Airy Fairy Lilian. Duchess

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СКАЧАТЬ grows desirous of knowing something about the owner of that name.

      Lilian therefore gives away to curiosity.

      "And who is Florence?" she asks.

      "'Who is Florence?'" repeats Cyril; "have you really asked the question? Not to know Florence argues yourself unknown. She is an institution. But I forgot, you are one of those unhappy ones outside the pale of Florence's acquaintance. How I envy – I mean pity you!"

      "Florence is my niece," says Lady Chetwoode: "she is at present staying with some friends in Shropshire, but she lives with me. She has been here ever since she was seventeen."

      "Is that very long ago?" asks Lilian, and her manner is so naïve that they all smile.

      "She came here – " begins Lady Chetwoode.

      "She came here," interrupts Cyril, impressively, "precisely five years ago. Have you mastered that date? If so, cling to it, get it by heart, never lose sight of it. Once, about a month ago, before she left us to go to those good-natured people in Shropshire, I told her, quite accidentally, I thought she came here nine years ago. She was very angry, and I then learned that Florence angry wasn't nice, and that a little of her in that state went a long way. I also learned that she came here five years ago."

      "Am I to understand," asks Lilian, laughing, "that she is twenty-six?"

      "My dear Lilian, I do hope you are not 'obtoose.' Has all my valuable information been thrown away? I have all this time been trying to impress upon you the fact that Florence is only twenty-two, but it is evidently 'love's labor lost.' Now do try to comprehend. She was twenty-two last year, she is twenty-two this year, and I am almost positive that this time next year she will be twenty-two again!"

      "Cyril, don't be severe," says his mother.

      "Dearest mother, how can you accuse me of such a thing? Is it severe to say Florence is still young and lovely?"

      "Do you and Florence like each other?" asks Lilian.

      "Not too much. I am not staid enough for Florence. She says she likes earnest people, – like Guy."

      "Ah!" says Lilian.

      "What?" Guy hearing his name mentioned looks up dreamily from the Times, in the folds of which he has been buried. "What about me?"

      "Nothing. I was only telling Lilian in what high esteem you are held by our dear Florence."

      "Is that all?" says Guy, indifferently, going back to the thrilling account of the divorce case he has been studying.

      "What a very ungallant speech!" says Miss Chesney, with a view to provocation, regarding him curiously.

      "Was it?" says Guy, meeting her eyes, and letting the interesting paper slip to the floor beside him. "It was scarcely news, you see, and there is nothing to be wondered at. If I lived with people for years, I am certain I should end by being attached to them, were they good or bad."

      "She doesn't waste much of her liking upon me," says Cyril.

      "Nor you on her. She is just the one pretty woman I ever knew to whom you didn't succumb."

      "You didn't tell me she was pretty," says Lilian, hastily, looking at Cyril with keen reproach.

      "'Handsome is as handsome does,' and the charming Florence makes a point of treating me very unhandsomely. You won't like her, Lilian; make up your mind to it."

      "Nonsense! don't let yourself be prejudiced by Cyril's folly," says Guy.

      "I am not easily prejudiced," replies Lilian, somewhat coldly, and instantly forms an undying dislike to the unknown Florence. "But she really is pretty?" she asks, again, rather persistently addressing Cyril.

      "Lovely!" superciliously. "But ask Guy all about her: he knows."

      "Do you?" says Lilian, turning her large eyes upon Guy.

      "Not more than other people," replies he, calmly, though there is a perceptible note of irritation in his voice, and a rather vexed gleam in his blue eyes as he lets them fall upon his unconscious brother. "She is certainly not lovely."

      "Then she is very pretty?"

      "Not even very pretty in my eyes," replies Sir Guy, who is inwardly annoyed at the examination. Without exactly knowing why, he feels he is behaving shabbily to the absent Florence. "Still, I have heard many men call her so."

      "She is decidedly pretty," says Lady Chetwoode, with decision, "but rather pale."

      "Would you call it pale?" says Cyril, with suspicious earnestness. "Well, of course that may be the new name for it, but I always called it sallow."

      "Cyril, you are incorrigible. At all events, I miss her in a great many ways," says Lady Chetwoode, and they who listen fully understand the tone of self-reproach that runs beneath her words in that she cannot bring herself to miss Florence in all her ways. "She used to pour out the tea for me, for one thing."

      "Let me do it for you, auntie," says Lilian, springing to her feet with alacrity, while the new name trips melodiously and naturally from her tongue. "I never poured out tea for any one, and I should like to immensely."

      "Thank you, my dear. I shall be much obliged; I can't bear to leave off this sock now I have got so far. And who, then, used to pour out tea for you at your own home?"

      "Nurse, always. And for the last six months, ever since" – with a gentle sigh – "poor papa's death, Aunt Priscilla."

      "That is Miss Chesney?"

      "Yes. But tea was never nice with Aunt Priscilla; she liked it weak, because of her nerves, she said (though I don't think she had many), and she always would use the biggest cups in the house, even in the evening. There never," says Lilian, solemnly, "was any one so odd as my Aunt Priscilla. Though we had several of the loveliest sets of china in the world, she never would use them, and always preferred a horrid glaring set of blue and gold that was my detestation. Taffy and I were going to smash them all one day right off, but then we thought it would be shabby, she had placed her affections so firmly on them. Is your tea quite right, Lady Chetwoode – auntie, I mean," – with a bright smile, – "or do you want any more sugar?"

      "It is quite right, thank you, dear."

      "Mine is without exception the most delicious cup of tea I ever tasted," says Cyril, with intense conviction. Whereat Lilian laughs and promises him as many more as he can drink.

      "Will you not give me one?" says Guy, who has risen and is standing beside her, looking down upon her lovely face with a strange expression in his eyes.

      How pretty she looks pouring out the tea, with that little assumption of importance about her! How deftly her slender fingers move among the cups, how firmly they close around the handle of the quaint old teapot!

      A lump of sugar falls with a small crash into the tray. It is a refractory lump, and runs in and out among the china and the silver jugs, refusing to be captured by the tongs. Lilian, losing patience (her stock of it is small), lays down the useless tongs, and taking up the lump between a dainty finger and thumb, transfers it triumphantly to her own cup.

      "Well caught," says Cyril, laughing, while it suddenly occurs to Guy that Florence would have died before she would have done such a thing. The sugar-tongs was made to pick up СКАЧАТЬ