¥ 1 .•>::vv-i^*VfPf^ (ic OOD-BYE 5W£ETHEilRT I "Reo as a Rose is ^he LI B R.ARY OF THE U N IVERSITY or ILLINOIS 8Z3 The person charging this material is re- sponsible for its return to the library from which it was withdrawn on or before the Latest Date stamped below. Theft, mutilation, and underlining of books are reasons for disciplinary action and may result in dismissal from the University. UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS LIBRARY AT URBANA-CHAMPAIGN AUG 1 6 1978 3UN 61d7S L161 — O1006 u GOOD-BYE, SWEETHEART :a ^iiic. BY RIIODA BROUGHTON, AUTHOR OF COMETH UP AS A FLOWER," A\U " RED AS A ROSI-: IS SHi: IN THREE VOLUMES. VOL. L LONDON : RICHARD BENTLEY AND SOX. 1872. (Ail rij^/ifs reserve J.) CO v./ ■S CONTENTS OF VOL. I, Part I. JIORNING. PAGE CHAl'. I. WHAT JEMIMA SAYS . - -3 II. WHAT THE AUTHOR SAYS . . 1 8 III. WHAT JEMIMA SAYS . » • 3^ IV. WHAT LENORE SAYS . . . 47 V. WHAT JEMIMA SAYS . . .69 VI. WHAT THE AUTHOR SAYS . . 79 VII. WHAT JEMIMA SAYS . . .96 VIII. WHAT THE AUTHOR SAYS . . I16 IX. WHAT THE AUTHOR SAYS . . . I42 X. WHAT THE AUTHOR SAYS . . 1 52 XI. WHAT THE AUTHOR SAYS . . . 170 XII. WHAT JEMIMA SAYS . . 1S9 iv Contents. CHAP. PAGE XIII. WHAT THE AUTHOR SAYS . . 2o6 XIV. WHAT JEMIMA SAYS . . . 232 XV. WHAT THE AUTHOR SAYS . . -243 XVI. WHAT JEMIMA SAYS . . . 278 XVII. WHAT THE AUTHOR SAYS . . - 294 P A E T I. " Being so very wilful, you must go." MORNING. " The sleepless Hours, who watch me as I lie, Curtained with star-enwoven canopies From the broad moonlight of the sky, Fanning the busy dreams from my dim eyes, Waken me when their mother, the grey Dawn, Tells them that dreams and that the moon is gone." VOL. I. a GOOD-BYE, SWEETHEART r CHAPTER I. WHAT JEMIMA SAYS. KINGLY June day: the hay- smell drowning all other smells in every land of Christendom : battling even with the ingeniously ill odours of this little drainless Breton town. People who suffer from hay-fever are sneezing and blowing their noses ; all the world else is opening its nostrils wide. The small sa/ou of a small French boarding-house : a nar- row room with a window at each end ; and 4 ** Good-bye, Sweetheart /" in this room we two sisters, the two Misses Herrick. Five minutes ago, the mistress of the establishment entered and closed the per- siennes of one of our windows, to hinder the sun from abiiner-'mg the cretonne curtains, as she said. She was about to follow suit with the other, and only desisted on our eager and impassioned representations that not even a Breton sun can shine from all points of the compass at once. Through the one casement thus left us Lenore is leaning out; Lenore, our youngest-born, the show one of our family. On her elbows she is leaning, looking idly into the little grass-grown //^^^, on which Mdlle. Leroux's pension gives. Jemima — I am Jemima — is making a listless reconnoitre of the furni- ture. The little cheap prints on the walls, ' La Religieuse defendue,' ' Le Guerrier pans^,' ' Napoleon L, Empereur des Fran- 9ais ;' one long fern frond, and a single fox- What yemima Says. glove in a wineglass on the mantelshelf ; bare cold parquet to the feet. Jemima is twenty-eight years of age, and very good- natured ; at least, so people say. I have often noticed that the eldest of many families are, physically speaking, failures. Jemima is, physically speaking, a failure. " How one misses one's iive-o' clock tea," says Lenore, looking back half over her shoulder to throw this and the succeeding remarks at me ; " from ten-o'clock break- fast till six-o'clock dinner, what a dreary waste ! How do you suppose the aborigines stave off the pangs of hunger, Jemima ? Do they chew a quid of tobacco, or a piece of chalk, or what ?" I reply, laconically, " Biscuits." *' Does not your soul yearn for one of those open tarts with fresh strawberries we saw yesterday at Xki^ patissier s in the Rue de St. Malo ? Mine does. I wish I had asked Frederic to bring me one." 6 " Good-bye^ Sweetheart /" " And do you imagine," ask I, sardoni- cally, " that you have reduced that poor man to such a pitch of imbecility as to induce him to carry about jam-tarts in his coat-pocket for you ?" Lenore smiles : she has that very sweet smile which is, they say, the peculiar attri- bute of ill-tempered people. '' I think," she answers, " that he is not far from being on a level with Miss Armstrong's lover, who allowed her to dress him up as a sheep, and lead him by a blue ribbon into a room full of company." Lenore's face is more round than oval ; it is fresh as a bunch of roses gathered at sunrise — fresh, but not ruddy ; her nose, though not in the least retrousse, belongs rather to the family of upward than that of downward tending noses ; her eyes are grey, as are the eyes of nine-tenths of the Anglo-Saxon race ; large, though not with the ^ze////f^^ largeness of a ' Book of Beauty,' What yeniima Says. wherein each eye is double the size of the prim purse mouth ; in her two cheeks are two dimples that, when she is grave, one only suspects, but that, when she laughs or smiles, deepen into two little delicious pit- falls, to catch men's souls at unawares in. " If Frederic were anybod}^ but Frederic," say I, sinking into an armchair, and pulling out my knitting — like most failures I'm fond of work — '' it would be considered rather risqite of us two innocents travelling about the Continent ^vith a young man in our train, even though he is a clergyman." " If Frederic," replies Lenore, contemp- tuously turning back to her contemplation of t\\Q place, and replacing her grey gingham elbows on the sill, '' were to be caught in the most flagitious situation one can ima- gine, that Simon Pure face of his would carry him triumphantly through. Who can connect the idea of immorality and spec- tacles ? Talk of an angel, and you hear 8 " Good-bye, Sweetheart /" the rustle of wings ; I hear Frederic's wings rusthng through the Porte Saint Louis, and — oh ! Jemima — Jemima, quick ! come here ! — who is it he has with him ?" I jump up, as bidden — I always do what Lenore bids me, though I have the advan- tage, or rather disadvantage, of her by ten years — and look out. "An Englishman, evidently," I say, sagaciously, '' by his beard ; nobody but Englishmen and oysters wear beards now-a-days." " Is he going to bring him up here ?" asks Lenore, craning her neck out to look round the balcony of the cafe next door, where, as usual, two fat men are smoking and drinking coffee. " No ; I see him nod- ding ; he is saying good-bye ; how tire- some !" (with an accent of disappoint- ment). " You are as bad as the young lady in Nixon's * Cheshire Prophecy,' " say I, What jemima Says, 9 laughing : " ' Mother, mother, I have seen a man ! Frederic enters, alone, looking very hot in the rigorous black of a priestly coat that grazes his heel, and the rigorous black of a priestly waistcoat that almost salutes his chin. " Enter a pretty cockatoo !" cries my sister, with an insolent laugh, pointing the insult by indicating with her forefinger the curly flourish of fine fair hair that sur- mounts the young man's forehead and blue spectacles. '' Pretty cockatoo !" " You should not make personal re- marks, Miss Leonora," answers Frederic, blushing. "My name is not ' Leonora,' " retorts she, with a pout ; " don't lengthen my two charming soft French syllables into that great long English mouthful, ' Leonora !' " But Frederic is deeply diving into a pocket in the hinder part of his raiment. lo ''Good-bye, Sweetheart T Thence he diffidently draws a Httle bon- bonniere. , " I have brouorht you some chocolate, Miss Lenore ; that— that is why 1 called to-day. I — I think I once heard you say that you liked it." '' My dear cockatoo, I hate the sight of it !" replies she, gravely, with the utter and unconscious ingratitude of a spoiled child. " I ate it every day and at every con- fectioner's in Rouen last week. Now, if it had been a strawberry tart — open fresh strawberries ; but it is not — give it to Jemima." " Never mind her, Mr. West," say I, it being my pleasing life-task to mend the breaches made by Lenore in her adorers* feelings — I never having any breaches of my own to mend — " never mind her. But tell us who your new friend is ; we have been on the qid vive ever since we saw you parting so tenderly under the arch." What Jeminia Says. 1 1 " Do you mean the man that came Avith me to-day as far as the Porte ?" asks Frederic, who has sat down upon the music-stool, and is turning slowly round and round, in order to be able to follow with his spectacles Lenore into whatever part of the little room her measured walk may take her. " But indeed he is no friend of mine," he adds, uneasily — " no friend at all ; a mere acquaintance — a college acquaintance." " What is his name ?" inquired I, nib- bling a stick of Lenore's despised chocolate, and asking the question more for the sake of something to say than from any parti- cular interest in the subject. " Le Mesurier." '' Hem I a good name, isn't it ? And what is he doing here ?" ''He is making a walking tour through Brittany with a friend ; the friend has gone for two or three days to stay at the 12 ''Good-bye, Siveetheart f Marquis de Roubillon's chateau near Dol, and Le Mesurler is to wait for him here." " Where is he staying at ?" '' The H6tel de la Poste." *' And why did not you bring him up here with you, pray ?" asks Lenore, joining in the conversation, and throwing herself indolently on the little hard horsehair sofa as she speaks. " Because he would not come," answers Frederic, quickly, and I think I detect a grain of malicious triumph in his voice. Lenore reddens. " I dare say you never gave him the chance." "On the contrary, I said to him, ' I am o-oino^ to make a call on some ladies at o o Mdlle. "L&voux's pension ; will you come too ? I do not doubt that they would be very happy to make your acquaintance.' And he said — stay, let me think, I know he worded it very strongly — ' Good God 1 What Jemiina Says. 13 No! one has enough of women In Eng- land.' " '' Interesting misogynist !" says Lenore, ironically. '' What a sweet— what a holy task It would be to bring him to a healthier frame of mind !" '' I don't really think he w^ould suit you, Miss Lenore," says Frederic, nervously, making the music-stool squeak painfully, as he fidgets upon it ; '' he has a way of saying more coolly impertinent things to ladles, in a quiet way, than any man I ever came across." Lenore jumps up into a sitting posture, and a mischievous tormenting look flashes Into her laughing grey eyes. *' My dear Frederic ! how you excite me ! After hearing nothing but how charming I am, from you and such as you, how refresh- ing to be told Impertinent plain truths, in a quiet way too — I like the quiet way; there's something sly and contraband about 14 ''Good-bye, Szveetheart T it — by a handsome woman-hater (I'm sure he must be handsome) in a reddish beard !" " He is a man of anything but a good character," says Frederic, lowering his voice, as if the subject he was broaching were one not fit for ladies' ears — '' at least, he was not at Oxford." Lenore springs to her feet. " Frederic !" she says, impressively, '' you have decided me : I luill see him !" " I don't quite see how, Lenore," say I, still nibbling. " Magnificently as you always affect to despise the shackles of conventionality, you can hardly forcr your acquaintance upon a poor man who has distinctly declined it" Lenore's two hands are clasped behind her back, as she stands before us. Sud- denly she stretches out one of them to Frederic. " I don't care," she says, with a little What yemima Says. emphatic stamp ; " I bet you half-a- crown that before nightfall I have seen him 1" " You know I never bet, Miss Le- nore." '' Oh, no ! of course not," drawing her- self up very stiffly, and affecting to button a hieh double-breasted waistcoat ; " sacred calling — Injurious example to flock, etcetera,. etcetera." " Never mind her," say I, recurring to my usual formula of soothing. '' Don't you know that ever since that unluck)- attack of croup she had when she was a child, when the doctor said she was not to be contradicted, and was to do whatever she liked, that Lenore has never been fit to speak to ?" '' If you see Le Mesurler," says Frede- ric, not heeding my blandishments, and getting rather pink with exasperation, " it will be against his will." 1 6 ''Good-bye, Sweetheart f '' Very likely, but I shall see him !" '' He is always bored by the society of respectable women ; he never makes any • secret of it." "What an uncharitable innuendo for a clergyman to make ! Every amiable trait you mention heightens my interest in him ! Well, I shall see him !" " Good-bye, Miss Herrick," cries Frede- ric, vaulting off his stool (which at parting gives one last valedictory squeak) and pick- ing up his soft dumpling hat — " good-bye, Miss Lenore !" *' Good-bye, sweetheart, good-bye !" re- plies Lenore, rhetorically. '' If you are going to the Hotel de la Poste — do not, however, put yourself out of the way on my account — but if you are going there, you may tell our mutual friend to expect me about four." Two minutes later the front-door closes on Mr. West, and I hear my sister running Wkal Jemima Says, 17 downstairs, and calling '' Stephanie — Ste- phanie I" at the top of her fresh, gay voice. Stephanie is the Breton femme de chambrc. VOL. I. J. CHAPTER IL WHAT THE AUTHOR SAYS. EN ORE'S bed-room : over the papered walls, a design of blue pea-flowers and giant asters, straggling quaintly, yet prettily; a small bed in a little recess, curtained off ; a wash- hand basin as big as a broth-bowl, and a ewer as big as a cream-jug ; a minute, dim looking-glass, hung exactly where it is im- possible to get anything more than a sug- gestion of one's own face in it Before this glass two women are standing, Lenore and Stephanie ; the first is looking at her- What the Author Says. 19 self, the second is looking at the first. Lenore is no longer an English lady ; she is a Breton peasant. Her waist is girt about with a heavy, black woollen petticoat, gathered into so many great folds at the back and sides, as to make her look as wide-hipped as the weather-beaten country- woman beside her ; a gay little purple shawl-handkerchief pinned over her broad chest. Lenore is a fine woman, not a chicken-breasted pretty slip of a girl ; and on her head (from which the chignon has disappeared) she is struggling with dubious success to arrange a head-dress similar to that worn by her companion. " Oh^ que mademoiselle est adroite f cries the latter, with the awful mendacity of a Frenchwoman, when any contest between truth and civility is concerned ; standing, with her hands on the broad hips that nature or her petticoat plaits have given her, looking on. 2 — 2 20 *' Good-bye, Sweetheart r " Mademoiselle is not adroite at all," cries Lenore impatiently, recklessly mingling together the Gallic and Anglo-Saxon tongues. ^^ All contraire, she is very mala- droite ; coiffez-moi, Stephanie, je vous en prie," sitting down on a chair, and letting her handsome awkward hands fall idle into her lap. A Breton cap off Is one thing — it is merely a straight piece of well-stiffened muslin or net ; on, it Is quite a different matter. Stephanie having, for the space of about two minutes, arranged and pinned and tied, bursts into a cascade of shrill French laughter. '' Mon Dieu ! but Mademoiselle has a droll air ! Mademoiselle will pardon her ; but. Dame, it makes one pdmer de rire!' Lenore rises, and putting her face close to the dark mirror, with its disfiguring side- lights, surveys her changed countenance with eager solemnity. A little border of What the AiUJior Says. 21 nut-brown hair, emerging from the crisp white musHn ; the broad stiff lappets, turned up and back, and secured with a pin on the crown, making a huge loop at each side of the head. Why describe what every one knows — that most piquant of headgears that the wise Breton pea- santry have not yet abandoned in favour of the mock lace and tawdry cheap flowers of our own lower orders ? '' Je suis belle, n'est ce pas ?" she asks, a little doubtfully, peeping over her own shoulder at the grave round beauty of her anxious peach face. " Oh, Mademoiselle est belle a ravir ; ca va a merveille; on ne pent mieux," &c., &c. " But my hands are too white," breaks in Lenore, stemming the torrent of enco- mium. " What will you sell me your nice red fingers for half-an-hour for ? Except on the stage, too, I suppose a peasant- woman does not wear rings " (slipping 22 *' Good-bye, Sweetheart /" them off on the washhand-stand — dressing- table there is none). "Well" (with a part- ing glance), " I think I am unrecognisable, am I not, Stephanie ? I should not know myself if I met myself in a shop-window." As she passes the salon-door, Lenore peeps in. " Do you know me, Jemima ?" Jemima gives a great start, and her knit- ting rolls down unheeded on the parquet : "' Why, Lenore, child, what have you been doing to yourself 1 What a fright you look ! Where are you going ?" " To the Hotel de la Poste," answers Lenore, shutting the door briskly, and run- ning downstairs very quickly to avoid questions or remonstrances. It is but a five minutes' walk from Mademoiselle Leroux's to the Hotel de la Poste ; but in five minutes there is plenty of time for courage to ooze out at fingers' ends. Lenore's feet, which at first, despite her heavy peasant boots, bore her along What the AiUJior Says. 23 quickly enough, subside into a very lagging walk. Her bravery is considerably cooled by the time she reaches her destination. An old shabby diligence is standing in the street ; on a bench, beside the hotel-door, three men in blue blouses are sitting drink- ing cider ; in the doorway a disengaged garcon, with a napkin under his arm. " Est ce que c'est ici 1' Hotel de la Poste ?" asks Lenore, almost timidly, her question being rendered rather superfluous by the fact of the hotel bearing its name in yard-long letters on its front. " Oui, Madame. Madame est Anglaise?" with a surprised glance at her dress. '' Yes, Madame is English. Is there much company here now ?" " Ca commence, Madame." '' Are there any of my compatriots stay- ing here ?" " There are several, Madame — a crowd in fact." 24 ''Good-bye, Sweetheart I'' " Did any of them arrive to-day ?" " Two English messieurs arrived by the voiture from Caulnes. If Madame wishes she can see their malles, qzion va monter,'' pointing inwards to a heap of portmanteaux and hat -boxes. Madame enters and in- spects them. '' And where is this monsieur ?" she asks, pointing with her finger to a small and rather battered portmanteau, bearing the name of " Paul Le Mesurier, Esq.," in large white letters upon it. " That monsieur is in the salle : he has commanded some cognac and a siphon." As he speaks a second gargon emerges from the unseen, bearing a