"Tis now the summer of your youth; time has not cropt the
roses from your cheek, though sorrow long has washed
them."--_The Gamester._
The wedding--a very private one--goes off charmingly. The day breaks
calm, smilingly, rich with beauty. "Lovely are the opening eyelids of
the morn."
Georgie, in her wedding garments, looking like some pale white lily,
is indeed "passing fair." She is almost too pallid, but the very
pallor adds to the extreme purity and childishness of her beauty, and
makes the gazer confident "there's nothing ill can dwell in such a
temple." Dorian, tall and handsome, and unmistakably content, seems a
very fit guardian for so fragile a flower.
Of course the marriage gives rise to much comment in the county,
Branscombe being direct heir to the Sartoris title, and presumably the
future possessor of all his uncle's private wealth. That he should
marry a mere governess, a positive nobody, horrifies the county, and
makes its shrug its comfortable shoulders and give way to more
malicious talk than is at all necessary. With some, the pretty bride
is an adventuress, and, indeed,--in the very softest of soft whispers,
and with a gentle rustling of indignant skirts,--not _altogether_ as
correct as she might be. There are a few who choose to believe her of
good family, but "awfully out-at-elbows, don't you know;" a still
fewer who declare she is charming all round and fit for anything; and
hardly one who does not consider her, at heart, fortunate and
designing.
One or two rash and unsophisticated girls venture on the supposition
that perhaps, after all, it is a real _bona fide_ love-match, and make
the still bolder suggestion that a governess may have a heart as well
as other people. But these silly children are pushed out of sight, and
very sensibly pooh-poohed, and are told, with a little clever laugh,
that they "are quite too sweet, and quite dear babies, and they must
try and keep on thinking all that sort of pretty rubbish as long as
ever they can. It is so successful, and so very taking nowadays."
Dorian is regarded as an infatuated, misguided young man, who should
never have been allowed out without a keeper. Such a disgraceful
flinging away of opportunities, and birth, and position, to marry a
woman so utterly out of his own set! No wonder his poor uncle refused
to be present at the ceremony,--actually ran away from home to avoid
it. And--so--by the by, talking of running away, what was that affair
about that little girl at the mill? Wasn't Branscombe's name mixed up
with it unpleasantly? Horrid low, you know, that sort of thing, when
one is found out.
The county is quite pleased with its own gossip, and drinks
innumerable cups of choicest tea over it, out of the very daintiest
Derby and Sevres and "Wooster," and is actually merry at the expense
of the newly-wedded. Only a very few brave men, among whom is Mr.
Kennedy, who is staying with the Luttrels, give it as their opinion
that Branscombe is a downright lucky fellow and has got the handsomest
wife in the neighborhood.
Towards the close of July, contrary to expectation, Mr. and Mrs.
Branscombe return to Pullingham, and, in spite of censure, and open
protest, are literally inundated with cards from all sides.
The morning after her return, Georgie drives down to Gowran, to see
Clarissa, and tell her "all the news," as she declares in her first
breath.
"It was all too enchanting," she says, in her quick, vivacious way. "I
enjoyed it _so_. All the lovely old churches, and the lakes, and the
bones of the dear saints, and everything. But I missed you, do you
know,--yes, really, without flattery, I mean. Every time I saw
anything specially desirable, I felt I wanted you to see it too. And
so one day I told Dorian I was filled with a mad longing to talk to
you once again, and I think he rather jumped at the suggestion of
coming home forthwith; and--why, here we are."
"I can't say how glad I am that you _are_ here," says Clarissa. "It
was too dreadful without you both. I am so delighted you had such a
really good time and were so happy."
"Happy!--I am quite that," says Mrs. Branscombe, easily. "I can always
do just what I please, and there is nobody now to scold or annoy me in
any way."
"And you have Dorian to love," says Clarissa, a little gravely, she
hardly knows why. It is perhaps the old curious want in Georgie's tone
that has again impressed her.
