CHAPTER IX.

_ARTHUR'S SECRET._

And I loved her--loved her, certes, As I loved all heavenly objects, with uplifted eyes and hands-- As I loved pure inspiration, loved the Graces, loved the Virtues, In a love content with writing his own name on desert sands.

A luxurious drawing-room, furnished with all the taste and elegance that money can command; flowers here, there and everywhere--flowers in the deep recesses of lace-veiled windows, flowers on the multitude of tables that stood in every corner, flowers--and these the sweetest of them all--in the lap of a young fair-haired girl who filled a corner of one of the sofas.

She was paying no great attention to the flowers, only bathing one of her hands in them from time to time, as though to refresh herself with their cool fragrance. The other hand, her eyes and her whole soul appeared to be given to the book she held, an elegant little volume bound in fawn-colored calfskin.

She was so deeply engrossed that she did not hear the door open, and her cousin had time to cross the long room, sit down by her side and take possession of the hand that was trifling with the flowers before she was aware of his presence.

Then she looked up, blushed charmingly and closed her book: "Arthur dear, how delightful! I began to think you were never coming near us again, and I wanted particularly to speak to you about something that has been in my head ever since our visit to the Academy."

"Four days!" answered Arthur, languidly, throwing himself back on the sofa--"an enormous time, as young ladies would say, for one subject to engross them, especially in this age of progress."

"I suppose it would be absurd to imagine that _you_ even remember, Master Arthur," replied Adele, quite equal to the occasion--"_boys_, as mamma always says, are _so_ volatile."

"Boys!" Arthur shrugged his shoulders contemptuously. "You are very polite to-day, Adele."

There was a shade of annoyance in his voice, which made Adele look up at him, for she was a kind little lady who never carried her jokes too far. The result of the look was a rapid movement from her side of the sofa to Arthur's, and an earnest inquiry: "Arthur dear, something is wrong with you, you must surely be ill."

For Arthur's face was pale, and there was a wan, anxious contraction on his broad white brow.

His only answer was a faint smile. Then, after a pause, "You were reading, Adele. Oh!" lifting the book from the small reading-table that stood conveniently near the sofa, "_The Faerie Queene_. I thought it would be something of the kind. Read some of it aloud, like a good girl; I'm too done up with this hot weather to talk just now."

"Poor old fellow!" Adele smoothed back his curly hair and imprinted a kiss, that did not seem to excite her cousin particularly, between his temples. "Your forehead is so hot, dear, let me bathe it with eau-de-cologne for you."

She opened a little bottle of richly-cut, ruby-colored glass, and pouring some of its sweet contents on her handkerchief pressed it again and again to his brow, Arthur submitting with the delicate grace of an invalid.

"There," he said at last, "that'll do, dear; you can read now."

And the obedient Adele, having first carefully lowered one of the Venetian blinds that no glare might offend her cousin's eyes, proceeded to read her favorite book in a soft, measured cadence that suited it admirably. There was no stumbling over the old English words. Adele was so thoroughly acquainted with the style that the quaint language came naturally from her lips, even with a kind of delicate grace. Love had given her the art, for she loved, more than any book she had ever read, this dreamy, old-world poem, with its fair women, its armed knights, its dragons and its myths. Perhaps the force of contrast made these things specially dear to the young girl's soul, for there was not much romance in the fashionable life her mother taught her to think the best and wisest of all lives for a nineteenth-century young lady to lead.

Her voice sounded like the echo of a dream in the wide room, and she herself, in her light summer dress, might well have answered to the description of one of the fair "maydes" whose woes and joys the gentle poet of another age has illumined with his silvery pen, while Arthur, as he rested on the sofa in an attitude of careless grace, his dark, lazy-looking eyes half closed, his head thrown back upon the cushions, might have been one of the brave young knights refreshing himself in his lady's bower after some terrible encounter with the many-headed, many-handed monster from whom it was his grand mission to free humanity in general, fair womankind in particular.

But the afternoon wore away. Adele had just finished the account of a mighty encounter between Arthur of the magic sword and three unknightly knights who had attacked him together.

It had apparently aroused Arthur, for he rose suddenly and stood by her side, looking down upon her with a certain earnestness.

"Shut the book for the present, Adele," he said, "I am ready to talk now; it has awoke me."

"What has awoke you, dear?"

"Your favorite poet, I suppose, my little cousin; but come, what were you so anxious to say to me when I came in just now?"

"Oh, Arthur, you cannot surely have forgotten. I wanted to speak to you about that beautiful fainting lady in the Academy."

"Perhaps I have _not_ forgotten, Adele." Arthur turned away from his cousin as he spoke, for he did not wish her to see the sudden flush which not all the proud consciousness of manhood and superiority had been strong enough to restrain.

