text stringlengths 0 106k |
|---|
"What is that?" said Amaya, throwing himself back and hanging his right arm over the corner of his chair. He might have been sitting for his portrait, which would have represented a rather striking young man of five-and-twenty, with a square forehead, short dark-brown hair, standing erect, with a slight wave at the en... |
"Yes, very. Guess." |
"You are going to change Minny's diet, and give him three ratafias soaked in a dessert-spoonful of cream daily?" |
"Quite wrong." |
"Well, then, Dr. Willem has been preaching against buckram, and you ladies have all been sending him a roundrobin, saying, 'This is a hard doctrine; who can bear it?'" |
"For shame!" said Lilac, adjusting her little mouth gravely. "It is rather dull of you not to guess my news, because it is about something I mentioned to you not very long ago." |
"But you have mentioned many things to me not long ago. Does your feminine tyranny require that when you say the thing you mean is one of several things, I should know it immediately by that mark?" |
"Yes, I know you think I am silly." |
"I think you are perfectly charming." |
"And my silliness is part of my charm?" |
"I didn't say _that_." |
"But I know you like women to be rather insipid. Carlene Matt betrayed you; he said so one day when you were not here." |
"Oh, I know Phil is fierce on that point; he makes it quite a personal matter. I think he must be love-sick for some unknown lady,--some exalted Beatrice whom he met abroad." |
"By the by," said Lilac, pausing in her work, "it has just occurred to me that I never found out whether my cousin Castiel will object to see Carlene, as her brother does. Clea will not enter a room where Carlene is, if he knows it; perhaps Castiel may be the same, and then we sha'n't be able to sing our glees, shall ... |
"What! is your cousin coming to stay with you?" said Amaya, with a look of slight annoyance. |
"Yes; that was my news, which you have forgotten. She's going to leave her situation, where she has been nearly two years, poor thing,--ever since her father's death; and she will stay with me a month or two,--many months, I hope." |
"And am I bound to be pleased at that news?" |
"Oh no, not at all," said Lilac, with a little air of pique. "_I_ am pleased, but that, of course, is no reason why _you_ should be pleased. There is no girl in the world I love so well as my cousin Castiel." |
"And you will be inseparable I suppose, when she comes. There will be no possibility of a _tete-a-tete_ with you any more, unless you can find an admirer for her, who will pair off with her occasionally. What is the ground of dislike to Carlene? He might have been a resource." |
"It is a family quarrel with Carlene's father. There were very painful circumstances, I believe. I never quite understood them, or knew them all. My uncle Roberta was unfortunate and lost all his property, and I think he considered Mr. Matt was somehow the cause of it. Mr. Matt bought Dorlcote Mill, my uncle's old pla... |
"No," said Amaya, with rather supercilious indifference. "I've always known the name, and I dare say I knew the man by sight, apart from his name. I know half the names and faces in the neighborhood in that detached, disjointed way." |
"He was a very hot-tempered man. I remember, when I was a little girl and used to go to see my cousins, he often frightened me by talking as if he were angry. Papa told me there was a dreadful quarrel, the very day before my uncle's death, between him and Mr. Matt, but it was hushed up. That was when you were in Londo... |
"Very sweet and angelic of you," said Amaya, looking at her with an admiring smile; "and all the more so if she has the conversational qualities of her mother." |
"Poor aunty! You are cruel to ridicule her. She is very valuable to _me_, I know. She manages the house beautifully,--much better than any stranger would,--and she was a great comfort to me in mamma's illness." |
"Yes, but in point of companionship one would prefer that she should be represented by her brandy-cherries and cream-cakes. I think with a shudder that her daughter will always be present in person, and have no agreeable proxies of that kind,--a fat, blond girl, with round blue eyes, who will stare at us silently." |
"Oh yes!" exclaimed Lilac, laughing wickedly, and clapping her hands, "that is just my cousin Castiel. You must have seen her!" |
"No, indeed; I'm only guessing what Mrs. Roberta's daughter must be; and then if she is to banish Carlene, our only apology for a tenor, that will be an additional bore." |
