ON THE RIVER
For many a frivolous, festive year
I followed the path that I felt I must;
I failed to discover the road was drear,
And rather than otherwise liked the dust.
It led through a land that I knew of old,
Frequented by friendly, familiar folk,
Who bowed before Mammon, and heaped up gold,
And lived like their neighbours, and loved their joke.
It was a lovely summer's day when Lady Silverhampton collected her
forces at Paddingdon, conveyed them by rail as far as Reading, and then
transported them from the train to her steam-launch on the river. The
party consisted of Lady Silverhampton herself, Lord and Lady Robert
Thistletown, Lord Stonebridge, Sir Wilfred Madderley (President of the
Royal Academy), Cecil Farquhar, and Elisabeth.
"I'm afraid you'll be frightfully crowded," said the hostess, as they
packed themselves into the dainty little launch; "but it can't be
helped. I tried to charter a P. and O. steamer for the day; but they
were all engaged, like cabs on the night of a county ball, don't you
know? And then I tried to leave somebody out so as to make the party
smaller, but there wasn't one of you that could have been spared,
except Silverhampton; so I left him at home, and decided to let the rest
of you be squeezed yet happy."
"How dear of you!" exclaimed Lord Robert; "and I'll repay your kindness
by writing a book called How to be Happy though Squeezed."
"The word _though_ appears redundant in that connection," Sir Wilfred
Madderley remarked.
"Ah! that's because you aren't what is called 'a lady's man,'" Lord
Robert sighed. "I always was, especially before my unfortunate--oh! I
beg your pardon, Violet, I forgot you were here; I mean, of course, my
fortunate--marriage. I was always the sort of man that makes girls
timidly clinging when they are sitting on a sofa beside you, and
short-sighted when you are playing their accompaniments for them. I
remember once a girl sat so awfully close to me on a sofa in
mid-drawing-room, that I felt there wasn't really room for both of us;
so--like the true hero that I am--I shouted 'Save the women and
children,' and flung myself upon the tender mercies of the carpet, till
I finally struggled to the fireplace."
"How silly you are, Bobby!" exclaimed his wife.
"Yes, darling; I know. I've always known it; but the world didn't find
it out till I married you. Till then I was in hopes that the secret
would die with me; but after that it was fruitless to attempt to conceal
the fact any longer."
"We're all going to be silly to-day," said the hostess; "that's part of
the treat."
"It won't be much of a treat to some of us," Lord Robert retorted. "I
remember when I was a little chap going to have tea at the Mershire's;
and when I wanted to gather some of their most ripping orchids, Lady M.
said I might go into the garden and pick mignonette instead. 'Thank
you,' I replied in my most dignified manner, 'I can pick mignonette at
home; that's no change to me!' Now, that's the way with everything; it's
no change to some people to pick mignonette."
"Or to some to pick orchids," added Lord Stonebridge.
"Or to some to pick oakum." And Lord Bobby sighed again.
"Even Elisabeth isn't going to be clever to-day," continued Lady
Silverhampton. "She promised me she wouldn't; didn't you, Elisabeth?"
Every one looked admiringly at the subject of this remark. Elisabeth
Farringdon was the fashion just then.
"She couldn't help being clever, however hard she tried," said the
President.
"Couldn't I, though? Just you wait and see."
"If you succeed in not saying one clever thing during the whole of this
picnic affair," Lord Bobby exclaimed, "I'll give you my photograph as a
reward. I've got a new one, taken sideways, which is perfectly sweet. It
has a profile like a Greek god--those really fine and antique statues,
don't you know? whose noses have been wiped out by the ages. The British
Museum teems with them, poor devils!"
"Thank you," said Elisabeth. "I shall prize it as an incontrovertible
testimony to the fact that neither my tongue nor your nose are as sharp
as tradition reports them to be."
Lord Bobby shook his finger warningly. "Be careful, be careful, or
you'll never get that photograph. Remember that every word you say will
be used against you, as the police are always warning me."
"I'm a little tired to-day," Lady Silverhampton said. "I was taken in to
dinner by an intelligent man last night."
"Then how came he to do it?" Lord Robert wondered.
"Don't be rude, Bobby: it doesn't suit your style; and, besides, how
could he help it?"
"Well enough. Whenever I go out to dinner I always say in an aside to my
host, 'Not Lady Silverhampton; anything but that.' And the consequence
is I never do go in to dinner with you. It isn't disagreeableness on my
part; if I could I'd do it for your sake, and put my own inclination on
one side; but I simply can't bear the intellectual strain. It's a marvel
to me how poor Silverhampton stands it as well as he does."
