Love me for my love

Chapter I. Page

FAVERSHAM COTTAGE.—INTRODUCTORY ............... 1 CHAPTER II.

CHAPTER IV.

CHAPTER V.

1V CONTENTS.

CHAPTER VI.

PAGE

CHAPTER X.

LOVE ME FOR MY LOVE.

CHAPTER I.

FAVERSHAM COTTAGE.—INTRODUCTORY.

FaversHam Corrace was the old lodge of Faversham House, the old lodge with modern additions and improvements, enlarged out of all knowing as a lodge, yet still as different from Faversham House as the villa to which my lady goes for a few weeks’ sea-bathing from the stately mansion at which my lord and my lady together entertain their friends during the hunting season. Faversham House was a grand old Irish palace, built with true Irish carelessness as to the value of space, and objectionableness of draughty

VOL. I. AK a ’ LOVE ME FOR MY LOVE.

passages; Faversham Cottage was even yet little more than a cottage ornée. Nevertheless, it was there, that the present Lord Faversham not only elected to live himself, but elected also to receive his friends. The present Lord Faversham, like all the other Favershams within the memory of man, was weakly, and he dreaded the spacious north drawing-rooms and long, lofty passages of Faversham House; he dreaded them yet more after one or two years of enforced absenteeism in warm southern latitudes : but perhaps he would never have had sufficient energy to enlarge the sunny little lodge, with its southern exposure, into a dwelling-place for himself, had he not in one of his winters abroad taken unto himself a wife, who also shrank from draughts and cold, and suffered from them nearly as much as he did himself.

The young Lady Faversham was a shght, fragile girl when she first came to Faversham— a girl possessed of no particular beauty, save that of haymg singularly small, pretty feet, and large dark eyes, with a soft, melancholy expression; but being introduced among them as a young Countess, the kindly-hearted Irish girls, with blue eyes ever laughing bewitchinely under long o’ershadowing lashes, each sought who could find out most charms in the girl who had been thus raised above them all by the young Harl, who might have had the choice among so much beauty, had he been contented to take a bride from his own county. These Irish girls, who were all so much prettier than she was, nevertheless chose to assert that there was a certain charm about Lady Faversham, which they themselves could not pretend to define, but which they declared they were always conscious of, while in her presence. They would gladly enough have made friends with her, and called her “ darling,” in their friendly Irish fashion, only there was also a certain dignity about her which restrained them from making too rapid advances. Perhaps it was her melancholy expression, anyhow, there was something that prevented the young Countess from becoming friends with any of her Irish neighbours. Yet nobody disliked her, and though she was known to have been only the daughter of a commoner, and almost penniless, when Lord Faversham married her, no one ever accused her of having used any undue arts to win his affections, or even hinted that her relations had used any for her. Indeed, she was known to have hardly any relations of her own; she was an orphan at the time of her marriage, and since she had become Lady Faversham, no relation or even old friend of hers had ever come to stay at Faversham Cottage, or Faversham, as it was more often called now, usurping to itself the name of the grand old house, just as it had before usurped so many of the comforts and little adornments that had of old time belonged as of right to its stately neighbour.

Thus, when one spring it was announced that Lady Faversham’s particular friend was coming to stay with her, it made rather a sensation in the neighbourhood—a sensation that was not at all diminished, when it became known that this particular friend was the Hon. Kathleen O’Grady, a celebrated London beauty, and daughter of the late Lord Killowen, whose estate was in the same county as that of Lord Faversham. It excited no little surprise also that this wonderful beauty should be expected to leave the scene of her triumphs early in July, and to come and rusticate, as it were, at Faversham; but Kathleen O’Grady and Sybil

Mordaunt—such had been Lady Faversham’s name before her marriage—had been no ordinary friends to each other, and though they had not met since the latter’s marriage, it was with a certainty of its being accepted that Lady Faversham wrote to Kathleen an invitation to come to Ireland, and spend a few weeks with her and her husband. Five years before the two girls had seen a great deal of each other, while spending the autumn at Ryde, and ever since that time, though Lady Faversham had entertained many wishes for herself and her husband, she had ever cherished but one wish, one shehtly romantic wish, for her early friend: for she and Kathleen had been friends before they had met at Ryde, though never such dear friends as after that second meeting, and their daily intercourse during the one or two months they spent together there.

Lady Faversham had herself at that time

FAVERSHAM OOTTAGE. F been in love with Kathleen’s cousin, Sandy Beaumont. She had lone ago conquered that early fancy, and since then she had become Lord Faversham’s wife, and been to him as true and loving a wife as ever woman was; but she had still a great tenderness for the man whom she had once loved almost passionately. So now the desire of her heart was that Sandy Beaumont should be made happy by a marriage with his cousin, Kathleen O’Grady.

