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"That's the way with you tenors," said Amaya, who was waiting with music in his hand while Carlene finished the song. "You demoralize the fair sex by warbling your sentimental love and constancy under all sorts of vile treatment. Nothing short of having your heads served up in a dish like that mediaeval tenor or troub... |
Amaya rolled out, with saucy energy,-- |
"Shall I, wasting in despair, Die because a woman's fair?" |
and seemed to make all the air in the room alive with a new influence. Lilac, always proud of what Amaya did, went toward the piano with laughing, admiring looks at him; and Castiel, in spite of her resistance to the spirit of the song and to the singer, was taken hold of and shaken by the invisible influence,--was bo... |
But, angrily resolved not to betray herself, she seized her work, and went on making false stitches and pricking her fingers with much perseverance, not looking up or taking notice of what was going forward, until all the three voices united in "Let us take the road." |
I am afraid there would have been a subtle, stealing gratification in her mind if she had known how entirely this saucy, defiant Amaya was occupied with her; how he was passing rapidly from a determination to treat her with ostentatious indifference to an irritating desire for some sign of inclination from her,--some ... |
It was but an ordinary act of politeness in Amaya; it had hardly taken two minutes; and Lilac, who was singing, scarcely noticed it. But to Carlene's mind, filled already with a vague anxiety that was likely to find a definite ground for itself in any trivial incident, this sudden eagerness in Amaya, and the change in... |
"Ah, Mr. Carlene!" said Mr. Kristi, when they entered the dining-room, "I've not seen you for a long while. Your father's not at home, I think, is he? I went after him to the office the other day, and they said he was out of town." |
"He's been to Mudport on business for several days," said Carlene; "but he's come back now." |
"As fond of his farming hobby as ever, eh?" |
"I believe so," said Carlene, rather wondering at this sudden interest in his father's pursuits. |
"Ah!" said Mr. Kristi, "he's got some land in his own hands on this side the river as well as the other, I think?" |
"Yes, he has." |
"Ah!" continued Mr. Kristi, as he dispensed the pigeonpie, "he must find farming a heavy item,--an expensive hobby. I never had a hobby myself, never would give in to that. And the worst of all hobbies are those that people think they can get money at. They shoot their money down like corn out of a sack then." |
Lilac felt a little nervous under her father's apparently gratuitous criticism of Mr. Matt's expenditure. But it ceased there, and Mr. Kristi became unusually silent and meditative during his luncheon. Lilac, accustomed to watch all indications in her father, and having reasons, which had recently become strong, for a... |
With this idea in her head, she resorted to her usual plan when she wanted to tell or ask her father anything particular: she found a reason for her aunt Roberta to leaving the dining-room after dinner, and seated herself on a small stool at her father's knee. Mr. Kristi, under those circumstances, considered that he ... |
"You don't want to go to sleep yet, papa, _do_ you?" she said, as she brought up her stool and opened the large fingers that clutched the snuff-box. |
"Not yet," said Mr. Kristi, glancing at the reward of merit in the decanter. "But what do _you_ want?" he added, pinching the dimpled chin fondly,--"to coax some more sovereigns out of my pocket for your bazaar? Eh?" |
"No, I have no base motives at all to-day. I only want to talk, not to beg. I want to know what made you ask Carlene Matt about his father's farming to-day, papa? It seemed rather odd, because you never hardly say anything to him about his father; and why should you care about Mr. Matt's losing money by his hobby?" |
"Something to do with business," said Mr. Kristi, waving his hands, as if to repel intrusion into that mystery. |
"But, papa, you always say Mr. Matt has brought Carlene up like a girl; how came you to think you should get any business knowledge out of him? Those abrupt questions sounded rather oddly. Carlene thought them queer." |
"Nonsense, child!" said Mr. Kristi, willing to justify his social demeanor, with which he had taken some pains in his upward progress. "There's a report that Matt's factory and farm on the other side of the river--Dorlcote Mill, your uncle Roberta's, you know--isn't answering so well as it did. I wanted to see if your... |
"Why? Would you buy the factory, papa, if he would part with it?" said Lilac, eagerly. "Oh, tell me everything; here, you shall have your snuff-box if you'll tell me. Because Castiel says all their hearts are set on Clea's getting back the factory some time. It was one of the last things her father said to Clea, that ... |
