"Look!" whispered Sophy, her eyes lighting up again in interest.
A young man rode up the approach to the Hall lodge. His mare was a beauty; he sat her well. He was perfectly dressed for the exercise. His features were clear-cut and handsome. There was as fine an air of breeding about him as about the splendid Newfoundland dog which ran behind him.
Julia looked as she was bidden. "He's handsome," she said. "Why – " she laughed low – "I believe I know who it is – I think I've seen him somewhere."
"Have you?" Sophy's question was breathless.
"Yes, I know! When we were at York! He was one of the officers there; he was in a box. Sophy, it's the Earl of Dunstanbury!"
Sophy did not speak. She looked. The young man – he could be hardly more than twenty – came on. Sophy suddenly hid behind her friend ("To save my pride, not her own," generous Julia explains – Sophy herself advances no such excuse), but she could see. She saw the rider's eye rest on Julia; did it rest in recognition? It almost seemed so; yet there was doubt. Julia blushed, but she forbore from smiling or from seeking to rouse his memory. Yet she was proud if he remembered her face from across the footlights. The young man, too – being but a young man – blushed a little as he gave the pretty girl by the gate such a glance as discreetly told her that he was of the same mind as herself about her looks. These silent interchanges of opinion on such matters are pleasant diversions as one plods the highway.
He was gone. Julia sighed in satisfied vanity. Sophy awoke to stern realities.
"Gracious!" she cried. "He must have come to lunch! They'll want a salad! You'll be here to-morrow – do!" And she was off, up the drive, and round to her own regions at the back of the house.
"I believe his Lordship did remember my face," thought Julia as she wandered back to Woodbine Cottage.
But Sophy washed lettuces in her scullery – which, save for its base purposes, was a pleasant, airy apartment, looking out on a path that ran between yew hedges and led round from the lawn to the offices of the house. Diligently she washed, as Mrs. Smilker had taught her (whether rightly or not is nothing to the purpose here), but how many miles away was her mind? So far away from lettuces that it seemed in no way strange to look up and see Lord Dunstanbury and his dog on the path outside the window at which she had been performing her task. He began hastily:
"Oh, I say, I've been seeing my mare get her feed, and – er – do you think you could be so good as to find a bone and some water for Lorenzo?"
"Lorenzo?" she said.
"My dog, you know." He pointed to the handsome beast, which wagged an expectant tail.
"Why do you call him that?"
Dunstanbury smiled. "Because he's magnificent. I dare say you never heard of Lorenzo the Magnificent?"
"No. Who was he?"
"A Duke – Duke of Florence – in Italy." He had begun to watch her face, and seemed not impatient for the bone.
"Florence? Italy?" The lettuce dropped from her hands; she wiped her hands slowly on her apron.
"Do you think you could get me one?"
"Yes, I'll get it."
She went to the back of the room and chose a bone.
"Will this do?" she asked, holding it out through the window.
"Too much meat."
"Oh!" She went and got another. "This one all right?"
"Capital! Do you mind if I stay and see him eat it?"
"No."
"Here, Lorenzo! And thank the lady!"
Lorenzo directed three sharp barks at Sophy and fell to. Sophy filled and brought out a bowl of water. Lord Dunstanbury had lighted a cigar. But he was watching Sophy. A new light broke on him suddenly.
"I say, were you the other girl behind the gate?"
"I didn't mean you to see me."
"I only caught a glimpse of you. I remember your friend, though."
"She remembered you, too."
"I don't know her name, though."
"Julia Robins."
"Ah, yes – is it? He's about polished off that bone, hasn't he? Is she – er – a great friend of yours?"
His manner was perhaps a little at fault; the slightest note of chaff had crept into it; and the slightest was enough to put Sophy's quills up.
"Why not?" she asked.
"Why not? Every reason why she should be," he answered with his lips. His eyes answered more, but he refrained his tongue. He was scrupulously a gentleman – more so perhaps than, had sexes and places been reversed, Sophy herself would have been. But his eyes told her. "Only," he went on, "if so, why did you hide?"
That bit of chaff did not anger Sophy. But it went home to a different purpose – far deeper, far truer home than the young man had meant. Not the mark only reddened – even the cheeks flushed. She said no word. With a fling-out of her arms – a gesture strangely, prophetically foreign as it seemed to him in after-days – she exhibited herself – the print frock, the soiled apron, the bare arms, red hands, the ugly knot of her hair, the scrap of cap she wore. For a moment her lips quivered, while the mark – the Red Star of future days and future fame – grew redder still.
The only sound was of Lorenzo's worrying the last tough scrap of bone. The lad, gentleman as he was, was good flesh and blood, too – and the blood was moving. He felt a little tightness in his throat; he was new to it. New, too, was Sophy Grouch to what his eyes said to her, but she took it with head erect and a glance steadily levelled at his.
"Yes," he said. "But I shouldn't have looked at any of that – and I shouldn't have looked at her either."
Brightly the mark glowed; subtly the eyes glowed. There was silence again.
Almost a start marked Dunstanbury's awakening. "Come, Lorenzo!" he cried; he raised his hat and turned away, followed by his dog, Lorenzo the Magnificent.
Sophy took up her lettuces and carried them into the kitchen.
"There you are, at last! And what's put you in a temper now?" asked Mrs. Smilker. She had learned the signs of the mark.
Sophy smiled. "It's not temper this time, Mrs. Smilker. I – I'm very happy to-day," she said. "Oh, I do hope the salad will be good!"
For he who was to eat of the salad – had he not forgotten print frock and soiled apron, bare arms, red hands, ugly knot, and execrable cap? He would not have looked at them – no, nor at beautiful many-tinted Julia Robins in her pride! He had forgotten all these to look at the stained cheek and the eyes of subtle glow. She had glanced in the mirror of love and sipped from the cup of power.
Such was her first meeting with Lord Dunstanbury. If it were ever forgotten, it was not Dunstanbury who forgot.
The day had wrought much in her eyes; it had wrought more than she dreamed of. Her foot was near the ladder now, though she could not yet see the lowest rung.
IV
FATE'S WAY – OR LADY MEG'S
The scene is at Hazleby, Lord Dunstanbury's Essex seat. His lordship is striking the top off his breakfast egg.
"I say, Cousin Meg, old Brownlow's got a deuced pretty kitchen-maid."
"There you go! There you go! Just like your father, and your grandfather, and all of them! If the English people had any spirit, they'd have swept the Dunstanburys and all the wicked Whig gang into the sea long ago."
"Before you could turn round they'd have bought it up, enclosed it, and won an election by opening it to ships at a small fee on Sundays," said Mr. Pindar.
"Why are Whigs worse than Tories?" inquired Mr. Pikes, with an air of patient inquiry.
"The will of Heaven, I suppose," sniffed Lady Margaret Duddington.
"To