For she was much too pretty to be a nurse, he said to himself—too pretty and too young. She had an air of refinement quite above her position. She had an arch, pretty face, with beautiful blue-gray eyes that were almost black when the full white lids and dark lashes drooped over them. The dazzling fairness of her complexion was heightened by the unrelieved blackness of her dress, and her pouting lips by contrast looked like rosebuds. Two long, thick braids of lovely chestnut-brown hair hung down her back, and some soft, fluffy rings of the same color waved over the low, broad forehead with its slender, dark brows. She was not only beautiful, she looked bright and intelligent, and the half smile that parted her red lips now made her wonderfully lovely.
But pretty as she was, she was aware that Captain Lancaster was regarding her with knit brows and a general air of entire disapprobation. Perhaps it was a novel experience. It seemed to amuse her. The dimples deepened around the sweet, arch mouth. She looked down at the card in her hand, and began to read it aloud in a soft, hesitating, inquiring voice: "Cap-tain Lan-caster?"
"Yes," he replied, and was on the point of making his most elegant bow when he suddenly remembered that it was not at all necessary to be so ceremonious with the nurse of his housekeeper's niece. So he straightened himself up again and said, almost tartly:
"You are the baby's nurse, I presume?"
The long fringe of the girl's lashes lifted a moment, and she flashed a dazzling glance into his face.
"The—baby?" she inquired.
"Yes—the little Miss West—the child that is to get to England under my care. Aren't you her nurse?"
The young lady had put a very small, white hand up to her face and coughed very hard for a moment. She looked at him the next moment, very red in the face from the exertion.
"I—ah, yes, certainly; I'm the nurse," she replied, demurely.
And then ensued a moment's silence, broken at last by the girl, who said, quietly and politely:
"Won't you be seated, Captain Lancaster?"
He dropped mechanically into a chair near him, but the pretty nurse-maid remained standing meekly in the center of the room, her small hands folded before her, a demure look on her fair face.
The caller cleared his throat and began, rather nervously:
"It isn't possible that you expected to go to England as that child's nurse?" he said.
"I had hoped to do so," answered the girl, with a sudden air of chagrin.
"But—ah—really, you know, you're too young, aren't you?" stammered Lancaster, feeling abashed, he knew not why, but maintaining a grave, judicial air.
"Too young? I should hope not. I was eighteen last week," lifting the small head with an air of great dignity.
He could hardly repress a smile, but he put his long, white hand hastily across his lips to hide it from those bright, keen eyes.
"And do you think you can really take good care of Miss West?" he said. "Remember, it is a long trip across the ocean."
She flashed him one of her swift, bright glances.
"Indeed?" she said. "But that does not matter at all, sir. I consider myself quite competent to take care of Miss West anywhere."
"Does she mean to be impertinent?" he thought; but a glance at the demure, downcast face reassured him. It was only the high self-confidence of ignorant, innocent youth.
"You must excuse me; I don't know how they do such things on this side of the water," he said, feeling mean within himself, yet not at all understanding why it was so. "But, you see, it is all different in England. There one chooses a woman of age and experience for a nurse. Now, I remember my own nurse was at least fifty years old."
"In-deed?" replied the girl, dropping him a demure little courtesy that somehow again filled him with an uneasy sense that, under all her pretty humility, she meant to be impertinent. His face felt hot and burning. He did not know how to pursue the conversation.
Seeing that he made her no answer, she looked up with a pretty, appealing air. "Do I understand that you object to taking me to England? that my youth counts against me?" she inquired.
"Oh, no, no; not at all, if you are sure you can take good care of the baby," he replied, hastily. "You see, the whole thing is a great bore and nuisance to me. I object most decidedly to being encumbered with that child, but, most unfortunately for me, I can't get out of it. So, if you can really be of any use, pray go along with it to England—Oh!"
The sudden exclamation was wrung from him by a glance at her face. The pretty actress had dropped her mask at hearing those swift, vehement words of his. A hot color glowed in her face, two pearly tears started under her dark lashes. She put out her white hands before her as if to ward off a blow.
"Oh, Captain Lancaster, say no more!" she cried. "There has been some wretched mistake somewhere, and I have only been laughing at you these five minutes. I am nobody's nurse at all. There isn't any child nor any baby. It is a grown-up young lady. I am Leonora West."
Tableau!
CHAPTER VIII
"If only the earth would open and swallow me up!" sighed Lancaster to himself, miserably. It is not pleasant to be made fun of, and the most of people are too thin-skinned to relish a joke directed against themselves. Lancaster did not. His ridiculous mistake flashed over him instantly at the deprecatory words of the girl, and he scarcely knew whom to be most angry with—himself or Leonora West.
He stole a furtive glance at her, wishing in his heart that he could subdue the crimson flush that glowed on his face. He was glad that she was not looking at him. She had sunk into a chair and buried her face in her hands. Evidently she was not enjoying her saucy triumph much. Those last impatient words of his had cleverly turned the tables.
He glanced at the drooping figure in the arm-chair, and it flashed over him that De Vere would never be done laughing if he knew that he, Lord Lancaster, a cavalry officer, and a "swell party" altogether, had been made a target for the amusement of this lowly born girl. How dared she do it? and could he keep De Vere from finding out? he asked himself in the same breath.
And just then Leonora West lifted her wet eyes to his face, and said, with a sob in her throat:
"I am glad now that I didn't tell you the truth at first. If I had, I mightn't have found out, perhaps, that you thought me a bore and a nuisance, and that you didn't want me to go to Europe with you."
Captain Lancaster winced. All she had said was quite true, yet he had not cared to have her know it. It is but seldom one cares to have people know one's real opinion of them.
"And—and"—she went on, resentfully, "you may be quite, quite sure, after this, that I will not go with you. You will have no trouble with me. My aunt might have come after me herself, I think. I was afraid, when I got her letter saying that you would come for me, that something would go wrong. Now I know it. To think that you should call me a baby!"
While she poured forth her grievances dolorously, Lancaster had been collecting his wool-gathering wits. What upon earth was he to do if she really refused to go with him? He pictured to himself old Lady Lancaster's fury. It was quite likely that, after such a contretemps, she would cut him off with a shilling.
"It will never do for her to stay in this mood. She shall go to England, nolens volens," he resolved.
"Richard" began to be "himself again." The ludicrous side of the case dawned upon him.
"I have made a tremendous faux pas, certainly, and now I must get out of it the best way I can," he thought, grimly.
Leonora's sharp little tongue had grown still now, and her face was again hidden in her hands. He went up to her and touched her black sleeve lightly.
"Oh, come now," he said; "if you go on like this I shall think I made a very apposite mistake. Who but a baby would make such a declaration as yours in the face of the circumstances? Of course you are going to Europe with me!"