small tray with the identical refreshments indicated upon it. By a sudden impulse Lenore runs forward to meet him. " Would it be permitted," she asks, colouring furiously, '' for her to take that into the salle f What the Aicthor Says, 25 " Mais oui, Madame, si ca vous convient." They both stare at her ; one laughs. If she had been by herself, now at this last moment, she would have set down the tray and fled ; but retreat is cut off by the first garcon politely throwing open the salle door. With trembling knees and a gallop- ing heart. Miss Lenore enters. A long room, and long table laid for any number of people ; bottles of vin 07^dinaire^ napkins, covered dishes full of emptiness, toothpick stands, pots of mangey hydran- geas and geraniums down the middle ; a little clergyman with falling shoulders that would not have disgraced a woman or a champagne bottle — Frederic in fact — study- ing an Indicateur in one of the windows ; another gentleman at the table, with the back of his head, and a suspicion of a lion- coloured beard, emerging from the sheets of Galiorna7ii, As noiselessly as her great clodhopping 2 6 ' ' Good-bye, Sweetheart ! ' ' boots will permit, Miss Herrick approaches the latter and deposits his cognac at his elbow. But in so doing her hand trembles so much that she knocks doAvn a fork and spoon, which fall with a clink on the floor. As she stoops to pick them up, and as he lifts his eyes, rather irritated at the noise, their glances meet. In Lenore's there is a mixture of expressions : shame, defiance, and above all, and bef6re all, disappoint- ment ; for, after all, this interesting woman- hating roiiG is not handsome : by no one but the mother who bore him could he ever have been thought even good-looking. In the strano^er's look there is nothino^ but extreme surprise — nay, astonishment. Glad, despite herself, to have got off so cheaply, Lenore is beating a hasty retreat, when Le Mesurier s voice overtakes her. "I say! Marie! Julie! Manon ! Hi! What the deuce is the French for 'Hi'? Call her back. West ! I have tried all the What the AiUhor Says, 27 names I know ; they are generally all Maries, but she wont answer to that." " Do you want anything?" asks Frederic, looking up innocently from his Indicateiir with that beamingly benevolent look that spectacles always give. But his friend, ex- cited by the pursuit of a pretty face, has precipitated himself towards the door, which is left ajar ; and passing quickly through it finds himself face to face with the object of his search, who, not having had presence of mind to take refuge in flight, is standing there with her empty tray — red, guilty, and beautiful. '' West ! West ! What's the French for ' What is your name ?' Do they grow them like this here ? Because, if so, we had better import a few. Comment vous appellez-voiis, ma chere ?" trying to take her hand. " What do you mean ?" cries the girl in very good English, snatching it away, 2S ''Good-bye, Sweetheart !'' totally forgetting her assumed character, and looking daggers at the Insolent wretch who has dared to call her ''Ma chh'er " Are you English ?" asks Le Mesurler, aghast, recoiling a step or two, and his mouth opening in horror as the thought of the admiring familiarities he has just been o^ivinof utterance to dart across his brain. At the sound — hardly credited — of a too well-known voice, Mr. West has thrown down his Indicateitr, and come running to the scene of action. " Miss Lenore !" She looks up at him — a dare-devil lio^ht in her eyes — resolute, now that the dhioue- ment has come, to brave it out. " Did Monsieur call ?" *' Miss Lenore, are you mad f " She stretches out her hand to him : " Who was right ? I have won my half- crown ; pay it me !" IV hat the Author Says. 29 Le Mesurier turns from one to the other in blank astonishment : '' I say, West, what is it all about ? what is the joke ?" '' You had better ask this lady." " There is no joke, none," says the girl, looking- at him hardily, but growling crim- son. " I came here to see you. I put on this dress to avoid beine recognised ; I have failed, that is all." " To see vie ! I am sure I am im- mensely flattered " (looking excessively surprised, and biting his lips hard to repress a broad smile) ; " but are you sure that you are not mistaking me for some one else ?" '* It was not that I cared in the least to see you," she says, frowning, and tears of shame rushing to her eyes. " Of course not ! of course not !" bowine. '' But when I say that I will do a thing, however foolish, I always do it.'' " An excellent rule to 00 through life o o '' Good-bye, Sweetheart f^ with," replies he gravely, still fighting with a laugh ; " but there are difficulties some- times in the way of putting it into prac- tice, are not there ?" " Miss Lenore, Miss Lenore," says Fre- deric, the veins in his forehead swelling, and all his little pink features working with nervous vexation, " will you allow me to see you home ? If we walk very fast — it is not an hour when there are many people about — perhaps you will not be recog- nised." '' I don't in the least care if I am recog- nised," answers Lenore, stoutly. " I have done nothing to be ashamed of." As she passes out Le Mesurier holds open the door and bows formally and solemnly ; and through the Place Dugues- clin and the Fosse, Miss Herrick carries the recollection of a rather ugly tanned face, in which she conjectures the contempt that does not appear — carries away with What the Author Says. 31 her also the pleasant consciousness of having made an utter and unladylike fool of herself, without the poor consolation of having done it amusingly. " Girl of the Period !" says Paul to him- self, thrusting his hands into his coat- pockets as he watches her departure through the lowered Venetian blinds. "After all, the Saturday does not over- colour. From all such ' Good Lord deliver US I CHAPTER III. WHAT JEMI^IA SAYS. T our pension we dine at six : it is a small and select establishment ; at present it contains only two families — la faniille Lange, and la faniille Erreeck. We are la famille Erreeck. La famille Lange is French, as may be ima- gined from its name. It consists of a mother, son, and daughter. The mother is a handsome, black-haired widow, mourn- ing jovially for the four-months-dead M. Lange, in uncovered head and huge jet rosary. Madlle. Peroline deplores her What yemiina Says. '»'? O.) papa, in white muslin, lilac ribbons, and a wonderful mop of litde frizzed curls and rolls. M. Cesar is a youdi with an eye-glass, which is for ever dropping out of his right eye — a youth tall of stature, and spotted like the pard. We are all dining together as sociably as their total ignorance of our tongue, and our very partial acquaintance with theirs, will permit. Through the open window, in the still yellow evening, we hear plainly the clump of sabots in the place, the voices — as often as not English or Irish, for Dinan, as is well known, swarms with both — of the passers-by. There are but few disadvantageous cir- cumstances in this world that have not also their advantageous side ; and the fact of our being the only people in the house that understand the English tongue enables my sister and me to impart our opinions concerning the company and the viands to each other with a freedom which, to a VOL. I. 3 34 " Good-bye, Sioeetheart /" stranger entering unacquainted with the posture of affairs, would seem startlingly candid. " I wish they would let us have our potatoes zuith our bifteck, as they call it. instead of afterwards and separate, as a side-dish," say I, grumblingly, being hope- lessly John-Bullish in my culinary tastes. " Look at this nasty fellow !" rejoins Le- nore, with a disgusted intonation, directing my attention to her neighbour, M. Cesar, who, with his napkin tucked under his chin, is holding the bone of his mutton cutlet in his hand, and gnawing it. " Do you suppose, Mima, that French gentlemen worry their food in such a cannibalish fashion, or is it a manner and custom con- fined to bourgeois like these ?" My reply is strangled in its birth by the unconscious Madame Lange, who, inter- rupting for a moment her succulent em- ployment of chasing the gravy round her What yeinima Says. 35 tilted plate with a crust, inquires, with some volubility, whether " Mademoiselle has made a promenade to-day ? Doubt- lessly Mademoiselle has already visited Fontaine des Eaux, and Lehon, and the Saint Esprit- — an object, in fact, truly re- markable ?" My French never was my strong point, even in school days ; and the waste of many immense years that have elapsed since my education was completed has not tended to make it stronger. I answer slowly, " Non — pas — aiijoiu'dWuii — trcs — chaiLci ;' and look piteously across to my junior for succour. But Lenore is still dis- dainfully eyeing the innocent M. Cesar and his mutton bone. '' Mademoiselle is right ; there has been a chaleiLT epoicvantablc ; in truth, she herself has been tres soiiffrante all day ; she has had inal aic cceiir. ^ly children, however, Cesar and Peroline, have been to play at 36 *' Good-bye^ Szveetheart I the croquet, with the Demoiselles Smeet and the Demoiselles Ammeelton. Cesar loves the croquet ; Is it not so, my friend ?" " Mais 0711, Maman." I try to say In French that croquet Is the best game that ever was Invented for bring- ing the two sexes together- — a trite and pedantic remark at best — and, failing to make myself understood, relapse Into si- lence, feeling rather small, and resolving henceforth for evermore to cleave to the vulgar tongue. Lenore laughs malignantly, but does not help me. M. Cesar, having eaten a huge strawberry mash, and more Vv^hlte-heart cherries than the rest of the company put together, pushes back his chair, and requests to be permitted to retire to make his toilette for a promenade a cheval. On the occasion of M. Cesar's making a promenade a cheval we are all expected to group ourselves at the salon windows to What yemiina Says, 3 7 watch him, as, In lavender gloves and cream- coloured trousers, he caracoles a little, a very little — for M. Cesar knows that dis- cretion Is the better part of valour — under our admiring eyes. His mamma mean while Is won't to retire Into a corner of the room, cover her face with her handkerchief, and cry. As he passes by her now she catches his hand : " Great God ! Cesar, take care that that wicked animal does not overturn thee !" " Fear not, mamma," replies Cesar, doughtily ; '' I will be careful." " Imagine an Englishman contemplating the posslblllt}' of parting company with his horse while ambling along the King's high- way !" says Lenore, scornfully. " Hush !" (with heightened colour and brightened eyes), " Is not that the hall-door bell ?" She runs to the window and looks out. 38 " Good-bye, Szueciheart /" " It is Frederic, of course, isn't it ?" I ask, finishing my last cherry. '' Yes." '' Anybody with him ?" " Anybody zuith him ! Of course not ! Who should there be ?" replies my sister tartly, from which, being a person of very superior intelligence, I conclude that Lenore expected somebody. We go up to the salon to receive our guest, and Lenore, contrary to her usual custom, runs to meet him with outstretched hand, and without any of her usual insults to his hair, his gait, or his physique generally. " Well, Frederic i" she cries, eagerly, and, as it seems to me, expectantly. "Well, Miss Lenore!" replies Frederic, growing purple to the ears, as he always does when his idol flings him a brace of careless words. '' Don't say ' Well, Miss Lenore !' " re- torts my sister, angrily — " It does irritate What yevihna Says. 39 one so. Have you nothing to say ? — nothlnof to tell me ?" " Nothing to tell you ?" echoes Frederic, bewildered, and again lapsing into his for- mer offence. " Why, it is such a very short time since we parted, that It is not likely I can have very much to relate." Lenore turns away with an ill-tempered movement of head and shoulder, and, walk- ine to the window, looks out. M. Cesar is kissing his lavender gloves repeatedly. Madame Lange is screaming out shrill cautions to her son, not to be too audacious. Mdlle. Leroux — an adorable old creature, in yellow cap and luxuriant grey beard — Is waving her pocket-handkerchief, and cry- ing, " Au revoir ! M. Cesar, au revoir !" Lenore does not appear to perceive any of them. " I suppose," says Mr. West, addressing me, but glancing timidly towards the win- dow, " that you have heard of Miss Lenore's 40 " Good-bye, Sweetheart /" adventtcre f I am really in hopes that we shall be able to keep it quite quiet — quite quiet. Le Mesurier fortunately knows no one here, and we luckily met no one but Mr. Stevens on our way home, and I don't think he saw us." " If he did see us," says my sister, turn- ing round her face again, ornamented with a rather g^rim smile, " I would not or-ive much for your character in Dinan by to- morrow, Frederic. You will be affiche all over the town as having been parading* about, in broad daylight, arm-in-arm with a bonne. I asked you to give me your arm on purpose. Do you know, Mima" (be- ginning to laugh), " we came toddling along so affectionately, like a pair of cits out on a Sunday afternoon ?" *' You forget that I saw you coming through the Porte," reply I, with severity ; '' and indeed, Lenore, when next you take it into your head to play a practical joke, I IV hat yeniima Says. 41 sincerely hope that it may be a more amus- ing and less unladylike one." '' Why did you tell us your friend was handsome ?" asks Lenore, abruptly, without paying the slightest attention to me. "I did not say so, Miss Leonora; you said so yourself !" '" I said so myself ! Why, how could I ? I had seen nothinof but the back of his neck." " You said you were sure he must be handsome.'' " Well, the wisest of us are liable to error," replies my sister, leaning her folded arms on the back of my chair, and gazing calml}- over' my head at Mr. West. " In that case I certainly erred egregiously : he is hideous — laid a faire peiir, as Mdlle. Peroline humorously remarked of you the other day." " In that case, Miss Leonora," replies Frederic, worked up into something like 42 " Good-bye, Sweetheart /" spirit, as I am glad to perceive, by her rudeness, '' there does not seem to be very much love lost between you !" Lenore blushes angrily. " Has he been expressing his disapprobation of me to you ?" she asks, quickly. "Is it the last new thing in manners to abuse people to their most Intimate friends ? If so, com- mend me to the mannerless sans-cidottesy '' I w^ish you would not get Into the habit, Lenore, of larding your conversation with French phrases : it reminds one so much of the yonrnal dcs Demoiselles^ This I say in the weak effort to turn the conversation Into a new channel : mean- while I endeavour to signal '' Danger !" .to Mr. West, cough, and wave the white flag ; but as he is not looking at or thinking of me. It Is all In vain. '' I don't think he had any idea that I was so much atta — , so Intimate, I mean, with you and Miss Jemima, as I am,'' What yeniima Says. 43 replies Frederic, earnestly. *' Indeed, Miss Lenore, I must do him that justice." " Who cares whether he has justice done him or not ?" cries Lenore, im- patient]}'. " What did he say ? what did he say ?" "It really would not at all amuse you, Miss Lenore," (nervously kneading his soft hat) ; " on the contrary, I am afraid it would make }'ou very angry." " You may as well tell me at once," says my sister, composedly sitting down on an arm-chair and folding her hands In her lap, '' because you shall never leave this room alive if you don't !" " Well, since you Insist upon It — please. Miss Jemima," (turning piteously to me) " please, Miss Jemima, bear witness that it is not my fault — that Miss Lenore has brought It on herself — he said (I daresay he did not mean it) that — that — he could not have believed that any English lady 44 *' Good-bye, Szueetheart /" could have lowered herself to such an ex- tent as to do such a thing !'