Molly Bawn Part 37

"Miss Ma.s.sereene."

"Indeed! Been received, and all that? Well, there's been nothing this season to touch on her. Introduce me, Ted, do!"

He is introduced. And Molly, smiling up at him one of her own brightest, kindliest smiles, makes him then and there her slave forever. On the spot, without a second's delay, he falls head over ears in love with her.

By degrees he gets back to Lady Stafford, and sinks upon the sofa beside her. I say "sinks" unadvisedly; he drops upon the sofa, and very nearly makes havoc of the springs in doing so.

"I want to tell you who I saw in town the day before I left--a week ago," he says, cautiously.

"A week ago! And have you been ever since getting here?"

"No; I did it by degrees. First, I went down to the Maplesons', and spent two days there--very slow, indeed; then I got on to the Blouts', and found it much slower there; finally, I drove to Talbot Lowry's night before last, and stayed there until this evening. You know he lives only three miles from here."

"He is at home now, then?"

"Yes. He always _is_ at home, I notice, when--you are here!"

"No!" says Cecil, with a little faint laugh. "You don't say so! what a remarkable coincidence!"

"An annual coincidence. But you don't ask me who it was I saw in London. Guess."

"The Christy Minstrels, without doubt. They never perform out of London, so I suppose are the only people in it now."

"Wrong. There was one other person--Sir Penthony Stafford!"

"Really!" says Cecil, coloring warmly, and sitting in a more upright position. "He has returned, then? I thought he was in Egypt."

"So he was, but he has come back, looking uncommon well, too--as brown as a berry. To my thinking, as good a fellow to look at as there is in England, and a capital fellow all round into the bargain!"

"Dear me!" says Cecil. "What a loss Egypt has sustained! And what a partisan you have become! May I ask," suppressing a pretended yawn behind her perfumed fan, "where your _rara avis_ is at present hiding?"

"I asked him," says Mr. Potts, "but he rather evaded the question."

"And is _that_ your Mr. Potts?" asks Molly, finding herself close to Tedcastle, speaking with heavy and suspicious emphasis.

"Yes," Tedcastle admits, coloring slightly as he remembers the glowing terms in which he has described his friend. "Don't you--eh, don't you like him?"

"Oh! like him? I cannot answer that yet; but," laughing, "I certainly don't admire him."

And indeed Mr. Potts's beauty is not of the sort to call forth raptures at first sight.

"I have seen many different shades of red in people's hair," says Molly, "but I have never seen it rosy until now. Is it dyed? It is the most curious thing I ever looked at."

As indeed it is. When introduced to poor Potts, when covering him with a first dispa.s.sionate glance, one thinks not of his pale gray orbs, his large good-humored mouth, his freckles, or his enormous nose, but only of his hair. Molly is struck by it at once.

"He is a right good fellow," says Luttrell, rather indignantly, being scarcely in the mood to laugh at Molly's sarcasms.

"He may be," is her calm reply, "but if I were he, rather than go through life with that complexion and that unhappy head, I would commit suicide."

Then there is a little more music. Marcia plays brilliantly enough, but it is almost impossible to forget during her playing that she has had an excellent master. It is not genuine, or from the heart. It is clever, but it is acquired, and falls very flatly after Molly's perfect singing, and no one in the room feels this more acutely than Marcia herself.

Then Luttrell, who has a charming voice, sings for them something pathetic and reproachful, you may be sure, as it is meant for Molly's ears; and then the evening is at an end, and they all go to their own rooms.

What a haven of rest and security is one's own room! How instinctively in grief or joy one turns to it, to hide from prying eyes one's inmost thoughts, one's hopes, and despairs!

To-night there are two sad hearts at Herst; Marcia's, perhaps, the saddest, for it is full of that most maddening, most intolerable of all pains, jealousy.

For hours she sits by her cas.e.m.e.nt, pondering on the cruelty of her fate, while the unsympathetic moon pours its white rays upon her.

"Already his love is dead," she murmurs, leaning naked arms upon the window-sill, and turning her l.u.s.trous southern eyes up to the skies above her. "Already. In two short months. And how have I fallen short?

how have I lost him? By over-loving, perhaps. While she, who does not value it, has gained my all."

A little groan escapes her, and she lets her dark head sink upon her outstretched arms. For there is something in Philip's eyes as they rest on Molly, something undefined, hardly formed, but surely there, that betrays to Marcia the secret feeling, of which he himself is scarcely yet aware.

One hardly knows how it is, but Molly, with a glance, a gesture, three little words pointed by a smile from the liquid eyes, can draw him to her side. And when a man of his cold, reserved nature truly loves, be sure it is a pa.s.sion that will last him his life.

Tedcastle, too, is thoroughly unhappy to-night. His honest, unprying mind, made sharp by "love's conflict," has seen through Philip's infatuation, and over his last cigar before turning in (a cigar that to-night has somehow lost half its soothing properties) makes out with a sinking of the heart what it all means.

He thinks, too, yet upbraids himself for so thinking, that Miss Ma.s.sereene must see that Philip Shadwell, heir to Herst and twenty thousand pounds a year, is a better catch than Teddy Luttrell, with only his great love for her, and a paltry six hundred pounds a year.

Is it not selfish of him to seek to keep her from what is so evidently to her advantage? Perhaps he ought to throw up his engagement, and, pa.s.sing out of her life, leave her to reap the "good the G.o.ds provide."

In vain he tries to argue himself into this heroic frame of mind. The more he tries, the more obnoxious grows the idea. He cannot, he will not give her up.

"Faint heart," says Teddy, flinging the remnant of his cigar with fierce determination into the grate, "never won fair lady; she is mine, so far, the fairest darling that ever breathed, and be it selfish or otherwise, keep her I will if I can."

But he sighs as he utters the word "can," and finds his couch, when at length he does seek it, by no means a bed of roses.

While Molly, the pretty cause of all this heart-burning, lies in slumber, soft and sweet, and happy as can be, with her "red, red" lips apart and smiling, her breathing pure and regular as a little child's, and all her "nut-brown" hair like a silken garment round her.

Cecil Stafford, walking leisurely up and down her apartment, is feeling half frightened, half amused, at the news conveyed to her by Mr. Potts, of her husband's arrival in England. Now, at last, after these three years, she may meet him at any moment face to face.

Surely never was a story so odd, so strange as hers! A bride unknown, a wife whose face has never yet been seen!

"Well," thinks Cecil, as she seats herself while her maid binds up her long fair hair, "no use troubling about it beforehand. What must be must be. And at all events the dreaded interview cannot be too soon, as until my return to town I believe I am pretty safe from him here."

But in saying this she reckons without her host in every sense of the word.

CHAPTER XIV.

"Oh, beware, my lord, of jealousy; It is the green-eyed monster who doth mock The meat it feeds on."

--_Oth.e.l.lo._