Leslie's Loyalty. Garvice Charles

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СКАЧАТЬ between his teeth as if he were a performing dog.

      Leslie had played and sung to him until she was tired, and she cast a wistful glance from the window toward the blue sky and sunlit sea.

      "Won't you leave it for a little while and come out on the beach, dear?" she said, coaxingly.

      But Francis Lisle shook his head.

      "No, no. I am just in the vein, Leslie; nothing would induce me to lose this light. But I wish you would go. It – it fidgets and unsettles me to have any one in the room who wants to be elsewhere. Go out for your walk; when you come back you will see what I have made of it; I flatter myself you will be surprised."

      If she were not it would only be because she had seen so many similar pictures of his.

      She put on her hat and dainty little Norfolk jacket of Scotch homespun, and went out with a handkerchief of his she was hemming in her pocket.

      The narrow street was bathed in sunshine; at the open doors some of the fisher wives were sitting or standing at their eternal knitting, children were playing noisily in the road-way. The women, one and all, looked up and smiled as she appeared in the open doorway, and one or two little mites ran to her with the fearless joyousness which is the child's indication of love.

      Leslie lifted one tiny girl with blue eyes and clustering curls and kissed her, patted the bare heads of the rest, and nodded pleasantly to the mothers.

      "Mayn't we come with 'oo?" asked the mite; but Leslie shook her head.

      "Not this afternoon, Trotty," she said, and ran away from them down the street which led sheer on to the beach.

      As a rule she allowed the children to accompany her, and play round her as she sat at work, but this afternoon she wanted to be alone.

      The arrival of the letter which her father had lost had disturbed and troubled her.

      The man from whom it had come was a certain Ralph Duncombe, and he was one of the many unfortunates who had fallen in love with her; but, unlike the rest, he had not been content to take "No" for an answer, and gone away and got over it, or drowned himself, but had persisted in hoping and striving.

      She had met him at a sea-side boarding house two years before this, had been pleasant and kind to him, as she was to everybody, but had meant nothing more than kindliness, and was surprised and pained when he had asked her to be his wife, and declined to take a refusal.

      Since that time he had cropped up at intervals, like a tax collector, and it seemed as if Leslie would never convince him that there was no hope for him. His persistence distressed her very much, but she did not know what she could do. He was the sort of man who, having set his heart upon a thing, would work with a dogged earnestness until he had got it; and could not be made to understand that women's hearts are not to be won, like a town, by a siege, however long and stringent it may be.

      She went down to the breakwater, and sat down in her favorite spot and got out her handkerchief; and two minutes afterward there was a patter-patter on the stones behind her, and a small black-and-tan terrier leaped on her lap with a joyous yap.

      She laughed and hugged him for a moment, then forced him down beside her.

      "Oh, Dick, what a wicked Dick you are! You've run the needle into my finger, sir!" she said. "Look there." And she held out a tapering forefinger with one little red drop on it.

      Dick smiled in dog fashion, and attempted to bite the finger, but to his surprise and disgust Leslie refused to play.

      "I'm too busy, Dick," she said, gravely. "I want to finish this handkerchief; besides, it's too hot. Suppose you coil yourself up like a good little doggie, and go to sleep – . Well, if you must you must, I suppose!" And she let him snuggle into her lap, where, seeing that she really meant it, he immediately went to sleep.

      It was a lovely afternoon. There was no one on the beach excepting herself, and all was silent save for the drowsy yawing of the gulls and the heavy boom of the tide as it went out, for the sea was very seldom calm at Portmaris, and in the least windy of days there was generally a ground-swell on.

      Leslie sat and worked, and thought, thought mostly of Mr. Ralph Duncombe, her persistent suitor; but once or twice the remembrance of the deformed cripple who had come to lodge at Marine Villa crossed her mind, and she was thinking of him pityingly when the sound of footsteps crunching firmly and uncompromisingly over the pebbles made her start, and caused the terrier to leap up with the fury of its kind.

      Leslie's brows came together as she looked up.

      A middle-sized young man, with broad shoulders and a rather clumsy but steady gait, was coming down the beach. He was not a good-looking man. He had a big head and red hair, a large mouth and a square jaw; his feet and hands were also large, and there was in his air and manner something which indicated aggressiveness and obstinacy.

      Sharp men who had seen him as a boy had said, "That chap will get on," and, unlike most prophets, they had been correct; Ralph Duncombe had "got on." He had started as an errand boy in a city office, and had risen step by step until he had become a partner. Rawlings & Co. had always been well thought of in the city, but Rawlings and Duncombe had now become respected and eminent.

      His square, resolute face flushed as he saw her, but the hand with which he took off his hat was as steady as a rock.

      "Good-morning, Miss Lisle," he said, making his voice heard above the dull roar of the sea and the shrill barking of the terrier.

      Leslie held out one hand while she held the furiously struggling Dick with the other.

      He took her hand in his huge fist, and dropped heavily on the shingle beside her.

      "I didn't know you had a dog," he said, glancing at her and then at the dog, and then at the sea, as a man does who is so much head-over-heels in love that he cannot bear the glory of his mistress' face all at once.

      "I haven't," said Leslie, laughing in the slow, soft way which her adorers found so bewitching – and agonizing. "He doesn't really belong to me, though he pretends that he does. He is the abandoned little animal of Mrs. Merrick, our landlady; but he will follow me about and make a nuisance of himself. Be quiet, Dick, or I shall send you home."

      "I'm not surprised," said Ralph Duncombe, with a slight flush, and still avoiding her eyes. "I can sympathize with Dick."

      Leslie colored, and took up her work, leaving Dick to wander gingerly round the visitor and smell him inquisitively.

      "You got my letter, Miss Leslie?"

      "No," she said. "I am very sorry; but papa lost it."

      He smiled as if he were not astonished.

      "It doesn't matter," he said. "It only said that I was coming and – here I am."

      "I – I will go and tell papa; you will come and have some lunch?"

      "No don't get up," he said, quickly putting out his hand to stay her. "I've had my lunch, and I can go and see Mr. Lisle presently if – ," he paused. "Miss Leslie, I suppose you know why I have come down here?"

      Leslie bent her head over her work. She could guess. Such a man as Mr. Ralph Duncombe was not likely to come down to such a place as Portmaris in obedience to a mere whim.

      "I've come down because I said that I would come about this time," he went on, slowly СКАЧАТЬ