated Doris. "You are not talking to Mattie, mother."

"I am not, indeed; if I were, I should at least receive a sensible answer. You are above my understanding. If you think that because a gentleman painted your portrait, and people admire it, you will never need to be sensible again, you make a great mistake."

Doris made no reply; a great flame of impatience seemed to burn her heart. How could she bear it, this prosaic, commonplace life? Gray calico and marriage all mingled in one idea! Kindly Mrs. Brace mistook her silence, and really thought she was making an impression on her.

"We have had but this one chance of giving the order; if it is not done now, it cannot be done until next year. Mrs. Moray is such a respectable woman herself that I should not like----"

Doris held up her hands with a passionate cry.

"That will do, mother! Order what you like, do as you like, but do not talk to me; I will not hear another word."

"You will grow more sensible as you grow older," said Mrs. Brace, composedly, as she went away with the calico in her hand, leaving Doris once more alone.

"How have I borne it all this time?" she asked herself, with a flush of anger on her fair face. "Yet, why should I be angry, and in what differ from them? Why should I be vexed or angry? Mattie would have talked for an hour--would have given a sensible answer, while I feel as though I had been insulted. They are my own mother and sister--why am I so different from them? Why does a bird of paradise differ from a homely linnet? Why does a carnation differ from a sun-flower? I cannot tell."

She could not tell. It was not given to her to know that all the characteristics of race were strong within her. But that little scene decided her; there had been some faint doubt in her mind, some little leaning toward Earle, and his great wealth of poetry and love--some lingering regret as to whether she was not forsaking the certain humble paths of peace and virtue for a brilliant but uncertain career.

"If I do this," she had thought to herself, "I shall kill Earle," and the idea had filled her mind with strange pathos. But all that vanished under one unskillful touch. Writing her story, knowing her faults, I make no excuses for her; but if she had had more congenial surroundings the tragedy of her life might have been averted.

She stood by the open window and thought it all over. The rich scent of the roses came in and clung to her dress and her hair; the blue sky had no cloud; the birds sang sweetly and clearly in the far distance; she heard the lowing of the cattle and the voices of the laborers.

Then her whole heart turned in disgust from her quiet home; it had no charm for her; she wanted none of it--she wanted life, warmth, glitter, perfume, jewels, the praise of men, the envy of women; she wanted to feel her own power, and to be followed by homage. What was her bright loveliness for if not for this? Stay here, where all the people were persecuting her about marrying Earle, having a respectable home, and buying gray calico! No, not for such a commonplace life. The beauty of hill and sky, and quaint meadow and shady lane, of blooming flowers and green trees, was not for her; it was dull, tame and uninteresting.

The greatest queen in all the wide world had admired her face. Was she to remain hidden in this humble, lowly house, where no one saw her but Earle and the few men whom business brought to the farm? It was not to be imagined. She raised her beautiful head with a clear, defiant gaze.

"I do not care," she said to herself, "whether it is right or wrong; I do not care what the price or penalty may be, I will go and take my share of what men and women call _life_."

And from that resolution, taken on a calm, bright summer day, under the golden light of heaven, with the song of the birds in her ears, she never once swerved or departed, let it cost her what it might.