CHAPTER X.

THE LONELY TARN.

While Constance Trevelyan--or Lady Lamorna, for so we ought to name her, though still known only as Mrs. Devereaux--was counting the hours of her husband's absence, and looking forward fondly to his return, Sybil, unnoticed, was absent from home more often and for longer periods than had been her wont; and the mother, preoccupied by her own secret thoughts, and anxiety for those who were far distant, failed to remark the circumstance till it was incidentally mentioned by Winny Braddon.

When questioned, Constance remarked with concern, that Sybil blushed deeply, and hastened to show her sketch-book, now nearly full, as an evidence of her artistic industry, and the progress she had made; she did not add with whom, or that she had a lover. She who never before had a secret from her mamma, was beginning to have one now; and had the latter looked more closely at the sketch-book, she might have found traces and touches of a bolder and more masterly pencil than Sybil's; and it all came to pass thus.

A mile or two from the Villa of Porthellick, there lies a lake, which had been a favourite resort of her brother Denzil when fishing for pike; and of this place, and a great old Druidical stone that stands thereby, Sybil wished to make a sketch, and on a suitable day proceeded thither with all her apparatus, as she was anxious to have her production finished before her papa's return.

It was a lonely tarn, deep and dark, yet there the bright green leaves and snowy flowers of the water lilies floated, and the voracious pike which rose at times to snap a fly or so, went plunging to the oozy bottom at the sight of aught so unusual as a human being invading the solitude.

There were within its circuit, three tiny willow-tufted isles, where the water-ducks built their nests amid the osiers, and near which an occasional wild swan flapped defiance with its wings among the floating lilies that impeded its stately progress.

On the hill slopes the varied tints of autumn were in all their beauty; the ripened apples and pears were dropping among the long grass of many an orchard; green yet lingered amid the foliage of the old Cornish elms; but the beeches were almost blood red, and the oaks were crisped and brown. In the calm depth of the tarn was reflected the shadow of the giant stone pillar, around which the storms, the winds and rain of perhaps three thousand years had swept; yet there it stood, solid, silent, grim and monstrous. Could that stone have spoken, what a tale it might have told of savage rites and human sacrifice; what a history unfolded of races long since passed away or merged in others--the men of days before even the galleys of the Phoenicians cast anchor in Bude Bay, when their crews came to barter for tin with the wild aborigines of Cornwall.

Sybil, seated on a little camp-stool, was so intent upon her work, that some time elapsed before she perceived that another artist--whether professional or, like herself an amateur, she could not determine--was similarly occupied not far from her; and insensibly her eye wandered, from time to time, in the direction of this stranger.

He was decidedly a handsome young man, whose grey tweed suit and round hat of grey felt, encircled by a narrow crape band, failed to conceal a very distinguished air. His features were good and well bronzed by a foreign sun, apparently. He was without whiskers, or was closely shaven; but a smart mustache and dark eyebrows gave character to his face. He was seated on a fragment of rock, and in intervals between the progress of his work and the whiffs of a cigar, spoke caressingly to a large dog that lay near him on the grass.

The latter, a magnificent Thibet mastiff, with heavy jowl and pendant flap-like ears, suddenly rose and came slowly, leisurely and steadily forward to Sybil, and after a glance of survey, eyed her with what was almost a smile--if a _dog_ can be said to smile. He then sniffed her skirts, and pawed them with his enormous paw. Sybil evinced no fear; she patted the clog's huge rough head; but was somewhat surprised, when he lay down on her skirts with the utmost composure, and showed no disposition to release her.

The young man, whose eyes had followed, with some interest, the motions of his dog, now whistled to him; but the mastiff did not stir.

"Rajah--Rajah--you impudent rascal, come here!" he cried.

But Rajah made no other response, than by whipping the turf with his long tail.

Upon this his master came round the margin of the tarn, and approaching Sybil, threw aside his cigar, lifted his hat and apologized, adding,--

"I trust that my dog has not alarmed you?"