* The blush on Lenore's face grows pain- ful — spreads even to her soft creamy throat. *' Oh, indeed ! Anything more ?" "He said," pursues Frederic, deceived by the apparent quietness with which his hearer takes the unflattering comments made upon her, "that If he had ever caught his sister playing such a trick, he would never have spoken to her again as long as she lived." " Oh, indeed I w^hat a loss for her ! Anything more ?" "He said he did not doubt that you were very good fun, if one went in for that sort of thing, but that you were not his style." " Not his style ! am I not ?" cries Lenore, rising suddenly from her chair, quivering from head to foot with passion ; What yemima Says. 45 '' and what Is his style, pray ? Whatever it is, thank God that I am not hke It. Frederic, I wonder that you are not ashamed to Insult me by repeating such speeches ! Jemima" (turning eagerly to me), " you can have no conception how ugly he is ; I only wish you could see him. Little eyes like a pig's, and a huge nose, and such a villainous expression ! What a fool I am to care what he says ! I don't care — it amuses me Immensely — ha, ha ! Wretch ! I wish he was dead." And to prove how little she cares, she bursts Into a tempest of tears, rushes out of the room, and bangs the guiltless door behind her. '' There, Mr. West," say I, not without a certain sombre triumph, " perhaps you will pay some attention to me next time." And I rise with dignity, and shaking out my brown- holland tail, prepare to follow and comfort my afflicted relative. As I 46 ''Good-bye, Szueetheai^t T reach the door I cannon against Madame Lange. '' Perollne, PeroHne ! where art thou, dear friend ? Come and try thy new body. Pardon, Mademoiselle, a thousand pardons !" ^^^4^^ CHAPTER IV. WHAT LEXORE SAYS. O the da)' of my death I shall always hate Stephanie !" says Lenore, lamentably, sitting leaning her elbows on the little round table in the middle of her bedroom, havinof broken off suddenly in the writing of a letter, to thrust her hands in amono- her crisp untidy hair, and give way to a fit of angry despondence. '' If I had not seen her going clacking about the house in that llnsey petticoat and that vile cap " (nodding her head to where the unlucky garments 48 '' Good-bye^ Sweetheart /" are lying on her bed), " it never would have entered my head to make a mounte- bank of myself." "If I were you," I reply severely, in answer to this jeremiad, " I should buy the whole suit from her, lay it up by me, and look at it whenever I next felt inclined to make a fool of myself." "It would not do badly for a fancy ball," says Lenore, with a sudden change of tone, from the lachrymose to the lively, rising briskly from her chair, and walking to- wards the bed ; " much more piquant than the everlasting Fires and Waters, Nights and Days, Louis Quatorzes, and Marie Stuarts, that one is so sick of; I never yet knew a very ugly woman go to a fancy ball that she did not go as Mary Queen of Scots." An austere silence on my part. '' I have a good mind to try " (with con- siderable cheerfulness of tone). " I must get Stephanie to give me lessons in the art What Lenore Says. 49 of arranging the cap. Let me see ; how did it go ? It looked quite simple." Still silence on my part. " One thing Is certain, one would be quite unique ; one would not run the risk of meetlnof one's double.'' " I should not have thought," say I, stiffly, unwilling that the wholesome lesson my sister has learned should so soon be forgotten — " I should not have thought that your associations with that costume were so pleasant that you would be In any hurry to put it on again." She covers her face with her hands : " How brutal of you to remind me of It, just when I had succeeded In diverting my thoughts from It for a moment !" I say nothing. " You know, Jemima, I had meant It to be just a spirited little freak ; and It all fell so flat, so tame. Pah ! it Is a thinof that one could not think of without blushing, if one were in a dark room by one's self, with the shutters shut." VOL. I. , 4 50 ^'Good-bye, SzueetheaiH T " I should think not." '' Shall I ever forget," cries Lenore, drawing away her hands from her crimson face, and clasping them together — '' shall I ever forget my feelings, as Frederic and I sneaked out together, with our tails be- tween our legs, and Jie held open the door so ceremoniously for us ? If he had had any good feeling he would have laughed, would not he, Mima ? If he had not been a monster he would have tried to look as if he thought it a good joke, but he did not ; he was as grave — as grave as I am now, which is putting it as strongly as I possibly can." " Frederic told you that he hated respec- table women," say I, gravely ; "so that his want of cordiality was, at least, an indirect compliment." She stands with her eyes moodily downcast, but does not answer. ''He evidently thought you respectable," I said cheerfully — " evidently ; that, at least, is a comfort, is not it ? I don't see how he What Le7iore Says. 51 found it out ; It must have been intui- tion." Neither does this thrust move her to speech. I begin a fresh sentence : '' Frederic said " " Frederic !" interrupts Lenore, impa- tiently stamping, and reheved at having found another object beside herself to vent her rage on. " Little Marplot ! If he had never been born, or if he had not been there, or if he had had sense enough to hold his tongue, it would have all gone off well enough, as I meant it. I should have seen Mr. Le Mesurier — not, heaven knows" (with great contempt), "that he is the least worth seeing — and he " She pauses. " Well, what about hmi f She draws in her breath, and her eyes flash spitefully : '' If a wish could have killed him at that moment, as he stood there bowing and sneering, and saying that he was afraid there must be some mistake — LIBRARY UNiVERSinr OF MlfNQS 52 ' * Good- 5) 'e, Sweetheart ! ' ' he knew as well as I did that there was no mistake — he vrould have been as dead as a doornail nov\^ I" She stops, breathes hard, and clenches, and again unclenches, her hand. " ' I'm sure I'm immensely flattered. What is the joke, West ? An excellent j^lan, no doubt.' " I hear her mutterino- over to herself these, as I conjecture, fragmentary speeches of her new acquaintance, while her cheeks grow ever more and more hotly red. *' Console }'ourself," I say, with vicarious philosophy. " I imagine that he did not hear your name ; you were so thoroughly disguised by your dress that he probably would not recognize you if he met you ; and the world is wide — we shall hardly be so unlucky as to happen upon him again." " Do you think not ?" answers Lenore, with hardly so much exhilaration of tone as might have been expected. '' I don't know about that. Brittany is not so very What Lenere Says. Irt^^. and even'bc>dv ifces ::• ^-r-r zr.t s^n^e Anray." " We must hope to be either a few days before or a few days behind him at eaidi place. There is no use in anticipatii^ evils." A rather demurring sile" :r. Our great did^ : r/," I continue, t , "will be lo avoid him as Icr: t- mains here; but we him 5: ':'.L : :r ~ Frederi: r ^ ay in means : r > : : walkc: r." "I shall do T!r: _: -s Lenore, quickly r- self. One's life if it were spec: . ^ a tiny place t -. A ^ - not meeting, wr " for my part, I : otherwise." 54 '^Good-bye, Sweetheart!''' ''In that case," reply I sarcastically, " I would call again at the Hotel de la Poste. Next time I would fear of brino^inof on a fit of couMiinof if I screamed ; and the consequence was that if ever I wanted anything I always threat- ened to break a blood-vessel, and straight- way got it." " I should think that that threat had lost its efficacy now," says Paul, looking incre- dulously at the girl's full womanly figure, and at the plump though slender dimpled hand, that droops over the boat side — at the round cream-white column of her proud throat. " No, it has not," she answers, shaking her head ; '' the prestige of my delicacy still remains, though the fact no longer 6—2 84 *^ Good-bye, Szveetheart /" exists, and I of course am careful to keep up a tradition which tends so much to my own Interest, as it enables me to have my own way in everything." " What a very bad thing for you !" says Le Mesurier, brusquely. " If I were your sister, I should set up a rival blood-vessel." "It would be no use," answers Lenore, laughing, and swinging her broad straw hat to and fro. " Jemima is one of those hopelessly healthy people who will live on, without an ache or a pain, to a hundred, and then tumble downstairs or eet run over by an omnibus, natural means having proved utterly inadequate to kill her." They are slowly sliding past Lehon, past the ivied bridge, past the steps down to the waters, wherein the Lehon monks used to bathe their holy sleek bodies In the by- gone summers, in the quick stream : pious Sybarites, who reconciled God and Mam- mon as never anyone has done since then. What the Author Says. 85 ''It would have been very different if papa had Hved," continues Lenore, begin- ning to dabble again, unremonstrated with this time. ''He used to make us get up at five o'clock on winter mornings to go out walking by starlight with him ; used to make us stand in a row before him, with our hands behind our backs, to repeat the Catechism ; and if we stumbled in our ' Duty to our Neighbour,' or ' I desire ' — Jemima always stuck fast in ' I desire ' — made us hold out our hands to be caned." " What a thousand pities that he died !"' says Paul, almost involuntarily resting on his oars, and staring straight from under his tilted hat at his vis-a-vis face, his keen eyes undazzled by all the pretty tints and harmonious hues that feast them. '' Do you think so ?" cries Lenore, look- ing up from the contemplation of her own face in the water. " Now, on the contrary-, I think it was such a mercy that he did ; I 86 " Good-bye, Siueetheai^t /" never feel tempted to question the wisdom of Providence's decrees in that particular instance." "What a truly filial sentiment !" '' Don't look so shocked," answers the girl, beginning to laugh again. " I was but five years old when he died, and the only very clearly-defined association that I have with him is the biting his hand one day, and being shut up in the black-hole because I would not say I was sorry. I was not sorry ; I never was sorry ; I am not sorry now." '' All the same, I still regret that he died." '' Why ?" '' Every woman needs some one to keep her in order," replies he, gravely, as if giving utterance to a sentence against which there can be no appeal. " Until she has crot a husband — her natural and leoiti- * mate master — she oueht to have a father." W/ial the AtUhor Says. ^"^ '' Natural and legitimate master !" re- peats Lenore, scornfully, drawing up her lone throat. " Did I hear aright ? That would be the subjection of mind to matter, instead of matter to mind." '' I can't say that I agree with you" (very drily). '' There is not that man living that could keep me in order ; I would break his heart, and his spirit, and everything breakable about him, first." '' I have no doubt that you would try." " I should succeed. I have got papa's temper ; they all tell me so — Jemima — my other sister — everybody" (speaking very triumphantly). '' You say It as If it were matter for pride. It is astonishing what things people pride themselves on. I believe there was once a family which piqued itself on having two thumbs on each of its hands." '' I sJioidci pity the poor man who under SS " Good-bye, Sweetheart /" took to keep me in order," says Lenore, folding her hands in her lap, while deli- cious ripples of laughter play about her lips and cheeks at the thought of the suf- ferings that await her future owner. " Of co7crse, you never mean to marry ?" " Of coitrse, I do, though" (getting rather angry, and colouring faintly). " Do you think I mean to be an old maid ?" *' I think," replies Paul, bluntly, " that, considering the utter docility which with you would be a sine qicd non in a husband, you run a very good chance of being one." Silence for a few moments ; no sound but the "swish" of the oars — the cool wash of the water against the keel ; then Le- nore, resolute, woman-like, to have the last word, recommences. " Confess," she says, leaning forwards towards him a little, and emphasising her remarks with her forefinger ; " confess that there is not a more laughable, degrading What the Author Says. 89 sight on the face of the earth than a woman in a state of abject subjection to her husband !" " Confess," rephes Paul, leaning forwards a little also, • and also speaking with em- phasis, " that there is not a more contemp- tible, degrading sight on the face of the earth than a man in a state of abject sub- mission to his w^ife !" *' You may laugh," cries Lenore, loftily, carrying her head very high, and looking defiantly at him ; '' but I maintain that there is not a more contemptible creature in creation than a patient grizzel !" " And I maintain," retorts Paul, looking back with equal defiance, " that there is not a more pitiable reptile in creation than a hen-pecked husband, if such a being ever existed, which I have some difficulty in bringing myself to believe." They have both raised their voices a little in their eagerness. Three English- 90 ''Good-bye, Sivcctheart T women riding by on donkeys, their drape- ries extending from head to tail over those ill-used animals, turn their heads. M. Dunois, the banker s son, taking his after- noon canter on a big bay horse along the towing-path, turns his also. " The aborigines are astonished at our vehemence," says Paul, recollecting him- self; ''and really," with a careless laugh, ''as we neither of us have at present a victim to test our theories and wreak our cruelties upon, we need not excite ourselves over it, need we ?" Lenore's sole answer is a vivid blush, of whose birth she herself could give no account. " What on earth has come to the girl ?" Le Mesurier says to himself, staring at her with the open unconscious stare of utter surprise ; " alternately making very silly remarks, and getting as red as a turkey- cock over them. I wonder does she smoke ? As likely as not. Shall I ask llV/d/ the Author Says. 91 her ? At all events. I wish she would let me. *' How long are }"ou going to stay at Dinan ?" inquires Miss Lenore, presently, with an abrupt change of subject. Paul shruo^s his shoulders. " God knows !" " What an unnecessarily forcible expres- sion !" " Do you think so ? It is what the shop-keepers in one part of Spain answer if you ask them whether they have such- and-such wares in their shop ; they are too lazy to look, so they say, ' God knows !' '' " Long, do )'ou think ?" pursues the girl, perseveringly, not heeding his apocryphal little anecdote. '' Until viy friend gets tired of his friend M. de Roubillon's cJidtcaii, with all its absurd little turrets and weathercocks, I suppose," replies Paul, being not cntirch' 92 " Good-bye, Siueethearl /" free from an old-fashioned Insular contempt for everything Gallic. " What Is your friend's name ?" '' Scrope." '' What Is he like ?" " Oh, I don't know ;" looking vaguely round at the water — the chestnut trees — the flags, for inspiration. ''I'm a very bad hand at describing ; he Is much like every- body else, I suppose." '' Like yoii, for Instance," rather mali- ciously. " Good heavens ! no," breaking into a short laugh ; " he zuould be flattered at the suggestion !" '' You mean that he Is orood-looklnof ?" '' Oh ! yes ; he is all very well " (rather impatiently) . " And how soon do you imagine that he will be here ?" '' Oh ! in two or three days, I should hope." What the A2ithor Says. *' You should hope /" — with a little accent of pique — '' you don't like Dinan, then ?" "It is all very well, for France," replies Paul, magnificently ; '' but it is rather like a penny bun — a little of it goes a long way." Lenore bends down her small head, heavily laden with great twists and curious plaits of crisp brown hair, and ceases from her questionings. It is Le Mesurier's turn to catechise. " Are you so very fond of Dinan, then,. Miss Herrick ?" '' We are fond of any place that is cheap," replies Lenore, shortly. '' Any place where mutton Is sevenpence a pound seems to us prettier and pleasanter than one where it is tenpence." " Oh, really !" looking and feeling rather awkward, and not exactly knowing how to take this manifestation of unnecessar}' can- dour. 94 ' ' Good- bye, Szuecihea rt /' ' '' We are real Bohemians, Jemima and I," pursues the girl, resting on her hand her small downy face — downy with the Avonderful bloom of life's beautiful red morning — a bloom as transient and unre- placeable as the faint grey dust on just- gathered grapes. " We pay our debts, but otherwise we arc quite Bohemians. We go and stay at places out of the proper season ; we drive all over London in omni- buses, and go down the Thames in penny steamboats, and do a hundred other un- civilised things. One summer we spent at Boulogne ; I liked that, Jemima hated It. " I daresay." " Oh ! that etablissement /" cries Lenore, clasping her hands together in childish glee at the recollection, while her speech trickles off into pretty low laughter. " What fun it was ! and how happy all the wicked people looked ! — everybody walking about IV/ial the Author Says. 9 Avith somebody that did not belong to them." '' No wonder you enjoyed yourself," replies Paul, sarcastically, rather disgusted ; not, as I need hardly say, at the fact re- lated, but at the narrator. " Look at Jemima gesticulating from the bank," cries Lenore, happily ignorant of the emotion she has produced ; nor, indeed, is the idea that any one can be disgusted with her very much prone to present itself to her mind. '' How eloquent an umbrella can be when wielded by a cunning hand ! What a great deal Jemima's is saying!" *' It is saying 'Land!' I imagine, isn't it ? Let us land," replies Paul, with some alacrity, his thoucrhts turninof more aflec- tionately towards claret-cup than towards a prolonged tctc-a-tctc with Lenore. *' Let us land," echoes the girl, with the slightest possible unintentional sigh. CHAPTER VII. W H AT JEMIMA SAYS. [HE flaes and the thick Qrreen rushes make way for the Httle boat ; on either side they part, and through them and over them she sHdes, smooth and slow, to shore. '' What have you done with my cocka- too ?" cries Lenore, putting one Httle high- heeled shoe on the prow and springing lightly to my side. " Have you mislaid him on the way, or has a ' lily white duck come and gobbled him up ?' " " Neither," reply I, rather morose at What Jemima Says. 97 having been defrauded of my water-party, " he is up in the wood picking sticks ; he has been gathering you a nosegay as big as a coachman's on a drawing-room day, as we came along." " I wish I could break him of that habit," cries Lenore, petulantly ; '' it is a bore having to carry them, and a still greater bore having to say ' Thank )ou ' for a great posy of dandelions and buttercups." " Poor West !" says Le Mesurier, with a half contemptuous laugh ; '* he shall give them to me ; / like dandelions." *' Oh, so do I," replies Lenore, quickly. " I'm wild about flow^ers ; they are the only things that do not deceive us — as I once overheard a girl saying to her partner at a ball." " We had better keep in sight of the boat," I say, with my usual excellent com- mon-sense, " or the Dinan gamins will be sure to steal it." VOL. I. 7 98 ** Good-bye, Sweetheart /" " Have you been here long enough,"" asks Lenore, addressing Mr. Le Mesurler over the top of my head, " to discover how cordially these interesting natives hate us English ? Even abandoned infants of three and four throw stones and ugly words at us, only luckily one does not understand Breton Billingsgate." " We spend a good deal of money in making ourselves hated in every quarter of the globe ; it is a little way we have," re- plies Le Mesurier, with languid interest, as he stalks along, a martyr to circumstances, w^ith a great stone jug in one hand and a kettle in the other. "It is too hard upon us poor out-at- elbows English — you must know we are all out-at-elbows here," continues Lenore — ''wasting our substance in clothing these Bretons and giving them better food than their wretched galette, and then getting pelted for our pains." What yeminia Says. 99 '' One always gets pelted, literally or metaphorically, when one tries to do one's neighbours good," replies Le ]\Iesiirier, misanthropically ; '' better leave it alone." We have turned off from the towing- path, and into the chestnut wood. There is no undergrowth, nor do the trees stand so close together, but that there is pleasant space for w^alking shadily beneath them. A little way ahead of us we see a small grey smoke and little shoots of fire rising straight upwards through the windless air, and beside it, Frederic on his knees, with his cheeks puffed out, like a trumpet player or a wind-god's, blowing the flame. " There's devotion for you !" cries Le Mesurier, laughing, and indicating Mr. West with his kettle. " Poor West ! mak- ing himself Into an improvised pair of bel- lows !" *' Dame ! as they say here, how ugly he is," cries Lenore, bursting out laughing. 