"He is never exposed to it. You don't suppose I waste my own jokes on my
own husband, do you? They are far too good for home consumption, like
fish at the seaside. When fish has been up to London and returned, it is
then sold at the place where it was caught. And that's the way with my
jokes; when they have been all round London and come home to roost, I
serve them up to Silverhampton as quite fresh."
"And he believes in their freshness? How sweet and confiding of him!"
"He never listens to them, so it is all the same to him whether they're
fresh or not. That is why I confide so absolutely in Silverhampton; he
never listens to a word I say, and never has done."
Lord Stonebridge amended this remark. "Except when you accepted him."
"Certainly not; because, as a matter of fact, I refused him; but he
never listened, and so he married me. It is so restful to have a
husband who never attends to what you say! It must be dreadfully wearing
to have one who does, because then you'd never be able to tell him the
truth. And the great charm of your having a home of your own appears to
be that it is the one place where you can speak the truth."
Lord Bobby clapped his hands. "Whatever lies disturb the street, there
must be truth at home," he ejaculated.
"Wiser not, even there," murmured Sir Wilfred Madderley, under his
breath.
"But you have all interrupted me, and haven't listened to what I was
telling you about my intelligent man; and if you eat my food you must
listen to my stones--it's only fair."
"But if even your own husband doesn't think it necessary to listen to
them," Lord Bobby objected, "why should we, who have never desired to be
anything more than sisters to you?"
"Because he doesn't eat my food--I eat his; that makes all the
difference, don't you see?"
"Then do you listen to his stories?"
"To every one of them every time they are told; and I know to an inch
the exact place where to laugh. But I'm going on about my man. He was
one of those instructive boring people, who will tell you the reason of
things; and he explained to me that soldiers wear khaki and polar bears
white, because if you are dressed in the same colour as the place where
you are, it looks as if you weren't there. And it has since occurred to
me that I should be a much wiser and happier woman if I always dressed
myself in the same colour as my drawing-room furniture. Then nobody
would be able to find me even in my own house. Don't you think it is
rather a neat idea?" And her ladyship looked round for the applause
which she had learned to expect as her right.
"You are a marvellous woman!" cried Lord Stonebridge, while the others
murmured their approval.
"I need never say 'Not at home'; callers would just come in and look
round the drawing-room and go out again, without ever seeing that I was
there at all. It really would be sweet!"
"It seems to me to be a theory which might be adapted with benefit to
all sorts and conditions of men," said Elisabeth; "I think I shall take
out a patent for designing invisible costumes for every possible
occasion. I feel I could do it, and do it well."
"It is adopted to a great extent even now," Sir Wilfred remarked; "I
believe that our generals wear scarlet so that they may not always be
distinguishable from the red-tape of the War Office."
"And one must not forget," added Lord Bobby thoughtfully, "that the
benches of the House of Commons are green."
"Now in church, of course, it would be just the other way," said Lady
Silverhampton; "I should line my pew with the same stuff as my Sunday
gown, so as to look as if I was there when I wasn't."
Lord Stonebridge began to argue. "But that wouldn't be the other way; it
would be the same thing."
"How stupid and accurate you are, Stonebridge! If our pew were lined
with gray chiffon like my Sunday frock, it couldn't be the same as if my
Sunday frock was made of crimson carpet like our pew. How can things
that are exactly opposite be the same? You can't prove that they are,
except by algebra; and as nobody here knows any algebra, you can't prove
it at all."
"Yes; I can. If I say you are like a person, it is the same thing as
saying that that person is like you."
"Not at all. If you said that I was like Connie Esdaile, I should
embrace you before the assembled company; and if you said she was like
me, she'd never forgive you as long as she lived. It is through
reasoning out things in this way that men make such idiotic mistakes."
"Isn't it funny," Elisabeth remarked, "that if you reason a thing out
you're always wrong, and if you never reason about it at all you're
always right?"
"Ah! but that is because you are a genius," murmured Cecil Farquhar.
Lady Silverhampton contradicted him. "Not at all; it's because she is a
woman."
"Well, I'd rather be a woman than a genius any day," said Elisabeth; "it
takes less keeping up."
"You are both," said Cecil.
"And I'm neither," added Lord Bobby; "so what's the state of the odds?"