For in the old days, when they had all been together at Ryde, and Sybil Mordaunt had been in love with Sandy Beaumont herself, she had always known, only too well, that he loved his cousin, and she knew that it was owing to some misunderstanding with her, some idea that she was going to marry another, that he had suddenly thrown up his commission, and gone off to Australia without even delaying sufficiently to say good-bye to his friends. The son of a man who had run through his money at rather an extraquick pace, it would then have been almost impossible for him to have married his beautiful cousin, even could she at that time have brought herself to wish it, and of the possibility or impossibility of this Sybil had never been able to assure herself. But during the last five years great things had happened to Sandy Beaumont. His English friends did not know quite how it had all come about, but they knew he had returned home possessed of immense wealth; and not lone after he had arrived in England, Lord Faversham had asked him to come and stay at Faversham for a few weeks, and it was on his accepting this invitation that Sybil had written to her friend, his cousin, asking her to leave the London gaieties for a little, and come down to them at the Cottage, feeling quite sure that this invitation would be accepted: for whether or no Kathleen could ever have made up her mind to marry Sandy before he had left the army, and gone out to Australia, all for love of her, and come back again with a fortune, yet Sybil knew well enough that there was no one in the whole world Kathleen cared for, as she now cared for her cousin, Sandy Beaumont. She knew that Kathleen thought of him now as the only man she had ever really loved, and she believed it was for his sake that the muchsought-after young beauty had so long remained single. Indeed, from the tenour of Kathleen’s last letters, Sybil feared that she was now suffering life to become a weary burden to her, because, though he had returned from Australia, Sandy Beaumont had not at once hastened to claim her as his bride, nor had as yet taken any, the least, notice of her or her mother, Lady Killowen, although in old days he had always been accustomed to go home to Killowen for his holidays, and had been treated there almost, if not quite, as a son of the house; but then Sandy had left England in anger with Kathleen and her mother, and it seemed that in all the years he had been away, he had not forgotten this, but forgotten only the old affection he had been wont to feel for them.

If the little world round Faversham had known all about it, as people never do know all about their neighbours’ concerns, they would have been far more surprised at Lady Faversham’s invitation of Kathleen, than they were now at the latter’s acceptance of it: for when Sybil and Kathleen had last been together, Lord Faversham had been very desperately in love with the Irish beauty—so desperately, indeed, that he had been very near dying on her refusal of him, and it was only in consequence of the illness brought on by his sorrow that he had spent the winter in the little island of Madeira, almost equally celebrated then for its wonder-working climate as it was still longer ago for its nectar-like wines. There he had again met Sybil Mordaunt, and with the elasticity of youthful feelings, he had quickly transferred his affections to her. Neither he nor Sybil had ever seen Kathleen since, and many people would have told the young wife that it was a dangerous experiment she was trying, bringmg her husband and his old love together under the same roof in such close and familiar intercourse as must necessarily ensue between them in the small home-circle of Faversham Cottage. But Lady Faversham did not belong to the fast school, after all not so numerous as conspicuous even in these days, and she had no more idea that it was any more possible for her husband now to prefer

Kathleen to herself, than for herself to go back and care for Sandy Beaumont in the mad way in which she had once cared for him, endowing him in her imagination with all those romantic qualities which a girl thinks admirable in a man. Sybil had now a great regard for Sandy Beaumont, a great regard and a great respect; if she could have spoken out her thoughts in naked truthfulness, she would probably have been forced to own that she still believed Sandy to have a finer manlier character than the man she had married; but she was herself in perfect unconsciousness of this, and she was Lord Faversham’s wife now, and nearer the danger of caring too much for him and his interests to the exclusion of all other interests, than to the very opposite danger of caring more for some other man. On his part, Lord Faversham had certainly never given his wife cause to feel any

FAVERSHAM COTTAGE. t3 jealousy. As a boy he had fallen in love with the beautiful Kathleen O’Grady, and it was partly because Sybil was her friend, and partly the reaction from his passion, causing him to fall in love with the exact opposite to Miss O’Grady, that had made him in the first instance take to Sybil Mordaunt.

Men generally did not much respect Lord Faversham. They saw he was good looking, with that kind of beauty which led many people even now to talk of him as a pretty boy, and so they took it for granted that he was vain. They saw that he shot but little, and hunted never—being, indeed, incapacitated by health from joining in either of these pursuits; and they were ready enough to pronounce him a muff.