7—2 I oo " Good-bye, Sweetheart /" '' What base ingratitude," says Le Mesurier, casting up his eyes theatrically to the chestnut boughs ; "a man ruins his trousers kneeling on damp grass, puts him- self into a ridiculous attitude, and runs the risk of getting congestion of the lungs for you, and all you say is — what was it ? did I hear aright ? — ' Damn ! how ugly he is.' " *' I said French Dame, not English," re- torts Lenore, still laughing ; " there is a very great difference in force between the two." " Da7ne is about equivalent to our ' Lor,' " I say, sententiously, " and I should imagine nearly as vulgar." " One can use it with a pleasant arriere pensee of swearing, you know," says my sister, " without the wickedness." " I think that will do now," cries Frederic, looking up at us with bland triumph from his kneeling posture, his cheeks reddened with the exertion of inflating them, and his WJiat yemirna Says. loi eyes watering from the smoke ; '' the sticks were rather green." " You looked an impersonation of Zephyr, as we came along," answers Lenore, ban- teringly ; " didn't he ? Didn't we say so, Mr. Le Mesurier ?" " We did, all of us ; there was not a dissentient voice," replies Le Mesurier, inattentively, fighting with an immense yawn, and his eyes fixed upon the stone jug. " Will you run and fill the kettle ? Frederic must make a nice flat place for it to sit upon," continues my sister ; " you know " (looking up at him with a sort of sleepy coquetry from under her eyes) " that it was only on the condition that you were useful that we allowed you to come at all." It may be my imagination, but I cannot help fancying that our new acquaintance elevates his eyebrows almost imperceptibly at this speech. *' I don't think that Mr. Le Mesurier I02 ^' Good-bye, Szveethcart r would have broken his heart If we had not let him come," I say tartly, In Irritated sur- prise at Lenore's want of perception. So speaking I kneel down, and with a chafed spirit begin to unpack the basket and cut bread-and-butter. Lenore flings herself down on the grass, and lying all along among the wood-flowers, watches with a malicious smile Frederic, who has begun again to blow his flagging fire. The three English ladles on donkeys pass along the towing-path ; they turn their blue-veiled heads towards our little encampment, and stare. The youth whose pleasing task It Is to goad their jackasses Into fitful and momentary gallops, stands stock still, with wide hungry eyes fastened on the bread and marmalade. " Frederic has overblown himself," says Lenore, laughing, '' he has blown all his fire away. Mima, dear, you must go and pick up some more sticks for him." What yemima Says. 103 I am preparing to rise and obey with my usual tame docility, when Mr. Le Mesurier, who has just returned with his full dripping kettle from the Ranee, interposes : " Miss Lenore — your name is Lenore, not Lenora, is not it ? — may I ask you one question ?" " So as it is not how old I am, or whether my chignon is all my own hair," replies Lenore, with a sort of uneasy smart- ness. *' It is neither ; I don't want to know either," he answers, gravely. ** What Is it, then ? Say on," throwing her head back a little, to be able to get a good look at him. " Why do not you go and pick up sticks yourself, instead of sending your elder sister ?" '' Elder sister !" cry I, with a mirthless laugh. '' Please don't challenge respect for me on that head ; I had rather be I04 " Good-bye, Sweetheart P' treated with contumely for evermore, than reverenced for such a triste superiority." "I do not go myself," replies Lenore, not listening to me, but still looking steadily up at him, " because I make it a rule never to do anything for myself that I can get any one else to do for me." '' Oh, indeed ! Thanks," turning away. " I set no manner of store by those little every-day virtues," continues Lenore, dis- dainfully thrusting out her red under-lip ; '' running on other people's errands, carry- ing their parcels, ordering dinner, sitting with your back to the horses — any one can do them ; they are a great deal of trouble, and there is no credit to be got out of them." '' Anybody cannot sit with their backs to the horses, for it makes some people sick," replies Le Mesurler, laughing. He has thrown himself forward, full length on the ground, in one of those care- IV/iat yemima Says. 105 lessly graceful attitudes that the British o-entleman affects ; his hat is on the back of his head, and his feet are kick- ing about among the catchfl}-s and ragged robins. " Now, if it were some bio^ thino^," con- tinues my sister, flushing, as she, having raised herself from the grass, leans her back against a chestnut trunk, " I could do it — I know I could ; that is, if I had the chance, and if there were plenty of people to look on. " And cry ' Hooray !' like the little boys on Guy Faux day. Would you ladies mind my smoking one cigar ?" *' I could have driven in the cart to the Place de la Revolution, like IMadame Roland," continues Lenore, beginning to march up and down, with her head up, and her hands behind her back ; '' standing up all the way, in a white gown, with little red carnations on it, and my long black io6 " Good-bye, Sweetheart P'' hair hanging down my back ; I could have smiled back at the yelling sa^is culottes " " I'm afraid you could not get guillotined nowadays if you were to be shot for it," returns he coolly, holding his cigar sus- pended between his fore and middle fin- gers ; '' it is next door to impossible to get hung." " I could have stabbed Marat in his bath," pursues Lenore, clenching her hand upon an imaginary knife. " Yes, stabbed him as he sat there, unshorn, sick, with a dirty cloth about his head " '' I'm afraid if you stick Beales or Brad- laugh in their tubs, you will only get ten years for it, commuted to two, if you make love to the chaplain," replies Le Mesurier, resolutely prosaic. " I could have " '' You could have hammered SIsera's temples to the floor or sawn off poor tipsy Holofernes' head," interrupts Mr. Le What Jemima Says. 107 Mesurler, rather impatiently cutting short my sister's heroics. " I know what you are going to say ; perhaps you could ; for my part, of all the characters known in history or fiction, I dislike those two strong- minded females about the most." '' I know exactly the kind of woman you like," says Lenore, stopping suddenly in her tramp, tramp, and looking down with contemptuous pink face on her prostrate and sprawling adversary. " I don't well see how you can," replies he, throwing away the end of his cigar, and burying one hand in his tawny beard. *'You have never seen my womankind; you have never seen me with any woman." " I did not even know that you had any womankind," she answers, a little inquisitively. He does not gratify her curiosity. " What is exactly the kind of woman I io8 '' Good-bye, Sweetheart P' like ?" he asks, raising his cold quick eyes to hers. " Amelia in ' Vanity Fair,' " she answers promptly, with a pretty air of triumph. '' I knew you were going to say that," he says calmly. *' But it is true, is it not ?" Inquires she eagerly. ''Not in the least ; you never made a worse hit in your life." " She was dollishly pretty ; she cried on every possible occasion ; she allowed every body she came near to bully her ; she had. not two ideas in her head. With all these qualifications, how could she fail to be charming ?" inquires my sister with wither- ing sarcasm. " I like her better than Jael," says Le Mesurier, doggedly. " So do I," cry I, tired of keeping silence, and clattering the tea-cups. " What is your opinion, West ?" asks What ycminia Says, 109 Le Mesurler, trying to extract the cork from the claret-jug with his fingers. " I say, Is there a cork-screw anywhere about ? Which Is your bcaic ideal of feminine excellence — Heber the Kenlte's amiable wife, or Amelia Osborne ?" " Frederic has no bcaic ideal of feminine excellence," answers Lenore for him, with an ironical smile ; " he hardly knows a woman when he sees one ; his bride is the Church. Let us come to tea ; the steam is beo^Innlnof to lift the kettle's hat off at last." As I have before remarked, the dinner hour at Mdlle. Leroux's pension is six o'clock ; so it Is at the Hotel de la Poste ; Indeed, the great event of the day happens throughout DInan at the same hour. To avoid, therefore, losing our daily portion of ragged beef, raw artichokes, and tripe (as half-past five has already come chiming through the ch.estnut boughs from the town no " Good bye, Sweetheart /" clocks), we are compelled rather to hurry up the conclusion of our at fresco feast. We give the rest of our French roll-and- butter, and the remainder of our tea (which, thanks to the Ranee and Frederic, has an agreeably mixed medicinal flavour of old iron, alluvial deposit, and smoke,) to the donkey-boy afore-mentioned, who, careless of his fair charges, and leaving them to the wild will of their asses, has been haunting us as a young vulture haunts a battle-field. We stand on the flowered bank, prepared to re-embark. The boat lies so still, so still on the windless tide, like a young child asleep in the sun ; near the other bank a man naked to the waist, and standing up to his middle in water, is pulling bundles of rotten ill-odorous flax out of the river. '' I shall take an oar going home," says Lenore, with decision. " I can row." '' Please don't," cry I nervously ; " you What yemima Says. 1 1 1 know you always catch crabs, and the last time that we went out boatino- on the Seine, at Rouen, you caught such a big one that you tumbled backwards over the seat and all but upset us." " The oars were too short," she answers, looking displeased at this allusion ; " it might have happened to any one." " One crab will be fatal to us to-day," says Le Mesurier laconicall}-, as he stands holding the boat's head steady for us to get in. "If people zuill make boats no wider than knife-blades or paper-cutters they cannot blame me if they upset," returns she carelessly, giving him her hand and preparing to step in. To my surprise — I might almost say alarm — by the very hand she gives him he detains her. " Miss Lenore, if you get in will you promise to sit still ?" " I never promise," she answers lightly, 112 " Good-bye, Sweetheart f leaving her hand peaceably In his. " When I was a child I never would promise to be a good girl, because I knew I never should be." " If you will not promise you really must not get in." '' Mitst not /" cries she, giving her head an angry toss. '' Who says must not ? Mttst not is an ugly word." '' Not so ugly as nmst in a woman's mouth," getting rather angry too. " May I ask whose boat this is ?" loftily. *"I think you said M. Panache was the name of the fellow ; but I am not a good hand at French surnames." "If it is M. Panache's boat, what right or authority have you over it, may I ask?" " None whatever," he answers quietly, " except possession, and that is nine points of the law." " Did he lend it X.o yoic f" What Jemima Says. 1 1 3 *' On the other hand, did he lend It to yoic f " Mr. Le Mesurler, I'm not joking." '* Miss Lenore, Fm not joking." " What business can it be of yours ?" ''I do not wish to see your sister drowned," with an invidiously perceptible accent on the two words. " You do not care whether / drown or not ?" snatching away her hand, and flash- ing annihilating looks at him. They do not seem to do him much harm. '' We discussed that question fully before," he answers, rather bored. '' Please promise, like a dear child," cry I, coaxingly, from the bows, where I am seated uneasily under my yellow umbrella. " Be rational," says Le Mesurler, looking at her gravely, yet with a suspicion of laughter about the eyes. '' I promised to row your sister home ; is not it only natural and Christian that I should wish to spare VOL. I. 8 114 *' Good-bye, Szucctheart T her the abject terror she suffered this afternoon ?'' " I will not promise," says Lenore doggedly, and breathing hard. " I will not be dictated to by a stranger. I will walk home." So saying, she turns sharply away, and begins to walk quickly down the glaring sun-baked towing path. ''Mr. Le Mesurier, Mr. Le Mesurier!" cry I, jumping up, and almost bringing on the catastrophe about which we have been squabbling ; "let her have her own way. She has never been thwarted in her life ; we have always let her have her own will from a child !" "For fear that she would break a blood- vessel if she had not," replies he smiling. " She told me so as we came along. Miss Lenore," raising his voice a little, " Miss Lenore ! we throw ourselves on your mercy." What yciuima Says. 115 'Xome back, come back," cry I ex- citedly, shaking my umbrella; ''you will get a sunstroke !" But Lenore is too Indignant to answer. 8—: CHAPTER VIII. WHAT THE AUTHOR SAYS. QT^?^^^ HE blandness born of after - dinnerhood is upon all DInan ; everybody Is as stiave as fed lions ; a child might play with them. The moon is holding her great yellow candle above the town, and ugly black night skulks away in corners. On the other side of the Place St. Louis, the old priest is sitting at the bottom of his garden, reading his breviary by moonlight. His white house's green shutters, that have been closed all day, to keep out the dust and WJiat tJic AiitJwr Says. 117 glare, are just opened to let In the evening cool. The mysterious family In the large yellow house, a little lower down, who always go out driving in a ramshackle old close carriage, with all the windows up, about sundown, are setting off on their nightly expedition. The Immense shadows of their horses are running up the face of the Pension Leroux : the heads and ears reach to the ^<^/^;^ windows. Madame Lange, Cesar and Peroline are out. They have gone faire de la miLsiqiic cJicz M. le Capi- taine G Flannizcin — a broken-down Irish- man, who tells the credulous natives that he has been in the Guards, and who, with his numerous progeny, lives in the graceful retirement of an entresol In the Rue de Saint ?^Ialo. The Herricks are therefore in undisputed possession of the salo7i. The piano belongs to Madame Lange, and she mostly locks it when she goes out. She has forgotten to do so ii8 ''Good-bye, Szueetheart P' to-day, and Frederic is committing piracies upon it. Like most little men, with small puny voices, he is fond of ferociously war- like and rollicking Bacchanalian songs, on the same principle, I suppose, which often induces a Hercules or a Samson to express in music his wish to be a butterfly, " In his love's bosom for to lie," or a daisy, or a swallow. Frederic has just been giving faint utterance to heathen- ish berserk sentiments, such as that to fight all day and drink all night are the only occupations really worthy a Christian gentleman's attention ; and now, leaning forwards on the music-stool, and peering near-slghtedly through his spectacles at the score, he Is piping, " Soho ! Soho ! said the bold Marco !" Mr. Le Mesurier — he is here too, It Is a few days after [the tea picnic — is leaning What the Author Says. 119 out of the window, smiling to himself and whistling inaudible accompaniments to the sineer. He is not o^io^antic enouQ'h to wish to be a butterfly, and too big to insist upon being a buccaneer. So he does not sing at all. Jemima is smiling, too, and beating time with head and foot, as she knits. Lenore is not in the room at all ; she is sitting on the front-door step, rather to the disgust of Stephanie, whose favourite seat it is, where she sits and chatters rough guttural Breton to her neighbours, in a clean stiff-winged cap, when her hard day's work is done. Lenore is chatting to nobody : she is only staring at the moon. " Does your sister sing ?" asked Le ]^Iesurier, turning away from the window. "Yes; rather well — when she chooses,'' replies Jemima, rythmically, still nodding time. " Would she sing now, if one asked her ?" I20 '' Good-bye, Sweetheart T " Probably not, but I can but try. Lenoref Lenore !" (going to the window and look- ing down). " Come in out of the damp, child ; you'll catch your death of cold." " Never did such a thing in my life, my dear." " What are you doing ?" " Only baying at the moon, as Made- moiselle Leroux's poodle did last night !" " Come up here and sing." " Could not think of superseding the present able performer." " He has stopped," puts in Paul, leaning his arms on the sill, and craning his brown neck out. "He Is exhausted. The bold Marco takes a great deal out of a fellow,, does not he. West ?" As he speaks he turns away again,, laughing, and so laughing forgets the request, about which he had never been much in earnest. A quarter of an hour passes. Frederic is still singing ; the bil- What the Aitthor Says. 121 Hard balls' gentle click from the cafe next door mixes with his voice. " Lenore ! Lenore !" cries Jemima, rising, knitting in hand, and leaning a second time out of the wide casement — " Onora ! Onora ! her mother is caUing. She sits at the lattice and hears the dew falHng, Drop after drop from the sycamores, laden With dew as with blossom, and calls home the maiden. Night cometh, Onora " — says Le Mesurler, spouting. " Onora, alias Miss Lenore, went down the place towards the foss^ five minutes ago." •' Alone ?" '' Alone." "In that demi-toilette gown ?" (with a horrified accent). *' Was it a demi-toilette ofown ?" asks Paul, with the crass ignorance of man- kind. 122 ''Good-bye, Sweetheart f " I mean without any shawl, or wrap, or cloak of any kind ?" " She went just as she was when she was sitting on the doorstep." '' Let me run and bring her back," cries West, eagerly, jumping up and snatching his hat, prepared to rush forth on his quest with devouter haste than ever Sir Galahad showed in the pursuit of the Holy Grail. " Oh, you know she never pays the slightest attention to you," answers Jemima, a little impatiently, forgetting her polite- ness in agitation, '' nor to me either, for the matter of that. Mr. Le Mesurier, I think she minds you more than most people, I don't know why ; would you mind trying to persuade her to come in out of the dew ?" • " Delighted !" says Le Mesurier, with a ready lie, walking towards the door ; "and If fair means fail, am I to employ foul ?" Lenore is not in the fossd. The grey What the AiUhor Says. 12 J towers of Duchesse Anne's castle rise be- side it like a faint dark dream ; black as Erebus, quiet as death, the tree boughs spread above him ; beneath them, on a black and silver path, he walks along — walks along slowly, enjoying his cigarette, and in no particular hurry to overtake his Holy Grail. On and on to the Place Du Guesclin, and there, a long way from him, he sees the white dimmer of a woman's dress. He walks up to the glimmer : he has found his Holy Grail. " Your sister sent me to ask you to come in out of the dew," he says, rather stiffly, and delivering his message with the exactitude of a Homeric messenger. He has come up rather behind her ; she did not perceive his approach. ** Tell my sister to mind her own busi- ness," she cries, startled and angry. '* I suppose she thinks that yoic are her own business," he answers, coldly. 