Part 20 (1/2)

”Oh, indeed!” said Miss Kate. ”I suppose you think you'd do quite as well as Sir Henry. Not a bit of you. He's A 1 with the ladies. Haven't you found that out in all your travels? Why the _young_ woman looked as if she'd eat poor _me_, when I only bowed to him! I mean the pale girl in a----Gracious! Captain Vanguard, if you like me tell me so, or, at least, if you kick me under the table--don't kick so precious hard!”

”That was my daughter, Miss Kate,” said Sir Henry, in perfect good-humour, interpreting very correctly Frank's too strenuous warning below the surface.

Kate got out of her difficulty gracefully enough.

”Your daughter!” she repeated. ”And a very nice daughter too. How fond she must be of you! I should, I know!”

Here Miss Cremorne exchanged glances with Vanguard, and Sir Henry felt a vague uncomfortable consciousness that the society was too young for him; relieved, however, by virtuous disapproval of Frank's promiscuous intimacies, and a dawning conviction that, if there had ever been any tendency to such an arrangement, he was well out of him for a son-in-law.

The sculptor now produced a velvet case of cigarettes which was handed round, and from which even the ladies did not disdain to take a few whiffs of the most fragrant tobacco in the world: Kilgarron only asking leave to indulge in a long strong Havanna, or ”roofer,” as he called it,--urging that to offer a man a cigarette when he wanted a cigar, was like giving him a slice of bread and b.u.t.ter when he asked for a beefsteak!

”Nonsense!” argued Mrs. Battersea. ”Half a loaf is better than no bread, and half a frolic than no fun,--consequently, half a puff is better than no smoke. What do _you_ say, Kate! That's your second cigarette already.”

The girl would have made a pretty picture, leaning back on the red velvet cus.h.i.+on of a sofa to which she had now betaken herself, while daintily holding the cigarette between her delicate fingers, she pursed up the rosiest and most provoking mouth imaginable to emit a long thin stream of aromatic smoke.

”What do I say?” she repeated, looking meaningly at Frank Vanguard.

”That I hate half-loaves, half-frolics, half-mouthfuls, half-measures in _everything_! All or none, say I. Take it or let it alone!”

The foreign-looking woman tapped her snuff-box. ”You're wrong,” said she. ”Everything in life is a matter of compromise. Besides, on _your_ principle, my dear, you'd have all your eggs in one basket. Suppose you drop it?”

”What a mess there would be in the basket!” observed the sculptor.

”They'd make an omelette _anyhow_,” said Lord Kilgarron, mixing himself a brandy-and-soda at the side-board.

”Besides, there are fresh ones laid every day,” added Picard.

”With chickens in them,” continued Mrs. Battersea, ”if you'll only have patience.”

”And after all, one egg is very like another,” murmured Sir Henry somewhat hazily; ”dress them how you please, there's generally a suspicion about them, and the freshest are rather tasteless at their best.”

Frank said nothing; but thought of the eggs he had most valued in the world, their basket, and its fate. Well, he had learned his lesson now.

He must make the most of a pretty painted egg he had chosen to-night, from the shelf, indeed, rather than the nest, and must abide by his selection, defying memory, prudence, common sense--defying even the bright eyes, pleasant smiles, and winning whispers of Kate Cremorne.

A man who has lost the flower he values most is perhaps never so unhappy as when he roams the garden to find a hundred others ready to be gathered, as sweet, as bright, as blooming, lacking only the subtle, special fragrance that was all in all to _him_. He is far less lonely in the desert than in that bower of beauty, which the absence of his rose--be she red, white, or yellow--has converted to a bare and dreary waste. Young hearts are sadly impatient of sorrow. Like young horses first put in harness, they are given to fret and bounce, and dash at any distraction which serves to divert their thoughts from the collar and the curb. Frank felt in no mood for self-communing to-night; but he was well disposed to s.n.a.t.c.h at any gratification the hour could afford. As the champagne mounted to his brain, Helen's pale, proud image faded into distance, and Jin's black eyes seemed to chain him in their spells. Ere long, he began to think he was a very lucky fellow after all, and exchanged jest or repartee with Kate Cremorne, as if he had not a care nor a sorrow in the world. That discriminating young person detected, nevertheless, something hollow in all this merriment.

”His heart's not in the game,” she whispered to her sister, as the whole party took up a fresh position in the conservatory. ”Something's gone wrong with Frank; and I think we needn't ask him to Greenwich next Sunday.”

Henceforth she divided her smiles between the sculptor, whom she had known from her childhood, and Picard, on whom she bestowed perhaps the larger share, appreciating, as women do, a certain spice of the adventurer, which he betrayed, without parading, in dress, manner, gestures, even in the curl of his moustache, and the turn of his well-shaped, sinewy, sunburnt hands.

Sir Henry fell to Mrs. Battersea, who encouraged him to drink more champagne than is good for anybody after one in the morning; while Frank, placidly smoking, suffered himself to be amused by the foreign-looking Englishwoman, whose spirits seemed rather to increase than diminish with the waning hours.

So the night wore on. It was already four o'clock in a bright summer sunrise, when Sir Henry lighting a fresh cigar as he grappled to Picard's offered arm with great good-will--expressed his intention of walking home.

”Every yard of the way, my dear fellow. Does one all the good in the world. Nothing like exercise. Never had gout, though I'm bred for it both sides; and, faith, I've earned it, too! We used to live hard in my early days. But I always took a deal of exercise--always. That is why I'm pretty fresh on my legs now.”

Picard a.s.sented, as younger men are bound to a.s.sent to such plat.i.tudes from their elders; and Sir Henry, whose pedestrianism was indeed of an exceedingly intermittent nature, puffed a volume of smoke in the rosy face of morning, and proceeding with his reflections.

”Now, Frank and that heavy fellow have gone off together on the chance of finding a cab. Much better have footed it like you and me. 'Gad, what a lovely day it's going to be! And what a pleasant night we've had! I'm not sure, though,”--here he turned round full on his companion--”I'm not sure we make the most of our lives after all. Hang it! if I had to begin again, I think I'd go in more for nature. Keep always out of doors, farm more, shoot more--look after the poor, hunt the country, and never go from home. I'm getting on now, and begin to understand the old Tartar chief, who longed for the Land of Gra.s.s when he was dying--