But Lord Faversham was neither a muff nor vain. A little weak, perhaps, im mind as well as body, a little too fond, perhaps, of the society of women in preference to that of men, but with something very chivalrous about him that led women to grow rather hot in their dissent from the opinion men mostly expressed of him. Not but that men liked him too, in spite of their contempt for the young Harl’s want of manliness, as they esteemed it; .and some men—the few who had known him for many years—felt anything but contempt for Lord Faversham. They knew that never in his life had he done anything that couid be called dirty or dishonourable. They knew that they would trust whatever they valued most—were it property, or wife, or child— in Lord Faversham’s keeping as soon as in that of any man. These men would have told Lady Faversham that she was not even risking anything when she asked her old friend and her husband’s first love to spend several weeks with her in her husband’s house.

Lord Faversham’s health might cause his wife great anxiety, he might try her patience at times by being fretful or fidgety ; but as long as he lived she could never suffer from any want of love; nor would he ever insult any woman—least of all a woman he had once fancied he loved, by any pretence of giving her the love that was now his wite’s, and hers alone.

It was ona Thursday evening that Miss O’Grady was expected at Faversham Cottage, no other guest was to arrive till the next day; and it so happened Lady Faversham was on that afternoon in some anxiety about her eldest child, who had been feverish all the morning.

“JT don’t think I quite like to leave Milly,” she said, as it drew near the time to go to the station. ‘Do you mind going to meet Kathleen? And then she could not think my stopping at home unkind.”

16 LOVE ME FOR MY LOVE. MV

Lord Faversham was sauntering about the hall, which served as billiard-room as well as hall, hardly even knocking the balls about, though he had a cue in his hand, as his wife thus spoke.

“J beheve you have got a monomania about health,’ he said. ‘* Milly looked all right yesterday.”

“J daresay it is my fancy,” replied Sybil, yielding at once, as she always yielded in appearance, in a manner that made it very difficult for her husband to gainsay her wishes, seeing she never gainsaid his opinions.

“Tl go, if you like, of course. Only, I may as well take the dog-cart if I do, or won’t that look the proper thing ?”’

“Yes; I should think so,” said Sybil eravely; evidently her mind was still with her sick child, but even as she spoke, she moved, and taking down her husband’s coat, placed it in a conspicuous situation, as a sort of gentle reminder against his going out.

“Oh! it is quite warm to-day, I shan’t want my coat,’ said Lord Faversham, devoting himself to the billiard balls again.

“It often turns cold towards evening,” replied Sybil. ‘‘ Give my love to Kathleen, and tell her why I don’t go to meet her, please. Thank you so much for going.”

“It is no trouble to me,” replied her husband, turning round, but as she spoke Sybil had left him: so seeing himself alone he sauntered to the hall-door, and looking out, gave himself up to his thoughts.

It was a pretty view enough that Lord Faversham saw from the hall-door of the Cottage; the ground sloped rather [sharply away at first, so as to afford an almost uninterrupted view of a lake at the foot of the little hill, on which the Cottage was situated. On VOL. I. 2 the lake two swans were usually to be seen, eravely admiring their own beauty as reflected from its glassy surface, or taking refuge in the pretty little island at its further end. Beyond the lake there were softlyrounded tree tops, and beyond the trees prettily-wooded hills in the distance, that was yet not so very distant, for the view was more artistic than extensive on this side of Faversham Cottage. Apparently the young Karl did not now derive any great satisfaction from the prospect, for he soon turned away from the door, and walked from the hall into the passage that ran all the length of the ground floor of the Cottage, turning thence into the first of the three sitting-rooms, which, opening into each other through foldingdoors, made the cottage as comfortable, as far as sitting-rooms went, as many a larger house. He seemed to be looking for some one, but as the three sitting-rooms were now untenanted, Lord Faversham, after passing hastily through them, returned listlessly to the middle room, and taking up a Review, threw himself upon a sofa. As the boy Earl hes there—for he is hardly more than a boy yet, though he has been four years married— let us take the opportunity of examining more closely into his personal appearance.

Lord Faversham is under the middle height, yet so slightly made, as hardly to look short ; his hands and feet are small, and in whatever attitude he may be—and, perlaps, -he is a trifle too much given to those that are easy and lounging—he always bears himself like a gentleman ; but his face is certainly his best point. A girlish pmk and white complexion, bright blue eyes, and fine, though untidy looking, gold brown hair, that never will lie straight, and yet has been never known 4o curl, having generally rather a ragged appearance; these are, perhaps, the first things to strike any one looking at him, as he now hes listlessly turning over the pages of his Review; but his features though hardly decided enough for a man, are perfectly regular and well shaped, and when his face lights up, as it generally does im conversation, it would not be easy to pick out a more pleasing countenance than that of the young Karl. As a boy he was often likened to a cherub, and this likeness has not quite deserted him yet, though his boyish beauty has a little passed away, and would, perhaps, quite have left him, had it not been for the delicacy of colouring that consumption so often stamps upon its victims.

