Esmeralda did not understand in the least. An ordinary girl, brought up in London society, would have grasped the whole thing and known that she was being married for her money. But Esmeralda was not only innocent but, measuring the marquis by her own standard, would have deemed him incapable of anything ignoble.

Where ignorance is bliss ’tis folly to be wise. And she was blissfully happy! She understood now why she had turned away from Norman Druce that night by the stream: she had not loved him. She loved Trafford, and she loved him with the fullness of a girl’s pure love, as sweet as it is unfathomable.

For a day or two she seemed living in a dreamland, in which she could think of nothing but her new and strange happiness. The folk at Belfayre, much as they had already admired her, were struck by the expression of her face, the strange, deep[150] light in her wonderful eyes, and Lilias looked and spoke to her almost shyly, as if Esmeralda’s happiness were something sacred.

But presently Esmeralda remembered Three Star, and remembered it with a feeling near akin to remorse.

“I must write to Varley—Varley Howard, my guardian,” she said to Trafford, one morning. “I must tell him all—all that has happened.”

“Yes, certainly,” said Trafford, to whom the facts and companions of her past always seemed misty and almost mythical. “Do you think he would come and pay us a visit? Ask him. We should all be glad to see him; glad to see any friend of yours, Esmeralda.”

“May I?” said Esmeralda, delightedly. Then her face fell. “But I’m afraid he would not come. He—he said he would not.”

“I don’t see why he shouldn’t,” said Trafford, in faint surprise. “It’s nothing of a journey nowadays.”

Esmeralda looked at him wistfully. She saw that he did not understand, and she would have liked to have explained to him; but for Varley’s sake she kept silent.

She wrote a long letter to him, telling him all about Belfayre, and the duke, and Lady Lilias, and of her engagement to Trafford; and she begged Varley to come over to England. She sent her love to all old friends, mentioning them by name, and she signed herself his dear Esmeralda. “You told me that if I was ever unhappy I was to come back to you and Three Star,” she added, in a postscript; “but, Varley, dear, I am the happiest girl alive, and I’m afraid I shall never come back to Three Star again. So you must come to me. Do come! You would like the duke and Trafford—oh! you would be sure to like him, and he you. He is just what you like, so brave, and kind, and good!”

With the letter she sent a great case of presents. Dresses and shawls for Melinda, tobacco for Taffy and the rest of the men, and a diamond ring—one of the best—for Varley himself.

Varley did not acquaint the men with her engagement to the Marquis of Trafford, but he conveyed her love to them; and, when the case arrived, there was much rejoicing in Three Star.

“Who said our Esmeralda was a-going to forget her old pals?” demanded Taffy, fiercely. “Let him stand out, and I’ll knock his head off!”

As no one had made the assertion, no one came forward to[151] have his head knocked off; but heads ached the next morning from the whisky that was drunk over that case.

Varley’s reply came in due course. He wished his Esmeralda all the happiness in the world—as did all the camp—but he would not come to England. He, too, put a postscript to remind her that her promise still held good, and that, if ever she was unhappy, she was to go straight back to Three Star, where loving hearts awaited her.

The letter brought tears to Esmeralda’s eyes. But it did not reach her until she was back in London, and plunged into a whirl of pleasure and gayety.

As Esmeralda, the girl from the wilds, she had made a sensation; as Miss Chetwynde, the fiancée of the Marquis of Trafford, and future Duchess of Belfayre, she was at once raised to a position of vast importance. She was sought after, and courted, and flattered to an extent that would have turned most girls’ heads. But Esmeralda managed to retain her simplicity and modesty through it all.

Men raved about her and envied Trafford, and the women copied her dresses, and even her peculiar accent, and envied her. Even her strange backwood phrases became the fashion, and when she made a slip in grammar, her auditors did not sneer, but smiled, as if she had said something clever.

As Lady Wyndover said, “You may say what you like, wear what you like, do what you like, when you own two millions, and are going to be the Duchess of Belfayre.”

Her ladyship was in her glory. Her hall table was strewn with cards, and all the big and most exclusive houses open to her; for was she not the guardian of Miss Chetwynde?

And Trafford? It is hard to describe his condition. He had done his duty, and was going to save the noble house of which he would some day be the head. He had won one of the loveliest girls in England; but he told himself that he still loved Ada Lancing.

They met, for the first time, after the announcement of his engagement to Esmeralda, at a dance at the Countess of Blankyre’s.

She came late, as usual, and Trafford made his way to her. He noticed, with a pang of remorse, that she was thinner, and that her face was more ethereal-looking even than it had been.

She greeted him with the quiet nonchalance which we favor nowadays, the quietude and repose which must be observed though our hearts are breaking: and not until they had taken[152] two or three turns round the room did she speak; then she said:

“So it is done, Trafford?”

“Yes; it is done,” he said, gravely. She drew a long breath, and he felt her hand close tightly upon his.

“I was right!” she said. “I knew that if you got her down to Belfayre you would succeed. Did you find it difficult?”

The question jarred upon him.

“Do not let us go into details,” he said.

She was silent for a moment, then she looked across the room at Esmeralda, who was dancing with one of her many admirers.

“How happy she looks!” she said. “She is positively radiant!” Her lips curled with something like a sneer. “A shop-girl could not look more elated; it is as if she were saying aloud, ‘I am to be the Duchess of Belfayre!’”

Trafford’s brows came down.

“You do her an injustice, Ada,” he said. “She sets no value on the title or the position. No one could think less of it than she does.”

She laughed scornfully.

“How blind men are! Do you think that, with all her innocence, she is ignorant of the worth of a dukedom? No girl out of her teens can be. But I beg your pardon; I would not dispel the delusion.”

“What delusion?” he asked.

“That she is in love with you,” she said, with almost vulgar frankness. “You think that she would have consented to marry you if you had been a commoner, and just a mere nobody?”

He was silent, but he glanced at Esmeralda under his knit brows.

“Trust me that, with all her seeming simplicity, she knows the worth of the bargain she has made. Do you think that you are the first man who has made love to her?”

His face grew dark.

“You are unjust to her,” he said.

She laughed bitterly.

“And you take up her defense,” she said. “Has it come to that already?”

“For God’s sake, be silent!” he said, almost fiercely. “What is done is done. You know how necessary, how inevitable it was. You yourself advised—yes, drove me to—the[153] doing of it. Do not make my duty harder and more difficult than it is.”

“Is it so hard, so difficult?” she murmured, with a thrill of gratification. “Forgive me, Trafford! You can not know, understand, what I feel, what I suffer! Yes, I advised you, I helped you. But—but all the same, I—I am a woman, and, ah! do not forget that—that............