"Love, love, love," cries that young woman, a little impatiently. "Why
are people always talking about love? Does it really make the world go
round, I wonder? Yes, of course I have Dorian to be fond of now." She
rises impulsively, and, walking to one of the windows, gazes out upon
the gardens beneath. "Come," she says, stepping on to the veranda;
"come out with me. I want to breathe your flowers again."
Clarissa follows her, and together they wander up and down among the
heavy roses and drooping lilies, that are languid with heat and sleep.
Here all the children of the sun and dew seem to grow and flourish.
"No daintie flowre or herbe that growes on grownd,
No arborett with painted blossoms drest
And smelling sweete, but there it might be fownd
To bud out faire and throwe her sweete smels al arownd."
Dorian, coming up presently to meet his wife and drive her home, finds
her and Clarissa laughing gayly over one of Georgie's foreign
reminiscences. He walks so slowly over the soft green grass that they
do not hear him until he is quite close to them.
"Ah! you have come, Dorian," says Dorian's wife, with a pretty smile,
"but too soon. Clarissa and I haven't half said all we have to say
yet."
"At least I have said how glad I am to have you both back," says
Clarissa. "The whole thing has been quite too awfully dismal without
you. But for Jim and papa I should have gone mad, or something. I
never put in such a horrid time. Horace came down occasionally,--very
occasionally,--out of sheer pity, I believe; and Lord Sartoris was a
real comfort, he visited so often; but he has gone away again."
"Has he? I suppose our return frightened him," says Branscombe, in a
peculiar tone.
"I have been telling Clarissa how we tired of each other long before
the right time," says Georgie, airily, "and how we came home to escape
being bored to death by our own dulness."
Dorian laughs.
"She says what she likes," he tells Clarissa. "Has she yet put on the
dignified stop for you? It would quite subdue any one to see her at
the head of her table. Last night it was terrible. She seemed to grow
several inches taller, and looked so severe that, long before it was
time for him to retire, Martin was on the verge of nervous tears. I
could have wept for him, he looked so disheartened."
"I'm perfectly certain Martin adores me," says Mrs. Branscombe,
indignantly, "and I couldn't be severe or dignified to save my life.
Clarissa, you must forgive me if I remove Dorian at once, before he
says anything worse. He is quite untrustworthy. Good-by, dearest, and
be sure you come up to see me to-morrow. I want to ask you ever so
many more questions."
* * * * *
"Cards from the duchess for a garden-party," says Georgie, throwing
the invitations in question across the breakfast-table to her husband.
It is quite a week later, and she has almost settled down into the
conventional married woman, though not altogether. To be entirely
married--that is, sedate and sage--is quite beyond Georgie. Just now
some worrying thought is oppressing her, and spoiling the flavor of
her tea; her kidney loses its grace, her toast its crispness. She
peeps at Dorian from behind the huge silver urn that seeks jealously
to conceal her from view, and says, plaintively,--
"Is the duchess a very grand person, Dorian?"
"She is an awfully fat person, at all events," says Dorian,
cheerfully. "I never saw any one who could beat her in that line.
She'd take a prize, I think. She is not a bad old thing when in a good
temper, but that is so painfully seldom. Will you go?"
"I don't know,"--doubtfully. Plainly, she is in the lowest depths of
despair. "I--I--think I would rather not."
"I think you had better, darling."
"But you said just now she was always in a bad temper."
"Always? Oh, no; I am sure I couldn't have said that. And, besides,
she won't go for you, you know, even if she is. The duke generally
comes in for it. And by this time he rather enjoys it, I suppose,--as
custom makes us love most things."
"But, Dorian, really now, what is she like?"
"I can't say that: it is a tremendous question. I don't know what she
is; I only know what she is not."
"What, then?"
"'Fashioned so slenderly, young and so fair,'" quotes he, promptly. At
which they both laugh.
"If she is an old dowdy," says Mrs. Branscombe, somewhat irreverently,
"I sha'n't be one scrap afraid of her, and I do so want to go right
over the castle. Somebody--Lord Alfred--would take me, I dare say.
Yes,"--with sudden animation,--"let us go."
