Miss Stuart

“ Yet as the story proceeded he became interested in spite of himself. "Do you mean to tell me," he said incredulously, "that Miss Stuart is absolutely ignorant of what goes on in that house?"
Dick laid his head on the table in sheer despair. "Ah Major, Major!" he cried, "I told her--I--you should have seen her face!" He burst into incoherent regrets, and praises of Belle's angelic innocence.
"It appears to me," remarked Major Marsden drily, "to be about the best thing that could have happened. Fiction is always unsafe. Belle,--as you call her--must have found it out sooner or later. ”

“ She sat down and wrote a long, gushing letter to her "cream-colored" cousin. Mrs. Stuart dropped her a line of thanks also, and Charley, of course, wrote, and there her adventure seemed to come to an end. Miss Stuart's letters were long and frequent. Mr. Stuart's rambling epistle alternately made her laugh and lose her temper, a daily loss with poor, discontented Edith. With the fine discrimination most men possess, he sent her, on her seventeenth birthday, a set of turquoise and pearls, which made her sallow complexion hideous, or, at least, as hideous as anything can make a pretty girl. ”

“ Miss Stuart is so fully acquainted with the advantages she possesses over all other women, that it is hardly possible to praise any lady at court for a well-turned arm, and a fine leg but she is ever ready to dispute the point by demonstration ”

“ This Miss Stuart felt instinctively, and as she was accustomed to admiration, it stung her into a desire to win something more than indifference from Leonard's friend. Her efforts were totally unsuccessful, and, as her treatment of her lover became less and less loyal, Guy withdrew altogether from her society, showing her no further courtesy than an occasional bow of recognition. In the meantime Miss Stuart's latest affair, with a certain Frenchman of unenviable reputation, was giving Baden food for gossip and keeping it on the qui vive for a scandal. ”

“ Miss Stuart had the [119] art of granting small favours and of holding out alluring hopes without really conceding anything. Charles, tantalised to desperation, continued more devoted than ever.
Royal admiration, while it invariably serves to recruit desirable partis who might otherwise evince no inclination to confer the blessing of matrimony upon a young and portionless beauty, is not without great disadvantages. In the case of La Belle Stuart the attentions she received from her sovereign tended to defeat the very object for which she was trying to employ them. ”

“ Stuart, his shaggy gray head and keen lined face attracting considerable attention in their neighbourhood. He was in his most expansive mood; the combativeness of an hour before had disappeared, and the ardent susceptible temperament of the man was absorbed in admiration, in the mere sensuous artist's delight in a stirring and beautiful series of impressions. When the white dress disappeared through the doorway of the ballroom, he followed it with a sigh of regret, and during the scene which followed between the Prince and his intended bride, he hardly looked at the stage. ”

“ Even Miss Stuart's active mind began at length to yield itself to the drowsy influence of the lifeless atmosphere, the monotonous buzzing of the flies, and the lazy twittering of the birds as they rested idly on the branches of the elms, or sailed languidly through the haze which softly enveloped the earth. She flung one arm above her head, and leaned back in her chair. Her thoughts went back to those far-off happy days in Annapolis, and a faint smile curved the lines of her mouth. ”

“ Stuart? I don’t know why, but I am sure she does not like me.”
“Margery”—and Stuart drew her back to him again and kissed her sweet lips—“we are pledged to each other, and none shall part us. Leave all to me, and it will come right. And now I have a lesson to teach you—henceforth I am Stuart, and Stuart only; don’t forget.”
“I will not,” she promised. She was silent for an instant, then said, softly: “How good you are! I will try to be worthy of you. Something tells me, Stuart, that I am not a common village girl. You will know the truth, perhaps, some day, and then you will be proud of me.” ”

“ Next morning the queen was awakened by the sound of trumpets and bugles: it had been decided the day before that she should set out that day for Hamilton, where reinforcements were looked for. The queen donned an elegant riding-habit, and soon, mounted on Rosabelle, appeared amid her defenders. The shouts of joy redoubled: her beauty, her grace, and her courage were admired by everyone. Mary Stuart became her own self once more, and she felt spring up in her again the power of fascination she had always exercised on those who came near her. ”