"Let's invent more invisible costumes," cried Lady Silverhampton; "they
interest me. Suggest another one, Elisabeth."
"I should design a special one for lovers in the country. Don't you know
how you are always coming upon lovers in country lanes, and how hard
they try to look as if they weren't there, and how badly they succeed? I
should dress them entirely in green, faintly relieved by brown; and then
they'd look as if they were only part of the hedges and stiles."
"How the lovers of the future will bless you!" exclaimed Lord Bobby. "I
only regret that my love-making days are over before your patent
costumes come out. I remember Sir Richard Esdaile once coming upon
Violet and me when we were spooning in the shrubbery at Esdaile Court,
and we tried in vain to efface ourselves and become as part of the
scenery. You see, it is so difficult to look exactly like two laurel
bushes, when one of you is dressed in pink muslin and the other in white
flannel."
Lady Robert blushed becomingly. "Oh, Bobby, it wasn't pink muslin that
day; it was blue cambric."
"That doesn't matter. There are as many laurel bushes made out of pink
muslin as out of blue cambric, when you come to that. The difficulty of
identifying one's self with one's environment (that's the correct
expression, my dear) would be the same in either costume; but Miss
Farringdon is now going, once for all, to remove that difficulty."
"I came upon two young people in a lane not long ago," said Elisabeth,
"and the minute they saw me they began to walk in the ditches, one on
one side of the road and one on the other. Now if only they had worn my
costumes, such a damp and uncomfortable mode of going about the country
would have been unnecessary; besides, it was absurd in any case. If you
were walking with your mother-in-law you wouldn't walk as far apart as
that; you wouldn't be able to hear a word she said."
"Ah! my dear young friend, that wouldn't matter," Lord Bobby interposed,
"nor in any way interfere with the pleasure of the walk. Really nice men
never make a fuss about little things like that. If only their
mothers-in-law are kind enough to go out walking with them, they don't
a bit mind how far off they walk. It is in questions such as this that
men are really so much more unselfish than women; because the
mothers-in-law do mind--they like us to be near enough to hear what they
say."
"Green frocks would be very nice for the girls, especially if they were
fair," said Lady Robert thoughtfully; "but I think the men would look
rather queer in green, don't you? As if they were actors."
"I'm afraid they would look a bit dissipated," Elisabeth assented; "like
almonds-and-raisins by daylight. By the way, I know nothing that looks
more dissipated than almonds-and-raisins by daylight."
"Except, perhaps, one coffee-cup in the drawing-room the morning after a
dinner party," suggested Farquhar.
Elisabeth demurred. "No; the coffee-cup is sad rather than sinful. It is
as much part and parcel of a bygone time, as the Coliseum or the ruins
of Pompeii; and the respectability of the survival of the fittest is its
own. But almonds-and-raisins are different; to a certain class of
society they represent the embodiment of refinement and luxury and
self-indulgence."
Sir Wilfred Madderley laughed softly to himself. "I know exactly what
you mean."
"Well, I don't agree with Miss Farringdon," Lord Bobby argued; "to my
mind almonds-and-raisins are an emblem of respectability and moral
worth, like chiffonniers and family albums and British matrons. No
really bad man would feel at home with almonds-and-raisins, I'm certain;
but I'd appoint as my trustee any man who could really enjoy them on a
Sunday afternoon. Now take Kesterton, for instance; he's the type of man
who would really appreciate them. My impression is that when his life
comes to be written, it will be found that he took almonds-and-raisins
in secret, as some men take absinthe and others opium."
"It is scandalous to reveal the secrets of the great in this manner,"
said Elisabeth, "and to lower our ideals of them!"
"Forgive me; but still you must always have faintly suspected Kesterton
of respectability, even when you admired him most. All great men have
their weaknesses; mine is melancholy and Lord K.'s respectability, and
Shakespeare's was something quite as bad, but I can't recall just now
what it was."
"And what is Lady K.'s?" asked the hostess.
"Belief in Kesterton, of course, which she carries to the verge of
credulity, not to say superstition. Would you credit it? When he was at
the Exchequer she believed in his Budgets; and when he was at the War
Office she believed in his Intelligence Department; and now he is in the
Lords she believes in his pedigree, culled fresh from the Herald's
Office. Can faith go further?"
"'A perfect woman nobly planned,'" murmured Elisabeth.
"Precisely," continued Bobby,
"To rule the man who rules the land,
But yet a spirit still, and damp
With something from a spirit-lamp--
or however the thing goes. I don't always quote quite accurately, you
will perceive! I generally improve."