"I shall poison Lord Alfred presently," says Dorian, calmly. "Nothing
shall prevent me. Your evident determination to spend your day with
him has sealed his doom. Very well: send an answer, and let us spend a
'nice long happy day in the country.'"
"We are always spending that, aren't we?" says Mrs. Branscombe,
adorably. Then, with a sigh, "Dorian, what shall I wear?"
He doesn't answer. For the moment he is engrossed, being deep in his
"Times," busy studying the murders, divorces, Irish atrocities, and
other pleasantries it contains.
"Dorian, do put down that abominable paper," exclaims she again,
impatiently, leaning her arms on the table, and regarding him
anxiously from the right side of the very forward urn that still will
come in her way. "What shall I wear?"
"It can't matter," says Dorian: "you look lovely in everything, so it
is impossible for you to make a mistake."
"It is a pity you can't talk sense,"--reproachfully. Then, with a
glance literally heavy with care, "There is that tea-green satin
trimmed with Chantilly."
"I forget it," says Dorian, professing the very deepest interest, "but
I know it is all things."
"No, it isn't: I can't bear the sleeves. Then"--discontentedly--"there
is that velvet."
"The very thing,"--enthusiastically.
"Oh, Dorian, dear! What are you thinking of? Do remember how warm the
weather is."
"Well, so it is,--grilling," says Mr. Branscombe, nobly confessing his
fault.
"Do you like me in that olive silk?" asks she, hopefully, gazing at
him with earnest intense eyes.
"Don't I just?" returns he, fervently, rising to enforce his words.
"Now, don't be sillier than you can help," murmurs she, with a lovely
smile. "Don't! I like that gown myself, you know: it makes me look so
nice and old, and that."
"If I were a little girl like you," says Mr. Branscombe, "I should
rather hanker after looking nice and young."
"But not too much so: it is frivolous when one is once married." This
pensively, and with all the air of one who has long studied the
subject.
"Is it? Of course you know best, your experience being greater than
mine," says Dorian, meekly, "but, just for choice, I prefer youth to
anything else."
"Do you? Then I suppose I had better wear white."
"Yes, do. One evening, in Paris, you wore a white gown of some sort,
and I dreamt of you every night for a week afterwards."
"Very well. I shall give you a chance of dreaming of me again," says
Georgie, with a carefully suppressed sigh, that is surely meant for
the beloved olive gown.
The sigh is wasted. When she does don the white gown so despised, she
is so perfect a picture that one might well be excused for wasting
seven long nights in airy visions filled all with her. Some wild
artistic marguerites are in her bosom (she plucked them herself from
out the meadow an hour agone); her lips are red, and parted; her hair,
that is loosely knotted, and hangs low down, betraying the perfect
shape of her small head, is "yellow, like ripe corn." She smiles as
she places her hand in Dorian's and asks him how she looks; while he,
being all too glad because of her excessive beauty, is very slow to
answer her. In truth, she is "like the snow-drop fair, and like the
primrose sweet."
At the castle she creates rather a sensation. Many, as yet, have not
seen her; and these stare at her placidly, indifferent to the fact
that breeding would have it otherwise.
"What a peculiarly pretty young woman," says the duke, half an hour
after her arrival, staring at her through his glasses. He had been
absent when she came, and so is only just now awakened to a sense of
her charms.
"Who?--what?" says the duchess, vaguely, she being the person he has
rashly addressed. She is very fat, very unimpressionable, and very
fond of argument. "Oh! over there. I quite forget who she is. But I do
see that Alfred is making himself, as usual, supremely ridiculous with
her. With all his affected devotion to Helen, he runs after every
fresh face he sees."
"'There's nothing like a plenty,'" quotes the duke, with a dry chuckle
at his own wit; indeed he prides himself upon having been rather a
"card" in his day, and anything but a "k'rect" one, either.
"Yes, there is,--there is propriety," responds the duchess, in an
awful tone.