124 ** Good bye, Sweetheart /" . '' At all events, I am not yoiu^sl' she says, rudely, yet laughing. Without an- other word he turns to go. " Let her catch her death of cold ! No great loss if she does !" he says to himself, beginning to light a second cigarette. He has not gone three yards when he hears a step behind him. A charming face, with little waves of moonlight rippling over it, smiles up at him. " Why are you going ?" she asks, in a low voice, as if saying something she was half ashamed of. *' I am not a spaniel, nor a Frederic Westr ''I was rude, I suppose" (hanging her head). No answer. " I often am, I fancy." " Very often " (emphatically). *' It is my way." *' It is a very bad way." WJiat the Atct/ior Says. 125 " I do not think it is qiciic all my fault cither," she says, almost humbly ; " it is partly theirs — I mean Mima's and Frederic's, and my other sister's. When I was a child, if I said anything rude they only laughed, and thought it clever. I wish they had not, now." '' So do I." "It makes people hate one a good deal," says the girl, naively. " This year we went to a ball that the 5th Dragoon Guards gave, and several of them did not ask me to dance once, because I had said things about them. I told one that he was like a pig set up on his hind legs ; so he was, but he never came near me all the evening in consequence." '' Poor fellow !" says Le Mesurier, laugh- ing. '' You could hardly blame him." " You are not angry now — you are laughing !" cries Lenore, joyously. " Tell me " — coming confidentially close to 126 '^Good-bye, Szveetheart T him—" is the bold Marco still saying Soho ?" "He was when I left." " Do not let us go home, then ; let us sit on this bench and talk." So they sit on a. bench with a back to it, in the deep shade cast by a double row of young lime trees. The heavy sweet lime flowers sway above their heads, sway so low as almost to touch their lips and cheeks. The lights from the cafe and the Hotel de la Poste opposite make little red reflections on their clothes and faces. Three Englishmen are coming back from fishing with rod and basket in their hands ; two very tall Englishmen and a very little one. At something that the little one says they all. laugh uproariously. It seems a sin to speak above one's breath in this holy moonshine. Two Frenchmen and three women saunter by in the deep shade ; it takes a little eflbrt to count how many What the Author Says. 127 there are. Whether they are old or young, pretty or ugly, who but a bat can tell in this frao^rant o^loom ? " What are you thinking of, IMiss Lenore ?" asks Paul, presently, peering a little inquisitively into his companion's face, as she gazes at the stars that are trembling like heavenly shining fruits between the dusk tree bous^hs. *' I am thinking," she answers, a little dreamily, " of how the Ranee is looking 11010, at this mimUe, down at Lehon, as it laps against those ivied steps where the monks used to bathe." " Shall I row you down there to see ?" he asks, banteringly. She springs to her feet in a moment. " Will you ? Do }ou mean really f she cries, eagerly. " Ah, no !" (her voice falling with a disappointed cadence). " I see by your eyes that )ou did not mean it — that you were only tantalising me." 128 ''Good-bye, Szucelhcaid T He feels her thin draperies wafted against his knees in the slow night-wind, as she stands before him ; the breath of the lime flowers comes passing sweet to his nostrils. It is all but dark. '' I did not mean to tantalise you," he answers, simply. " I will take you, and welcome, if you wish ; only what will your sister say ?" " She will say, ' Lenore, are you mad ?' She always says that. Perhaps I am mad ; I sometimes think so." " But what time of night is it, do you suppose ? Is not it nearly bedtime ?" he asks, taking out his watch, and trying to decipher the hour by the little crimson ofleams from the cafe. " Bedtime !" she cries, impatiently. " I feel as if I shall like never to go to bed again as long as I live. " ' What has night to do with sleep ?' " What the Author Says. 129 " All right, then — come along," says he, recklessly, seeing that he is in for it, and that it is not his business to find his com- panion in prudish scruples, which do not seem inclined to occur to her. A quarter of an hour more, and no woman's dress oflimmers white from the shaded bench in the Place Du Guesclin ; it is glimmering, instead, in M. Panache's little cock-boat on the broad bright Ranee. Death's lovely brother. Sleep, is ruling over everything ; even the river sleeps, and no passing breeze breaks its slumber. The moon comes up behind the chestnut woods, and the water lies smooth as glass ; while the trees, and the tremulous grasses, and the great squadrons of broad ox-eyes — yellow sun-disks with white rays round them — live again in the black depths, where the moon also lies drowned, like a pale bright maiden. They are floating along so stilly, so stilly, on the opaline flood. The little VOL. I. 9 130 ^^ Good-bye, Sweetheart T boat hardly m(^ves. Lenore is sitting in the stern. The red cloak Paul brought her Is drooping from her shoulders ; pearly lights are playing about her hair and her grave fair face and her wonderful eyes. "If one were fond of her, one would be In the seventh heaven, I suppose," says Paul, cynically to himself But even though one is not fond of her — even though one disapproves of her — ^even though she Is not one's style — yet flesh is w^eak, and blood is blood ; and In cool manhood, as In hot youth, blood still tingles, and pulses throb, with the seduc- tive enervation of night, proximity, and great fairness. " Shall I sing ?" asks the girl, almost In a whisper — " ' Sing ! sing ! what shall I sing ? The cat ran away with the pudding-bag string.' " " By all means, if you like." What the Author Says. 131 '' What shall I sing, really f — English, French, German, Italian " " Whatever you please. The smallest contribution thankfully received." She leans her round white elbow on her lap for a moment or two, and her head on her hand, in reflection ; then the pensive look fades out of her face, and a dare-devil smile flashes over it. '' You are a civilian, are not you ?" she asks, abruptly. " I am 710ZU. Why ?" " You cannot take my song person- ally, that is all. Listen ; I am begin- ning." This is Lenore's song, as it rings gaily out over the dumb woods and waters. Most of you, my friends, know it well enough : " Oh que j'aime les militaires ! J'aime les militaires ; 132 ''Good-bye, Sweetheart T J'aime leur uniforme coquet, Leur moustache et leur plumet. Je sais ce que je voudrais. Je voudrais etre cantiniere. Avec eux toujours je serais, Et je les griserais. Pres d'eux, vaillante et legere, Aux combats je m'elancerais — She breaks off abruptly. " Do you like it ?" " Immensely." '' That means, not at all." "It is a song that I was always parti- cularly fond of, and I think the line in which you express your intention of making your friends drunk peculiarly happy," he answers, ironically. She looks down, half-ashamed. " The ideal woman would not have sung such a song, I suppose ?" " Probably not." " Tell me," she cries, impulsively, '' is the ideal woman clothed with flesh ?" What the Author Says. 133 *' What do }'ou mean ?" *' Is she some Hvlng-, breathing woman, that you have in your mind's eye ?" He hesitates a Httle, and also reddens — unless the moon belies him — a very little. '' Since you ask me point-blank — Avell, she is." The girl turns her fair head aside, and droops it over the stream, through which she draws her hand listlessly. '' Tell me what she is like ; I wish to know," she says, presently, very softl)'. Silence for a few minutes ; then Paul beo^ins : *' She is not at all clever — of the two, I think, she is rather dull. She does not say much, but she always thinks before she speaks." " What an intolerable prig she must be!" " She talks about things, not people. She is very loving " 134 ^^ Good-bye, Szueetheart f " Pooh !" interrupts Lenore, contemptu- ously. " What woman Is not ? It is our besetting sin. What a Hst of attractions ! But tell me — tell me, is she handsome — as handsome as — as — as / am ?" she ends, laughing confusedly, and growing scarlet. The water falls drip, drip, in long lazy drops from the idle oars. " Are you handsome ?" he asks, gravely — not with impertinence, but as though wishing for information — and so asking, looks at her long and steadily in the moon- light^a familiarity of which she cannot complain, as she has brought it on herself. '' Well, yes " (drawing his breath rather hard), '* I suppose you are." She laughs again, but constrainedly. '' But waiving the question of my beauty — is she handsome — pretty ?" "I do not know," he answered, slowly. '' Some one asked me that question the IJ^/ial the AiUJior Says. 135 other clay, and I said I did not know, I do not." Lenore leans back in the stern with the rudder string in her hand. " Describe her to me. I will tell you in a moment whether she is or not." He stares absently over her head, at the viaduct, striding gigantic across the valley — at the town, with its house roofs white as silver sheets in the moonshine. '' She is small," he begins, slowly, '' veiy small ! not more than five foot one, and thin — rather too thin, perhaps," his eyes resting as he speaks, for an instant, with reluctant admiration on the superbly deve- loped figure of his vis-a-vis. " Her eyes are ," he stops short in want of an epithet. " Bright ?" suggests Lenore. " Bright ! No !" cries he, energetically repelling her suggestion with scorn. '' I hate your bright eyes. They always look 136 ^'Good-bye, SweetheaiH T metallic ; hers look at you as if they were looking through a mist, and they have a dark shady line under them." ''Belladonna!" suggests Lenore again, with supercilious brevity. " Some one said to me the other day that they were like the eyes of a shot part- ridge," he continued, not heeding her ; " so they are." " What a lackadaisical dying duck sort of idea !" '' She is pale — as pale as — as — as— a lily !" he continues, unable to find a new white simile. " That clear yet opaque look " " Like a hard-boiled ^gg'' Interrupts Lenore, scornfully. " Not in the least like a hard-boiled ^gg !" retorts he, nettled, and the river of his eloquence suddenly dried. " I do not know whether you are aware of it," says the girl, with a heightened ]\'/iat the Author Says. 137 colour, " but you have described a person in every respect the exact opposite of me." He gives a haH' smile. '' Have I ? I apologize. I really was not aware of it. I only did as you bid me." He pulls a few yards further on ; no sound but the oars turning in the rowlocks — the plash, plash, of the smitten water. Lehon i\bbey lifts roofless gables to the nightly sky, and Lehon Castle its round dim towers, whence never a knis^ht will look aoain. The water fairies have been supping on the river to-night ; they have left their rare white water-lih* cups and broad green platters behind them. " Stop rowing," cries Lenore, imperi- oush", " I want to leather some of those lilies." He obeys. Motionless they lie among the great round leaves, and white chalices. She leans back over the stern, and pulls 138 ''Good-bye, Sweetheart f with her strong white hands at the tough long stalks. " What will you do with them ?" asks Le Mesurier, indolently, his unwilling eyes taking in the lazy grace of the half-recum- bent form, of the large white outstretched arm, at which a happy moonbeam is catch- ing ; " they have not at all a nice smell in water — faint and sickly — they will only die." No answer. " What do you want with them ?" he asks, rising, he does not know why, and stepping over the little seat that intervenes between them. '' You will see," she answers, briefly. They are so wet — so wet, as they lie in her lap. He watches her as she dries one dripping bud with her pocket-handkerchief, and then with quick deft fingers places it closed and sleepy in her hair. *' Do you like it T' she asks in a half IV hat the A lit Ji or Says. 139 whisper, raising" her eyes to his, with a slow briofht smile. How still it Is ! Not a sound ; every- thing is asleep ; only the wakeful moon sees his cold quick eyes flash. He would have laughed this morning if you had told him that Lenore Herrick could make his heart beat as it is beatinof now. '' What would you have me say ?" he answers, in the same key in which she spoke. " If I did not like It, would you have me tell you so T '' Yes." " I do like it," he says, half angrily ; '' you know I do ; you knew I did before you asked me." '' Take It, then," she says with a low laugh, holding it out to him. *' Keep It as a memento of the fast girl who zco?ild go out boating with you, against your will, at ten o'clock at night — of the girl who may be very good ftui, if one goes iii 140 ''Good-bye, Szueetheart T for that sort of thing, bitt is not yonr styled He reddens. " What do you mean ?" " You will not have it ? Well, then, here it goes !" As she speaks she flings the blossom away, far out into the river. It falls with a little flop, and a little gleam of broken silver into the water, and so floats down to Dinan. " What do you mean ?" he cries, eagerly. *' How impatient you are ! I did want it ; I held out my hand for it. I will have it yet !" So saying, he snatches up one of the oars, and makes frantic lunges with it at the little valueless prize. It is exactly three inches too far off for him to reach. Paul's arms are long, and he hates being- beaten. Unmindful of the tittuppy nature of little cock-boats, he leans farther and What the Author Says. 141 farther over the side. It is almost within his reach — it is quite within his reach ; he has got it — has he, though ? '' Take care ! take care !" cries Lenorc, Avildly ; but it is too late. In another moment, M. Panache's boat is floating away, bottom upwards, after the water-hly, and two people are struggling and splash- ing in the moonlit Ranee. CHAPTER IX. WHAT THE AUTHOR SAYS. HEN Paul rises to the surface, sputtering and blowing uninten- tional bubbles, his first thought naturally Is, " Where Is Lenore ?" At about three yards' distance from him he sees something white. He swims towards it, and catches at it ; It is Lenore. Feel- ing his grasp, she flings out her two arms wildly, and clutches him spasmodically round the neck. " Loose me !" he cries, breathlessly, still sputtering. '' Lenore, Lenore ! you will drown us both !" What the Author Says. 143 But Lenore is too much iDlindcd and deafened by the water to pay any heed to his remonstrances. She only clasps him the more convulsively. With a strong- effort he manages to unlock her arms, and grasping her firmly with one hand, with the other strikes out for shore. Swimming in one's clothes is never plea- sant, but swimming in one's clothes, with only one hand at one's disposal — the other being occupied in supporting a perfectly helpless inert woman — is more unpleasant still. Happily it does not last long ; the adven- ture is not of heroic dimensions. Not half a dozen yards from the fatal lilies the bul- rushes have advanced their thick green standards, and where the bulrushes are water is shallow and footing easily gained. The flaofs and the rushes swish aQ^ainst his face and buffet it rudely as he scrambles through them, half dragging half carr)-ing his companion through the deep river mud 144 ''Good-bye, Sweetheart T and the chilly midnight waters. Having deposited her in a limp bundle on the bank, he sits down beside her and pants. As for her, she is a little stunned by the shock of the plunging water ; that is all. She is not wont to faint, and has not fainted now. Presently she sits up, and, pushing her dripping hair out of her be- wildered eyes, says gaspingly : '' Don't scold me ; it was you that did it. '' I know it was," he answers, as dis- tinctly as the chattering of his teeth will let him. " Well, you did not let me drown after all, you see," she says, with a smile, that, though forlorn and drenched, is still half malicious. " Well, no ; not this time." They look at one another for a minute, then both burst into a simultaneous fit of violent laughter. What the Ant hoi' Says. 145 '' What a ridiculous drowned rat you do look !" cries she, politely. *' The same to you," he answers, griml)-, as he sits dripping dismally on the dry June grass. *' What have you done with your hat ?" " The same as you have done with yours, I fancy." " And Mima's Connemara cloak ?" " Half way back to Connemara by now." '' I have lost one of my shoes," says the girl, half crying, '' and the other is full of mud." She looks up at him piteously, as inno- cently as a baby might do. The Ranee has washed all the coquetr}- out of her eyes, on whose long lashes the river drops are hanging. " How shall I ever get home ? I shall have to hop all the way." " Perhaps I might carry you," he says, not unkindly, leaning forwards to examine VOL. I. 10 146 ''Good-bye, Sweetheart T the unlucky shoe ; while his nose and his beard and his short hau' water the butter- cups and refresh them. "- Carry me !" she cries, derisively. " Why, I weigh nine stone eight ! I might as well talk of carrying you !" He is not particularly anxious to carry her, and does not repeat his offer. '' How cold I am !" she says, shudder- ing. " How it runs down one's back, does not it ? I wish one's clothes would not stick to one like court-plaister. I am sure it will be the death of me." " By-the-bye," cries he, a brilliant idea striking him, and beginning to search franti- cally in his coat-pockets (we, in Dinan, never dress for dinner, therefore he is still In his shooting-jacket), " if it is not gone — no, thank God ! here it is !" — drawing out a little silver flask — ''take a pull at It, it will keep the life in you." " What is it ?" What the Author Says. 147 '' Brandy." '' Will It make me drtcnk .?" she a^ks, gravely, holding it In her hand, and trem- bling all over like a smooth-haired terrier on a frosty day. He laughs. ''No such luck. It would be the best thing that could possibly happen to you, if It did ; but it will not, I am afraid. Go on." She obeys, and drinks. It burns her throat, but her teeth become a shade less vocal. He follows her example ; and then, jumping to his feet, gives himself a prodi- gious shake, like a Newfoundland who has just deposited the recovered stick at his master's feet. " Come on," he says ; '' we had better be getting home as quick as we can. Let us pray that we may meet no one ! I feel uncommonly small, do not you ?" "Uncommonly!" replies Lenorc, with assenting emphasis. 