Airy Fairy Lilian Part 22

"I do not think so. I have seen a good deal of the world in my time, but never gained anything from it except--sorrow."

She sighs heavily; again the shadow darkens her face and dims the beauty of her eyes.

"It must have caused you great grief losing your husband so young," says Cyril, gently, hardly knowing what to say.

"No, his death had nothing to do with the trouble of which I am thinking," replies Mrs. Arlington, with curious haste, a quick frown overshadowing her brow. Her fingers meet and clasp each other closely.

Cyril is silent, being oppressed with another growing conviction which completely routs the first and leads him to believe the dead and gone Arlington a miserable brute, deserving of hanging at the very least.

This conviction, unlike the first, carries consolation with it. "I am sorry you would not let my mother call on you," he says, presently.

"Did Sir Guy say I would not see her?" asks she, with some anxiety. "I hope he did not represent me as having received her kind message with ingrat.i.tude."

"No, he merely said you wished to see no one."

"He said the truth. But then there are ways of saying things, and I should not like to appear rude. I certainly do not wish to see any one, but for all that I should not like to offend your mother."

There is not the very smallest emphasis on the word "your," yet somehow Cyril feels flattered.

"She is not offended," he says, against his conscience, and is glad to see his words please her. After a slight pause he goes on: "Although I am only a stranger to you, I cannot help feeling how bad it is for you to be so much alone. You are too young to be so isolated."

"I am happier so."

"What! you would care to see no one?"

"I would care to see no one," emphatically, but with a sigh.

"How dreadfully in the way you must have found me!" says Cyril, straightening himself preparatory to departure. "The rain, I see, is over." (It has been for the last ten minutes.) "I shall therefore restore you to happiness by taking myself away."

Mrs. Arlington smiles faintly.

"I don't seem to mind you much," she says, kindly, but with a certain amount of coldness. "Pray do not think I have wished you away."

"This is the first kind thing you have ever said to me," says Cyril, earnestly.

"Is it? I think I have forgotten how to make pretty speeches," replies she, calmly. "See, the sun is coming out again. I do not think, Mr.

Chetwoode, you need be afraid any longer of getting wet."

"I'm afraid--I mean--I am sure not," says Cyril, absently. "Thank you very much for the shelter you have afforded me. Would you think me very _exigeant_ if I asked you to give me that rose you have been ill-treating for the last half hour?"

"Certainly not," says Mrs. Arlington, hospitably; "you shall have it if you care for it; but this one is damaged; let me get you a few others, fresher and sweeter."

"No, thank you. I do not think you _could_ give me one either fresher or sweeter. Good-evening."

"Good-bye," returns she, extending her hand; and, with the gallant Marshal firmly clasped in his hand, Cyril makes a triumphant exit.

He has hardly gone three yards beyond the gate that guards the widow's bower when he finds himself face to face with Florence Beauchamp, rather wet, and decidedly out of temper. She glances at him curiously, but makes no remark, so that Cyril hopes devoutly she may not have noticed where he has just come from.

"What a shower we have had!" he says, with a great a.s.sumption of geniality and much politeness.

"You do not seem to have got much of it," replies she, with lady-like irritability, looking with open disfavor upon the astonishing dryness of his clothes.

"No,"--amiably,--"I have escaped pretty well. I never knew any cloth to resist rain like this,--doesn't even show a mark of it. I am sorry I cannot say the same for you. Your gown has lost a good deal of its pristine freshness; while as for your feather, it is, to say the least of it, dejected."

No one likes to feel one's self looking a guy. Cyril's tender solicitude for her clothes has the effect of rendering Miss Beauchamp angrier than she was before.

"Oh, pray don't try to make me more uncomfortable than I am," she says, sharply. "I can imagine how unlovely I am looking. I detest the country: it means simply destruction to one's clothes and manners," pointedly.

"It has been raining ever since I came back from Shropshire."

"What a pity you did come back just yet!" says Cyril, with quite sufficient pause to throw an unpleasant meaning into his words. "As to the country, I entirely agree with you; give me the town: it never rains in the town."

"If it does, one has a carriage at hand. How did you manage to keep yourself so dry, Cyril?"

"There is plenty of good shelter round here, if one chooses to look for it."

"Evidently; very good shelter, I should say. One would almost think you had taken refuge in a house."

"Then one would think wrong. Appearances, you know, are often deceitful."

"They are indeed. What a beautiful rose that is!"

"Was, you mean. It has seen its best days. By the bye, when you were so near The Cottage, why didn't you go in and stay there until the rain was over?"

"I shouldn't dream of asking hospitality from such a very suspicious sort of person as this Mrs. Arlington seems to be," Miss Beauchamp replies, with much affectation and more spitefulness.

"You are right,--you always _are_," says Cyril, calmly. "One should shun the very idea of evil. Extreme youth can never be too careful. Good-bye for the present, Florence; I fear I must tear myself away from you, as duty calls me in this direction." So saying, he turns into another path, preferring a long round to his home to a further _tete-a-tete_ with the charming Florence.

But Florence has not yet quite done with him. His supercilious manner and that last harmless remark about "extreme youth" rankles in her breast; so that she carries back to Chetwoode with her a small stone carefully hidden in her sleeve wherewith to slay him at a convenient opportunity.

The same shower that reduces Miss Beauchamp to sullen discontent behaves with equal severity to Lilian, who reaches home, flushed and laughing, drenched and out of breath, with the tail of her gown over her shoulders and a handkerchief round her neck. Guy is with her; and it seems to Lady Chetwoode (who is much concerned about them) as though they had rather enjoyed than otherwise their enforced run.

Florence, who arrives some time after them, retires to her room, where she spends the two hours that must elapse before dinner in repairing all dilapidations in face and figure. At seven o'clock precisely she descends and gains the drawing-room as admirably dressed as usual, but with her good humor still conspicuous by its absence.

She inveighs mildly against the evening's rain, as though it had been specially sent for the ruin of her clothes and complexion, and says a good deal about the advantages to be derived from a town life, which is decidedly gracious, considering how glad she has been all these past years to make her home at Chetwoode.

When dinner is almost over she turns to Cyril and says, with deliberate distinctness:

"Until to-day I had no idea you were acquainted with--the widow."

There is no mistaking whom she means. The shot is well fired, and goes straight home. Cyril changes color perceptibly and does not reply instantly. Lady Chetwoode looks at him with marked surprise. So does Lilian. So does Sir Guy. They all await his answer. Miss Beauchamp's petty triumph is complete.

"Had you not?" says Cyril. "I wonder so amazing a fact escaped your knowledge."

"Have you met Mrs. Arlington? You never mentioned it, Cyril," says Lady Chetwoode.

"Oh, yes," says Miss Beauchamp, "he is quite intimate there: aren't you, Cyril? As I was pa.s.sing The Cottage to-day in a desperate plight, I met Cyril coming out of the house."

"Not out of the house," corrects Cyril, calmly, having quite recovered his self-possession; "out of the garden."