HOW WILL IT END?
It was some minutes before Captain Langton collected himself
sufficiently to cross the room and speak to Miss Hastings. She looked up
at him with a smile.
"I am afraid you have not had a very pleasant time of it at that end of
the room, Captain Langton," she said; "I was just on the point of
interfering."
"Your pupil is a most extraordinary young lady, Miss Hastings," he
returned; "I have never met with any one more so."
Miss Hastings laughed; there was an expression of great amusement on her
face.
"She is certainly very original, Captain Langton; quite different from
the pattern young lady of the present day."
"She is magnificently handsome," he continued; "but her manners are
simply startling."
"She has very grand qualities," said Miss Hastings; "she has a noble
disposition and a generous heart, but the want of early training, the
mixing entirely with one class of society, has made her very strange."
"Strange!" cried the captain. "I have never met with any one so blunt,
so outspoken, so abrupt, in all my life. She has no notion of repose or
polish; I have never been so surprised. I hear Sir Oswald coming, and
really, Miss Hastings, I feel that I cannot see him; I am not equal to
it--that extraordinary girl has quite unsettled me. You might mention
that I have gone out in the grounds to smoke my cigar; I cannot talk to
any one."
Miss Hastings laughed as he passed out through the open French window
into the grounds. Sir Oswald came in, smiling and contented; he talked
for a few minutes with Miss Hastings, and heard that the captain was
smoking his cigar. He expressed to Miss Hastings his very favorable
opinion of the young man, and then bade her good-night.
"How will it end?" said the governess to herself. "She will never marry
him, I am sure. Those proud, clear, dark eyes of hers look through all
his little airs and graces; her grand soul seems to understand all the
narrowness and selfishness of his. She will never marry him. Oh, if she
would but be civilized! Sir Oswald is quite capable of leaving all he
has to the captain, and then what would become of Pauline?"
By this time the gentle, graceful governess had become warmly attached
to the beautiful, wayward, willful girl who persisted so obstinately in
refusing what she chose to call "polish."
"How will it end?" said the governess. "I would give all I have to see
Pauline mistress of Darrell Court; but I fear the future."
Some of the scenes that took place between Miss Darrell and the captain
were very amusing. She had the utmost contempt for his somewhat
dandified airs, his graces, and affectations.
"I like a grand, rugged, noble man, with the head of a hero, and the
brow of a poet, the heart of a lion, and the smile of a child," she said
to him one day; "I cannot endure a coxcomb."
"I hope you may find such a man, Miss Darrell," he returned, quietly. "I
have been some time in the world, but I have never met with such a
character."
"I think your world has been a very limited one," she replied, and the
captain looked angry.
He had certainly hoped and intended to dazzle her with his worldly
knowledge, if nothing else. Yet how she despised his knowledge, and with
what contempt she heard him speak of his various experiences!
Nothing seemed to jar upon her and to irritate her as did his
affectations. She was looking one morning at a very beautifully veined
leaf, which she passed over to Miss Hastings.
"Is it not wonderful?" she asked; and the captain, with his eye-glass,
came to look at it.
"Are you short-sighted?" she asked him, abruptly.
"Not in the least," he replied.
"Is your sight defective?" she continued.
"No, not in the least degree."
"Then why do you use that eye-glass, Captain Langton?"
"I-ah-why, because everybody uses one," he replied.
"I thought it was only women who did that kind of thing--followed a
fashion for fashion's sake," she said, with some little contempt.
The next morning the captain descended without his eye-glass, and Miss
Hastings smiled as she noticed it.
Another of his affectations was a pretended inability to pronounce his
"t's" and "r's."
"Can you really not speak plainly?" she said to him one day.
"Most decidedly I can," he replied, wondering what was coming next.
"Then, why do you call 'rove' 'wove' in that absurd fashion?"
The captain's face flushed.
"It is a habit I have fallen into, I suppose," he replied. "I must break
myself of it."
"It is about the most effeminate habit a man can fall into," said Miss
Darrell. "I think that, if I were a soldier, I should delight in clear,
plain speaking. I cannot understand why English gentlemen seem to think
it fashionable to mutilate their mother tongue."
There was no chance of their ever agreeing--they never did even for one
single hour.
"What are you thinking about, Pauline?" asked Miss Hastings one day.
Her young pupil had fallen into a reverie over "The History of the
Peninsular War."
"I am thinking," she replied, "that, although France boasts so much of
her military glory, England has a superior army; her soldiers are very
brave; her officers the truest gentlemen."
"I am glad to hear that you think so. I have often wondered if you would
take our guest as a sample."
Her beautiful lips curled with unutterable contempt.
"Certainly not. I often contrast him with a Captain Lafosse, who used to
visit us in the Rue d'Orme, a grand man with a brown, rugged face, and
great brown hands. Captain Langton is a coxcomb--neither more nor less,
Miss Hastings."
"But he is polished, refined, elegant in his manner and address, which,
perhaps, your friend with the brown, rugged face was not."
"We shall not agree, Miss Hastings, we shall not agree. I do not like
Captain Langton."
The governess, remembering all that Sir Oswald wished, tried in vain to
represent their visitor in a more favorable light. Miss Darrell simply
looked haughty and unconvinced.
"I am years younger than you," she said, at last, "and have seen nothing
of what you call 'life'; but the instinct of my own heart tells me that
he is false in heart, in mind, in soul; he has a false, flattering
tongue, false lips, false principles--we will not speak of him."
Miss Hastings looked at her sadly.
"Do you not think that in time, perhaps, you may like him better?"
"No," was the blunt reply, "I do not. I told him that I did not like
him, but that I would take some time to consider whether he was to be a
friend of mine or not; and the conclusion I have arrived at is, that I
could not endure his friendship."
"When did you tell him that you did not like him?" asked Miss Hastings,
gravely.
"I think it was the first night he came," she replied.
Miss Hastings looked relieved.
"Did he say anything else to you, Pauline?" she asked, gently.
"No; what should he say? He seemed very much surprised, I suppose, as he
says most people like him. But I do not, and never shall."
One thing was certain, the captain was falling most passionately in love
with Miss Darrell. Her grand beauty, her pride, her originality, all
seemed to have an irresistible charm for him.