"Oh no--not in the least," replied Sybil, who began to feel somewhat embarrassed now.

"I assure you that he is very gentle; but he is permitting himself to be too free, and very few young ladies would, like you, have seen such an animal approach them without betraying signs of alarm, and all that sort of thing. Get up sir!"

"Oh, please don't," said Sybil holding out an ungloved and very pretty hand, deprecatingly, between the dog and the young man's uplifted cane; "all dogs, and even cats, like me."

"Thereby acknowledging your power--eh?" responded the stranger, looking down admiringly into the soft, bright, earnest face, and clear dark eyes that were turned upward to his own.

"I don't know what you mean by my power," said Sybil, with simplicity; "but, as most people like me, why should not dogs--and--and this is such a splendid fellow!'

"I have brought him from a very distant country--he was the farewell gift of a friend who died, otherwise," he added, gallantly, "I should beg your acceptance of him."

Sybil now coloured more deeply, and became uneasy; but the stranger resumed in his most suave tone,--

"And you have been sketching this pretty little lake--like me? Our tastes and occupation are quite similar!"

Sybil had closed her book of sketches.

"Will you not do me the favour to----"

"Show you my poor production--do you mean, sir?"

"Yes."

"But you may be an artist, and a well-skilled one."

"And what then?"

"I should blush for my work."

"Nay. Well, then, I am not an artist, but merely an amateur--an officer on leave; yet I am fond of using my pencil, and have the regimental reputation of doing so with pretty good success."

Sybil thought of her brother Denzil--he too was an officer; poor Denzil, now so far, far away--and she gave her new acquaintance a half shy and half doubtful glance, that served to charm him very much, and then showed her sketch, which he praised warmly, as by good breeding and in duty bound.

It was doubtless cleverly done, but his eye wandered to the rare and delicate beauty of the little hand that had achieved it. Her sketch, however, was inferior to his own, which he now produced, with Sybil's own figure seated on the camp-stool introduced in the middle distance, so as to give the exact proportion of the great rock-pillar.

"Oh, sir," she exclaimed, "you have me in your sketch, as well as the big stone."

"Could I omit the most pleasing feature in my little landscape?"

Sybil coloured again, for her education, and the peculiar mode in which she had been reared, made her, at times, shy and reserved; she knew not why, for to be so was not her natural character, which was rather candid, frank, and free; so, to change the subject from herself, she hastened to turn over the leaves of the stranger's sketch-book, wherein were many drawings full of spirit and interest.

"That wooden cross," said he, "marks the grave of poor Jack Delamere, who gave me Rajah, through whom I have had the pleasure of making your acquaintance to-day. He died when we were on the march up country to Allahabad, and I buried him in a grove of date palms."

"And he lies there alone?" said Sybil, her eyes involuntarily wandering to the great dog which lay near them on the grass.

"Quite alone--poor Jack! he was the soul of the mess-bungalow."

"And what is this Hall with the wonderful pillars?"

"Oh! that is a Buddhist Temple--all hewn out of the living rock. I sketched it at Ellora. Those caves are masses of carving, and are among the most wonderful things in India, as they often consist of many apartments or halls of vast height, decorated, as you see, with elaborate columns and monstrous statues. My next sketch is a Hindoo water-girl. I gave her a rupee to stand for me at Arcot; but, as her clothing is somewhat scanty, we shall skip to the next. Ah--that is a mango tree, and here are the palace of Mysore and the town and fort of Agra."

"How much you have seen of the world!" said Sybil, her dark eyes dilating as she glanced for a moment at the stranger's young and handsome face; "I wonder if Denzil will ever look upon those places. Heavens, how poor and mean do my Cornish sketches of ruins, rocks, and engines look, after yours!"

"Nay, do not say so," replied the other, smiling, as he surveyed with growing interest the soft bright face of the speaker, under its piquant little hat and veil; "hideous as the edifices are in reality, some of our mining engine-houses, with all their chains and pulleys, wheels and timber, blocks and gearing, their heaps of rubbish and debris, they make somewhat picturesque sketches."

