"I have never yet felt afraid of any one," returns Lilian, absently.
"How I do admire your courage,--your pluck, if I may so call it," says Florence, hesitating properly over the unlady-like word. "Now, _I_ am so different. I am painfully nervous with some people. Guy, for instance, quite tyrannizes over me," with the little conscious laugh that makes the old disgust rise warmly in Lilian"s breast. "I should be so afraid to contradict Guy."
"And why?"
"I don"t know. He looks so--so---- I really can hardly explain; but some sympathetic understanding between us makes me know he would not like it.
He has a great desire for his own way."
"Most people have,"--dryly. "I never feel those sympathetic sensations you speak of myself, but I could guess so much."
"Another reason why I should refrain from thwarting his wishes is this,"
says Florence, sorting her colors carefully, "I fancy, indeed I _know_, he could actually dislike any one who systematically contradicted him."
"Do you think so? I contradict him when I choose."
"Yes," blandly: "that exactly ill.u.s.trates my idea."
"You think, then, he dislikes me?" says Lilian, raising herself the better to examine her companion"s features, while a sense of thorough amus.e.m.e.nt makes itself felt within her.
"Dislike"--apologetically--"is a hard word. And yet at times I think so.
Surely you must have noticed how he avoids you, how he declines to carry out any argument commenced by you."
"I blush for my want of sensibility," says Lilian, meekly. "No, I have not noticed it."
"Have you not?" with exaggerated surprise. "I have."
At this most inopportune moment Guy enters the room.
"Ah, Guy," says Lilian, quietly, "come here. I want to tell you something."
He comes over obediently, gladly, and stands by her chair. It is a low one, and he leans his arm upon the back of it.
"Florence has just said you hate being contradicted," she murmurs, in her softest tones.
"If she did, there was a great deal of truth in the remark," he answers, with an amused laugh, while Florence glances up triumphantly. "Most fellows do, eh?"
"And that I am the one that generally contradicts you."
"That is only half a truth. If she had said who _always_ contradicts me, it would have been a whole one."
Lilian rises. She places her hand lightly on his arm.
"She also said that for that reason you dislike me." The words are uttered quietly, but somehow tears have gathered in the violet eyes.
"Dislike!" exclaims her lover, the very faint symptoms of distress upon his darling"s face causing him instant pain. "Lilian! how absurd you are! How could such a word come to be used between us? Surely Florence must know--has not my mother told you?" he asks, turning to Miss Beauchamp a look full of surprise.
"I know nothing," replies she, growing a shade paler. At this moment she does know, and determines finally to accept, when next offered, the devotion Mr. Boer has been showering upon her for the past two months.
Yes, she will take him for better, for worse, voice, low-church tendencies, and all. The latter may be altered, the former silenced. "I know nothing," she says; "what is it?"
"Merely this, that Lilian and I are going to be married this summer.
Lilian, of your goodness do not contradict me, in this one matter at least," bending a tender smile upon his betrothed, who returns it shyly.
"I confess you surprise me," says Florence, with the utmost self-possession, though her lips are still a trifle white. "I have never been so astonished in my life. You seem to me so unsuited--so--but that only shows how impossible it is to judge rightly in such a case. Had I been asked to name the feeling I believed you two entertained for each other, I should unhesitatingly have called it hatred!"
"How we have deceived the British Public!" says Guy, laughing, although at her words a warm color has crept into his face. "For the future we must not "dissemble." Now that we have shown ourselves up in our true colors, Florence, you will, I hope, wish us joy."
"Certainly, with all my heart," in a tone impossible to translate: "my only regret is, that mere wishing will not insure it to you."
Here a servant opening the door informs Miss Beauchamp that Lady Chetwoode wishes to see her for a few minutes.
"Say I shall be with her directly," returns Florence, and, rising leisurely, she sweeps, without the smallest appearance of haste, from the room.
Then Lilian turns to Sir Guy:
"How curiously she uttered that last speech!--almost as though she hoped we should not be happy, I am sure I am right; she does not want you to marry me."
"She was not enthusiastic in her congratulations, I admit. But that need not affect us. I am not proud. So long as _you_ want to marry me, I shall be quite content."
Lilian"s reply, being wordless, need not be recorded here.
"Spiteful thing," remarks she, presently, _a propos_ of the spotless Florence.
"Poor, Boer!" replies he.
"You think she will marry _him_?" heavily, and most unflatteringly, emphasized.
"I do."
"Poor Florence!" returns she. "When I think that, I can forgive her all her sins. Dreadful man! I do hope she will make his life a burden to him."
"I am sure you will live to see one hope fulfilled. Though I dare say he has a better chance of peace in the years to come than I have: Florence, at all events, does not go about boxing people"s----"
"Guy," says Miss Chesney, imperatively, laying her hand upon his lips, "if you dare to finish that sentence, or if you ever refer to that horrible scene again, I shall most positively refuse to marry---- Oh!
here is Mr. Boer. Talk of somebody! Look, it is he, is it not?" Standing on tiptoe, she cranes her neck eagerly, and rather flattens her pretty nose against the window-pane in a wild endeavor to catch a glimpse of Mr. Boer"s long-tailed coat, which "hangs" very much "down behind,"
before it quite disappears in a curve of the avenue. Presently it comes to view again from behind the huge laurustinus bush, and they are now quite convinced it is indeed the amorous parson.
"Yes, it is he," says Guy, staring over his betrothed"s head, as he catches the first glimpse. "And evidently full of purpose. Mark the fell determination in his clerical stride."
"She saw him this morning at the schools,--she told me so,--and here he is again!" says Lilian, in an awe-struck tone. "There must be something in it. As you say, he really seems bent on business of some sort; perhaps he is come----"
"With a new chant, as I"m a sinner," says Chetwoode, with a groan. "Let us go into the library: the baize and that large screen stifles sound."
"No, to propose! I mean: there is a curious look about him as if, if----"
"He was going to execution?"
"No, to Florence."
"That is quite the same thing."