Molly Bawn Part 45

"And"--half removing the barring fingers--"I am the dearest, sweetest, best Molly to be found anywhere?"

"Oh, darling! don't you know I think so?" says Luttrell, with pa.s.sionate fondness.

"And you will never forgive yourself for making me so unhappy?"

"Never."

"Very well,"--taking away her hand, with a contented sigh,--"now you may kiss me."

So their quarrel ends, as all her quarrels do, by every one being in the wrong except herself. It is their first bad quarrel; and although we are told "the falling out of faithful friends is but the renewal of love," still, believe me, each angry word creates a gap in the chain of love,--a gap that widens and ever widens more and more, until at length comes the terrible day when the cherished chain falls quite asunder. A second coldness is so much easier than a first!

CHAPTER XVII.

"One silly cross Wrought all my loss.

O frowning fortune!"

--_The Pa.s.sionate Pilgrim._

It was an unfortunate thing,--nay, more, it was an unheard-of thing (because for a man to fall in love with his own wife has in it all the elements of absurdity, and makes one lose faith in the wise saws and settled convictions of centuries),--but the fact remained. From the moment Sir Penthony Stafford came face to face with his wife in the corridor at Herst he lost his heart to her.

There only rested one thing more to make the catastrophe complete, and that also came to pa.s.s: Cecil was fully and entirely aware of his sentiments with regard to her.

What woman but knows when a man loves her? What woman but knows (in spite of all the lies she may utter to her own heart) when a man has ceased to love her? In dark moments, in the cruel quiet of midnight, has not the terrible certainty of her loss made her youth grow dead within her?

Cecil's revenge has come, and I hardly think she spares it.

Scrupulously, carefully, she adheres to her _role_ of friend, never for an instant permitting him to break through the cold barricade of mere good-fellows.h.i.+p she has raised between them.

Should he in an imprudent moment seek to undermine this barrier, by a word, a smile, sweet but chilling, she expresses either astonishment or amus.e.m.e.nt at his presumption (the latter being perhaps the more murderous weapon of the two, as ridicule is death to love), and so checks him.

To her Sir Penthony is an acquaintance,--a rather amusing one, but still an acquaintance only,--and so she gives him to understand; while he chafes and curses his luck a good deal at times, and--grows desperately jealous.

The development of this last quality delights Cecil. Her flirtation with Talbot Lowry,--not that it can be called a flirtation, being a very one-sided affair, the affection Talbot entertains for her being the only affection about it,--carefully as he seeks to hide it, irritates Sir Penthony beyond endurance, and, together with her marked coldness and apparent want of desire for his society, renders him thoroughly unhappy.

All this gratifies Cecil, who is much too real a woman not to find pleasure in seeing a man made miserable for love of her.

"I wish you could bring yourself to speak to me now and then without putting that odious 'Sir' before my name," he says to her one day.

"Anybody would say we were utter strangers."

"Well, and so we are," Cecil replies, opening wide her eyes in affected astonishment. "How can you dispute it? Why, you never even saw me until a few days ago."

"You are my wife at all events," says the young man, slightly discomfited.

"Ay, more's the pity," murmurs her ladys.h.i.+p, with such a sudden, bewitching, aggravating smile as entirely condones the incivility of her speech. Sir Penthony smiles too.

"Cecil--Cis,--a pretty name.--It rhymes with kiss," he says, rather sentimentally.

"So it does. And Penthony,--what does that rhyme with? Tony--money. Ah!

that was our stumbling block."

"It might have been a worse one. There are more disagreeable things than money. There was once upon a time a stubborn mare, and even she was made to go by this same much-abused money. By the bye,"--thoughtfully,--"you don't object to your share of it, do you?"

"By no means. I purchased it so dearly I have quite a veneration for it."

"I see. I don't think my remark called for so ungracious a reply. To look at you one could hardly imagine a cruel sentiment coming from your lips."

"That shows how deceitful appearances can be. Had you troubled yourself to raise my veil upon your wedding-day you might have made yourself miserable for life. Really, Sir Penthony, I think you owe me a debt of grat.i.tude."

"Do you? Then I confess myself _un_grateful. Oh, Cecil, had I only known----" Here he pauses, warned by the superciliousness of her bearing, and goes on rather lamely. "Are you cold? Shall I get you a shawl?" They are standing on the veranda, and the evening is closing in.

"Cold? No. Who could feel cold on so divine an evening? It reminds one of the very heart of summer, and---- Ah!" with a little start and a pleased smile, "here is Mr. Lowry coming across the gra.s.s."

"Lowry! It seems to me he always is coming across the gra.s.s." Testily.

"Has he no servants, no cook, no roof over his head? Or what on earth brings him here, morning, noon, and night?"

"I really think he must come to see me," says Lady Stafford, with modest hesitation. "He was so much with me in town, off and on, that I dare say he misses me now. He was very attentive about bringing me flowers and--and that."

"No doubt. It is amazing how thoughtful men can be on occasions. You like him very much?"

"Very much indeed. He is amiable, good-natured, and has such kind brown eyes."

"Has he?" With exaggerated surprise. "Is he indeed all that you say? It is strange how blind a man can be to his neighbor's virtues, whatever he may be to his faults. Now, if I had been asked my opinion of Talbot Lowry, I would have said he was the greatest bore and about the ugliest fellow I ever met in my life."

"Well, of course, strictly speaking, no one could call him handsome,"

Cecil says, feeling apologetic on the score of Mr. Lowry; "but he has excellent points; and, after all, with me, good looks count for very little." She takes a calm survey of her companion's patrician features as she speaks; but Sir Penthony takes no notice of her examination, as he is looking straight before him at nothing in the world, as far as she can judge.

"I never meet him without thinking of Master Shallow," he says, rather witheringly. "May I ask how he managed to make himself so endurable to you?"

"In many ways. Strange as it may appear to you, he can read poetry really charmingly. Byron, Tennyson, even Shakespeare, he has read to me until," says Cecil, with enthusiasm, "he has actually brought the tears into my eyes."

"I can fancy it," says Sir Penthony, with much disgust, adjusting his eyegla.s.s with great care in his right eye, the better to contemplate the approach of this modern hero. "I can readily believe it. He seems to me the very personification of a 'lady's man,'--a thorough-paced carpet knight. When," says Sir Penthony, with careful criticism, "I take into consideration the elegant slimness of his lower limbs and the cadaverous leanness of his under-jaw, I can almost see him writing sonnets to his mistress's eyebrow."

"If"--severely--"there is one thing that absolutely repels me, it is sarcasm. Don't you be sarcastic. It doesn't suit you. I merely said Mr.

Lowry probably feels at a loss, now his mornings are unoccupied, as he generally spent them with me in town."

"Happy he. Were those mornings equally agreeable to you?"

"They were indeed. But, as you evidently don't admire Talbot, you can hardly be expected to sympathize with my enjoyment."

"I merely hinted I thought him a conceited c.o.xcomb; and so I do. Ah, Lowry, how d'ye do? Charmed to see you. Warm evening, is it not?"

"You are come at last, Mr. Lowry," Cecil says, with sweet meaning in her tone, smiling up at him as he stands beside her, with no eyes but for her. "What a glorious day we have had! It makes one sad to think it cannot continue. I do so hate winter."

"Poor winter!" says Lowry, rather insipidly. "It has my most sincere sympathy. As for the day, I hardly noticed its beauties: I found it long."

"The sign of an idler. Did you find it _very_ long?"