But whilst we have been describing him, Lord Faversham had already risen again from the sofa, throwing down the Review with that careless contempt which we all of us are too apt to show towards other men’s thoughts. Lord Faversham was restless on this afternoon, as it was often his way to be restless, and it now occurred to him that it was quite time for him to go to meet Miss O’Grady, if he ever were going; so he rang the bell, and began ordering the dog-cart, instead of the pony-carriage, i which Lady Faversham had intended meeting her friend.

*““The cart has already gone for the luggage, I suppose ?”’ he asked.

**Yes, my lord, and her ladyship has already countermanded the pony-carriage. The dog-cart is at the door now.”

Then Lord Faversham had no further excuse for dawdling about, and going out gathered up the reins, and drove off to meet his old love, whose rejection of him had once gone very near to break his heart. It seemed to Lord Faversham a strange position, this in which he was placed on that July afternoon; and, truth to tell, he did not much like it. He had shrunk from putting any obstacle in the way of his wife’s wishes, when she had first proposed inviting Miss: O’Grady to visit them, but even then he had not liked the idea of meeting his old love again, and now as the time drew nearer, he liked the idea still less. To no man can it be pleasant to be reminded of the time when he made a fool of himself, and a man violently in love is very apt to make a fool of himself. Lord Faversham was of opinion that he had made a very great fool of himself, when he had been in love with Miss O’Grady, and he thought that her presence would remind him very forcibly of this; still it had to be endured now, so he drove on to the station, and having arrived there, had quite time to erow impatient for the arrival of the train before there were any signs of its approach. At last the whistle was heard, and in a few moments the long train was filling up the little station, stopping only a minute or two

FAVERSHAM COTTAGE. yy to allow of the descent of the Hon. Kathleen O’Grady, her maid, and her boxes, for very rarely did any one alight at Faversham, except those who were bound for the Cottage. Almost before he knew what he was doing, Lord Faversham had shaken hands with Miss O’Grady, and was inquiring after her boxes, alarmingly numerous, as was only to be expected. The next moment he was helping Kathleen into the dog-cart, and sitting down beside her himself; then they drove off, the maid established in the back seat as a chaperone if any were necessary, but as she was a foreigner, her presence did not much affect the téte-a-téte. | Lord Faversham had hoped before hand that Miss O’Grady would not refer to the old love passages between them, but in hoping this he had quite left out of consideration the peculiar character of the far-famed beauty.

As it was, she had hardly inquired after

Sybil, and listened to her message about her sick child, before she was saying in her deep rich tones :

“Dear Sybil, how strange it seems that she should be your wife! Of course you two have got quite accustomed to the idea by this time, but who would have thought it, when we were last all together, and she used to preach me such dear little sermons about my cruelty to you ?”

“Did she?” said Lord Faversham, with a sort of quiver in his voice, and a twinkle about the blue eyes, that seemed verging on a smile. ‘* Well, you were very cruel.”

“Yes, | know! was,’ replied Kathleen, quite eravely. ‘‘I behaved as badly to you as I always have to every man who has ever been fool enough to care for me; but fortunately it does not do them much harm. Here are you as happy as possible, with the best and dearest girl in the world for your wife, while

J ——” and she broke off with a heavy sigh and heightened colour.

Lord Faversham looked round into her beautiful face, more beautiful than ever, as he was obliged to acknowledge to himself, while thus looking into it, though its beauty roused none of the emotion in his heart now that once it had been wont to excite. ‘You are not happy ?” he said quietly.

**Happy!”’ exclaimed Miss O’ Grady, speaking with the abandon that always formed one of the principal charms of her conversation. **How can any one be happy who only lives in the present ? I cannot think of the past, and I dare not think of the future. I have nota friend in the world except Sybil, and if she only knew what I really am, she would never care to speak to me again, nor ever have dreamt of asking me here.”

“‘T don’t think that,” said Lord Faversham, gravely. Then he added with a little air of dignity, that sat well on his boyish features, ** Both my wife and I have long wished to see you, and we should both have been much disappointed if you could not have come to us.”

*““T believe every one thinks me mad to have done so,” said Kathleen shortly, after a moment's pause, during which she had quite taken in the force of that “both my wife and I.” Indeed she had understood a great deal more by it than Lord Faversham had ever meant. ‘Nobody could understand why I was leaving town at such a time, but I am so weary of the whole thing.”

