Airy Fairy Lilian. Duchess

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СКАЧАТЬ Chetwoode," says Lilian, with soft hesitation, "I want to ask you a question."

      "Do you, dear? Then ask it."

      "But it is a very odd question, and perhaps you will be angry."

      "I don't think I shall," says Lady Chetwoode ("One, two, three, four," etc.)

      "Well, then, I like you so much—I love you so much," corrects Lilian, earnestly, "that, if you don't mind, I should like to call you some name a little less formal than Lady Chetwoode. Do you mind?"

      Her ladyship lays down her knitting and looks amused.

      "It seems no one cares to give me my title," she says. "Mabel, my late ward, was hardly here three days when she made a request similar to yours. She always called me 'Auntie.' Florence calls me, of course, 'Aunt Anne;' but Mabel always called me 'Auntie.'"

      "Ah! that was prettier. May I call you 'Auntie' too? 'Auntie Nannie,'—I think that a dear little name, and just suited to you."

      "Call me anything you like, darling," says Lady Chetwoode, kissing the girl's soft, flushed cheek.

      Here the door opens to admit Sir Guy and Cyril, who are driven to desperation and afternoon tea by the incivility of the weather.

      "The mother and Lilian spooning," says Cyril. "I verily believe women, when alone, kiss each other for want of something better."

      "I have been laughing at Lilian," says Lady Chetwoode: "she, like Mabel, cannot be happy unless she finds for me a pet name. So I am to be 'Auntie' to her too."

      "I am glad it is not to be 'Aunt Anne,' like Florence," says Cyril, with a distasteful shrug; "that way of addressing you always grates upon my ear."

      "By the bye, that reminds me," says Lady Chetwoode, struggling vainly in her pocket to bring to light something that isn't there, "Florence is coming home next week. I had a letter from her this morning telling me so, but I forgot all about it till now."

      "You don't say so!" says Cyril, in a tone of unaffected dismay.

      Now, when one hears an unknown name mentioned frequently in conversation, one eventually 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 СКАЧАТЬ