"True; but I prefer those great solemn stones of unknown antiquity, and I never tire of drawing them."

"But they are so deucedly alike," replied the young officer; "and now for your book--ah, do permit me," he added, turning the leaves.

"That is the Lake of Como, where we passed several months," said Sybil, tremulous with hesitation, for what she deemed alike the boldness of the attempt and the poverty of her execution. "I now wonder how I dared to think of depicting such a scene, with all its white villas and green groves of orange and flowering arbutas; its cliffs and crags, and, over all, the snow-clad peaks of the Alps, and the mountains of the Brianza covered with pine-forests!"

"Perhaps each sketch is the souvenir of some past or tender happiness? And this stately palace, with the terrace before it?"

"Is one where papa and mamma resided when I was very young."

"You are not very old yet," was the laughing rejoinder.

"It is on the Arno. But how often have I wished for power to depict the lovely Lake of Como, as we could see it by night from the windows of our villa--the shore all dark, or dotted only by the lights in many a palace and dwelling, the snowy summits of the Splugen Alps rising against the starlit sky, and the oars of the gondoliers flashing as their little vessels shot across the sheet of silent water."

"You are quite an enthusiast!" said the officer, smiling; and at that moment, with her sparkling eyes and flushed cheeks, the usually pale girl looked radiantly beautiful; but her dark eyes drooped, and she replied--

"I did so love Como and our pleasant picnics to Bellaggio and other places, where the orange-trees overhang the water so closely that the golden fruit dipped in it from time to time, when the laden branches were stirred by the passing wind."

"Now you will surely agree with me, that when contrasted with such scenery as you describe, our Cornish rock-pillars and mines are but stupid affairs?"

"Ah, no--I cannot assent to that; there is Bottalick Mine, for example, where the gloomy precipices of slate are hewn into such fantastic shapes, and the great engine, perched on the ledge of a terrible cliff, enables the miner to work below the sea. Oh, think of that, to be quarrying for copper and tin in damp grottoes and cells four hundred and eighty feet below the ocean, and to hear its waves--the same waves that dash against Cape Cornwall--rolling the mighty boulders in thunder on the bluffs overhead!"

"Have _you_ been down and heard all that?"

"No," replied Sybil, blushing for her own energy and enthusiasm.

"How then----"

"Denzil has been down often."

"Denzil again," said the stranger with a smile, and perhaps the faintest tone of pique; "you are surely very fond of this Denzil."

"Fond--I love him dearly!"

"A candid admission."

"He is my only brother."

"I am so glad to hear that he is a brother, and not--not----"

"What?"

"A cousin or--friend."

Sybil felt that the conversation was wandering from the picturesque, and now said, a little hastily,

"I must bid you good morning--my way lies there," she added, pointing westward.

"And mine also; so far, at least, as the high road--allow me to have the pleasure of carrying your camp-stool."

"Many thanks."

"Do you reside in this neighbourhood?" he asked, after a pause.

"Yes--a little way from this," she replied, evasively.

"_I_ am on a visit to an old Indian friend--General Trecarrel," said the stranger, in a tone and manner calculated to invite confidence; but Sybil instantly became reserved. Her absent parent, she knew not why, had ever most sedulously avoided the General and all his family, and her mamma had apparently acquiesced in this, for they knew that the General would at once, in the spurious "Captain Devereaux," recognise Richard Trevelyan. "You, perhaps, know the Trecarrels?" added her companion.

"I have not the pleasure--though I have heard of them, of course," replied Sybil, adjusting her veil tightly over her face, with an air of annoyance.

The gentleman said no more; but in silence carried her sketch-book and camp-stool until they reached the high road, where, aware that to remain longer with her might appear intrusive, he lifted his hat, and with studious politeness bade her adieu.

Sybil hastened homeward, nor dared to look back, though perfectly conscious that the eyes of the stranger, whose voice seemed to linger in her ear, would be looking after her more than once. She had all a young girl's perfect conviction of this.