Part 42 (1/2)
quotes Lilian lightly. ”There is no use in your lecturing me, Sir Guy; it does me little good. _You_ want _your_ way, and I want _mine_; I am not 'self-willed,' but I don't like tyranny, and I always said you were tyrannical.”
”You are of course privileged to say what you like,” haughtily.
”Very well; then I _shall_ say it. One would think I was a baby, the way you--scold--and torment me,” here the tears of vexation and childish wrath rise in her eyes; ”but I do not acknowledge your authority; I have told you so a hundred times, and I never shall,--never, never, never!”
”Lilian, listen to me----”
”No, I will not. I wonder why you come near me at all. Go back to Florence; she is so calm, so sweet, so--_somnolent_,”--with a sneer,--”that she will not ruffle your temper. As for me, I hate disagreeable people! Why do you speak to me? It does neither of us any good. It only makes you ill-mannered and me thoroughly unhappy.”
”Unhappy!”
”Yes,” petulantly, ”_miserable_. Surely of late you must have noticed how I avoid you. It is nothing but scold, scold, scold, all the time I am with you; and I confess I don't fancy it. You might have known, without my telling you, that I detest being with you!”
”I shall remember it for the future,” returns he, in a low voice, falling back a step or two, and speaking coldly, although his heart is beating wildly with pa.s.sionate pain and anger.
”Thank you,” retorts Lilian: ”that is the kindest thing you have said to me for many a day.”
Yet the moment his back is turned she regrets this rude speech, and all the many others she has given way to during the last fortnight. Her own incivility vexes her, wounds her to the heart's core, for, however mischievously inclined and quick-tempered she may be, she is marvelously warm-hearted and kindly and fond.
For full five minutes she walks to and fro, tormented by secret upbraidings, and then a revulsion sets in. What does it matter after all, she thinks, with an impatient shrug of her pretty soft shoulders. A little plain speaking will do him no harm,--in fact, may do him untold good. He has been so petted all his life long that a snubbing, however small, will enliven him, and make him see himself in his true colors.
(What his true colors may be she does not specify even to herself.) And if he is so devoted to Florence, why, let him then spend his time with her, and not come lecturing other people on matters that don't concern him. Such a fuss about a simple emerald ring indeed! Could anything be more absurd?
Nevertheless she feels a keen desire for reconciliation; so much so that, later on,--just before dinner,--seeing Sir Guy in the shrubberies, walking up and down in deepest meditation,--evidently of the depressing order,--she makes up her mind to go and speak to him. Yes, she has been in the wrong; she will go to him, therefore, and make the _amende honorable_; and he (he is not altogether bad!) will doubtless rejoice to be friends with her again.
So thinking, she moves slowly though deliberately up to him, regarding the while with absolute fervor the exquisite though frail geranium blossom she carries in her hand. It is only partly opened, and is delicately tinted as her own skin.
When she is quite close to her guardian she raises her head, and instantly affects a deliciously surprised little manner at the fact of his unexpected (?) nearness.
”Ah, Sir Guy, you here?” she says, airily, with an apparent consummate forgetfulness of all past broils. ”You are just in time: see what a lovely flower I have for you. Is not the color perfect? Is it not sweet?” proffering to him the pale geranium.
”It is,” replies he, taking the flower mechanically, because it is held out to him, but hardly looking at it. His face is pale with suppressed anger, his lips are closely set beneath his fair moustache; she is evidently not forgiven. ”And yet I think,” he says, slowly, ”if you knew my opinion of you, you would be the last to offer me a flower.”
”And what then is your opinion?” demands Lilian, growing whiter and whiter until all her pretty face has faded to the ”paleness o' the pearl.” Instinctively she recoils a little, as though some slight blow has touched and shaken her.
”I think you a heartless coquette,” returns he, distinctly, in a low tone that literally rings with pa.s.sion. ”Take back your gift. Why should you waste it upon one who does not care to have it?” And, flinging the flower contemptuously at her feet, he turns and departs.
For a full minute Miss Chesney neither stirs nor speaks. When he is quite gone, she straightens herself, and draws her breath sharply.
”Well, I never!” she says, between her little white teeth, which is a homely phrase borrowed from nurse, but very expressive, and with that she plants a small foot viciously upon the unoffending flower and crushes it out of all shape and recognition.
Dinner is over, and almost forgotten; conversation flags. Even to the most wakeful it occurs that it must be bordering upon bed-hour.
Lilian, whose nightly habit is to read for an hour or two in her bed before going to sleep, remembering she has left her book where she took off her hat on coming into the house some hours ago, leaves the drawing-room, and, having crossed the large hall, turns into the smaller one that leads to the library.
Midway in this pa.s.sage one lamp is burning; the three others (because of some inscrutable reason known only to the under-footman) have not been lit: consequently to-night this hall is in semi-darkness.