"That wouldn't be a bit like it," says the duke, still openly amused
at his own humor; after which--thinking it, perhaps, safer to withdraw
while there is yet time--he saunters off to the left, and, as he has a
trick of looking over his shoulder while walking, nearly falls into
Dorian's arms at the next turn.
"Ho, hah!" says his Grace, pulling himself up very shortly, and
glancing at his stumbling-block to see if he can identify him.
"Why, it is you, Branscombe," he says, in his usual cheerful, if
rather fussy, fashion. "So glad to see you!--so glad." He has made
exactly this remark to Dorian every time he has come in contact with
him during the past twenty years and more. "By the by, I dare say you
can tell me,--who is that pretty child over there, with the white
frock and the blue eyes?"
"That pretty child in the frock is my wife," says Branscombe,
laughing.
"Indeed! Dear me! dear me! I beg your pardon. My dear boy, I
congratulate you. Such a face,--like a Greuze; or a--h'm--yes." Here
he grows slightly mixed. "You must introduce me, you know. One likes
to do homage to beauty. Why, where could you have met her in this
exceedingly deficient county, eh? But you were always a sly dog, eh?"
The old gentleman gives him a playful slap on his shoulder, and then,
taking his arm, goes with him across the lawn to where Georgie is
standing talking gayly to Lord Alfred.
The introduction is gone through, and Georgie makes her very best bow,
and blushes her very choicest blush; but the duke will insist upon
shaking hands with her, whereupon, being pleased, she smiles her most
enchanting smile.
"So glad to make your acquaintance. Missed you on your arrival," says
the duke, genially. "Was toiling through the conservatories, I think,
with Lady Loftus. Know her? Stout old lady, with feathers over her
nose. She always will go to hot places on hot days."
"I wish she would go to a final hot place, as she affects them so
much," says Lord Alfred, gloomily. "I can't bear her; she is always
coming here bothering me about that abominable boy of hers in the
Guards, and I never know what to say to her."
"Why don't you learn it up at night and say it to her in the morning?"
says Mrs. Branscombe, brightly. "_I_ should know what to say to her at
once."
"Oh! I dare say," says Lord Alfred. "Only that doesn't help me, you
know, because _I_ don't."
"Didn't know who you were, at first, Mrs. Branscombe," breaks in the
duke. "Thought you were a little girl--eh?--eh?"--chuckling again.
"Asked your husband who you were, and so on. I hope you are enjoying
yourself. Seen everything, eh? The houses are pretty good this year."
"Lord Alfred has just shown them to me. They are quite too exquisite,"
says Georgie.
"And the lake, and my new swans?"
"No; not the swans."
"Dear me! why didn't he show you those? Finest birds I ever saw. My
dear Mrs. Branscombe, you really must see them, you know."
"I should like to, if you will show them to me," says the little
hypocrite, with the very faintest, but the most successful, emphasis
on the pronoun, which is wine to the heart of the old beau; and,
offering her his arm, he takes her across the lawn and through the
shrubberies to the sheet of water beyond, that gleams sweet and cool
through the foliage. As they go, the county turns to regard them; and
men wonder who the pretty woman is the old fellow has picked up; and
women wonder what on earth the duke can see in that silly little Mrs.
Branscombe.
Sir James, who has been watching the duke's evident admiration for his
pretty guest, is openly amused.
"Your training!" he says to Clarissa, over whose chair he is leaning.
"You ought to be ashamed of yourself and your pupil. Such a
disgraceful little coquette I never saw. I really pity that poor
duchess: see there, how miserably unhappy she is looking, and
how----er----pink."
"Don't be unkind: your hesitation was positively cruel. The word 'red'
is unmistakably the word for the poor duchess to-day."
"Well, yes, and yesterday, and the day before, and probably
to-morrow," says Sir James, mildly. "But I really wonder at the
duke,--at his time of life, too! If I were Branscombe I should feel it
my duty to interfere."
He is talking gayly, unceasingly, but always with his grave eyes fixed
upon Clarissa, as she leans back languidly on the uncomfortable
garden-chair, smiling indeed every now and then, but fitfully, and
without the gladness that generally lights up her charming face.