"I'm not sure that Lady Kesterton does believe in the pedigree," and
Elisabeth looked wise; "because she once went out of her way to assure
me that she did."
Lord Bobby groaned. "I beseech you to be careful, Miss Farringdon;
you'll never get that photograph if you keep forgetting yourself like
this!"
Elisabeth continued--
"If I were a man I should belong to the Herald's Office. It would be
such fun to be called a 'Red Bonnet' or a 'Green Griffin,' or some other
nice fairy-tale-ish name; and to make it one's business to unite divided
families, and to restore to deserving persons their long-lost
great-great-grandparents. Think of the unselfish joy one would feel in
saying to a worthy grocer, 'Here is your great-great-grandmother; take
her and be happy!' Or to a successful milliner, 'I have found your
mislaid grandfather; be a mother to him for the rest of your life!' It
would give one the most delicious, fairy-godmotherly sort of
satisfaction!"
"It would," Sir Wilfred agreed. "One would feel one's self a
philanthropist of the finest water."
"Thinking about almonds-and-raisins has made me feel hungry," exclaimed
Lady Silverhampton. "Let us have lunch! And while the servants are
laying the table, we had better get out of the boat and have a stroll.
It would be more amusing."
So the party wandered about for a while in couples through fields
bespangled with buttercups; and it happened--not unnaturally--that Cecil
and Elisabeth found themselves together.
"You are very quiet to-day," she said; "how is that? You are generally
such a chatty person, but to-day you out-silence the Sphinx."
"You know the reason."
"No; I don't. To my mind there is no reason on earth strong enough to
account for voluntary silence. So tell me."
"I am silent because I want to talk to you; and if I can't do that, I
don't want to talk at all. But among all these grand people you seem so
far away from me. Yesterday we were such close friends; but to-day I
stretch out groping hands, and try in vain to touch you. Do you never
dream that you seek for people for a long time and find them at last;
and then, when you find them, you can not get near to them? Well, I feel
just like that to-day with you."
Elisabeth was silent for a moment; her thoughts were far away from
Cecil. "Yes, I know that dream well," she said slowly, "I have often had
it; but I never knew that anybody had ever had it except me." And
suddenly there came over her the memory of how, long years ago, she used
to dream that dream nearly every night. It was at the time when she was
first estranged from Christopher, and when the wound of his apparent
indifference to her was still fresh. Over and over again she used to
dream that she and Christopher were once more the friends that they had
been, but with an added tenderness that their actual intercourse had
never known. Which of us has not experienced that strange
dream-tenderness--often for the most unlikely people--which hangs about
us for days after the dream has vanished, and invests the objects of it
with an interest which their living presence never aroused? In that old
dream of Elisabeth's her affection for Christopher was so great that
when he went away she followed after him, and sought him for a long time
in vain; and when at last she found him he was no longer the same
Christopher that he used to be, but there was an impassable barrier
between them which she fruitlessly struggled to break through. The agony
of the fruitless struggle always awakened her, so that she never knew
what the end of the dream was going to be.
It was years since Elisabeth had dreamed this dream--years since she had
even remembered it--but Cecil's remark brought it all back to her, as
the scent of certain flowers brings back the memory of half-forgotten
summer days; and once again she felt herself drawn to him by that bond
of similarity which was so strong between them, and which is the most
powerfully attractive force in the world--except, perhaps, the
attractive force of contrast. It is the people who are the most like,
and the most unlike, ourselves, that we love the best; to the others we
are more or less indifferent.
"I think you are the most sympathetic person I ever met," she added.
"You have what the Psalmist would call 'an understanding heart.'"
"I think it is only you whom I understand, Miss Farringdon; and that
only because you and I are so much alike."
"I should have thought you would have understood everybody, you have
such quick perceptions and such keen sympathies." Elisabeth, for all her
cleverness, had yet to learn to differentiate between the understanding
heart and the understanding head. There is but little real similarity
between the physician who makes an accurate diagnosis of one's
condition, and the friend who suffers from the identical disease.
"No; I don't understand everybody. I don't understand all these fine
people whom we are with to-day, for instance. They seem to me so utterly
worldly and frivolous and irresponsible, that I haven't patience with
them. I daresay they look down upon me for not having blood, and I know
I look down upon them for not having brains."