“ Indeed, when Maud, to try the stability of a shoe, waltzed round the room with her brother, Belle was startled at her own admiration for their lithe, graceful, sensuous beauty.
"I'll tell you what it is," cried Mabel, the eldest of the three; "you'll have a ripping good time tonight, Maudie. I never saw you look so cheek." She meant chic, but the spelling was against her. As for Mrs. Stuart, she appeared correctly attired in black satin and bugles. The girls saw to that, suppressing with inexorable firmness the good lady's hankering after gayer colours and more flimsy stuffs. ”

“ Stuart is nothing if not cultivated; her light individuality floats easily on the stream of London thought, now with this current, now with that, but always in movement, never left behind. She has the usual literary and artistic topics at her fingers' end, and as she knows everybody, whenever the more abstract sides of a subject begin to bore her, she can fall back upon an endless store of gossip as lively, as brightly-coloured, and, on the whole, as harmless as she herself is. ”

“ He debated all the while what thing he could do to win again that quick smile from Stuart. He wanted that man’s approval—more than aught else he wanted it—would force it somehow, no matter by what extravagance of action. He believed Stuart despised him, and the thought cut like rain-rods in a north-easterly. “If he doesn’t despise me, then why won’t he tell me more about his—his ideas?”
But on no subsequent visit to the Haven, was Stuart to be drawn. “My creed is the wrong sort for an engaged young man; better leave it alone. By the way, you promised that I should see your fiancée.” ”

“ More regretted and admired for her misfortunes and accomplishments than condemned for her sins and crimes, Mary Stuart, the beautiful Queen of Scots, lives in the recollections of posterity as a vision of incomparable grace, beauty, and loveliness, hallowed by the genius of great poets and redeemed by a tragic and cruel death. To no historical memory poetry and tradition have been more kind and more idealizing than to Mary Stuart ”

“ Mary Stuart's love life makes a piteous story, for it is the life of one who was ever seeking—seeking for the man to whom she could look up, who could be strong and brave and ardent like herself, and at the same time be more powerful and more steadfast even than she herself in mind and thought. Whatever may be said of her, and howsoever the facts may be colored by partisans, this royal girl, stung though she was by passion and goaded by desire, cared nothing for any man who could not match her in body and mind and spirit all at once. ”

“ Of course, to-day this cult of the Stuarts is nothing but a fad. No one ever expects to see a Stuart on the English throne. But it is significant of the deep strain of romance which the six Stuarts who reigned in England have implanted in the English heart. The old Jacobite ballads still have power to thrill. Queen Victoria herself used to have the pipers file out before her at Balmoral to the "skirling" of "Bonnie Dundee," "Over the Water to Charlie," and "Wha'll Be King but Charlie!" It is a sentiment that has never died. ”

“ Stuart, her Stuart, the being who held her very life, marry another—that fair, lovely woman who had laughed her to scorn! The sunshine grew blood-red before her eyes, for one instant she reeled, and then grasped the doorpost for support. Then gradually she awoke to the fullness of her pain and humiliation. Pride was swelling in her heart; she seemed in that instant changed from a girl of glowing, living hopes to a woman who had tasted the bitterness of all earthly grief. ”

“ Never, never did a more perfect pair stand forth in lordly hall, or on the emerald turf, than Mary Stuart and her destroyer. Both in the flush and flower of gorgeous youth: she invested with beauty such as few before or since have ever had to show, with grace, and symmetry, and all that nameless something which goes yet further to excite the admiration, and call forth the love of men, than loveliness itself ”