Horace had promised to be here to-day,--had faithfully promised to
come with her and her father to this garden-party; and where is he
now? A little chill of disappointment has fallen upon her, and made
dull her day. No smallest doubt of his truth finds harbor in her
gentle bosom, yet grief sits heavy on her, "as the mildews hang upon
the bells of flowers to blight their bloom!"
Sir James, half divining the cause of her discontent, seeks carefully,
tenderly, to draw her from her sad thoughts in every way that occurs
to him; and his efforts, though not altogether crowned with success,
are at least so far happy in that he induces her to forget her
grievance for the time being, and keeps her from dwelling too closely
upon the vexed question of her recreant lover.
To be with Sir James is, too, in itself a relief to her. With him she
need not converse unless it so pleases her; her silence will neither
surprise nor trouble him; but with all the others it would be so
different: they would claim her attention whether she willed it or
not, and to make ordinary spirited conversation just at this moment
would be impossible to her. The smile dies off her face. A sigh
replaces it.
"How well you are looking to-day!" says Scrope, lightly, thinking this
will please her. She is extremely pale, but a little hectic spot, born
of weariness and fruitless hoping against hope, betrays itself on
either cheek. His tone, if not the words, does please her, it is so
full of loving kindness.
"Am I?" she says. "I don't feel like looking well; and I am tired,
too. They say,--
'A merry heart goes all the day,
Your sad tires in a mile-a;'
I doubt mine is a sad one, I feel so worn out. Though,"--hastily, and
with a vivid flush that changes all her pallor into warmth,--"if I
were put to it, I couldn't tell you why."
"No? Do you know I have often felt like that," says Scrope,
carelessly. "It is both strange and natural. One has fits of
depression that come and go at will, and that one cannot account for;
at least, I have, frequently. But you, Clarissa, you should not know
what depression means."
"I know it to day." For the moment her courage fails her. She feels
weak; a craving for sympathy overcomes her; and, turning, she lifts
her large sorrowful eyes to his.
She would, perhaps, have spoken; but now a sense of shame and a sharp
pang that means pride come to her, and, by a supreme effort, she
conquers emotion, and lets her heavily-lashed lids fall over her
suffused eyes, as though to conceal the tell-tale drops within from
his searching gaze.
"So, you see,"--she says, with a rather artificial laugh,--"your
flattery falls through: with all this weight of imaginary woe upon my
shoulders, I can hardly be looking my best."
"Nevertheless, I shall not allow you to call my true sentiments
flattery," says Scrope: "I really meant what I said, whether you
choose to believe me or not. Yours is a
'Beauty truly blent, whose red and white
Nature's own sweet and cunning hand laid on.'"
"What a courtier you become!" she says, laughing honestly for almost
the first time to-day. It is so strange to hear James Scrope say
anything high-flown or sentimental. She is a little bit afraid that he
knows why she is sorry, yet, after all, she hardly frets over the fact
of his knowing. Dear Jim! he is always kind, and sweet, and
thoughtful! Even if he does understand, he is quite safe to look as if
he didn't. And that is always such a comfort!
And Sir James, watching her, and marking the grief upon her face,
feels a tightening at his heart, and a longing to succor her, and to
go forth--if need be--and fight for her as did the knights of old for
those they loved, until "just and mightie death, whom none can
advise," enfolded him in his arms.
For long time he has loved her,--has lived with only her image in his
heart. Yet what has his devotion gained him? Her liking, her regard,
no doubt, but nothing that can satisfy the longing that leaves
desolate his faithful heart. Regard, however deep, is but small
comfort to him whose every thought, waking and sleeping, belongs alone
to her.
"Full little knowest thou, that hast not tride,
What hell it is, in swing long to bide;
To loose good dayes that might be better spent,
To wast long nights in pensive discontent;
To speed to-day, to be put back to-morrow;
To feed on hope, to pine with feare and sorrow;
To fret thy soul with crosses and with cares;
To eate thy heart through comfortlesse dispaires."
