Molly Bawn Part 16

"And is she?"

"She is positively lovely. Rather small, perhaps, but exquisitely fair, with large laughing blue eyes, and the most fetching manner. If he had raised her veil, I don't believe he would ever have gone abroad to cultivate the dusky n.i.g.g.e.r."

"What became of her,--'poor maid forlorn?'"

"She gave up 'milking the cow with the crumpled horn,' and the country generally, and came up to London, where she took a house, went into society, and was the rage all last season."

"Why did you not tell him how pretty she was?" impatiently.

"Because I was in Ireland at the time on leave, and heard nothing of it until I received that letter telling of the marriage and his departure.

I was thunderstruck, you may be sure, but it was too late then to interfere. Some one told me the other day he is on his way home."

"'When Greek meets Greek' we know what happens," says Molly. "I think _their_ meeting will be awkward."

"Rather. She is to be at Herst this autumn: she was a ward of your grandfather's."

"Don't fall in love with her, Teddy."

"How can I, when you have put it out of my power? There is no room in my heart for any one but Molly Bawn. Besides, it would be energy wasted, as she is encased in steel. A woman in her equivocal position, and possessed of so much beauty, might be supposed to find it difficult to steer her bark safely through all the temptations of a London season; yet the flattery she received, and all the devotion that was laid at her feet, touched her no more than if she was ninety, instead of twenty-three."

"Yet what a risk it is! How will it be some day if she falls in love?

as they say all people do once in their lives."

"Why, then, she will have her _mauvais quart-d'heure_, like the rest of us. Up to the present she has enjoyed her life to the utmost, and finds everything _couleur de rose_."

"Would it not be charming," says Molly, with much _empress.e.m.e.nt_, "if, when Sir Penthony comes home and sees her, they should both fall in love with each other?"

"Charming, but highly improbable. The fates are seldom so propitious.

It is far more likely they will fall madly in love with two other people, and be unhappy ever after."

"Oh, cease such raven's croaking," says Molly, laying her hand upon his lips. "I will not listen to it. Whatever the Fates may be, Love, I know, is kind."

"Is it?" asks he, wistfully. "You are my love--are you kind?"

"And you are my lover," returns Molly. "And you most certainly are not kind, for that is the third time you have all but run that horrid umbrella into my left eye. Surely, because you hold it up for your own personal convenience is no reason why you should make it an instrument of torture to every one else. Now you may finish picking those strawberries without me, for I shall not stay here another instant in deadly fear of being blinded for life."

With this speech--so flagrantly unjust as to render her companion dumb--she rises, and catching up her gown, runs swiftly away from him down the garden-path, and under the wealthy trees, until at last the garden-gate receives her in its embrace and hides her from his view.

CHAPTER VIII.

"Thine eyes I love, and they as pitying me, Knowing thy heart, torment me with disdain."

--Shakespeare.

All round one side of Brooklyn, and edging on to the retired butcher's country residence, or rather what he is pleased to term, with a knowing jerk of the thumb over his right shoulder, his "little villar in the south," stretches a belt of trees, named by courtesy "the wood." It is a charming spot, widening and thickening toward one corner, which has been well named the "Fairies' Glen," where crowd together all the "living gra.s.ses" and wild flowers that thrive and bloom so bravely when nursed on the earth's bosom.

On one side rise gray rocks, cold and dead, save for the little happy life that, springing up above, flows over them, leaping, laughing from crag to crag, bedewing leaf and blossom, and das.h.i.+ng its gem-like spray over all the lichens and velvet mosses and feathery ferns that grow luxuriantly to hide the rugged jags of stone.

Here, at night, the owls delight to hoot, the bats go whirring past, the moonbeams surely cast their kindest rays; by day the pigeons coo from the topmost boughs their tales of love, while squirrels sit blinking merrily, or run their Silvios on their Derby days.

Just now it is neither night nor garish day, but a soft, early twilight, and on the sward that glows as green as Erin's, sit Molly and her attendant slave.

"The reason I like you," says Molly, reverting to something that has gone before, and tilting back her hat so that all her pretty face is laid bare to the envious suns.h.i.+ne, while the soft rippling locks on her forehead make advances to each other through the breeze, "the reason I like you,--no,"--seeing a tendency on his part to creep nearer, "no, stay where you are. I only said I liked you. If I had mentioned the word love, then indeed--but, as it is, it is far too warm to admit of any endearments."

"You are right,--as you always are," says Luttrell, with suspicious amiability, being piqued.

"You interrupted me," says Miss Ma.s.sereene, leaning back comfortably and raising her exquisite eyes in lazy admiration of the green and leafy tangle far above her. "I was going to say that the reason I like you so much is because you look so young, quite as young as I do,--more so, indeed, I think."

"It is a poor case," says Luttrell, "when a girl of nineteen looks older than a man of twenty-seven."

"That is not the way to put it. It is a charming and novel case when a man of twenty-seven looks younger than a girl of nineteen."

"How much younger?" asks Luttrell, who is still sufficiently youthful to have a hankering after mature age. "Am I fourteen or nine years old in your estimation?"

"Don't let us dispute the point," says Molly, "and don't get cross. I see you are on for a hot argument, and I never could follow even a mild one. I think you young, and you should be glad of it, as it is the one good thing I see about you. As a rule I prefer dark men,--but for their unhappy knack of looking old from their cradles,--and have a perfect pa.s.sion for black eyes, black skin, black locks, and a general appearance of fierceness! Indeed, I have always thought, up to this, that there was something about a fair man almost ridiculous. Have not you?"

Here she brings her eyes back to the earth again, and fastens them upon him with the most engaging frankness.

"No. I confess it never occurred to me before," returns Luttrell, coloring slightly through his Saxon skin.

Silence. If there is any silent moment in the throbbing summer. Above them the faint music of the leaves, below the breathing of the flowers, the hum of insects. All the air is full of the sweet warblings of innumerable songsters. Mingling with these is the pleasant drip, drip of the falling water.

A great lazy bee falls, as though no longer able to sustain its mighty frame, right into Miss Ma.s.sereene's lap, and lies there humming. With a little start she shakes it off, almost fearing to touch it with her dainty rose-white fingers.

Thus rudely roused, she speaks:

"Are you asleep?" she asks, not turning her head in her companion's direction.

"No," coldly; "are you?"

"Yes, almost, and dreaming."

"Dreams are the children of an idle brain," quotes he, somewhat maliciously.

"Yes?" sweetly. "And so you really have read your Shakespeare? And can actually apply it every now and then with effect, to the utter confusion of your friends? But I think you might have spared _me_.

Teddy!" bending forward and casting upon him a bewitching, tormenting, adorable glance from under her dark lashes, "if you bite your moustache any harder it will come off, and then what will become of me?"

With a laugh Luttrell flings away the fern he has been reducing to ruin, and rising, throws himself upon the gra.s.s at her feet.

"Why don't I hate you?" he says, vehemently. "Why cannot I feel even decently angry with you? You torment and charm in the same breath. At times I say to myself, 'She is cold, heartless, unfeeling,' and then a word, a look--Molly," seizing her cool, slim little hand as it lies pa.s.sive in her lap, "tell me, do you think you will ever--I do not mean to-morrow, or in a week, or a month, but in all the long years to come, do you think you will ever love me?" As he finishes speaking, he presses his lips with pa.s.sionate tenderness to her hand.

"Now, who gave you leave to do that?" asks Molly, _a propos_ of the kissing.

"Never mind: answer me."