"Frogwater," said young Lord Dogwood, with a generous flush, "I was wrong. Wynchgate, your hand."
The two noblemen shook hands.
"My friends," said Lord Wynchgate, "in asking you to abandon our game, I had an end in view. I ask your help in an affair of the heart."
"Ha! excellent!" exclaimed the five noblemen. "We are with you heart and soul."
"I propose this night," continued Wynchgate, "with your help, to carry off a young girl, a female!"
"An abduction!" exclaimed the Ambassador somewhat sternly. "Wynchgate, I cannot countenance this."
"Mistake me not," said the Earl, "I intend to abduct her. But I propose nothing dishonourable. It is my firm resolve to offer her marriage."
"Then," said Lord Frogwater, "I am with you."
"Gentlemen," concluded Wynchgate, "all is ready. The coach is below. I have provided masks, pistols, and black cloaks. Follow me."
A few moments later, a coach, with the blinds drawn, in which were six noblemen armed to the teeth, might have been seen, were it not for the darkness, approaching the humble lodging in which Winnifred Clair was sheltered.
But what it did when it got there, we must leave to another chapter.
CHAPTER V
THE ABDUCTION
The hour was twenty minutes to ten on the evening described in our last chapter.
Winnifred Clair was seated, still fully dressed, at the window of the bedroom, looking out over the great city.
A light tap came at the door.
"If it's a fried egg," called Winnifred softly, "I do not need it. I ate yesterday."
"No," said the voice of the Landlady. "You are wanted below."
"I!" exclaimed Winnifred, "below!"
"You," said the Landlady, "below. A party of gentlemen have called for you."
"Gentlemen," exclaimed Winnifred, putting her hand to her brow in perplexity, "for me! at this late hour! Here! This evening! In this house?"
"Yes," repeated the Landlady, "six gentlemen. They arrived in a closed coach. They are all closely masked and heavily armed. They beg you will descend at once."
"Just Heaven!" cried the Unhappy Girl. "Is it possible that they mean to abduct me?"
"They do," said the Landlady. "They said so!"
"Alas!" cried Winnifred, "I am powerless. Tell them"—she hesitated—"tell them I will be down immediately. Let them not come up. Keep them below on any pretext. Show them an album. Let them look at the goldfish. Anything, but not here! I shall be ready in a moment."
Feverishly she made herself ready. As hastily as possible she removed all traces of tears from her face. She threw about her shoulders an opera cloak, and with a light Venetian scarf half concealed the beauty of her hair and features. "Abducted!" she murmured, "and by six of them! I think she said six. Oh, the horror of it!" A touch of powder to her cheeks and a slight blackening of her eyebrows, and the courageous girl was ready.
Lord Wynchgate and his companions—for they it was, that is to say, they were it—sat below in the sitting-room looking at the albums. "Woman," said Lord Wynchgate to the Landlady, with an oath, "let her hurry up. We have seen enough of these. We can wait no longer."
"I am here," cried a clear voice upon the threshold, and Winnifred stood before them. "My lords, for I divine who you are and wherefore you have come, take me, do your worst with me, but spare, oh, spare this humble companion of my sorrow."
"Right-oh!" said Lord Dogwood, with a brutal laugh.
"Enough," exclaimed Wynchgate, and seizing Winnifred by the waist, he dragged her forth out of the house and out upon the street.
But something in the brutal violence of his behaviour seemed to kindle for the moment a spark of manly feeling, if such there were, in the breasts of his companions.
"Wynchgate," cried young Lord Dogwood, "my mind misgives me. I doubt if this is a gentlemanly thing to do. I'll have no further hand in it."
A chorus of approval from his companions endorsed his utterance. For a moment they hesitated.
"Nay," cried Winnifred, turning to confront the masked faces that stood about her, "go forward with your fell design. I am here. I am helpless. Let no prayers stay your hand. Go to it."
"Have done with this!" cried Wynchgate, with a brutal oath. "Shove her in the coach."
But at the very moment the sound of hurrying footsteps was heard, and a clear, ringing, manly, well-toned, vibrating voice cried, "Hold! Stop! Desist! Have a care, titled villain, or I will strike you to the earth."
A tall aristocratic form bounded out of the darkness.
"Gentlemen," cried Wynchgate, releasing his hold upon the frightened girl, "we are betrayed. Save yourselves. To the coach."
In another instant the six noblemen had leaped into the coach and disappeared down the street.
Winnifred, still half inanimate with fright, turned to her rescuer, and saw before her the form and lineaments of the Unknown Stranger, who had thus twice stood between her and disaster. Half fainting, she fell swooning into his arms.
"Dear lady," he exclaimed, "rouse yourself. You are safe. Let me restore you to your home!"
"That voice!" cried Winnifred, resuming consciousness. "It is my benefactor."
She would have swooned again, but the Unknown lifted her bodily up the steps of her home and leant her against the door.
