Part 29 (2/2)

HOW t.i.tA SUGGESTS A GAME OF BLIND MAN'S BUFF, AND WHAT COMES OF IT.

”Well, I hardly can,” says t.i.ta, struggling with her memory. ”He seems a big man, with--_airs_, you know, and--and----”

”Trousers!” puts in Mr. Gower. ”I a.s.sure you,” looking confidently around him, ”the checks on his trousers are so loud, that one can hear him _rattle_ as he walks.”

”Oh! is that the Mr. Warbeck?” says Minnie. ”I know; I met him in town last July.”

”You met a hero of romance, then,” says Gower. ”That is, a thing out of the common.”

”I know him too,” says Mrs. Chichester, who has been thinking. ”A big man, a sort of giant?”

”A horrid man!” says t.i.ta.

Mrs. Chichester looks at her as if amused.

”Why horrid?” asks she.

”Oh, I don't know,” says t.i.ta, shrugging her shoulders. ”I didn't like him, anyway.”

”I'm sure I'm not surprised,” says Tom Hescott.

He takes a step closer to t.i.ta, as if to protect her. It seems hideous to him that she should have to discuss--that she should even have known him.

”Well, neither am I,” says Mrs. Chichester. ”He _is _horrid, and as ugly as the----” She had the grace to stop here, and change her sentence. ”As ugly can be.”

It is a lame conclusion, but she is consoled for it by the fact that some of her audience understand what the natural end of that sentence would have been.

”And what manners!” says she. ”After all,” with a pretty little shake of her head, ”what can you expect of a man with hair as red as a carrot?”

”Decency, at all events,” says Tom Hescott coldly.

”Oh! That--last of all,” says Mrs. Chichester.

”Lady Warbeck is a very charming old lady,” says Margaret Knollys, breaking into the conversation with a view to changing it.

”Yes,” says Mrs. Chichester. She laughs mischievously. ”And such a delightful contrast to her son! She is so good.”

”She's funny, isn't she?” says t.i.ta, throwing back her lovely little head, and laughing as if at some late remembrance.

”No; good--_good!”_ insists Mrs. Chichester. ”Captain Marryatt, were you with me when she called that day in town? No? Oh! _well,”_ with a little glance meant for him alone--a glance that restores him at once to good humour, and his position as her slave once more--”you ought to have been.”

”What did she say, then?” asks Minnie Hescott.

”Nothing to signify, really. But as a contrast to her son, she is perhaps, as Lady Rylton has just said, 'funny.' It was about a book--a book we are all reading nowadays; and she said she couldn't recommend it to me, as it _bordered_ on impropriety! I was so enchanted.”

”I know the book you mean,” says Mrs. Bethune, who has just sauntered up to them in her slow, graceful fas.h.i.+on.

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