A Romance of Toronto Part 5

"But I am not sure that it is our party, Smyth; I scarcely know how I should vote here; if Meredith is right, why doesn't he prove to Ontario that Mowat has held the reins too long?"

"So he will before next election," replied Smyth, with a satisfied air.

"Don't be too sure, Mr. Smyth, eloquent though he be," said his hostess; "while that clever Demosthenes of his party, Hon. C. F. Frazer, says him nay."

"Do you meditate a long stay, Buckingham, in this the white-washed city of the Dominion?" asked Tremaine.

"Yes, off and on all winter; you know I intend to purchase some of your mineral lands, since you allow them to lie undeveloped," he added, jestingly.

"You see, Capt. Tremaine," said Mrs. Gower, merrily, "the American Eagle done in silver is not as yet plenty with us."

"Don't despair, Tremaine, Commercial Union is looming up," said Buckingham.

"Treason! treason!" laughed Tremaine, "for we know what it would father."

"Hear, hear," cried Smyth.

"Oh, I don't know," laughed Mrs. Gower, "they say it is the Main-e idea for settling; here's a pretty mess! here's a pretty mess--of fish!"

"We can wait," said Buckingham, quietly, "evolution will bring about the Maine idea, with you also."

"Did you say you are going to Maine, Mr. Buckingham, we cannot do without you now," said pretty Mrs. St. Clair, caressingly.

"Thank you, Mrs. St. Clair, I do not go; but even if so, you would, I fear, miss me less than your latest fad in the pet quadruped."

"How severe you are, Mr. Buckingham. Are all New York men so, Mrs.

Dale?" She sighed, having a penchant for him.

"It's annexation, Mrs. St. Clair," said Mrs. Dale, mischievously.

"Annexation! is Mr. Buckingham going to be married?"

"I believe so." At this juncture Master Noah St. Clair, who had come instead of his father, was interested in other than his plate, while his mother said reproachfully:

"It _cannot_ be true, Mr. Buckingham."

"Mrs. Dale is disposed to be facetious, Mrs. St. Clair; you must not swear by everything she says."

"That is an evasive answer, and I am dying to know; tell me, _dear_ Mrs.

Dale, what it means?"

"Which, annexation, or Mr. Buckingham?" said her tormentor.

"Oh, both, of course," she said, breathlessly.

"Both; well, when I come to take a good look at him, Mrs. St. Clair, he looks important rather than severe, his reason is, he believes, the best part of Canada pines for annexation; _comprenez vous_?"

"Oh, is that what you meant," she replied, with a relieved air, when, catching her son's eye, she said, with a.s.sumed carelessness, "I do miss my men friends so much when they marry."

"He is as cold as ice," whispered Mr. Cobbe, who, though a man of birth and breeding, prides himself upon being a flirt; "he is an icicle, I wonder you waste your warmth upon him."

"Nice man," she thought, "and only the second time I've met him; he must be in love with me, too, poor fellow," and, in an undertone, she says, "That's the way all you men speak of each other, but he is only so before people."

"You had better throw him over, an Irish heart is warmer than an American," he said, in his deep tones, into her ear.

"But the poor fellow would break his heart," she whispered, her cheeks flushing; he, equally vain, continued:

"Not he, a successful speculation would console him; and I--and I would console you."

"Are you always so susceptible?" she asked, turning her pretty enamelled face around to be admired.

"No, indeed; but a man doesn't meet as pretty a woman as you every day, as your mirror must tell you."

"How you gentlemen flatter," well aware that he is admiring her pretty hand and delicate wrist, as she holds aloft a bunch of transparent grapes.

"Not you," and for the moment he meant it; the particular she of the hour feasting on the nectar her soul loves, never dreaming that the next pa.s.sable looking female in propinquity with him will be also steeped to the lips in the same food, "not you," he said, with a fond look.

"Thank you," she said, prettily, and with the faith of her early teens, "I must tell you a pretty compliment a gentleman paid me at the 'Kirmiss' last season, he said 'I was a madrigal in Dresden china.'"

"Too cold, too cold," he said, thickly, managing to press her fingers as they rose from the table, ere she laid her hand on the arm of Mr. Smyth, to whom she had been allotted, but who never spoiled his dinner by giving beauty her natural food.

On Mr. Dale declining to linger, leading his hostess back to her pretty drawing-room, she said in his ear:

"You have dubbed me queen of Holmnest, therefore must obey when I bid you back to the dining-room for a smoke."

CHAPTER VI.

COFFEE AND CHIT-CHAT.

"What a lovely little home you have, Mrs. Gower," said her friend, Mrs.

Smyth, seating herself near her hostess, the pale blue plush of the padded chair contrasting well with her fair hair, pink cheeks and pretty grey eyes.

"That chair becomes you at all events, dear," said her hostess, seeing that a maid deftly pa.s.sed coffee bright as decanted wine, afterwards small bouquets of beautiful pansies and clematis among her guests, from huge gla.s.s and j.a.panese bowls.

"I could scarcely believe Will, when he wrote me of your good fortune, you know, the children and I were at Muskoka."

"Yes, I knew you would be glad. I bought this pretty little place the week you left, it seemed after years of waiting, my money (what is left of it) all came right in a day; you do not know how glad I am to at last see you in a home of my own--and in a chair pretty enough to become you, dear," she added more brightly.

"Oh, you always make the most of small kindnesses shown you, we were only too glad to have you."

"Be that as it may, I shall always remember the bright hours with yourselves in the dark days of my life," she said, warmly.

"When did you see Charlie?" asked Mrs. Smyth, in an undertone, for there are other ears.