“ From the shadow-side of the hulk against which Stuart leant, enumerating his ethics to the stars, a long-drawn-out sigh quivered through the air; then a low and satisfied grunt; both sounds expressive of the mood in man, when, having reached a fatuity of content too great for words, he has to resort to animal noises in which to relieve his feelings. Stuart strolled round, and stood gazing down at a reclining figure upon the sand, figure which he recognized as one-half of the lovers who had so often shattered his evening calm.
“Where’s Letty?” ”

“ And once more the assumption of authority on John Raby's part irritated him into contradiction. "It will be a pity to disturb Miss Stuart's first day," he replied stiffly, and rode away.
The young civilian shrugged his shoulders. Philip Marsden wasn't a bad fellow on the whole, but a prig of the first water. Imagine any one gifted with a grain of common sense acting as he had done! Why, if he wanted the girl's good graces, had he not paid up the rest of the money and finished the whole affair? ”

“ The fact is that Miss Stuart—the Princess Henrietta Maria as we call her here—wants a well-educated amanuensis. I manage her estates and her household, but—and I needn’t attempt to disguise it—my education has been neglected. I am not good at letter-writing. Still, I have worked my way gradually up into my present position, and I am not disposed to imperil it. The man who comes here must be my ally. He will be paid four hundred a year, and will keep his place as long as he likes, provided that he gets on well with me. ”

“ Georgiana told him briefly. Stuart looked gloomy. "That's all right," he said, "as long as he confines himself to being company for your father. But if he takes to being company for you—lookout!"
"Absurd! He's years older than I, and he said he would be working very hard. I shall see nothing of him except at the table. Heavens! don't grudge us anything that promises to relieve the monotony of our lives even a little bit."
Stuart whistled. ”

“ Mary Stuart was then in the full bloom of her beauty, beauty even more brilliant in its mourning garb—a beauty so wonderful that it shed around her a charm which no one whom she wished to please could escape, and which was fatal to almost everyone. ”

“ At this terrible sarcasm Lady Lochleven took a step towards Mary Stuart, holding in her hand the knife which she had just been using to cut off a piece of meat brought her to taste; but the queen rose up with so great a calm and with such majesty, that either from involuntary respect or shame of her first impulse, she let fall the weapon she was holding, and not finding anything sufficiently strong in reply to express her feelings, she signed to the servants to follow her, and went out of the apartment with all the dignity that anger permitted her to summon to her aid. ”

“ Poverty had stood between him and the realisation of a dream till, with the sight of his ideal profoundly happy as some one else's wife, had come distrust and contempt for a feeling that experience showed him did not, could not last. Why, therefore, should it enter into and disturb his life at all? Friendship? ah, that was different! Perhaps the future held a time when he would clasp hands with a life-companion; a woman to be the mistress of his home, the mother of his children. But Belle! poor little, soft Belle Stuart, with her beautiful grey eyes! ”

“ Most of us have sufficient principal for such a small dividend.
"I knew father had not forgotten," she said calmly, when an abject badge-wearer was discovered asleep under a castor-oil bush, and proved to be the bearer of a note addressed in the familiar bold flourish to Miss Belle Stuart. ”

“ Some people said she was a nun; in which case she must have been a Sister of Charity, as she appears not to have been confined to a cloister. After some time, young Stuart either became faithless to the lady or was suddenly recalled to Scotland by his parents, and had got into his carriage at the door of the hotel, when his Dido unexpectedly made her appearance, and stepping on the forewheel of the coach to address her lover, he ordered the postilion to drive on; the consequence of which was that the lady fell, and one of the wheels going over her forehead, killed her. ”

“ Stuart read, listened, and then demanded with queenly brevity:
"Your name?"
"Christie Devon."
"Too long; I should prefer to call you Jane as I am accustomed to the name."
"As you please, ma'am."
"Your age?"
"Twenty-one."
"You are an American?"
"Yes, ma'am."
Mrs. Stuart gazed into space a moment, then delivered the following address with impressive solemnity:
"I wish a capable, intelligent, honest, neat, well-conducted person who knows her place and keeps it. The work is light, as there are but two in the family. I am very particular and so is Mr. Stuart. ”