A NIGHT OF PORTENTS

ALICE was combing Lady Betty’s hair late that night.

The two girls were in Betty’s bedroom, a solitary taper burning on the table. In this rosy twilight both faces showed indistinctly. Betty’s finery lay upon a chair near by; she wore only a flowing white robe over her night-rail, and one rosy foot, out of the slipper, rested on the rug. Her luxuriant hair falling about her almost hid her face, and her eyes were fixed pensively upon the fire. Meanwhile, Alice stood behind her combing and brushing her hair with hands that actually trembled, while her face was very white. If Lady Clancarty had looked at her, she would have divined some trouble, but as it was she was only aroused from her revery by the girl’s unwonted awkwardness.

“Dear me, Alice!” she exclaimed, “that is the third time you have pulled my hair. I shall be as bald soon as Lady Dacres without her perukes. What ails you, girl?”

“I’m nervous,” Alice said, her voice breaking suspiciously, “I can’t help it.”

Lady Betty tossed back her hair, snatched up a taper and looked at her sharply.

“Nervous?” she exclaimed, “why, you are naturally as tame as any barnyard fowl. Nervous! Why, your eyes are sticking out of your head. What is it, girl? Hast met your friend the parson again?”

“No, no,” faltered Alice, with a little sob. “I—I overheard some talk between two gentlemen to-night in the hall—and it scared me.”

Betty laughed merrily.

“Fie, Alice, fie!” she cried, “an eavesdropper! What horrible thing was it they said? Mercy on us, girl, you look as if they plotted bloody murder!”

“So they did, madam,” Alice said soberly.

Lady Betty stared.

“The child’s demented,” she remarked, shaking her head.

“That I’m not,” Alice replied bluntly, wiping a tear from her pale cheek, “but I hate to think of one of them dead—for some folly, too.”

“Oh, ho!” said her mistress, setting down the taper, “now I understand—there is to be a duel;” then suddenly her mood changed.

“Who were they?” she demanded sharply.

Alice began to show reluctance and her eyes avoided Betty’s.

“Two guests of the inn, madam,” she said, averting her face.

But Lady Clancarty caught her arm and turned her to the light.

“Out with it, Alice,” she said imperiously, “I will know.”

“It was Lord Savile,” the girl said slowly, “and—and another—a stranger.”

“Our stranger of Althorpe, Alice?” Lady Betty said, a sudden indefinable change in her whole aspect.

Alice nodded sullenly.

Her mistress stood quite still for a moment, pressing her hands together. She had shaken her hair about her face again, so that it was concealed. There was something in her attitude so unusual, in the silence, too, of the room, where only the fire crackled, and in the girl’s own nervousness, that quite overcame Alice. She began to cry.

“They fight to-morrow,” she sobbed, “in the meadow beyond the grove of limes—at sunrise.”“Who are their seconds?” Lady Betty asked, in a strangely quiet tone.

“Mr. Benham, so I heard them say, and a young fellow with a face like a boy. He was to act for the stranger because he had no friends.”

“Young Mackie!” said Lady Clancarty. “You heard this and did not tell me, Alice? I find it hard to forgive you.”

“But why should I?” cried Alice trembling, “what could your ladyship do?”

Betty gave a strange little laugh. “You shall see what I will do to-morrow,” she said quietly, “for you shall go with me.”

“Go where, my lady?” Alice asked in surprise.

“To the meadow behind the limes,” replied her mistress calmly; “there I shall go to-morrow, at sunrise, and stop this folly. It began in my rooms, Alice, over a ballad, and I have no mind that it shall end in bloodshed.”

“Indeed, madam, I think you are in the right,” said Alice simply, “but what can we do? They will never listen to a woman!”

Lady Clancarty shut her lips firmly, and held her little bare foot out to the fire, warming it.

“I fear you cannot stop them,” Alice went on; “Lord Savile was very fierce, but the other gentleman—oh, madam, I feared him more! he was so cool; and those eyes of his—they are like steel.”

“So they are,” said Betty absently, “and hath he not a handsome face?” and she looked pensively into the fire. “To-morrow we shall go, Alice, to-morrow at sunrise, and I shall stop this duel—I will stop it, if I have to go to the king!”

But the little handmaid did not reply; she was watching her mistress with an anxious face. She did not know the meaning of this new Lady Betty, and some hint of impending trouble weighed upon her. She was country bred, too, and timid, and the thought of the gray dawn with the shadowy trees looming through the mist and only the flash of steel to illumine the scene, made her tremble. But Betty, usually so observant and sympathetic and light hearted, did not heed her; she was suddenly self-absorbed, pensive, quietly determined. She went to the window and peeped out into the night.

“How many hours until sunrise, Alice?” she asked.

“Six, my lady,” the girl replied with a sigh, “and I wish it might be sixteen!”

Betty laughed, a strange little embarrassed laugh, coming back and sinking on her knees before the hearth, the firelight playing on her lovely face, and the shadowy masses of her hair, and the gleaming white of her draperies.

“I cannot sleep,” she said softly; “I cannot sleep—I am not fit for a soldier’s wife!”

Alice shuddered. “Indeed, my lady, I’d as lief marry a butcher!” she cried, with such genuine horror and disgust that she moved her mistress to merriment.

“There, my girl, I told you so,” cried Lady Betty, “you were meant for that same parson.”