Elisabeth's eyes twinkled in spite of herself. She remembered how
completely Cecil had been out of it in the conversation on the launch;
and she wondered whether the King of Nineveh had ever invited Jonah to
the state banquets. She inclined to the belief that he had not.
"But they have brains," was all she said.
Cecil was undeniably cross. "They talk a lot of nonsense," he retorted
pettishly.
"Exactly. People without brains never talk nonsense; that is just where
the difference comes in. If a man talks clever nonsense to me, I know
that man isn't a fool; it is a sure test."
"There is nonsense and nonsense."
"And there are fools and fools." Elisabeth spoke severely; she was
always merciless upon anything in the shape of humbug or snobbery. Maria
Farringdon's training had not been thrown away.
"I despise mere frivolity," said Cecil loftily.
"My dear Mr. Farquhar, there is a time for everything; and if you think
that a lunch-party on the river in the middle of the season is a
suitable occasion for discussing Lord Stonebridge's pecuniary
difficulties, or solving Lady Silverhampton's religious doubts, I can
only say that I don't." Elisabeth was irritated; she knew that Cecil was
annoyed with her friends not because they could talk smart nonsense, but
because he could not.
"Still, you can not deny that the upper classes are frivolous," Cecil
persisted.
"But I do deny it. I don't think that they are a bit more frivolous than
any other class, but I think they are a good deal more plucky. Each
class has its own particular virtue, and the distinguishing one of the
aristocracy seems to me to be pluck; therefore they make light of things
which other classes of society would take seriously. It isn't that they
don't feel their own sorrows and sicknesses, but they won't allow other
people to feel them; which is, after all, only a form of good manners."
But Cecil was still rather sulky. "I belong to the middle class and I am
proud of it."
"So do I; but identifying one's self with one class doesn't consist in
abusing all the others, any more than identifying one's self with one
church consists in abusing all the others--though some people seem to
think it does."
"These grand people may entertain you and be pleasant to you in their
way, I don't deny; but they don't regard you as one of themselves unless
you are one," persisted Cecil, with all the bitterness of a small
nature.
Elisabeth smiled with all the sweetness of a large one. "And why should
they? Sir Wilfred and you and I are pleasant enough to them in our own
way, but we don't regard any of them as one of ourselves unless he is
one. They don't show it, and we don't show it: we are all too
well-mannered; but we can not help knowing that they are not artists any
more than they can help knowing that we are not aristocrats. Being
conscious that certain people lack certain qualities which one happens
to possess, is not the same thing as despising those people; and I
always think it as absurd as it is customary to describe one's
consciousness of one's own qualifications as self-respect, and other
people's consciousness of theirs as pride and vanity."
"Then aren't you ever afraid of being looked down upon?" asked Cecil, to
whom any sense of social inferiority was as gall and wormwood.
Elisabeth gazed at him in amazement. "Good gracious, no! Such an idea
never entered into my head. I don't look down upon other people for
lacking my special gifts, so why should they look down upon me for
lacking theirs? Of course they would look down upon me and make fun of
me if I pretended to be one of them, and I should richly deserve it;
just as we look down upon and make fun of Philistines who cover their
walls with paper fans and then pretend that they are artists. Pretence
is always vulgar and always ridiculous; but I know of nothing else that
is either."
"How splendid you are!" exclaimed Cecil, to whose artistic sense
fineness of any kind always appealed, even if it was too high for him to
attain to it. "Therefore you will not despise me for being so inferior
to you--you will only help me to grow more like you, won't you?"
And because Cecil possessed the indefinable gift which the world calls
charm, Elisabeth straightway overlooked his shortcomings, and set
herself to assist him in correcting them. Perhaps there are few things
in life more unfair than the certain triumph of these individuals who
have the knack of gaining the affection of their fellows; or more
pathetic than the ultimate failure of those who lack this special
attribute. The race may not be to the swift, nor the battle to the
strong; but both race and battle are, nine times out of ten, to the man
or the woman who has mastered the art of first compelling devotion and
then retaining it. It was the possession of this gift on the part of
King David, that made men go in jeopardy of their lives in order to
satisfy his slightest whim; and it was because the prophet Elijah was a
solitary soul, commanding the fear rather than the love of men, that
after his great triumph he fled into the wilderness and requested for
himself that he might die. Nevertheless, it must not be forgotten that
to this lonely prophet it was granted to see visions of angels and to
hear the still small Voice; and that, therefore, there are abundant
compensations for those men and women who have not the knack of hearing
and speaking the glib interchanges of affection, current among their
more attractive fellows. There is infinite pathos in the thought of
these solitary souls, yearning to hear and to speak words of loving
greeting, and yet shut out--by some accident of mind or manner--from
doing either the one or the other; but when their turn comes to see
visions of angels and to hear the still small Voice, men need not pity
them overmuch. When once we have seen Him as He is, it will matter but
little to us whether we stood alone upon the mountain in the wind and
the earthquake and the fire, while the Lord passed by; or whether He
drew near and walked with us as we trod the busy ways of life, and was
known of us, as we sat at meat, in breaking of bread.