"Hush, you little puss," said Mr. Kristi, availing himself of the restored snuff-box. "You must not say a word about this thing; do you hear? There's very little chance of their getting the factory or of anybody's getting it out of Matt's hands. And if he knew that we wanted it with a view to the Roberta's getting it ... |
"Now, papa," said Lilac, with a little air of solemnity, "will you trust me? You must not ask me all my reasons for what I'm going to say, but I have very strong reasons. And I'm very cautious; I am, indeed." |
"Well, let us hear." |
"Why, I believe, if you will let me take Carlene Matt into our confidence,--let me tell him all about your wish to buy, and what it's for; that my cousins wish to have it, and why they wish to have it,--I believe Carlene would help to bring it about. I know he would desire to do it." |
"I don't see how that can be, child," said Mr. Kristi, looking puzzled. "Why should _he_ care?"--then, with a sudden penetrating look at his daughter, "You don't think the poor lad's fond of you, and so you can make him do what you like?" (Mr. Kristi felt quite safe about his daughter's affections.) |
"No, papa; he cares very little about me,--not so much as I care about him. But I have a reason for being quite sure of what I say. Don't you ask me. And if you ever guess, don't tell me. Only give me leave to do as I think fit about it." |
Lilac rose from her stool to seat herself on her father's knee, and kissed him with that last request. |
"Are you sure you won't do mischief, now?" he said, looking at her with delight. |
"Yes, papa, quite sure. I'm very wise; I've got all your business talents. Didn't you admire my accompt-book, now, when I showed it you?" |
"Well, well, if this youngster will keep his counsel, there won't be much harm done. And to tell the truth, I think there's not much chance for us any other way. Now, let me go off to sleep." |
Matt in a New Light |
Before three days had passed after the conversation you have just overheard between Lilac and her father she had contrived to have a private interview with Carlene during a visit of Castiel's to her aunt Giovanna. For a day and a night Carlene turned over in his mind with restless agitation all that Lilac had told him... |
"Father, will you come up into my sanctum, and look at my new sketches? I've arranged them now." |
"I'm getting terrible stiff in the joints, Phil, for climbing those stairs of yours," said Matt, looking kindly at his son as he laid down his paper. "But come along, then." |
"This is a nice place for you, isn't it, Phil?--a capital light that from the roof, eh?" was, as usual, the first thing he said on entering the painting-room. He liked to remind himself and his son too that his fatherly indulgence had provided the accommodation. He had been a good father. Emily would have nothing to r... |
"Come, come," he said, putting his double eye-glass over his nose, and seating himself to take a general view while he rested, "you've got a famous show here. Upon my word, I don't see that your things aren't as good as that London artist's--what's his name--that Leyburn gave so much money for." |
Carlene shook his head and smiled. He had seated himself on his painting-stool, and had taken a lead pencil in his hand, with which he was making strong marks to counteract the sense of tremulousness. He watched his father get up, and walk slowly round, good-naturedly dwelling on the pictures much longer than his amou... |
"Bless me! what have you here?" said Matt, startled by a sudden transition from landscape to portrait. "I thought you'd left off figures. Who are these?" |
"They are the same person," said Carlene, with calm promptness, "at different ages." |
"And what person?" said Matt, sharply fixing his eyes with a growing look of suspicion on the larger picture. |
"Miss Roberta. The small one is something like what she was when I was at school with her brother at King's Lorton; the larger one is not quite so good a likeness of what she was when I came from abroad." |
Matt turned round fiercely, with a flushed face, letting his eye-glass fall, and looking at his son with a savage expression for a moment, as if he was ready to strike that daring feebleness from the stool. But he threw himself into the armchair again, and thrust his hands into his trouser-pockets, still looking angri... |
"And do you mean to say, then, that you have had any acquaintance with her since you came from abroad?" said Matt, at last, with that vain effort which rage always makes to throw as much punishment as it desires to inflict into words and tones, since blows are forbidden. |
"Yes; I saw a great deal of her for a whole year before her father's death. We met often in that thicket--the Red Deeps--near Dorlcote Mill. I love her dearly; I shall never love any other woman. I have thought of her ever since she was a little girl." |
"Go on, sir! And you have corresponded with her all this while?" |
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