“IT should think you must be,” said Lord Faversham, compassionately. ‘I don’t think I could stand a London season myself.”’

Then he had to get down to open the gate, for the old lodge having been changed into a dwelling-house there was as yet no other lodge to supply its place, and in a minute or two more they had driven up the steep approach to the Cottage, and Lord Faversham was handing Kathleen out, and conducting her to the little circular room at the top of the staircase, that served as Lady Faversham’s boudoir, and where she joined them in a moment.

** She is handsomer than ever,” exclaimed Sybil, as she bent again over her now sleeping child, after Kathleen had retired to her own room to prepare for dinner. Lord Iaversham had gone with her to see little Milly, and he bent over the child also, without answering his wife’s remark.

«Milly will do nicely now, I am sure,” he said; ‘‘ you need not be anxious any more about her; need you, Sybil?”

“No; and Lady Faversham smiled her soft quiet smile. “I suppose I was very silly to be so anxious before, but I always have been given to worrying myself, as Kathleen says. I wish I could learn indifference to trifles from her.”

*“‘T don’t,’ said Lord Faversham, earnestly. **T don’t know that there is anything [ am more glad of than that she refused me long ago,” he added, as he saw his wife looking at him with her large dark eyes opened to their fullest extent, at hearing him speak thus earnestly ; for the young Earl, Irish though he was, had all an Englishman’s reserve, and very rarely expressed more than a tenth part of what he felt. ‘* Not even that you accepted me, though I don’t know about that,” he added, with his pretty boyish smile. ‘‘ But I did so wish to marry her once, and I think I might have been happy, if I had, too, in a way; but what a wretched creature I should have grown into by this time! I had rather be miserable than be the slave of any woman’s caprices, aS I should have been of Miss

O’Grady’s, if she had ever condescended to become my wife.”

“You would never have suited each other,” said Sybil, gently; and as she spoke, she took hold of her husband’s hand caressingly. That was her only sign of endearment; she was not given to kissing, but she would often take hold of the hand of any one she loved, and stroke it softly and tenderly. But Lord Faversham was not always ~ satisfied with so small an outward sign as this, and he kissed his wife very fondly now.

“ Dearest Sybil,” he said, and then they both went to dress for dinner, and prepare for spending the evening with Kathleen O’Grady, already well known as a beauty in more than one capital ot

Hurope.

Chapter II

Next day Lord Faversham had again to drive to the station, and when the train arrived, he saw a fair-bearded man alight, to whom he called out with great cordiality: “ How are you, Beaumont, old fellow?” He remained sitting in the dog-cart this time, not thinking it necessary to get out to assist this new comer with his luggage, as he had thought it necessary on the occasion of his meeting the great London beauty the day before. Sandy Beaumont’s luggage seemed indeed to be of a very different order, and was certainly of very different bulk from that of his fair cousin; but if there was a difference

OHANGED ? ' 31 in the luggage, there was yet a greater difference in the personal appearance of the two guests at Faversham Cottage.

Sandy Beaumont had never been good looking, and a few years in the Australian Bush had not done anything towards beautifying him. He was filled out now from what he had been when he went out there a mere lad, but he had always been squarely made, and this did not alter him so much as the change in his expression since Lord Faversham had last seen him. As a lad, a young subaltefn in rather a crack line-regiment, he had been remarkable for an air of unmixed bonhomie, now his expression was rather stolid than otherwise, and he looked like a man who had, somehow or another, lost himself at some previous period of his life, and who had never been able to find his old self again. This expression was to a certain extent carried out by the thick beard of a light colour, slightly tinged with red, which stamped him, if anything else had been needed to do so, as a man home from the colonies; for Sandy Beaumont took very decidedly the impress of the surroundings among which he found himself. Perhaps it was because he worked so thoroughly heart and soul at whatever he took in hand, anyhow just as of old when he had belonged to the army, he had looked every inch a soldier, so now he looked equally unmistakably a colonist, not handsome at all, not even a gentleman at the first glance, perhaps, but most certainly and undoubtedly a colonist. Yet though he hardly looked so decidedly a gentleman that any casual observer would have pronounced him such, yet hardly any one, even judging from his personal appearance alone, and without hearing him speak, could ever have dared to assert that he was not a gentleman ;

for there was a look of power about Sandy

CHANGED ? oo

Beaumont, such as it is very rare to mect among the lower orders, unless in its inferior form as obstinacy, and Sandy did not look obstinate. Neither had he the least a daredevil air, he only looked the sort of man who would always do anything he wanted done, and would always get other people to carry out anything he wanted carried out.