Part 35 (2/2)
”I think your ring grows prettier and prettier every time I look at it.
But it would not stay on the finger you chose; while I was dressing it fell off; so, fearing to lose it, I slipped it upon this one. It looks as well, does it not?”
”Yes,” said Chetwoode, though all the time he is wis.h.i.+ng with all his heart it had not fallen from the engagement finger. When we love we grow fearful; and with fear there is torment.
”Why don't you ask Florence to sing?” asks Lilian, suddenly.
Archibald Chesney has risen and lounged over to the piano, and now is close beside her. To Guy's jealous ears it seems as though the remark was made to rid her of his presence.
”Because I detest French songs,” he answers, somewhat sharply,--Miss Beauchamp being addicted to such foreign music.
”Do you?” says Lilian, laughing at his tone, which she fully understands, and straightway sings one (the gayest, brightest, most nonsensical to be found in her _repertoire_) in her sweet fresh voice, glancing at him with a comical challenge in her eyes every time the foolish yet tender refrain occurs.
When she has finished she says to him, saucily:
”Well, Sir Guy?”
And he answers:
”I am vanquished, utterly convinced. I confess I now like French songs as well as any others.”
”I like them ten times better,” says Archibald, impulsively, ”when they are sung by you. There is a _verve_, a gayety about them that other songs lack. Have you any more? Do you know any of Gounod's? I like them, though they are of a different style.”
”They are rather beyond me,” says Lilian, laughing. ”But hear this: it is one of Beranger's, very simply set, but I think pretty.”
This time she sings to _him_,--unmistakably,--a soft little Norman love-song, full of grace and tenderest entreaty, bestowing upon him all the beguiling smiles she had a moment since given exclusively to her guardian, until at length Sir Guy, muttering ”coquette” to his own heart, turns aside, leaving Chesney master of the field.
Lilian, turning from her animated discussion with Archibald, follows his departing footsteps with her eyes, in which lies a faintly malicious smile; an expression full of suppressed enjoyment curves her lips; she is evidently satisfied at his abrupt retreat, and continues her interrupted conversation with her cousin in still more joyous tones.
Perhaps this is how she means to fulfill her mysterious threat of ”showing” Sir Guy.
CHAPTER XV.
”I will gather thee, he cried, Rosebud brightly blowing!
Then I'll sting thee, it replied, And you'll quickly start aside With the p.r.i.c.kle glowing.
Rosebud, rosebud, rosebud red, Rosebud brightly blowing!”
--GOETHE--_translated_.
”Nurse, wash my hair,” says Lilian, entering her nurse's sanctum, which is next her own, one lovely morning early in September when
”Dew is on the lea, And tender buds are fretting to be free.”
The fickle sun is flinging its broad beams far and near, now glittering upon the ivied towers, and now dancing round the chimney-tops, now necking with gold the mullioned window. Its brightness is as a smile from the departing summer, the sweeter that it grows rarer every hour; its merry rays spread and lengthen, the wind grows softer, balmier, beneath its influence; it is as the very heart of lazy July.
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