Molly Bawn Part 30

There is a solemnity about the repast that strikes but fails to subdue Molly. It has a contrary effect, making her spirits rise, and creating in her a very mistaken desire for laughter. She is hungry too, and succeeds in eating a good dinner, while altogether she comes to the conclusion that it may not be wholly impossible to put in a very good time at Herst.

Never does she raise her eyes without encountering Philip's dark ones regarding her with the friendliest attention. This also helps to rea.s.sure her. A friend in need is a friend indeed, and this friend is handsome as well as kind, although there is a little something or other, a suppressed vindictiveness, about his expression, that repels her.

She compares him unfavorably with Luttrell, and presently lets her thoughts wander on to the glad fact that to-morrow will see the latter by her side, when indeed she will be in a position to defy fate,--and Marcia. Already she has learned to regard that dark-browed lady with distrust.

"Is any one coming to-morrow?" asks Mr. Amherst, _a propos_ of Molly's reverie."

"Tedcastle, and Maud Darley."

"Her husband?"

"I suppose so. Though she did not mention him when writing."

"Poor Darley!" with a sneer: "she never does mention him. Any one else?"

"Not to-morrow."

"I wonder if Luttrell will be much altered," says Philip; "browned, I suppose, by India, although his stay there was of the shortest."

"He is not at all bronzed," breaks in Molly, quietly.

"You know him?" Marcia asks, in a rather surprised tone, turning toward her.

"Oh, yes, very well," coloring a little. "That is, he was staying with us for a short time at Brooklyn."

"Staying with you?" her grandfather repeats, curiously. It is evidently a matter of wonder with them, her friendship with Tedcastle.

"Yes, he and John, my brother, are old friends. They were at school together, although John is much older, and he says----"

Mr. Amherst coughs, which means he is displeased, and turns his head away. Marcia gives an order to one of the servants in a very distinct tone. Philip smiles at Molly, and Molly, unconscious of offense, is about to return to the charge, and give a lengthened account of her tabooed brother, when luckily she is prevented by a voice from behind her chair, which says:

"Champagne, or Moselle?"

"Champagne," replies Molly, and forgets her brother for the moment.

"I thought all women were prejudiced in favor of Moselle," says Philip, addressing her hastily, more from a view to hinder a recurrence to the forbidden topic than from any overweening curiosity to learn her taste in wines. "Are not you?"

"I am hardly in a position to judge," frankly, "as I have never tasted Moselle, and champagne only once. Have I shocked you? Is that a very lowering admission?"

Mr. Amherst coughs again. The corners of Marcia's mouth take a disgusted droop. Philip laughs out loud.

"On the contrary, it is a very refreshing one," he says, in an interested and deeply amused tone, "more especially in these degenerate days when most young ladies can tell one to a turn the precise age, price, and retailer of one's wines. May I ask when was this memorable 'once'?"

"At the races at Loaminster. Were you ever there? I persuaded my brother to take me there the spring before last, and he went."

"We were there that year, with a large party," says Marcia. "I do not remember seeing you on the stand."

"We were not on it. We drove over, John and I and Letty, in the little trap, a Norwegian, and dreadfully shaky it was, but we did not care, and we sat in it all day, and saw everything very well. Then a friend of John's, a man in the Sixty-second, came up, and asked to be introduced to me, and afterward others came, and persuaded us to have luncheon with them in their marquee. It was there," nodding at Philip, "I got the champagne. We had great fun, I remember, and altogether it was quite the pleasantest day I ever spent in my life."

As she speaks, she dimples, and blushes, and beams all over her pretty face as she recalls that day's past glories.

"The Sixty-second?" says Marcia. "I recollect. A very second-rate regiment I thought it. There was a Captain Milburd in it, I remember."

"That was John's friend," says Molly, promptly; "he was so kind to me that day. Did you like him?"

"Like him! A man all broad plaid and red tie. No, I certainly did not like him."

"His tie!" says Molly, laughing gayly at the vision she has conjured up,--"it certainly _was_ red. As red as that rose," pointing to a blood-colored flower in the centre of a huge china bowl of priceless cost, that ornaments the middle of the table, and round which, being opposite to him, she has to peer to catch a glimpse of Philip. "It was the reddest thing I ever saw, except his complexion. But I forgave him, he was so good-natured."

"Does good-nature make up for everything?" asks Philip, dodging the bowl in his turn to meet her eyes.

"For most things. Grandpapa," pointing to a family portrait over the chimney-piece that has attracted her attention ever since her entrance, "whose is that picture?"

"Your grandmother's. It is like you, but," says the old man with his usual gracefulness, "it is ten times handsomer."

"_Very_ like you," thinks the young man, gazing with ever increasing admiration at the exquisite tints and shades and changes in the living face before him, "only you are ten thousand times more beautiful!"

Slowly, and with much unnecessary delay, the dinner drags to an end, only to be followed by a still slower hour in the drawing-room.

Mr. Amherst challenges Philip to a game of chess, that most wearisome of games to the on-looker, and so arranges himself that his antagonist cannot, without risking his neck, bestow so much as a glance in Miss Ma.s.sereene's direction.

Marcia gets successfully through two elaborate fantasies upon the piano, that require rather more than the correct brilliancy of her touch to make up for the incoherency of their composition; while Molly sits apart, dear soul, and wishes with much devoutness that the inventor of chess had been strangled at his birth.

At ten o'clock precisely Mr. Amherst rises, having lost his game, and a good deal of his temper, and expresses his intention of retiring without delay to his virtuous slumbers. Marcia asks Molly whether she too would not wish to go to her room after the day's fatigue; at which proposition Molly grasps with eagerness. Philip lights her candle,--they are in the hall together,--and then holds out his hand.

"Do you know we have not yet gone through the ceremony of shaking hands?" he says, with a kindly smile, and a still more kindly pressure; which I am afraid met with some faint return. Then he wishes her a good night's rest, and she wends her way up-stairs again, and knows the long-thought-of, hoped-for, much-dreaded day is at an end.

CHAPTER XII.

"The guests are met, the feast is set; May'st hear the merry din."

--_Ancient Mariner._

"Teddy is coming to-day," is Molly's first thought next morning, as, springing from her bed, she patters across the floor in her bare feet to the window, to see how the weather is going to greet her lover.

"He is coming." The idea sends through her whole frame a little thrill of protective gladness. How happy, how independent she will feel with her champion always near her! A sneer loses half its bitterness when resented by two instead of one, and Luttrell will be a sure partisan.

Apart from all which, she is honestly glad at the prospect of so soon meeting him face to face.

Therefore it is that with shining eyes and uplifted head she takes her place at the breakfast-table, which gives the pleasantest meal at Herst--old Amherst being ever conspicuous by his absence at it.

Philip, too, is nowhere to be seen.

"It will be a _tete-a-tete_ breakfast," says Marcia, with a view to explanation. "Grandpapa never appears at this hour, nor--of late--does Philip."