The Lady Paramount. Harland Henry

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СКАЧАТЬ and a nice brown skin; and with a nose, my dear, a nose like Julius Caesar's. Well, you 'll meet him on Sunday, at your Papistical place of worship—if he does n't call before. I daresay he 'll think himself obliged to."

      "Oh, Fairy Godmother," gasped Susanna, faintly; "feel."

      She took Miss Sandus's hand, and pressed it against her side.

      "Feel how my heart is beating."

      "Mercy!" exclaimed Miss Sandus.

IV

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      "Hang it all, how she sticks in one's mind," said Anthony, with impatience. "Am I returning to my cubhood, that the mere vision of a woman should take possession of me like this?"

      And then, having, I suppose, weighed the question, "It's the weather," he decided. "Yes—I 'll bet you ten-and-sixpence that it's nothing more than just this silly, sentimental, languorous June weather."

      He was seated in a shaded corner of his garden, where the day was murmurous with the humming of bees, and the mingled sweetness of many flowers rose and fell in the air. Beyond the shade, the sunshine broke into a mosaic of merry colours, on larkspur and iris, pansies and pink geraniums, jessamine, sweet-peas, tulips shameless in their extravagance of green and crimson, red and white carnations, red, white, and yellow roses. The sunshine broke into colour, it laughed, it danced, it almost rioted, among the flowers; but in the prim alleys, and on the formal hedges of box, and the quaintly-clipped yews, and the old purple brick walls, where fruit trees were trellised, it lay fast, fast asleep. Without the walls, in the deep cool greenery of the park, there was a perpetual drip-drip of bird-notes. This was the web, upon which a chosen handful of more accomplished birds were embroidering and cross-embroidering and inter-embroidering their bold, clear arabesques of song. Anthony had a table and a writing-case before him, and was trying to write letters. But now he put down his pen, and, for the twentieth time this afternoon, went over the brief little encounter of the morning.

      Two ladies had passed him in a dog-cart, as he was walking home from the village: a young lady driving, an oldish lady beside her, and a groom behind.

      That was all: the affair of ten seconds; and at first he was not aware of any deeper or more detailed impression. He had glanced at them vaguely; he was naturally incurious; and he had been thinking of other things.

      But by-and-bye, as if his retina had reacted like a photographic plate, a picture developed itself, which, in the end, by a series of recurrences, became quite singularly circumstantial. The dog-cart and its occupants, with the stretch of brown road, and the hedge-rows and meadows at either side, were visible anew to him; and he saw that the young lady who was driving had dark hair and dark eyes, and looked rather foreign; and he said, but without much concern as yet, "Ah, that was no doubt Madame Torrebianca, with her friend Miss What 's-her-name;"—and proceeded again to think of other things.

      The picture faded; but presently it came back. He noticed now that the slightly foreign-looking young woman was pretty, and even interesting-looking; that besides its delicate modelling and its warm, rather Southern colouring, there was character in her face, personality; that there were intelligence, humour, vivacity; that she looked as if she would have something to say. He noticed, too, that she had what they call "a fine figure,"—that she was tall, for a woman, and slender without being thin; that she bore herself well, with an air of strength, with an air of suppleness and resistance. He could even see how she was dressed: in grey cloth, close-fitting, with grey driving-gloves, and a big black hat that carried out the darkness of her hair. And he was intrepid enough to trust his man's judgment, and to formulate an opinion of her dress. She was very well dressed, he ventured to opine; far too cunningly and meticulously dressed for an Englishwoman. There was something of French unity, intention, finish, in her toilet; there was line in it, the direct, crisp line, that only foreign women seem anxious to achieve.

      And he said, "I rather hope it is Madame Torrebianca—since one has got to know her. She looks as if she might have a spice of something in her not utterly banale."

      If that was n't saying a great deal, he reflected, one seldom enough, in our staid, our stale society, meets a person of whom one can say so much;—and again dismissed her.

      But still again, presently, back she came; and then again and again, in spite of him. And her comings now were preceded by a strange little perturbation. A strange little vague feeling of pleasantness, as if something good had happened to him would begin, and well up, and grow within him, penetrating and intensifying his sense of the summer sweetness round about, till it distracted his attention, and he must suspend his occupation of the moment, to wonder, "What is it?" In response, the vague pleasantness, like a cloud, would draw together and take shape; and there was the spirited grey figure in the dog-cart, with the black hat, and the dark hair and eyes, again dashing past him.

      And little by little he discovered that she was more than merely pretty and interesting-looking. Her face, with all its piquancy, was a serious face, a strenuous face. Under its humour and vivacity, he discovered a glow … a glow … could it be the glow of a soul? Her eyes were lustrous, but they were deep, as well. A quality shone in them rarer even than character: a natural quality, indeed, and one that should naturally be common: but one that is rare in England among women—among nice women, at least: the quality of sex. The woman in the dog-cart was nice. About that, he recognised with instant certainty, there could be no two conjectures. But she was also, he recognised with equal certainty, a woman: the opposite, the complement of man. Her eyes were eyes you could imagine laughing at you, mocking you, teasing you, leading you on, putting you off, seeing through you, disdaining you; but constant in them was the miracle of womanhood; and you could imagine them softening adorably, filling with heavenly weakness, yielding in womanly surrender, trusting you, calling you, needing you.

      Our melancholic young squire of Craford was not a man much given to quick-born enthusiasms; but now, as he put down his pen, and her face shone before him for the twentieth time this sunny afternoon, now all at once, "By Jove, she's unique," he cried out. "I have never seen a woman to touch her. If she is Madame Torrebianca——"

      But there he checked himself.

      "Of course she is n't. No such luck," he said, in dejection.

      And yet, he speculated, who else could she be? The simultaneous presence of two young foreign women in this out-of-the-way country neighbourhood seemed, of all contingencies, the most unlikely. Well, if she really was …

      He was conscious suddenly of a sensation to the last degree unfamiliar: a commotion, piercing, regretful, desirous, actually in his heart, an organ he had for years proudly fancied immune; and he took alarm.

      "Am I eighteen again? Positively, I must not think of her any more."

      But it was useless. In two minutes he was thinking of her harder than ever, and the commotion in his heart was renewed.

      "If she really is Madame Torrebianca," he told himself, with a thrill and a craving, "I shall see her on Sunday."

      The flowers, beyond there, in the sun, the droning of the bees, the liquid bird-notes, the perfumes in the still soft air, all seemed to melt and become part of his thought of her, rendering it more poignant, more insidiously sweet.

      At last he started up, in a kind of anger.

      "Bah!" he cried, "It's the weather. It's this imbecile, love-sick weather."

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