Part 22 (2/2)
”You do not seem to have got much of it,” replies she, with lady-like irritability, looking with open disfavor upon the astonis.h.i.+ng dryness of his clothes.
”No,”--amiably,--”I have escaped pretty well. I never knew any cloth to resist rain like this,--doesn't even show a mark of it. I am sorry I cannot say the same for you. Your gown has lost a good deal of its pristine freshness; while as for your feather, it is, to say the least of it, dejected.”
No one likes to feel one's self looking a guy. Cyril's tender solicitude for her clothes has the effect of rendering Miss Beauchamp angrier than she was before.
”Oh, pray don't try to make me more uncomfortable than I am,” she says, sharply. ”I can imagine how unlovely I am looking. I detest the country: it means simply destruction to one's clothes and manners,” pointedly.
”It has been raining ever since I came back from Shrops.h.i.+re.”
”What a pity you did come back just yet!” says Cyril, with quite sufficient pause to throw an unpleasant meaning into his words. ”As to the country, I entirely agree with you; give me the town: it never rains in the town.”
”If it does, one has a carriage at hand. How did you manage to keep yourself so dry, Cyril?”
”There is plenty of good shelter round here, if one chooses to look for it.”
”Evidently; very good shelter, I should say. One would almost think you had taken refuge in a house.”
”Then one would think wrong. Appearances, you know, are often deceitful.”
”They are indeed. What a beautiful rose that is!”
”Was, you mean. It has seen its best days. By the bye, when you were so near The Cottage, why didn't you go in and stay there until the rain was over?”
”I shouldn't dream of asking hospitality from such a very suspicious sort of person as this Mrs. Arlington seems to be,” Miss Beauchamp replies, with much affectation and more spitefulness.
”You are right,--you always _are_,” says Cyril, calmly. ”One should shun the very idea of evil. Extreme youth can never be too careful. Good-bye for the present, Florence; I fear I must tear myself away from you, as duty calls me in this direction.” So saying, he turns into another path, preferring a long round to his home to a further _tete-a-tete_ with the charming Florence.
But Florence has not yet quite done with him. His supercilious manner and that last harmless remark about ”extreme youth” rankles in her breast; so that she carries back to Chetwoode with her a small stone carefully hidden in her sleeve wherewith to slay him at a convenient opportunity.
The same shower that reduces Miss Beauchamp to sullen discontent behaves with equal severity to Lilian, who reaches home, flushed and laughing, drenched and out of breath, with the tail of her gown over her shoulders and a handkerchief round her neck. Guy is with her; and it seems to Lady Chetwoode (who is much concerned about them) as though they had rather enjoyed than otherwise their enforced run.
Florence, who arrives some time after them, retires to her room, where she spends the two hours that must elapse before dinner in repairing all dilapidations in face and figure. At seven o'clock precisely she descends and gains the drawing-room as admirably dressed as usual, but with her good humor still conspicuous by its absence.
She inveighs mildly against the evening's rain, as though it had been specially sent for the ruin of her clothes and complexion, and says a good deal about the advantages to be derived from a town life, which is decidedly gracious, considering how glad she has been all these past years to make her home at Chetwoode.
When dinner is almost over she turns to Cyril and says, with deliberate distinctness:
”Until to-day I had no idea you were acquainted with--the widow.”
There is no mistaking whom she means. The shot is well fired, and goes straight home. Cyril changes color perceptibly and does not reply instantly. Lady Chetwoode looks at him with marked surprise. So does Lilian. So does Sir Guy. They all await his answer. Miss Beauchamp's petty triumph is complete.
”Had you not?” says Cyril. ”I wonder so amazing a fact escaped your knowledge.”
”Have you met Mrs. Arlington? You never mentioned it, Cyril,” says Lady Chetwoode.
”Oh, yes,” says Miss Beauchamp, ”he is quite intimate there: aren't you, Cyril? As I was pa.s.sing The Cottage to-day in a desperate plight, I met Cyril coming out of the house.”
”Not out of the house,” corrects Cyril, calmly, having quite recovered his self-possession; ”out of the garden.”
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