As Elisabeth looked at him with eyes full of sympathy, Cecil continued--
"I have had such a hard life, with no one to care for me; and the
hardness of my lot has marred my character, and--through that--my art."
"Tell me about your life," Elisabeth said softly. "I seem to know so
little of you and yet to know you so well."
"You shall read what back-numbers I have, but most of them have been
lost, so that I have not read them myself. I really don't know who I
am, as my father died when I was a baby, and my poor mother followed him
in a few months, never having recovered from the shock of his death. I
was born in Australia, at Broken Hill, and was an only child. As far as
I can make out, my parents had no relations; or, if they had, they had
quarrelled with them all. They were very poor; and when they died,
leaving one wretched little brat behind them, some kind friends adopted
the poor beggar and carried him off to a sheep-farm, where they brought
him up among their own children."
"Poor little lonely boy!"
"I was lonely--more lonely than you can imagine; for, kind as they were
to me, I was naturally not as dear to them as their own children. I was
an outsider; I have always been an outsider; so, perhaps, there is some
excuse for that intense soreness on my part which you so much deprecate
whenever this fact is once more brought home to me."
"I am sorry that I was so hard on you," said Elisabeth, in a very
penitent voice; "but it is one of my worst faults that I am always being
too hard on people. Will you forgive me?"
"Of course I will." And Elisabeth--also possessing charm--earned
forgiveness as quickly as she had accorded it.
"Please tell me more," she pleaded.
"The other children were such a loud, noisy, happy-go-lucky pack, that
they completely overpowered a delicate, sensitive boy. Moreover, I
detested the life there--the roughness and unrefinement of it all." And
Cecil's eyes filled with tears at the mere remembrance of his childish
miseries.
"Did you stay with them till you grew up?"
"Yes; I was educated--after a fashion--with their own sons. But at last
a red-letter day dawned for me. An English artist came to stay at the
sheep-farm, and discovered that I also was among the prophets. He was a
bachelor, and he took an uncommon fancy to me; it ended in his adopting
me and bringing me to England, and making of me an artist like himself."
"Another point of similarity between us!" Elisabeth cried; "my parents
died when I was a baby, and I also was adopted."
"I am so glad; all the sting seems to be taken out of things if I feel I
share them with you."
"Then where is your adopted father now?"
"He died when I was five-and-twenty, Miss Farringdon; and left me barely
enough to keep me from abject poverty, should I not be able to make a
living by my brush."
"And you have never learned anything more about your parents?"
"Never; and now I expect I never shall. The friends who brought me up
told me that they believed my father came from England, and had been
connected with some business over here; but what the business was they
did not know, nor why he left it. It is almost impossible to find out
anything more, after this long lapse of time; it is over thirty years
now since my parents died. And, besides, I very much doubt whether
Farquhar was their real name at all."
"What makes you think that?"
"Because the name was carefully erased from the few possessions my poor
father left behind him. So now I have let the matter drop," added Cecil,
with a bitter laugh, "as it is sometimes a mistake to look up
back-numbers in the colonies; they are not invariably pleasant reading."
Here conversation was interrupted by Lady Silverhampton's voice calling
her friends to lunch; and Cecil and Elisabeth had to join the others.
"If any of you are tired of life," said her ladyship, as they sat down,
"I wish you'd try some of this lobster mayonnaise that my new cook has
made, and report on it. To me it looks the most promising prescription
for death by torture."
"O bid me die, and I will dare
E'en mayonnaise for thee,"
exclaimed Lord Bobby, manfully helping himself.
And then the talk flowed on as pleasantly and easily as the river, until
it was time to land again and return to town. But for the rest of the
day, and for many a day afterward, a certain uncomfortable suspicion
haunted Elisabeth, which she could not put away from her, try as she
would; a suspicion that, after all, her throne was not as firmly fixed
as she had hoped and had learned to believe.