Part 12 (1/2)
”I'm sure I've nothing to do with Mr Hartshorne. What _do_ you mean, Herbert? Pray explain yourself.”
And the young lady drew herself up with a tremendous accession of dignity to the full height of her little figure.
Herbert Pringle was so disgusted with the dissimulation of the s.e.x as evinced in the instance of his sister that he felt himself nerved up and able to go on with the talk before him, so he plunged at once _in medias res_.
”Here's Lady Inskip been telling me--”
”Oh! I've got to thank _her_ for interesting herself about me! I am sure I am very much obliged to Lady Inskip!”
”You need not interrupt me, Lizzie, and you need not get angry about Lady Inskip. She's a most motherly woman, and she spoke very kindly to me about you. You see, Lizzie, it's a very hard thing for a fellow to speak of. Of course I think girls ought to be allowed to mind their own affairs of this kind, and it seems rough on my part to interfere; but, you see, as Lady Inskip very kindly observed, you've no mother to advise you, and consequently I must take her place.”
As he said this, the Reverend Herbert Pringle looked certainly as unlike a mother as possible.
”Go on, Herbert; let me know all that Lady Inskip has been kind enough to say of me,” said Violet Eyes, now facing her brother, with a full sense of her dignity, and tapping her foot on the floor with angry impatience.
”Well, she told me that she saw you and Tom Hartshorne in the garden the other day as she drove by; and, though I see no harm in it, and fortunately no one but herself saw it, she said she was very much shocked, and that you acted as if you were engaged. Now, Lizzie, you know I'm very fond of you, and all that sort of thing, but people might talk, you know, and I want you to put a stop to it.”
Lizzie's defences were entirely overthrown. Her look of indignation faded off her face, to be replaced by a quick crimson blush, which as rapidly disappeared and left her features as pale as marble. She made a hurried step towards her brother, and fell sobbing on his neck.
”Oh! Bertie, Bertie!” she sobbed out, between a series of little gasps.
”There, there, don't cry! my darling little Lizzie. You know I did not mean to hurt you, my own little sister!” said Herbert, sympathisingly, patting her head as if he were saying ”Poor dog! poor dog!” to a Newfoundland pup. And the subject was dropped, Lizzie thus gaining the victory in the end by having recourse to a woman's strongest safeguard-- tears. For, as he told Lady Inskip afterwards, ”when the waterworks were turned on he had to give in.” The old campaigner for her part, was very well satisfied that the topic had been mentioned: that was all she wanted.
Lizzie went to bed very early that night, pleading a headache, and really her face was so pale and the deep violet eyes were so sunk in her head with broad veins of black underneath them, that her a.s.sertion was freely borne out by her appearance.
The poor little heart was deeply troubled: the stricken deer was grievously wounded. She was very young, you must remember, and had fallen into that horrible abyss of love without knowing what she was doing. The temptation had been so sweet, the steps she had taken into that rose-coloured paradise so gradual, that she had not perceived the drift of their march, so that Tom's sudden act and manner had startled and frightened her; it was letting in the sunlight on one who has been blindfolded, and the little secret which she had hugged to her heart alarmed, while it gave her such sweet ecstasy.
Ever since that morning in the garden, only two days ago--two days! it seemed more like two years, she had been so much altered--Lizzie had not been the same. She had awakened from a long sleep as it were, and everything round her, every little inconsiderable item in her daily life bore a new charm to her or had a fresh meaning. A deeper and more beautiful light beamed now in her thoughtful eyes; there was a charming hesitancy in her manner in lieu of the former piquante pert way she had.
In a word, Lizzie was our Lizzie still, but a hundred times more loveable and prettier from the new love light that encircled her.
She had been watching--eagerly watching, for her next meeting with Tom, and yet when she thought of him, blushed at her thoughts and trembled with a sly rapture. He was so n.o.ble--so manly--so handsome! Just in fact what most young girls think Corydon when in love.
It was no wonder, then, that the brother's lecture and the idea of the old campaigner's criticism on her conduct frightened our poor little maid.
She went up to her little bed tearfully and heavy-hearted, and thought of chains and dungeons, and all the malicious contrivances of the wicked for parting true lovers, and she sobbed herself to sleep. When she woke up in the morning she was still in the most restless and perturbed state that her little mind could be in. ”How dared that odious old thing speak about her, or look at her, or come round at all!” She would never see Tom again--and she was longing to see him all the time!
She would not go to the pic-nic--that she wouldn't!
Then she _would_ go, because the aforesaid old odious thing would imagine that she took it to heart if she stopped away.
But she would _not_ go because that impudent Master Tom would be there, she thought, with a rising blush and a conscious swelling of the tender little bosom underneath her muslin dress.
Of course she determined to go!
Volume 1, Chapter XIV.
THAT YOUNG IMP.
The old campaigner's pic-nic had been decided upon by her, not only as a merrymaking festival, but as a regular strategical _coup_.
She wanted to roll many issues into one, and like a prudent general, she conned her forces, surveyed their position, and considered her war _materiel_; all being in train, she determined that as she wanted to create an impression in the neighbourhood, and bring sundry persons together without being compelled to go to any great expense, the best and most efficacious mode she could adopt for carrying out her plans would be to give a pic-nic.