10 — 2 148 " Good-bye, Sweethem^t F' *' Give me your hand, and let me help you up." She does as he bids her, and as she rises to her feet a fresh deluge rustles, drips, pours down from her. "" How heavy water is !" she says, stag- gering. " I have half the Ranee about me. I feel like the woman who was killed by the weight of her jewels." " Stay ; let me wring out your clothes a little for you." He kneels before her on the grass, and with both hands twists and strains, and wrings her thin flabby gown and her soaked petticoats, as a laundress might. '' There, is that better ?" *' Yes, thanks. I think so — a little," re- plies she, doubtfully. *' Come on, then," — employing the invari- able phrase with which a Briton embarks upon any undertaking, from a walk with his sweetheart upwards to a Balaklava JVhat the Author Says. 149 charge. Without more speech they be^in to tramp along the towing-path, leaving behind them a track as of a thunder shower or a leaky water-cart. On to the landing stage, up the steep steps to the highway. At the corner of the silent shininof road a great rock abutting casts a sharp black shadow ; and out of this shadow, and into the light come two people, running in dis- orderly haste. " Your sister and West to the rescue," says Le Mesurier, speaking for the first time since they set off homewards. " My long lost Frederic !" says Lenore, with grim merriment ; " flying to the river- side to poke about for my dead body with dracrs and a boat-hook. How I wish we could avoid them ! How small and thin, and drowned I feel !" " Lenore, is that you ? where Jiave you been ? how wet you are ! what has hap- pened ?" cries Jemima, incoherently, scorn- 150 " Good-bye, Sweetheart T ing punctuation, and precipitating herself upon her sister. "Jemima, my sin has found me out," replies Lenore, solemnly. '' I made Mr. Le Mesurier take me out on the water ; and in order to pay off all old scores, he upset me." " And himself into the bargain," says Le Mesurier, laughing. " Jemima, your Connemara cloak is just about arriving at St. Malo ; so is my hat, so is Mr. Le Mesurier s." " And you are not hurt, only drenched ?'^ cries West, tremulously ; and, forgetting his shyness, lays an audacious hand upon one of the shoulders that are glimmering,, so wet and shining, through her transparent gown. " Not hurt, only drenched," she echoes^ laughing cheerily, and eluding him, while her face smiles out, pale and pretty and altered, from the thick frame of heavy What the AiitJior Says. 151 damp hair that cleaves so closely and lovingly to cheeks and throat. " See, Jemima !" exhibiting- a small muddy foot, *' my right shoe has gone the way of all shoes." ******* " A very blessed upset !" says Paul to himself, half an hour later, oracularly shak- ing his head, as he scrambles into dry clothes at the Hotel de la Poste. " She was doing her best to make a fool of me, and she had all but succeeded." CHAPTER X. WHAT THE AUTHOR SAYS. WEEK has gone by. Lenore's teeth no longer chatter. She is quite dry again, and has bought a new hat seven times more coquettish than the drowned one. She keeps, however, a tender memento of her adventure with Paul in the shape of a sore throat and trifling cough, which not even the unwonted dose of cognac has kept off. Breakfast at the Hotel de la Poste is over. The twenty or thirty commercial travellers and clerks, who, according to the wont of French What the AntJior Says. i ^}, hotels, share that feast with the visitors and tourists, have disappeared again into private Hfe. Paul is sitting in the little dark salon, writing a letter to his sister, with a sputter- ing pen. Paul's caligraphy is rather like that of John Bell, of the Chancery Bar, who wrote three several hands : one that no one but himself could read, one that his clerk could read and he could not, and one that nobody could read. Paul is just staring- hard at his production, and wondering what on earth was the mystic remark that he had made at the top of the second page — searching his mind for the history of the past week, in order to be able to give a guess as to what it was likely to have been, when the door opens, and admits Mr. West. " Le Mesurier !" *' Well !" (not looking up). West enters, and walks over to the win- dow. 154 '' Good-bye, Sweetheart f *' Well !" says Paul, again, abandoning- the idea of reading over his letter, and be- ginning to fold it. West advances to the table, and lays a small tremulous hand on his friend's broad shoulder. " Le Mesurier, I — I — have a favour to ask of you." '' My dear fellow, do not say that it is to lend you five pounds," cries Le Mesu- rier, in affected alarm. " I have had severe losses myself lately ; I have a heavy engagement to meet to-morrow — " " Oh, pooh ! it is not that, of course ; but — but — I have something to say to you." " Say on." "Not here " (glancing round uneasily) ; *' we mio^ht be overheard." " By whom ? The noble army of shop- boys dispersed Itself half an hour ago, and the landlord informed me yesterday that What iJic AiLtJior Says. 155 the only English words he knew were, ' Sneep, snap, snorum, a cockolorum !' " " Would you mind coming outside for a moment ?" says Frederic, pertinaciously. " All rlcrht. Give us a llo^ht !" He leisurely folds and directs his letter, and then takes out and lights a cigar, whilst West stands beside him, shifting* feverishly from leg to leg, and rolling up his dumpling hat Into a hundred weird shapes. The}' emerge from the hotel door ; the voihnr is just starting for Caulnes, drawn by a pony and a huge white horse, both in the worst possible spirits. A man, all clad In white flannel, Is stepping Into the Interior ; a fat priest, with his limp cassock clinging about his legs, climbing up Into the dust)- banquette ; the blue-bloused driver mendinof a rift in the rotten rope harness ; and over all, the broad sun laughing down, and the lime flowers from the Place Du Guesclin shak- 156 ''Good-bye, Sweetheart T ing out their lovely scent on the morning air. The two men cross the street, enter the place, and sit down on a bench— the very one on which Paul and Lenore sat in the dark, a week ago. " Well !" says Le Mesurier expectantly, after they have sat three minutes without speaking. '' I am going home — to England," says Frederic abruptly. '' Have you brought me out here to tell me that ?" asks Paul, banteringly. Silence ! " So you are going home, are you, eh ?" pursues Paul, carelessly. "So will I, I think. Let us toss who shall pay — heads or tails," throwing up a napoleon into the air and catching it. But Frederic's thoughts are far enough away from heads or tails. The diligence is just moving off. " Allez ! Allez /" cries the driver, flicking with his long whip the jy/iat the Author Says. 157 old white horse's sharp back. The bells give a cracked jingle ; off they go ! " I am naturally particularly loth to leave this place just now," says West, his spec- tacles mournfully fixed on the lessening- vehicle. '' Are you ?" says Le Mesurier, staring at him obtusely. " Why ? and wh)^ natu- rally 7' Frederic pulls a delicate lime leaf that is fluttering just above his nose, and tears it into thin green strips. '' I thought," he says, blushing and stam- mering, '' that you must have seen that there was — was something between me, and — and — and — Miss Lenore." Paul shakes his head. " Indeed I can- not say that I ever noticed anything of the kind," he answers bluntly, feeling rather angry, he cannot imagine why. '' Did not you ?" (pushing his spectacles down on the bridge of his nose, and gazing 158 " Good-bye, Szueetheart P' over them with meek surprise at his friend,) " I fancied that my attachment — my — my devotion — must have been patent to the most superficial observer." " My dear fellow, of course they were," says Paul laughing, not ill-naturedly. " But you said something between you and Miss Lenore. Nov/ the w^ord bctzueen implies that there are two to the bargain." '' And you think that there Is only one to this bargain," says Frederic despon- dently, looking down, while the blush fades out of his face, and the gay motes run up and down about his hair. '' Good Lord, West !" a little impatiently, " how can I tell ? Does the girl confide in me, do you suppose ?" " No doubt you think," says Frederic, turning towards his companion again, while his sensitive mouth twitches painfully, " that I am not the sort of man to take a hand- some spirited girl's fancy ?" What the Author Says. 159 " How can I tell ?" repeats Le Mesu- rier, embarrassed by the exactitude with which his friend has hit his thouofht. " ' Different men are of different opinions ; Some like apples, some like inions — ' and I daresay women are the same." How drowsily the bees are humming high up among the faint thick blooms ! It is enough to send one to sleep. " After all," says Frederic, brightening a little, under the influence of his com- panion's homely saw, " I am not altogether sure that the mere fact of her treating me cavalierly — chaffing me, calling me names, and so forth, tells entirely against me. It is the way of some girls, I believe. Even if Lenore did like a fellow, she would die sooner than shew it." '' Would she ?" says Le Mesurier with a half absent smile, throwing his head back, and staring up into the flickering tremulous i6o " Good-bye, Sweetheai^t P' leafage above him, while his thoughts travel back over the past week, to the silver wash of a midnight stream — to a lady with pearly lights playing about her, holding out a water lily to him, and saying with a slow soft smile, '' Take it then." He is woke out of his trance by two Bre- ton housewives, chattering past in those shrill screechy voices that God has given to Frenchwomen alone, as they step out stoutly in their short heavy petticoats and trim black stuff stockings. " Now I have told you the state of things with me," says Frederic with a ner- vous laugh, " perhaps you can guess what is the favour I am going to ask of you ?" " I !•" says Le Mesurier, giving a great start, and looking thoroughly puzzled. " Guess." '' Not I. Perhaps," with a brilliant flash of intuition, " it is to ask me to be best What tJie AiUhoj^ Says, i6i man : only that is no great favour, and it is rather premature, is not it ?" Frederic jumps up suddenly. ''If you are going to make a jest " he says, with a hurt intonation. '' My good fellow," cries Paul, energeti- cally, laying his hand upon his shoulder, *' I give you my word of honour that I know no more than the dead what you are driving at. I never was good at guessing. I never found out a riddle in all my life. I give it up." West looks at him distrustfully, but seeing no mirth, only boundless bewilder- ment, in his friend's ugly face, he continues, speaking with difficulty, looking down and kicking about some stray cherrystones that a former occupant of the bench has left strewn on the ground : " I do not know why it is, I am sure — cannot make out — but you have certainly VOL. I. II 1 62 ''Good-bye, Sweethem^t f more influence with Miss Lenore than any- one else has." "Have I.?" says Paul shortly, turning away his head. '' She will do for you what she will not do for either her sister, or me." " Will she ?" still more shortly, while a slight flattered flush rises to his forehead. *' I, really have not discovered it." '■■ And such being the case," continues West, with increasing hesitation, stammer- ing, floundering, and reddening ever more and more, " I thought that perhaps you might " " I might what f asks Paul, still staring stupidly at his friend. '' I thought," says West, plunging des- perately in medias res, seeing that he is not likely to get much help from his com- panions intelligence, " that you might perhaps — say something about me to her What the Author Says, i6 J — sound her feelings with regard to me, to a certain extent." '* I I ! !" says Paul, turning sharp round ; the mystified expression of his face giving place to one of enormous astonishment. '' I ! my dear West ? Are you qtiite cracked ?" "She would at all events give you a hearing," says Frederic, downcast but per- tinacious. " Would she ?" cries the other, laughing violently. '' I very much doubt it. She would be more likely to bang the door in my face and tear out my few remaining hairs, and quite right too." '' Perhaps it is because you saved her life," pursues West ruefully, keeping on his own tack. " Saved her life 1" breaks in Paul, now really angry. "My good fellow, for God's sake do not talk like a fool, whatever you do ! To upset a woman into a ditch and I I — 2 164 ^'Good-bye, Sweetheart f then pull her out, can hardly be termed * saving her life,' even in these days, when every little thing is called by some big name." Silence ; the little yellow lights glancing and flashing up and down about their hats and coats. " West," says Paul abruptly, rising from his seat, thrusting his hands down to the very bottom of his pockets, in his favourite attitude, and looking full and keenly into his companion's downcast face, '' suppose you got Miss Lenore, what on earth would you do with her ?" " Do with her ?" repeats West, staring. " What do you mean ?" " Can you fancy that girl a parson's wife ?" says Le Mesurier, beginning to laueh, while with Inner vision he sees again that dare-devil smile, those lovely half-lowered eyes, that had kindled such unwilling fire in his own cold veins. '' Do What the Author Says. 165 not be angry with me, West ; I could not stop laughing now If you were to kill me. I think I see her holding forth at a mothers' meeting, or teaching at a Sunday-school ! Poor little wretches ! would not she cuff them !" " She is so young," says Frederic, depre- catlngly. '' I should hope that one might be able to uioitld her " '' Moidd her !" echoes Paul, derisively. '' My dear boy, It would take you all your time. She would comb your hair with a three-legged stool." A pause. '* I am to understand, then," says Fre- deric, trying to speak stiffly, but with a suspicion of tears In his voice, "that you decline to help me ?" " Decline to propose to Miss Lenore for you ? I do, distinctly," replies Paul, stoutly. '' Perhaps," says Frederic, with the easy 1 66 ''Good-bye, Sweetheart P' baseless jealousy of unlucky love, " you would have no such objection to speak to her on your own account ?" A dark unbecoming flush rushes over Le Mesurier s face. "I !" he says, angrily. " What are you talking about, West ? Must everybody be in love with her because yon are ? Did not I tell you, the very first day I saw her — the day that she took it into her head to play that unaccountable prank — very bad form it was too — that she was not my style ? No more she is. I must say that she im- proves upon acquaintance ; but, no, no — not my line at all." Frederic sits down upon the bench again, in a stooped shapeless attitude of utter despondency. ''Why cannot you ask her yourself?" inquires Le Mesurier, with a mixed feeling of compassion for the sufferer s misery and raging contempt for his poverty of spirit. What the Autho7'' Says. 167 " If a thing is worth having, it is surely worth askincr for." " It would be no use," replies West de- jectedly ; " she would not listen to me — she never does ; she would only laugh, and turn everything I said into ridicule." " Why on earth do not you go in for the old one instead ?" asks Paul impatiently. " She would suit you down to the ground. She would listen to you fast enough, and she would not need any moulding." " I dare say it would have been happier for me if I could have fancied her," replies West, with the admirable conceit of man, in whose vocabulary ''ask" and ''have' are supposed to be interchangeable terms. " She is a dear good girl, and really fond of parish work. But no no " (with a heavy sigh), " that is impossible now." He covers his face with both hands, and relapses into silence. Paul eyes him doubtfully for a few minutes ; then, laying 168 " Good-bye, Sweetheart f his hand on his shoulder, says, not un- kindly : '' Cheer up, old man ! It is a long lane that has no turning. I would do anything in reaso7i I could for you, for old acquaint- ance' sake ; but what you ask is not in reason — come, now, is it ?" *' Perhaps not " (in a stifled voice). *' She would box my ears, or order me out of the house, as likely as not ; she is quite capable of either," says Paul, trying to steel himself in his resolution in propor- tion as he finds it melting under the fire of his compassion. "No doubt — I ought not to have asked you," West says, lifting his face from his hands, which fall nervelessly on his knees. " I should not have thought of doing so if I had not known what an opinion she had of you." '' Has she ?" says Paul, colouring again slighdy, while a warm glow of self-satisfac- What the AtUhor Says, 169 tion steals pleasantly over him. *' But now, my dear fellow, do think what a fool I should look. How should I begin ? How should I 2fo on ? How should I finish ?" " I would leave all that to you, of course." '' No, no," says Le Mesurler, rising has- tily ; " npon my sottl, I cannot ; it is impos- sible. I have no opinion of go-betweens. Ask for yourself, and take your answer, whatever it is, like a man." CHAPTER XL WHAT THE AUTHOR SAYS. RAG, is a good dog, but Hold- fast is a better. Mr. Le Mesu- rier, however, shows himself incapable of being the latter — incapable of keeping to the wise and rational resolution expressed at the close of the last chapter. On the morning of the day following that on which Frederic preferred his request, Paul might have been seen, walking slowly and with a hang-dog air, in the direction of the Pension Leroux. He is smoking like a chimney ; his eyes are fixed on the W/iat the Aiiihor Says. 171 ground, and his hands are buried deeper than ever in the pockets of his old grey shooting-jacket. " I woukl give any one twenty pounds to stand in my shoes for the next half-hour," he says to himself as he drags his feet one after another through the calf market, be- tween the miserable calves, flung down roughl}', with legs tied together, and heads moving wistfully from side to side, to lie for hours together, baking helpless, and unpitied, in the midday sun. Paul need not have o^one near the calf market at all ; it is quite out of his way ; but then it takes a little longer. He stands for a quarter of an hour starinof in at the clever little terra- cotta models of men and beasts, in M. Noel Le Ouillec's small shop-window, close to the Porte Saint Louis ; but however ingenious two clay pigs, set up on their hind-legs and walking arm-in-arm, or a donkey playing a concertina, ma}' be, 1 72 '' Good-bye, Sweethea7^t /" it is impossible to stare at them for •ever. '' Please God she is out !" he says piously, turning with a sigh through the ^^Ay porte. But she is not out. As he •comes in sight of the salon-\Nm.di0^s[ he sees two arms resting on the sill ; a woman in a bright blue gown and with bright brown hair leaning out. It is not Jemima. Je- mima is not addicted to gay colours, save in the matter of that Connemara cloak, that Providence has sent sailinof down the Ranee to Saint Malo. The cherry market is held in the Place St. Louis. Groups of snowy-headed women with great eared caps are trudging about the little square, with huge baskets of piled-up cheiries, shaded by great cotton umbrellas — little luscious black cherries, juicy red ones, pale fleshy whitehearts. Lenore is in treaty for some of the latter. " Tenez /" she cries, sending her clear IV hat the Author Says, 175 English voice, fresh as the voice of a waterfall or of a blackbird on a i^rcen April evening, down through the sing-song French screams below, and pointing with her fore-finger to a tempting heajD — " Cojn- bien r '' Quaf S07CS la liinr'' replies a weather- beaten little housewife briskly. The girl's eyes wander round the bas- kets to see whether any other saleswoman has bigger cherries than those under her notice, and so wandering, they fall on Paul's upturned face. Instantly she forgets that such fruit as cherries exists. " Anybody at home T' asks Paul, shading his face with his hand and smiling up. ** It depends upon who 'anybody' Is," she answers gravely. ''If anybody means Madame Lange, she is out ; If anybody means Jemima, she is out ; If anybody means me, I am not out." " I may come up, then ?" 