I have never experienced such an odd sensation in my life as the touch of Carlotta"s fresh young arms upon my face and the perfume of spring violets that emanated from her person. I released myself swiftly from her indecorous demonstration.
"You mustn"t do things like that," said I, severely. "In England, young women are only allowed to embrace their grandfathers." Carlotta looked at me wide-eyed, with the fox-terrier knitting of the forehead.
"But you are so good to me, Seer Marcous," she said.
"I hope you"ll find many people good to you, Carlotta," I answered. "But if you continue that method of expressing your appreciation, you may possibly be misunderstood."
I had recovered from the momentary shock to my senses, and I laughed.
She fluttered a sidelong glance at me, and a smile as inscrutable as the Monna Lisa"s hovered over her lips.
"What would they do if they did not understand?"
"They would take you," I replied, fixing her sternly with my gaze, "they would take you for an unconscionable baggage."
"_Hou!_" laughed Carlotta, suddenly. And she ran from the room.
In a moment she was back again. She came up to me demurely and plucked my sleeve.
"Come and show me what I must put on so as to please you."
I rang the bell for Antoinette, to whom I gave the necessary instructions. Her next request would be that I should act the part of lady"s-maid. I must maintain my dignity with Carlotta.
The lovely afternoon had attracted many people to the park, and the lawns were thronged. We found a couple of chairs at the edge of one of the cross-paths and watched the elegant a.s.sembly. Carlotta, vastly entertained, asked innumerable questions. How could I tell whether a lady was married or unmarried? Did they all wear stays? Why did every one look so happy? Did I think that old man was the young girl"s husband? What were they all talking about? Wouldn"t I take her for a drive in one of those beautiful carriages? Why hadn"t I a carriage? Then suddenly, as if inspired, after a few minutes" silent reflection:
"Seer Marcous, is this the marriage market?"
"The what?" I gasped.
"The marriage market. I read it in a book, yesterday. Miss Griggs gave it me to read aloud--Tack--Thack--"
"Thackeray?"
"Ye-es. They come here to sell the young girls to men who want wives."
She edged away from me, with a little movement of alarm. "That is not why you have brought me here--to sell me?"
"How much do you think you would be worth?" I asked, sarcastically.
She opened out her hands palms upward, throwing down her parasol, as she did so, upon her neighbour"s little Belgian griffon, who yelped.
"Ch, lots," she said in her frank way. "I am very beautiful."
I picked up the parasol, bowed apologetically to the owner of the stricken animal, and addressed Carlotta.
"Listen, my good child. You are pa.s.sably good-looking, but you are by no means very beautiful. If I tried to sell you here, you might possibly fetch half a crown--"
"Two shillings and sixpence?" asked the literal Carlotta.
"Yes. Just that. But as a matter of fact, no one would buy you. This is not the marriage market. There is no such thing as a marriage market.
English mothers and fathers do not sell their daughters for money. Such a thing is monstrous and impossible."
"Then it was all lies I read in the book?"
"All lies," said I.
I hope the genial shade of the great satirist has forgiven me.
"Why do they put lies in books?"
"To accentuate the Truth, so that it shall prevail," I answered.
This was too hard a nut for Carlotta to crack. She was silent for a moment. She reverted, ruefully, to the intelligible.
"I thought I was beautiful," she said.
"Who told you so?"
"Pasquale."
"Pasquale has no sense," said I. "There are men to whom all women who are not seventy and toothless and rheumy at the eyes are beautiful.
Pasquale has said the same to every woman he has met. He is a Lothario and a Don Juan and a Caligula and a Faublas and a Casanova."
"And he tells lies, too?"
"Millions of them," said I. "He contracts with their father Beelzebub for a hundred gross a day."
"Pasquale is very pretty and he makes me laugh and I like him," said Carlotta.
"I am very sorry to hear it," said I.
The griffon, who had been sniffing at Carlotta"s skirts, suddenly leaped into her lap. With a swift movement of her hand she swept the poor little creature, as if it had been a noxious insect, yards away.
"Carlotta!" I cried angrily, springing to my feet.
The ladies who owned the beast rushed to their whining pet and looked astonished daggers at Carlotta. When they picked it up, it sat dangling a piteous paw. Carlotta rose, merely scared at my anger. I raised my hat.
"I am more than sorry. I can"t tell you how sorry I am. I hope the little dog is not hurt. My ward, for whom I offer a thousand apologies, is a Mohammedan, to whom all dogs are unclean. Please attribute the accident to religious instinct."
The younger of the two, who had been examining the paw, looked up with a smile.
"Your ward is forgiven. Punch oughtn"t to jump on strange ladies" laps, whether they are Mohammedans or not. Oh! he is more frightened than hurt. And I," she added, with a twinkling eye, "am more hurt than frightened, because Sir Marcus Ordeyne doesn"t recognise me."
So Carlotta had nearly killed the dog of an unrecalled acquaintance.
"I do indeed recognise you now," said I, mendaciously. I seem to have been lying to-day through thick and thin. "But in the confusion of the disaster--"
"You sat next me at lunch one day last winter, at Mrs. Ordeyne"s,"
interrupted the lady, "and you talked to me of transcendental mathematics."