He is quite assured she lives in utter ignorance of his love. No word
has escaped him, no smallest hint, that might declare to her the
passion that daily, hourly, grows stronger, and of which she is the
sole object. "The noblest mind the best contentment has," and he
contents himself as best he may on a smile here, a gentle word there,
a kindly pressure of the hand to-day, a look of welcome to-morrow.
These are liberally given, but nothing more. Ever since her engagement
to Horace Branscombe he has, of course, relinquished hope; but the
surrender of all expectation has not killed his love. He is silent
because he must be so, but his heart wakes, and
"Silence in love bewrays more woe
Than words, though ne'er so witty."
"See, there they are again," he says now, alluding to Georgie and her
ducal companion, as they emerge from behind some thick shrubs. Another
man is with them, too,--a tall, gaunt young man, with long hair, and a
cadaverous face, who is staring at Georgie as though he would
willingly devour her--but only in the interest of art. He is lecturing
on the "Consummate Daffodil," and is comparing it unfavorably with the
"Unutterable Tulip," and is plainly boring the two, with whom he is
walking, to extinction. He is Sir John Lincoln, that old-new friend of
Georgie's, and will not be shaken off.
"Long ago," says Georgie, tearfully, to herself, "he was not an
aesthete. Oh, how I _wish_ he would go back to his pristine freshness!"
But he won't: he maunders on unceasingly about impossible flowers,
that are all very well in their way, but whose exaltedness lives only
in his own imagination, until the duke, growing weary (as well he
might, poor soul), turns aside, and greets with unexpected cordiality
a group upon his right, that, under any other less oppressive
circumstances, would be abhorrent to him. But to spend a long hour
talking about one lily is not to be borne.
Georgie follows his example, and tries to escape Lincoln and the
tulips by diving among the aforesaid group. She is very
successful,--groups do not suit aesthetics,--and soon the gaunt young
man takes himself, and his long hair, to some remote region.
"How d'ye do, Mrs. Branscombe?" says a voice at her elbow, a moment
later, and, turning, she finds herself face to face with Mr. Kennedy.
"Ah! you?" she says, with very flattering haste, being unmistakably
pleased to see him. "I had no idea you were staying in the country."
"I am staying with the Luttrells'. Molly asked me down last month."
"She is a great friend of yours, I know," says Mrs. Branscombe; "yet I
hadn't the faintest notion I should meet you here to-day."
"And you didn't care either, I dare say," says Mr. Kennedy, in a tone
that is positively sepulchral, and, considering _all_ things, very
well done indeed.
"I should have cared, if I had even once thought about it," says Mrs.
Branscombe, cheerfully.
Whereupon he says,--
"_Thank_ you!" in a voice that is _all_ reproach.
Georgie colors. "I didn't mean what _you_ think," she says, anxiously.
"I didn't _indeed_."
"Well, it sounded exactly like it," says Mr. Kennedy, with careful
gloom. "Of course it is not to be expected that you ever _would_ think
of me, but----I haven't seen you since that last night at Gowran, have
I?"
"No."
"I think you might have told me then you were going to be married."
"I wasn't going to be married then," says Georgie, indignantly: "I
hadn't a single idea of it. Never thought of it, until the next day."
"I quite thought you were going to marry me," says Mr. Kennedy, sadly;
"I had quite made up my mind to it. I never"--forlornly--"imagined you
as belonging to any other fellow. It isn't pleasant to find that one's
pet doll is stuffed with sawdust, and yet--"
"I can't think what you are talking about," says Mrs. Branscombe,
coldly, and with some fine disgust; she cannot help thinking that she
must be the doll in question, and to be filled with sawdust sounds
anything but dignified.
Kennedy, reading her like a book, nobly suppresses a wild desire for
laughter, and goes on in a tone, if possible, more depressed than the
former one.
"My insane hope was the doll," he says: "it proved only dust. I
haven't got over the shock yet that I felt on hearing of your
marriage. I don't suppose I ever shall now."
"Nonsense!" says Georgie, contemptuously. "I never saw you look so
well in all my life. You are positively fat."