1 74 ',' Good-bye, Sweetheart /" "If you are sure that you can find your way," retorts she, laughing. He turns and enters the house. Old Mdlle. Leroux puts her head out from the door of the dining-room, where she Is sitting, mending table-linen, waggles her grey curls and yellow ribbons, and cries '' Bon jotLT, Monsiettr P' cheerily. " Oh, for a brandy and soda !" sighs Paul to himself as he reaches the landing. Screwing up his fast-oozing courage, he marches in. Lenore has turned away from the window to greet him ; she looks as if she were a piece of the summer sky, all blue and smiling. " You must not stay long," she says, stretching out a ready hand to him ; " it is Wednesday ; and on Wednesday we are obliged to evacuate this salon, because it is Madame Lange's clay for receiving. Fancy receiving here f (looking round contempt- uously). What the Atithor Says. 175 '' Well, are not you rcceivmg here your- self now ?" says Paul, trying to speak Avith airy nonchalance, and feeling as if he were looking extremely sheepish. " Are not you receiving me f " '' Oh, yes, but then you are nobody," she says, with a gay little laugh. " Thanks." " I mean you are only one — not a party," laughing again, and standing before him, straight and fresh and beautiful. " She is meat for his masters " — is Le Mesurier's involuntary thought ; and so thinking looks at her (unknowing it) with grave critical intentness. Under that look her great frank eyes fall suddenly, and her colour comes and goes, goes and comes, in tremulous carnation. " I am so glad you have come," she says, beginning to talk very fast. '' Mima is gone out sketching with Mdlle. Pero- line, and I have been so hard-up for some- 1 76 " Good-bye, Sweetheart f thing to do, that I have been reduced to trying to educate Monsieur Charles. Look at him ! He is rather wobbly, per- haps, but not so bad for a beginner, is her So speaking, she points to where, on a small stool, Mdlle. Leroux's unhappy poodle sits dismally upright on tottering shorn hind-quarters, zvith his arm in a sli^tg ; that is to say, with one poor little paw unmercifully tied, with a bit of blue ribbon, round his neck. '' Faites mendiant Monsie^cr Charles /" cries the young girl, flinging herself on her knees on the floor before him. '' Up ! up ! Unfortunately he does not understand English !" *' Does not he ?" '' He has been going through a regular course of exercises," says Lenore, gravely. " Just before you came in I put one of M. Cesar's hats on his head, and a pair of old What the Aiithor Says. 177 Mdlle. Leroux's spectacles on his nose, and you can have no conception how hke Frederic he looked." As she kneels there, with all her blue draperies spread about the floor, and the dimples appearing and disappearing in her cheeks, a spasm of unwilling admiration contracts his heart. '* Frederic is going," he says, brusquely, turning his head away, and looking out of window, ''going home, to England, to- morrow." "Is he ?" says the girl, carelessly ; " why does not he come and say good-bye ' to us then ? — or are his feelings too many for him ?" ''He is talkinof of cominof this after- noon." " I hope he will not cry, or have a great access of emotion ; he generally has at this sort of crisis ; it always makes me laugh, don't you know, and that looks so unfeel- VOL. I. 12 1 78 " Good-bye, Sweetheart /" ing," she says, glancing appeallngly up at him. " You are unfeeling !" he blurts out, un- justifiably, with a mistaken feeling of loyalty towards his friend. She looks at him quickly, to see whether he Is joking, but, perceiving that he Is serious, says quietly, and without anger : " Am I ? — what makes you think so ?" *' I gather It from your own words." " About Frederic ?" she answers, com- posedly. '' Poor dear little gentleman ! We shall miss him very much — getting tickets and claiming luggage ; but you would hardly expect me to go Into hysterics over him, would you ?" He Is silent, meditating on the utter bootlessness of his errand. " Would you ?" she repeats, pertinaci- ously. She has sunk down In a sitting attitude on the floor, her idle hands He white as milk in her lap. Monsieur JVhat the Author Says. i 79 Charles has availed himself of the diver- sion effected in his favour to abandon his upright posture, hobble off on three legs to a corner under the piano, where he spends himself in vain efforts to bite off his blue ribbon. " It would be much better for you if you had some one to go into hysterics about," says Paul, drawing a small cane chair near Lenore, and resolving to^attack the fortress indirectly. She blushes vividly ; some girls blush at a nothing ; other girls blush at nothing. " Would it ?" she says. " You will not be angry with me for speaking plainly to you ? We have seen a good deal of each other, considering how short a time it is since we first met, have not we ?" says he, with a benevolent sense of fatherly enjoyment in lecturing this fair delinquent, this embodied storm, whom only he can calm; "but you are one of 12 — 2 i8o ^^ Good-bye, Sweetheart P^ those women who would be much better and happier married than single /" ** Am I ?" in a very low voice. " You ought to marry either a tyrant or a slave," continues he, surprised at his own eloquence ; " either a fellow who would knock under completely to you, or a fellow who would make yotc knock under com- pletely." ** And which would you recommend, may I ask ?" she says, lifting her eyes archly, yet with difficulty, to his face. " \xi yoitr case, I think, the slave." She looks slightly disappointed, but makes no rejoinder. '' I do you the justice to think," pursues Paul, warmed by the fire of his own rhetoric, "that a man's looks would not influence you much — that he would not be damned in your eyes, even if he had the misfortune not to be good-looking." She looks at him again, bravely and What the Author Says, i8i firmly this time. " You are right ; I hate your beauty-men, they trespass on (nir preserves," laughing. " If a fellow had been fond of you, ever since he had known you, then," continues Paul, drawing his chair three inches nearer, and half wishing that he were not a proxy ; *' if he had never cared two straws for any other woman — if he were a really good fellow at bottom, even though he might not have much to recommend him in the eyes of the world — you wcuid not send him away quite without hope, even though you do turn him into ridicule now and then ?" " Into ridicule," she says, stammering ; " what do you mean ?" ''Well, we will not say anything about that — but, you would not send him away quite without hope, would you ?" Her lips tremble and form some w^ord, but it is inaudible. 1 8 2 " Good-bye, Sweetheart I ' ' " You will at least listen to him when he comes this afternoon ?" says Le Mesurier, with a sigh at his own magnanimity. " Listen to him ? To whom ?" she asks, lifting her head in bewilderment, while the colour dies out of her cheeks. " Whom ? Why, of whom have we been talking all along ? Frederic, of course," replies Paul, a little blankly. There is a painful pause ; the girl's face has grown ghastly, and her eyes are dilated in a horrible surprise. '' I am to understand, then," she says, in a husky choked voice, ''that you are his messenger — that you have been good enough to take the trouble of making love to me off his hands ?" They have both risen, and are confront- ing one another. It would be hard to say which of the two, considerinor their different complexions, were the paler. " Tell him," she says, making a strong What the Author Says. 183 effort over herself, and speaking each slow syllable with painful distinctness, " to do his own errands next time." As she speaks she points to the door. Half of Paul's vision Is fulfilled. She has not boxed his ears — he wishes to heaven that she would — but she has turned him out of the house. He Is downstairs and In the little hall before he perceives that he has left his hat behind him. He runs up- stairs, three steps at a time, in his hurry to fetch it and be out of the house. He en- ters the salon hurriedly, and Is half-way to- wards the table, when he stops short with an expression of shocked astonishment ; for, on the little stiff sofa, Lenore is lying, long and limp, her face hidden In her hands, her body, and all her smart blue gown, shaken with great violent sobs. " Good God ! what is the matter ?" he cries, hastily. " What has happened ? Are you ill r 184 ''Good-bye, Sweetheart T Hearing his voice, she starts, and buries her face deeper than ever in the Httle hard bolster, as if trying to hide it for ever from the Hght. " Lenore ! Lenore !" cries the young man in high excitement, flinging himself on his knees beside her, entirely forgetting his proxy character, and speaking now alto- gether on his own account. '' What have I done ? Tell me ! Have I said anything to vex you ? If I thought I had I would cut out my own tongue." She does not stir ; but through her fingers he sees the hot tears trickling, and, stoop- ing over her, hears her murmur almost un- intelligibly, in a voice of choked rage and shame : '' Leave me alone ! Why have you come back ? Go away !" '* I will never go, until you tell me what I have done !" cries Paul, quite forgetting himself; and, so saying, with his two hands, What the Author Says. 185 by main force draws hers away from her face. ''Tell me — Lenore ! Tell me — darling f^^ Her lovely eyes are drowned In tears ; her cheeks are crimsoned with shameful weeping — weeping for hivi — as, with a throb of irrepressible passionate exultation, he feels. Whether divinino^ the exultation or not, she wrenches herself away from him. " What do you mean ?" she cries, flash- ing at him through her tears. " I told you to go ! I hate you! Go!!'' So he goes. * Evening again, and bedtime. The market-women have sold all their wares, and gone home again. The old priest in the white house has just opened his door, and let out two dogs, in a whirlwind of excitement ; but for them the place is 1 86 ''Good-bye, Siveetheart !'' empty and silent. The two Misses Her- rlck are In the elder one's bedroom. Lenore is sitting on the edge of the low bed ; her cheeks are as white as privet- flowers, and there are red rims round her eyes. Jemima Is devoured with curiosity as to the cause of these phenomena, but she does not ask. " Jemima," says her sister brusquely, *' let us leave this place ! Let us move on somewhere else !" " Leave DInan ! — leave Mr. Le Mestt- rier !'' cries Jemima, archly, raising her eyebrows, as she stands before the glass, screwing up her pale thin hair Into a little lump at the top of her head, and drawing a white crochet net over It, In preparation for her virgin slumbers. '' I am sick of DInan and Mr. Le Mesu- rler!" rejoins Lenore, petulantly. '' Sick of DInan !— sick of Mr. Le Mesu- rier 1" exclaims the other, now thoroughly^ What the Author Says. 187 astonished, turning round with her mouth open. " Since when ?" ** Since five -and -twenty minutes past eleven this morning, if you wish to be exact," repHes Lenore, with candid bitter- ness. '' There — do not tease, but let us go !" '' Go where ?" *' ' Anywhere, anywhere out of the world !' " answers the young girl, falling back wearily on the bed, and dishevelling the cool trim pillow on which her sister's chaste head is to repose. " To Guingamp, to see t\\Q pardon^ " And what is a pardon, pray ? for I have not the remotest idea," answers the elder, coming towards the bed, having finished her night-toilet, in the severe sim- plicity of which she looks at least twenty years older than in her day one. *' If you had read novels less, and your Murray more, you would not have needed 1 88 ''Good-bye, Sweetheart!'' to ask that question," replies Lenore, roll- ing her head about. " A pardon is a sort of religious fete ! very dull, I do not doubt, but," — with a tired sigh — *' it all comes in the day's work ; let us go !" =r^ CHAPTER XII WHAT JEMIMA SAYS. =?^^/^ E are at Gulngamp. We have - been here tvro hours. Two \os2is^^^ ' hours ao^o we arrived, hot and angr}' ; hustled b)* thronging groups of peasants, that are pressing into the little town to receive the annual pardon of their sins, and open a fresh account with God. The Hotel de France brims over with guests, insomuch that we have been rele- gated to a stuffy little chamber aic qiiatrihnc, into which the afternoon sun beats full ; hotter than ten thousand iQO ''Good-bye^ Sweetheart f Christmas fires. Just now we asked for hot water, to wash our dirty faces ; and a woman in a huge starched white collar, and clear cap, brought in some in a tiny teapot. This has put the culminating-point to our despair. It is one of those days when one's very soid is hot, and longs to throw off the heavy cloak of the body; a day when one would fain take off one's flesh, and sit in one's bones, according to Sydney Smith's time-honoured waggery. It is not windless ; on the contrary, there is a very perceptible air ; but it is such air as meets you at the mouth of a furnace. Lenore has abandoned the struggle with circum- stances. She has acknowledged herself beaten, and lies all along, in extremest dis- habille, on the narrow bit of parquet between the two beds, where the hard oak communicates a little coolness to the back. Her head rests on a pillow that she has pulled down ; a white dressing-gown is What yeinima Says. 191 loosely wrapped about her, and her small bare feet wander about Impatiently in the vain search for a cool spot on the hot boards. Now and again, odd, sluggish, beetleish animals, with slate-coloured bodies, crawl over her outflung arms. She has just energy enough left to shake them off, and call piteously to me to come and kill them with my shoe-heel. Our two windows and our door are open ; we are trying to believe that we are in a draught. A regiment is passing through Guingamp ; the officers are billeted on our hotel. Every now and then one hears the clink of a sabre and the sound of heavy feet coming down our corridor. " Heavens, Jemima ! shut the door !" cries my sister, unwilling to be exposed in her present sketchy toilette to the gaze of the French army. I spring forward and close it ; and as soon as the large-busted small-waistcd hero, in his hot red trousers 192 " Good-bye, Szveetheart P ' and tight epauletted frock-coat, has passed, fling it wide again. I have been unpack- ing, my head buried in my small canvas- covered box ; it is more than woman born of woman can bear. I rise and lean out of the window. Outside a lugubrious horn is playing " Partant pour la Syrie," very slowly ; the omnibus is just driving into the courtyard. " Poor omnibus ! poor horses !" cry I, compassionately — " how many times have they been down to the station to-day ? What a heap of luggage !" '' Jemima, my head is not high enough yet ; give me your pillow too !" calls out Lenore, lamentably, from the floor. I comply, and then return to the window, and look again at the omnibus, which is just beginning to empty its load. " Good heavens !" ejaculate I, with animation. ''Why, Lenore, there is Mr. Le Mesurier getting out ! He has a What yemiina Says. 193 puggry round his hat ; how odd he looks !" Lenore is disposing two pillows and a bolster to her mind ; she gives a great start, but her head is turned from me. '' I wish he would get a new portman- teau," pursue I, soliloquising ; " the ' P. Le M.' on his is getting nearly effaced with age." The omnibus still dis^orees : an old priest in a broad felt hat, and limp sash round his huge waist, with a yellow face and black teeth, yawning prodigiously ; a peasant woman, with a queer baby in a tight calico skullcap ; then another gentle- man in a puggry. " The plot thickens," cry I, with a sprightly air. '' Lenore, I think the friend has turned up at last. I began to fancy that he was a sort of Mrs. Harris ; but seeing is believing, and here he is !" Silence. VOL. I, 13 194 ''Good-bye, Sweetheart f ''How good-looking!" say I, under my breath, as the second gentleman joins the first, and indicates his worldly goods to the gargon. I hear a scrambling noise behind me. Lenore is at my side ; her face is white, and she peeps obliquely behind the curtain, as the hot breeze blows back her loose bright hair. " How ugly your friend Paul looks be- side him !" say I, spitefully. " When does not he look ugly ?" rejoins my junior, with bitterness. " They are parleying with the landlady," say I, leaning out. " No doubt she is civiller to them than she was to us ; I sup- pose two maidless, courierless, husbandless women must resign themselves to being snubbed ! Ah, poor dear Frederic ! how one does miss him !" " Under which head did he come ?" asks Lenore, drily — '' maid, courier, or husband ?" What yemima Says, 195 The luggage is carried into the house ; the pageant fades. I return to my pack- ing, and ten minutes pass. " Lenore, dear, you had better be begin- ning to dress," I say, hortatively ; " the clock struck the quarter five minutes ago." " I am not thinking of dressing," replies Lenore, looking enormously long, as she lies stretched straight out. '' You are going down to dinner as you are, in fact — bare legs and a dressing- gown ?" say I, humorously. '' I am not going down to dinner at all," replies she, clasping her hands underneath her head. ''Not going down to dinner ! What do you mean ?" exclaim I, in high astonish- ment. " Jemima, do French people ever open their windows ? Do not they hate fresh air ^. Would it be possible to eat steam- 13—2 196 " Good-bye, Siueetheart T ing ragouts In a close room with fifty commercial travellers, to-day of all days ?" " Before the omnibus came from the station, you thought it quite possible," reply I, drily. Silence. '' Come now, did not you T "Well — yes" (looking rather sheepish). " It