"Farewell," he said, in a voice resonant with gloom.
"Oh, sir!" cried the unhappy girl, "let one who owes so much to one who has saved her in her hour of need at least know his name."
But the stranger, with a mournful gesture of farewell, had disappeared as rapidly as he had come.
But, as to why he had disappeared, we must ask our reader's patience for another chapter.
CHAPTER VI
THE UNKNOWN
The scene is now shifted, sideways and forwards, so as to put it at Muddlenut Chase, and to make it a fortnight later than the events related in the last chapter.
Winnifred is now at the Chase as the guest of the Marquis and Marchioness. There her bruised soul finds peace.
The Chase itself was one of those typical country homes which are, or were till yesterday, the glory of England. The approach to the Chase lay through twenty miles of glorious forest, filled with fallow deer and wild bulls. The house itself, dating from the time of the Plantagenets, was surrounded by a moat covered with broad lilies and floating green scum. Magnificent peacocks sunned themselves on the terraces, while from the surrounding shrubberies there rose the soft murmur of doves, pigeons, bats, owls and partridges.
Here sat Winnifred Clair day after day upon the terrace recovering her strength, under the tender solicitude of the Marchioness.
Each day the girl urged upon her noble hostess the necessity of her departure. "Nay," said the Marchioness, with gentle insistence, "stay where you are. Your soul is bruised. You must rest."
"Alas," cried Winnifred, "who am I that I should rest? Alone, despised, buffeted by fate, what right have I to your kindness?"
"Miss Clair," replied the noble lady, "wait till you are stronger. There is something that I wish to say to you."
Then at last, one morning when Winnifred's temperature had fallen to ninety-eight point three, the Marchioness spoke.
"Miss Clair," she said, in a voice which throbbed with emotion, "Winnifred, if I may so call you, Lord Muddlenut and I have formed a plan for your future. It is our dearest wish that you should marry our son."
"Alas," cried Winnifred, while tears rose in her eyes, "it cannot be!"
"Say not so," cried the Marchioness. "Our son, Lord Mordaunt Muddlenut, is young, handsome, all that a girl could desire. After months of wandering he returns to us this morning. It is our dearest wish to see him married and established. We offer you his hand."
"Indeed," replied Winnifred, while her tears fell even more freely, "I seem to requite but ill the kindness that you show. Alas, my heart is no longer in my keeping."
"Where is it?" cried the Marchioness.
"It is another's. One whose very name I do not know holds it in his keeping."
But at this moment a blithe, gladsome step was heard upon the flagstones of the terrace. A manly, ringing voice, which sent a thrill to Winnifred's heart, cried "Mother!" and in another instant Lord Mordaunt Muddlenut, for he it was, had folded the Marchioness to his heart.
Winnifred rose, her heart beating wildly. One glance was enough. The newcomer, Lord Mordaunt, was none other than the Unknown, the Unaccountable, to whose protection she had twice owed her life.
With a wild cry Winnifred Clair leaped across the flagstones of the terrace and fled into the park.
CHAPTER VII
THE PROPOSAL
They stood beneath the great trees of the ancestral park, into which Lord Mordaunt had followed Winnifred at a single bound. All about them was the radiance of early June.
Lord Mordaunt knelt on one knee on the greensward, and with a touch in which respect and reverence were mingled with the deepest and manliest emotion, he took between his finger and thumb the tip of the girl's gloved hand.
"Miss Clair," he uttered, in a voice suffused with the deepest yearning, yet vibrating with the most profound respect, "Miss Clair—Winnifred—hear me, I implore!"
"Alas," cried Winnifred, struggling in vain to disengage the tip of her glove from the impetuous clasp of the young nobleman, "alas, whither can I fly? I do not know my way through the wood, and there are bulls in all directions. I am not used to them! Lord Mordaunt, I implore you, let the tears of one but little skilled in the art of dissimulation–"
"Nay, Winnifred," said the Young Earl, "fly not. Hear me out!"
"Let me fly," begged the unhappy girl.
"You must not fly," pleaded Mordaunt. "Let me first, here upon bended knee, convey to you the expression of a devotion, a love, as ardent and as deep as ever burned in a human heart. Winnifred, be my bride!"
"Oh, sir," sobbed Winnifred, "if the knowledge of a gratitude, a thankfulness from one whose heart will ever treasure as its proudest memory the recollection of one who did for one all that one could have wanted done for one—if this be some poor guerdon, let it suffice. But, alas, my birth, the dark secret of my birth forbids–"
"Nay," cried Mordaunt, leaping now to his feet, "your birth is all right. I have looked into it myself. It is as good—or nearly as good—as my own. Till I knew this, my lips were sealed by duty. While I supposed that you had a lower birth and I an upper, I was bound to silence. But come with me to the house. There is one arrived with me who will explain all."