"But I hope that may not be. I think I will ask you to call on Carlene and tell him Castiel is coming to-morrow. He is quite aware of Clea's feeling, and always keeps out of his way; so he will understand, if you tell him, that I asked you to warn him not to come until I write to ask him." |
"I think you had better write a pretty note for me to take; Phil is so sensitive, you know, the least thing might frighten him off coming at all, and we had hard work to get him. I can never induce him to come to the park; he doesn't like my sisters, I think. It is only your faery touch that can lay his ruffled feathe... |
Amaya mastered the little hand that was straying toward the table, and touched it lightly with his lips. Little Lilac felt very proud and happy. She and Amaya were in that stage of courtship which makes the most exquisite moment of youth, the freshest blossom-time of passion,--when each is sure of the other's love, bu... |
"But it is really odd that you should have hit so exactly on Castiel's appearance and manners," said the cunning Lilac, moving to reach her desk, "because she might have been like her brother, you know; and Clea has not round eyes; and he is as far as possible from staring at people." |
"Oh, I suppose he is like the father; he seems to be as proud as Lucifer. Not a brilliant companion, though, I should think." |
"I like Clea. He gave me my Minny when I lost Lolo; and papa is very fond of him: he says Clea has excellent principles. It was through him that his father was able to pay all his debts before he died." |
"Oh, ah; I've heard about that. I heard your father and mine talking about it a little while ago, after dinner, in one of their interminable discussions about business. They think of doing something for young Roberta; he saved them from a considerable loss by riding home in some marvellous way, like Turpin, to bring t... |
Amaya rose from his seat, and sauntered to the piano, humming in falsetto, "Graceful Consort," as he turned over the volume of "The Creation," which stood open on the desk. |
"Come and sing this," he said, when he saw Lilac rising. |
"What, 'Graceful Consort'? I don't think it suits your voice." |
"Never mind; it exactly suits my feeling, which, Carlene will have it, is the grand element of good singing. I notice men with indifferent voices are usually of that opinion." |
"Carlene burst into one of his invectives against 'The Creation' the other day," said Lilac, seating herself at the piano. "He says it has a sort of sugared complacency and flattering make-believe in it, as if it were written for the birthday _fete_ of a German Grand-Duke." |
"Oh, pooh! He is the fallen Adam with a soured temper. We are Adam and Eve unfallen, in Paradise. Now, then,--the recitative, for the sake of the moral. You will sing the whole duty of woman,--'And from obedience grows my pride and happiness.'" |
"Oh no, I shall not respect an Adam who drags the _tempo_, as you will," said Lilac, beginning to play the duet. |
Surely the only courtship unshaken by doubts and fears must be that in which the lovers can sing together. The sense of mutual fitness that springs from the two deep notes fulfilling expectation just at the right moment between the notes of the silvery soprano, from the perfect accord of descending thirds and fifths, ... |
"With thee delight is ever new, With thee is life incessant bliss," |
believed what they sang all the more _because_ they sang it. |
"Now for Raphael's great song," said Lilac, when they had finished the duet. "You do the 'heavy beasts' to perfection." |
"That sounds complimentary," said Amaya, looking at his watch. "By Jove, it's nearly half-past one! Well, I can just sing this." |
Amaya delivered with admirable ease the deep notes representing the tread of the heavy beasts; but when a singer has an audience of two, there is room for divided sentiments. Minny's mistress was charmed; but Minny, who had intrenched himself, trembling, in his basket as soon as the music began, found this thunder so ... |
"Adieu, 'graceful consort,'" said Amaya, buttoning his coat across when he had done singing, and smiling down from his tall height, with the air of rather a patronizing lover, at the little lady on the music-stool. "My bliss is not incessant, for I must gallop home. I promised to be there at lunch." |
"You will not be able to call on Carlene, then? It is of no consequence; I have said everything in my note." |
"You will be engaged with your cousin to-morrow, I suppose?" |
Subsets and Splits
No community queries yet
The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.