Part 48 (2/2)
”Asked your husband who you were, and so on. I hope you are enjoying yourself. Seen everything, eh? The houses are pretty good this year.”
”Lord Alfred has just shown them to me. They are quite too exquisite,”
says Georgie.
”And the lake, and my new swans?”
”No; not the swans.”
”Dear me! why didn't he show you those? Finest birds I ever saw. My dear Mrs. Brans...o...b.., you really must see them, you know.”
”I should like to, if you will show them to me,” says the little hypocrite, with the very faintest, but the most successful, emphasis on the p.r.o.noun, which is wine to the heart of the old beau; and, offering her his arm, he takes her across the lawn and through the shrubberies to the sheet of water beyond, that gleams sweet and cool through the foliage. As they go, the county turns to regard them; and men wonder who the pretty woman is the old fellow has picked up; and women wonder what on earth the duke can see in that silly little Mrs.
Brans...o...b...
Sir James, who has been watching the duke's evident admiration for his pretty guest, is openly amused.
”Your training!” he says to Clarissa, over whose chair he is leaning.
”You ought to be ashamed of yourself and your pupil. Such a disgraceful little coquette I never saw. I really pity that poor d.u.c.h.ess: see there, how miserably unhappy she is looking, and how----er----pink.”
”Don't be unkind: your hesitation was positively cruel. The word 'red'
is unmistakably the word for the poor d.u.c.h.ess to-day.”
”Well, yes, and yesterday, and the day before, and probably to-morrow,” says Sir James, mildly. ”But I really wonder at the duke,--at his time of life, too! If I were Brans...o...b.. I should feel it my duty to interfere.”
He is talking gayly, unceasingly, but always with his grave eyes fixed upon Clarissa, as she leans back languidly on the uncomfortable garden-chair, smiling indeed every now and then, but fitfully, and without the gladness that generally lights up her charming face.
Horace had promised to be here to-day,--had faithfully promised to come with her and her father to this garden-party; and where is he now? A little chill of disappointment has fallen upon her, and made dull her day. No smallest doubt of his truth finds harbor in her gentle bosom, yet grief sits heavy on her, ”as the mildews hang upon the bells of flowers to blight their bloom!”
Sir James, half divining the cause of her discontent, seeks carefully, tenderly, to draw her from her sad thoughts in every way that occurs to him; and his efforts, though not altogether crowned with success, are at least so far happy in that he induces her to forget her grievance for the time being, and keeps her from dwelling too closely upon the vexed question of her recreant lover.
To be with Sir James is, too, in itself a relief to her. With him she need not converse unless it so pleases her; her silence will neither surprise nor trouble him; but with all the others it would be so different: they would claim her attention whether she willed it or not, and to make ordinary spirited conversation just at this moment would be impossible to her. The smile dies off her face. A sigh replaces it.
”How well you are looking to-day!” says Scrope, lightly, thinking this will please her. She is extremely pale, but a little hectic spot, born of weariness and fruitless hoping against hope, betrays itself on either cheek. His tone, if not the words, does please her, it is so full of loving kindness.
”Am I?” she says. ”I don't feel like looking well; and I am tired, too. They say,--
'A merry heart goes all the day, Your sad tires in a mile-a;'
I doubt mine is a sad one, I feel so worn out. Though,”--hastily, and with a vivid flush that changes all her pallor into warmth,--”if I were put to it, I couldn't tell you why.”
”No? Do you know I have often felt like that,” says Scrope, carelessly. ”It is both strange and natural. One has fits of depression that come and go at will, and that one cannot account for; at least, I have, frequently. But you, Clarissa, you should not know what depression means.”
”I know it to day.” For the moment her courage fails her. She feels weak; a craving for sympathy overcomes her; and, turning, she lifts her large sorrowful eyes to his.
She would, perhaps, have spoken; but now a sense of shame and a sharp pang that means pride come to her, and, by a supreme effort, she conquers emotion, and lets her heavily-lashed lids fall over her suffused eyes, as though to conceal the tell-tale drops within from his searching gaze.
”So, you see,”--she says, with a rather artificial laugh,--”your flattery falls through: with all this weight of imaginary woe upon my shoulders, I can hardly be looking my best.”
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