"That's how it always shows with me," says Kennedy, unblushingly.
"Whenever green and yellow melancholy marks me for its own, I sit on a
monument (they always keep one for me at home) and smile incessantly
at grief, and get as fat as possible. It is a refinement of cruelty,
you know, as superfluous flesh is not a thing to be hankered after."
"How you must have fretted," says Mrs. Branscombe, demurely, glancing
from under her long lashes at his figure, which has certainly gained
both in size and in weight since their last meeting.
At this they both laugh.
"Is your husband here to-day?" asks he, presently.
"Yes."
"Why isn't he with you?"
"He has found somebody more to his fancy, perhaps."
As she says this she glances round, as though for the first time alive
to the fact that indeed he is not beside her.
"Impossible!" says Kennedy. "Give any other reason but that, and I may
believe you. I am quite sure he is missing you terribly, and is vainly
searching every nook and corner by this time for your dead body. No
doubt he fears the worst. If you were my----I mean if ever I were to
marry (which of course is quite out of the question now), I shouldn't
let my wife out of my sight."
"Poor woman! what a time she is going to put in!" says Mrs.
Branscombe, pityingly. "Don't go about telling people all that, or you
will never get a wife. By this time Dorian and I have made the
discovery that we can do excellently well without each other
sometimes."
Dorian coming up behind her just as she says this, hears her, and
changes color.
"How d'ye do!" he says to Kennedy, civilly, if not cordially, that
young man receiving his greeting with the utmost bonhommie and an
unchanging front.
For a second, Branscombe refuses to meet his wife's eyes, then,
conquering the momentary feeling of pained disappointment, he turns to
her, and says, gently,--
"Do you care to stay much longer? Clarissa has gone, and Scrope, and
the Carringtons."
"I don't care to stay another minute: I should like to go home now,"
says Georgie, slipping her hand through his arm, as though glad to
have something to lean on; and, as she speaks, she lifts her face and
bestows upon him a small smile. It is a very dear little smile, and
has the effect of restoring him to perfect happiness again.
Seeing which, Kennedy raises his brows, and then his hat, and, bowing,
turns aside, and is soon lost amidst the crowd.
"You are sure you want to come home?" says Dorian, anxiously. "I am
not in a hurry, you know."
"I am. I have walked enough, and talked enough, to last me a month."
"I am afraid I rather broke in upon your conversation just now," says
Branscombe, looking earnestly at her. "But for my coming, Kennedy
would have stayed on with you; and he is a--a rather amusing sort of
fellow, isn't he?"
"Is he? He was exceedingly stupid to-day, at all events. I don't
believe he has a particle of brains, or else he thinks other people
haven't. I enjoyed myself a great deal more with the old duke, until
that ridiculous Sir John Lincoln came to us. I don't think he knew a
bit who the duke was, because he kept saying odd little things about
the grounds and the guests, right under his nose; at least, right
behind his back: it is all the same thing."
"What is? His nose and his back?" asks Dorian; at which piece of folly
they both laugh as though it was the best thing in the world.
Then they make their way over the smooth lawns, and past the glowing
flower-beds, and past Sir John Lincoln, too, who is standing in an
impossible attitude, that makes him all elbows and knees, talking to a
very splendid young man--all bone and muscle and good humor--who is
plainly delighted with him. To the splendid young man he is nothing
but one vast joke.
Seeing Mrs. Branscombe, they both raise their hats, and Sir John so
far forgets the tulips as to give it as his opinion that she is "Quite
too, too intense for every-day life." Whereupon the splendid young
man, breaking into praise too, declares she is "Quite too awfully
jolly, don't you know," which commonplace remark so horrifies his
companion that he sadly and tearfully turns aside, and leaves him to
his fate.
Georgie, who has been brought to a standstill for a moment, hears both
remarks, and laughs aloud.
"It is something to be admired by Colonel Vibart, isn't it?" she says
to Dorian; "but it is really very sad about poor Sir John. He has
bulbous roots on the brain, and they have turned him as mad as a
hatter."