Hand in hand the lovers, for such they now were, returned to the Chase. There in the great hall the Marquis and the Marchioness were standing ready to greet them.
"My child!" exclaimed the noble lady, as she folded Winnifred to her heart. Then she turned to her son. "Let her know all!" she cried.
Lord Mordaunt stepped across the room to a curtain. He drew it aside, and there stepped forth Mr. Bonehead, the old lawyer who had cast Winnifred upon the world.
"Miss Clair," said the Lawyer, advancing and taking the girl's hand for a moment in a kindly clasp, "the time has come for me to explain all. You are not, you never were, the penniless girl that you suppose. Under the terms of your father's will, I was called upon to act a part and to throw you upon the world. It was my client's wish, and I followed it. I told you, quite truthfully, that I had put part of your money into options in an oil-well. Miss Clair, that well is now producing a million gallons of gasolene a month!'
"A million gallons!" cried Winnifred. "I can never use it."
"Wait till you own a motor-car, Miss Winnifred," said the Lawyer.
"Then I am rich!" exclaimed the bewildered girl.
"Rich beyond your dreams," answered the Lawyer. "Miss Clair, you own in your own right about half of the State of Texas—I think it is in Texas, at any rate either Texas or Rhode Island, or one of those big states in America. More than this, I have invested your property since your father's death so wisely that even after paying the income tax and the property tax, the inheritance tax, the dog tax and the tax on amusements, you will still have one half of one per cent to spend."
Winnifred clasped her hands.
"I knew it all the time," said Lord Mordaunt, drawing the girl to his embrace, "I found it out through this good man."
"We knew it too," said the Marchioness. "Can you forgive us, darling, our little plot for your welfare? Had we not done this Mordaunt might have had to follow you over to America and chase you all around Newport and Narragansett at a fearful expense."
"How can I thank you enough?" cried Winnifred. Then she added eagerly, "And my birth, my descent?"
"It is all right," interjected the Old Lawyer. "It is A 1. Your father, who died before you were born, quite a little time before, belonged to the very highest peerage of Wales. You are descended directly from Claer-ap-Claer, who murdered Owen Glendower. Your mother we are still tracing up. But we have already connected her with Floyd-ap-Floyd, who murdered Prince Llewellyn."
"Oh, sir," cried the grateful girl. "I only hope I may prove worthy of them!"
"One thing more," said Lord Mordaunt, and stepping over to another curtain he drew it aside and there emerged Lord Wynchgate.
He stood before Winnifred, a manly contrition struggling upon features which, but for the evil courses of he who wore them, might have been almost presentable.
"Miss Clair," he said, "I ask your pardon. I tried to carry you off. I never will again. But before we part let me say that my acquaintance with you has made me a better man, broader, bigger and, I hope, deeper."
With a profound bow, Lord Wynchgate took his leave.
CHAPTER VIII
WEDDED AT LAST
Lord Mordaunt and his bride were married forthwith in the parish church of Muddlenut Chase. With Winnifred's money they have drained the moat, rebuilt the Chase, and chased the bulls out of the park. They have six children, so far, and are respected, honoured and revered in the countryside far and wide, over a radius of twenty miles in circumference.
II
JOHN AND I OR, HOW I NEARLY LOST MY HUSBAND
(Narrated after the approved fashion of the best Heart and Home Magazines)
It was after we had been married about two years that I began to feel that I needed more air. Every time I looked at John across the breakfast-table, I felt as if I must have more air, more space.
I seemed to feel as if I had no room to expand. I had begun to ask myself whether I had been wise in marrying John, whether John was really sufficient for my development. I felt cramped and shut in. In spite of myself the question would arise in my mind whether John really understood my nature. He had a way of reading the newspaper, propped up against the sugar-bowl, at breakfast, that somehow made me feel as if things had gone all wrong. It was bitter to realize that the time had come when John could prefer the newspaper to his wife's society.
But perhaps I had better go back and tell the whole miserable story from the beginning.
I shall never forget—I suppose no woman ever does—the evening when John first spoke out his love for me. I had felt for some time past that it was there. Again and again, he seemed about to speak. But somehow his words seemed to fail him. Twice I took him into the very heart of the little wood beside Mother's house, but it was only a small wood, and somehow he slipped out on the other side. "Oh, John," I had said, "how lonely and still it seems in the wood with no one here but ourselves! Do you think," I said, "that the birds have souls?" "I don't know," John answered, "let's get out of this." I was sure that his emotion was too strong for him. "I never feel a bit lonesome where you are, John," I said, as we made our way among the underbrush. "I think we can get out down that little gully," he answered. Then one evening in June after tea I led John down a path beside the house to a little corner behind the garden where there was a stone wall on one side and a high fence right in front of us, and thorn bushes on the other side. There was a little bench in the angle of the wall and the fence, and we sat down on it.