"Well," he continued after a pause, as his cousin remained thoughtfully silent, "I _do_ remember; but what of her?"

"I have been thinking of her, Arthur." Adele's eyes looked sorrowful. "And whenever I think of her I remember those miserable houses, the shabby black dress and the quiet sadness in her face. Oh, Arthur, _do_ you think it would be possible to help her in any way?"

"For you it might be," said Arthur with an appearance of sudden interest. "Unfortunately," he added bitterly, "women have the habit of looking upon any attempt at friendliness in one of the opposite sex as a species of insult."

This was rather too much for Adele. With every respect for her cousin and fiance, he was still too young, in her estimation, to be capable of exciting indignation in the breast of any woman. She laughed merrily: "I like your vanity, sir. As if any one could be insulted with you! You would have to pin on a false moustache, draw your hat over your brows to hide those ingenuous-looking eyes of yours, and button an enormous rough great coat up to your chin, before any one--any stranger, I mean--could imagine you even grown up. Why _I_ look ages older than you!"

Adele got up and looked at herself in the mirror.

"Yes, _ages_!" she repeated, with provoking emphasis and in eager expectation of a delightful torrent of self-vindication from her cousin. They often indulged in this kind of wordy war, and Adele's feminine volubility and quickness of wit generally gave her the advantage.

No answer came from Arthur to the rash challenge. He was standing behind her, not looking into the mirror, but, as though utterly unconscious of her light words, gazing away into vacancy. Adele caught sight of his face in the mirror, and a sudden silence seized her, for even as she spoke she saw that in her young cousin's face which warned her he was a boy no longer.

He had drawn himself up to his full height, and stood seemingly rapt in earnest thought, for his brows were slightly contracted, and his ingenuous-looking eyes had taken a deep, fixed look that strangely moved his cousin. With the quickness of a woman's insight she saw that her jest had been ill-timed, that a certain indescribable change, perhaps that for which she had hoped and longed, had come to the beautiful boy whom she had loved and caressed with almost maternal tenderness, for manhood's strength of purpose was written on his face. Her first feeling was a sense of foreboding. If Arthur was indeed changed, would he be changed to her?

The next was a determination, strong as the womanhood which with her love the young girl had put on early, to share his secret, whatever it might be.

She was too young and too inexperienced to understand all that this change, which she certainly felt, might mean; she could not reason about the new earnestness, nor trace it to any cause which he might think it well to hide, for Adele was eminently generous and unsuspicious. She was accustomed to her cousin's light, boyish affection, and did not expect him to be a passionate lover; she was therefore ready with all her soul to rejoice in anything that would make him less frivolous, less absorbed in self and the mere enjoyment of life.

For a few moments she stood silently at the mirror, looking into it, but looking absently, for her mind was engaged in the problem of how to approach him, how to gain his confidence at this time which the young girl instinctively felt to be critical in her cousin's history. If he had ambitious dreams, was it not right that she should share them? She had always been his confidante; the bare idea, indeed, of being shut out from any of Arthur's secrets gave Adele keen pain.

Deciding at last that frankness was her best policy, she turned to her cousin and putting both hands on his shoulders looked earnestly into his eyes. "Arthur," she said with a slight tremor in her voice, "what are you thinking about? Tell me."

He might have been called from a distant land, so great was the interval that separated his mind from hers at that moment, and at first he seemed even to have difficulty in recalling his scattered ideas.

She repeated the question, with an added earnestness that lent pathos to her voice.

Then he looked down upon her:

"Why do you wish so much to know, Adele?"

"Oh, Arthur, how can you ask?" Her voice trembled, she was very near tears. "Dear," she continued in a lower voice, taking his hand in hers, "if I thought you had _one_ corner in your heart of which I knew nothing, I scarcely know what I should do. 'Trust me all in all,' Arthur. I say it in all sincerity." She smiled faintly. "I promise not to be like that naughty Vivien, wrapping you up in spells, even if--if you should have any secret--"

"That would pain you very much to know, little cousin."

Adele looked up bravely: "I should prefer to know it, Arthur--indeed I should; I think, dear--I _think_--I could put myself out of the question altogether, and help you as a sister might."

He did not notice the tremulousness, the slight choking of voice with which her brave little sentence ended.

"I wish with all my heart that you were my sister, Adele: then I could tell you without any hesitation."

Adele turned a little pale: "I _am_ your sister, Arthur. Tell me."

He looked down upon her kindly: "I will tell you, Adele, for in these matters I believe frankness to be the best policy; and, after all, it may be only a dream. I was thinking of Margaret Grey."