is on account of Mr. Le Mesurier that you are going to forego your dinner ?" " Well — yes" (much more sheepishly). *' Lenore ! Lenore ! what has he done ?" cry I, kneeling down beside her, in a frenzy of curiosity ; '' tell me." "He has done nothing," turning her face away, and plucking at the pillow with her finorers. '' What has he said ?" " He has said nothing." " Did he tell you that you were not good form, according to his pet expression ?" (laughing). IV hat ycinima Says. 197 '' No." " Did he make love to you ?" suggest I, growing wild in my conjectures. " No, no." " Did he propose to you ?" ''No! xo! xNO!" I can only see her ear, which has grown suddenly scarlet. ''What did he do ?" ask I, at my wit's end. "Jemima!" says Lenore, sitting up on the floor facing me, and looking very serious, " if I live to be a hundred and fifty, I will never tell you." " I shall have to ask him then ; he will tell me quickly enough," answer I, nettled, and rising to my feet again. " Perhaps ; very likely !" rejoins she, curtly. " But you will come down to dinner, like a good child T' say I, coaxingly, as I wrestle with a white muslin Garibaldi, 198 '' Good-bye, Sweetheaid T which has shrunk in the washhig, and is too small to contain my charms. '' I will not." " But you have had no luncheon ?" '^ No." " Nor afternoon tea ?" " No." " You would probably be at a distance of half a mile from him," say I, encour- agingly ; " the table Is as long as from here to England ; I saw it." "Jemima," replies Lenore gravely, look- ing at me with her large solemn eyes, " I might sit exactly opposite to him, and that would kill me on the spot." I shrug my shoulders. "He is ugly enough, certainly," I say severely ; " but he is hardly such a Medusa's head that it is death to look at him." But Lenore is obdurate. " I had rather die than go down," she says, with the tragic exaggeration of youth, shaking her head. IV hat yemiina Says, 199 and all the shining tangles of hair that ripple about her throat. The bell rings, tingling and jangling through the open doors and narrow pas- sages. I am obliged to go down alone, in my shrunk muslin Garibaldi and shabby- old black-silk skirt, into a crowd of bearded Enelish and shorn French, who are gathered to raven like wolves in the salle a manger, I leave Lenore lying prone on the parquet, hungry and frowning, and slaying an occasional beetle with her slipper. At dinner I sit between the land- lord and a close-shaved little Breton, with a vast and greasy appetite. In silence and loneliness I raven like my neighbours. Mr. Le Mesurier fulfils my prophecy ; he is half a mile off Now and ao^ain I have a vision of his leonine beard between the thirteen or fourteen interveninQ^ oruests, and of a handsome blonde head beyond him. On remounting to our garret I find that 200 " Good-bye, Sweetheart /" Lenore has resumed her clothes, and is sitting on the window-sill, pelting a stray dog in the courtyard with cherrystones. Her eyes turn with a sort of anxiety to me as I enter. "Well, well," say I, spitefully, "there was an excellent dinner ; I have broueht you a ' Memi' to show you what you have lost — , * POTAGE. Vermicelli. POISSONS. Soles, fines herbes. Entrees. . Jambon Madere. Poulets sautes. Champignons ''" " Pooh !" interrupts my sister, impa- tiently, " what do I care ? Well, did you — did you see him ?" " I caught a glimpse now and then of his chestnut curls," reply I, banteringly ; " only a glimpse, though, as he was at least a kilometre off." What ycinima Says. 201 '' Did he see you ?" '' Probably not ; the dear fellow did not seem to have eyes for anything but his dinner." "He did not miss me, then ?" with an accent of chagrin. " If he did he disguised it admirably." '' I might have gone down, after all." " Perfecdy." She picks up the incmt. " ' Jambon Madere ' — how good it sounds ! Why did not you ask it to walk upstairs ? Jemima, are there any biscuits left in your bag r I investigate, and find half a one, and a great many dusty crumbs, upon wdiich my sister pounces, as a kitten upon a ball of worsted. '' I could not conscientiously say the children's grace, ' Thank God for my good dinner,' " she says, shaking her head. " Jemima, let us go out." 202 " Good-bye, Sweetheart /" '' It is only eight o'clock, and t]\Q pardon does not begin till nine." " Never mind ; there Is, at all events, more to see in the town than there is here, and I shall be more likely to forget that fifteen hours must elapse before I see food agam. So we go and pass through the court- yard, and out into the cheerful swarming streets. The prospect of having a years sins wiped off seems pleasant, for all faces look gay. The town is thronged with ex- quisitely-starched clean lace caps, sticking out half a mile behind their owner's heads — thronged with broad felt hats, and loose embroidered waistcoats, trimmed with chains of silver buttons. They are like peasants in a melodrama — real benighted peasants — who have not yet begun to tell themselves that they are quite as good as their betters, and that there is no reason why they should not wear hats and bonnets What y cm i Ilia Says. 20^ o of exactly the same shape and fabric. But even here innovation is laying her ugly hand. Even Brittany is setting forth on the road that leads to chimneypot hats and shooting-coats ; even here, the ancient Breton costume in all its purity is the ex- ception ; the old-world trunk hose of }'es- terday are ceding to the new-world trousers of to-day. We stroll slowly up through the chatter- ing crowd, amongst long-haired lank men, and lauehinof weather-beaten Avomen. On most Breton faces is written, " Life to us is arduous." No one is drunk, and no one is swearing. '^ How can they be happ)', then ?" would be the thought of an English working-man ; but they are, or at least they look so. The church is already lit, though it is yet day, little points of yellow light flicker- ing feebly in the broad white light of the summer evening. We mount the steps — 204 " Good-bye, Szueethcart /" mount them gingerly, lest we should tread on the outspread legs of the crowded wor- shippers, crowded as swarmed bees, upon the steps and in the porch before an image there. We enter the church ; censers are swinging slowly ; the fragrant hush of a holy gloom is spread between the dim high arches — gloom that the thousand little yel- low lig^hts are fiorhtino^ acrainst. Grown men, with swart heads bent and doffed hats in their rough hands ; women ; little prim children in caps like their mothers, and petticoats down to their little heels, all — 'all are prostrate before each gaudy shrine, sending up their simple souls in prayer to God's ofreat mother. Not to her alone, however. As thickly as about the crowned and sceptred Virgin the people press around a brass head, with a glass window in its chest, and its nose blackened by the salutations of many past years and generations. Standing a few IVhat yciniDia Says, 20; paces off, I am watching a tall youth, who, with long thick hair hanging straight and black about his harsh melancholy face, is stooping to kiss the uncouth brazen fea- tures, when an English voice sounds low and laughing in my ear : " Worse than the Pope's toe, is not it ?" I give an angry start. Devotion is as catching as mumps. Without any feeling of the ridiculous I could have followed the Breton boy's example, and kissed the blackened nose. Paul Le Mesurier is beside me, and beyond him, heedless of the praying Bretons, staring with all his blue eyes at Lenore, stands a fair handsome youth, leaning against a pillar. " Is it wicked to introduce people in church ?" asks Paul, sotto voce. " I cannot help it, if it is ; I have had no peace since. Scrope, let me introduce you to Miss Her- rick." CHAPTER XIII. WHAT THE AUTHOR SAYS. HOPE you are better, Miss Lenore," says Paul, leaving his friend and his acquaintance together, and threading his way between the kneeling country-people to where the young girl stands with her back resolutely turned to him, and her eyes as resolutely fixed upon the high altar, aflame with lights and laden with flowers. " Better of what ?" she asks, brusquely, not turning towards him. '' I always think there must be something W/iat the Author Says. 207 radically wrong with a person who foregoes her dinner in a land where luncheon is un- known," he answers, trying to get a peep round the corner into her averted face. " How do )'ou know that I forewent my dinner ?" she inquires sharply, glancing at him for an instant, and then looking away again as quickly. " I saw your sister, and I did not see _ jj you. " I dined upstairs," she answers, shortly. He looks at her doubtfully. " Did you, really ? Why ?" " I hate talking in church," she says, flashing round impatiently at him ; " it is irreverent." " So do I ; the incense gets into my head. Let us go outside." " You may go if you choose," she says, setting her back against a pillar, and reso- lutely ignoring his presence. " I prefer to stay here." 2o8 " Good-bye, Siueethea^^t /" A little child, kneeling at her feet in close calico cap, with a rosary between its little fingers, stares up wonderingly, with wide eyes, at the monsieur and the madame, standing so erect and chattering so irreve- rently in the great solemn church. " Your sister and Scrope are going down the steps now," he says, stooping a little to whisper to her in deference to the sacred place, while an amused gleam flashes in his eyes. " The procession will begin in a quarter of an hour. Come !" She makes a half-movement of compli- ance. " Mind," she says, looking at him, de- fiantly, '' I am coming, not in the least be- cause you ask me, but because I do not want to miss this fine sight." The street is fuller than ever. The dusk is drawinof on. Gendarmes in cocked hats and tail-coats ; tight-belted, red-legged soldiers leavening the mass of the peasants. What the Author Says. 209 A woman at a stall selling candles — candles as thick as your waist ; candles as thick as your wrist ; candles no thicker than your finger. Every one is buying, each person laying down his francs or centimes, and walking proudly off with a hollow taper as tall as himself. " You have not forgiven me yet, then ?" says Le Mesurier, as he elbows a way for his companion between the Avoollen- shawled women and embroidered-jacketed men. *' Forgiven you for what Y' she asks, resolutely obtuse, while her cheeks show a sudden rivalship with the poppy-bunch in her hat. " For my — my unlucky embassy," he answers, with a rather awkward laugh. She looks away from him to the illumi- nated church, at once bright and dark against the warm gloom of the June twi- light. VOL. T. 14 2IO " Good-bye, Sweetheart T " I thought it was very officious of you," she answers, coldly. " Officio2ts r echoes he, quickly, while his own tanned cheeks catch the pretty angry poppy hue. " Do you suppose I did it for my own pleasure ? Do you suppose that I ever, in all my life, had a job that I hated more ?" '' Why did you undertake it, then ?" asks the girl, drily. " Because I was living in the same house with him ; because I had no peace day or night : because I was sick of the sound of your name ; because— poor little beggar ! — he cried — yes, actually cined ! — If I said ' No ' once, I said it a hundred times." "It was a pity that you did not say it a hundred-and-one times." '' I not only," continues Paul, becoming exasperated, and consequently spiteful, while his usually quiet eyes give a cold IV hat the Author Says. 211 flash — '' I not only declined die office for myself, but I did all I could to dissuade him from asking you himself." *' Thank you." " I told him that, If he did Induce you to marry him, you would make him rue the day." *' Thank you." '* I told him how utterly unsulted you were for a parson's wife.'' '' Thank you." . '' How much more suited to him your sister was." " Thank you ; tiuo ' thank yous,' indeed — one for myself, and one for Jemima." "He had some fatuous idea in his head of being able to mould you into the proper clerical shape ; but I flatter myself I, at all events, succeeded in weeding that gro- tesque notion out of his mind." "In short," says Lenore, turning sharply upon him a lovely crimson face, like a 14—2 2 12 ** Good-bye, Sweetheart f blown rose, and proud eyes trying to wink away the mortified tears — '' in short, not satisfied with hating me yourself, you have been doing your best to make one of my few friends hate me too." " Well, at all events," retorts he, smiling, and recovering his good-humour at the same moment as she loses hers — ''at all events, I did not succeed ; for, despite all my dissuasions, you see, he still wished to gain you." The crowd grows thicker and thicker. In five minutes the procession will begin. Leaning over a little balcony above them, some English ladies and gentlemen are laughing real English laughs, unlike the high cascades of shrill French laugh- ter. "We shall be hustled to death down here," says Paul, lifting his high head to look over the press. " We ought to have secured a window, like those Britishers up What the Author Says. 213 there. It is not too late now. Let us ask the candle-woman." The candle-woman turns from the diminished heap of her tapers to listen politely to "Paul's slow laborious Eny^lish- French. " Monsieur and madame desire a croisdc in order to see the procession ? Jllais oiu, certainement. If monsieur and madame will have the goodness to follow her, she will conduct them." So saying, she leads them under an arch- w^ay, through an empty workshop, and up a perfectly dark and filthy flight of stone stairs. The room to which they at length attain belongs to a blanchissaisc. It is low and poor, but very clean. Neatly-starched caps are hanging on a line across the room ; two tidy little beds are in the small recesses ; a crucifix hangs over the chim- neypiece ; and an excruciating smell from the gutter below rises up to their offended 2 14 ' ' Good-b) '6, Sweet hea rt f ' nostrils. The owner of the apartment, having expressed an obHging hope that madame will not be " trop genee par rodettrl' and having placed a hassock on the low sill for Lenore to lean her arms upon, leaves her visitors in peace. Paul stands upright and silent, with an expres- sion of face as if he were trying entirely to repress the faculty of smell. Lenore lets her eyes wander round, and gives the reins to her imagination. Supposing that this garret were her home — hers and Paul's ; supposing that she spent her life in ironing caps, and hanging them on lines. Supposing that Paul spent his in digging in the fields, and came back at night to galettc and cider, in a broad Breton hat and trunk hose. Good heavens ! how ugly he would look ! She breaks off her suppositions to smile in- voluntarily at the idea. " What are you smiling at ?" asks Paul, What the Author Says. 215 stooping over her, and swallowing a large mouthful of bouquet de gutter' as he speaks. " Must I tell you really f she asks, lift- ing her face — every dimple full of mis- chievous lauohter — to his. '^ Yes." *' I was thinking, then — mind, you made me tell you — how ugly you would look in a flapping felt hat and trunk hose !" "Is that all ?" he answers, carelessly. " I can assure you that I am nothing to what I was when I was a boy. In my old regiment we used to pique ourselves upon being the ugliest corps in the service ; we had not a decent-lookino^ fellow amono^st us." There is a little pause. Everybody is lighting his or her candle ; one or two un- lucky mortals have broken theirs off in the middle. '' Did you really think I should marry 2 1 6 '' Good-bye, Szueet heart /" Frederic ?" asks Lenore presently, with abruptness. '' How could I tell ?" " But did you think iX, probable f " If I were a woman, I do not think I should care about undertaking him," he answers, laughing. " But you might have done worse." She looks away, vexed — she could hardly have said why. • "He is exactly ^vo, feet two inches high," she says scornfully, drawing up her long white throat, and looking insultingly tall. " Do you mete out your love to a man according to his inches ?" he asks, leaning his arms on the back of his chair, and laughing again. '' He has a nose like a piece of putty." '' He has." " He wears barnacles." " He does." What the Author Says. 2 i 7 *' And goloshes." '' Yes." " He plays the concertina at tea-parties." " Does he ?" " And sings, * I'm a nervous man.' " '' So he is." "He turns up his trousers at the bottom when it rains." '' Well, why should not he ?" " It would be impossible," says the young girl, with trenchant emphasis, " to marry a man who did any one of those things ; it is a thousand times more Impossible to marry a man who does them all!' *' He would let you have your own way in everything, big or little ; he would let you ride rough-shod over him. It would be very bad for you, but I suppose it would please you," answers Paul, half cynlcall)', taking In, with an uncomfortable unwilling glance, the poppy-crowned hat ; the eyes, dew soft yet spirited ; the fine nostrils, and 2i8 ''Good-bye, SiucetJieart T blood-red lips, half parted, as if for some sweet speech of his young companion. " Perhaps it would — perhaps it would not," she answers gently. " I have never loved anybody yet — never ; at least, not for long — not for more than two days ; but of course I shall some day ; and then, I sup- pose — I fancy — I imagine" (stammering) " that what he likes I shall like." Is it some reflection from the lights out- side, or are her cheeks a shade more deeply coloured than usual, as she lifts her eyes, with a sort of tender trouble in their shady depths, to his ? He shakes his head. " May I be there to see !" he says, with a light laugh ; but there is no laugh in his eyes ! — instead, an eager gravity, touched with the stirrings of a restless passion. When an uncivil woman is to yoiL alone civil ; when a cold woman is for yoiL alone warm ; when a high-spirited woman is ior yoti alone meek, IJ^/iat the Aiiihor Says. 219 the flattery Is trebled in value. It is diffi- cult to feel sentimental in a very bad smell, but I think, if )'ou asked him, Paul Le Mesurler would tell )'ou that he accom- plished that feat in the little Guingamp garret. The procession is really beginning at last ; out of the lit church-doors it streams, and the surging sea of heads part and cleave asunder to make way for it. Gilt and coloured lamps lead the wa)', car- ried by Breton peasants ; then the relics of a saint in a gilt case ; then a troop of young- girls in white, clear and clean as St. Agnes ; then a troop of sailors, also in white, with red sashes : two carr}ing a little model of a ship, two carr)ing a gilt anchor between them ; then a wax figure in a red silk petti- coat carried on a bier. " It is Ic petit Saint Vincent !" cries the good woman of the house, in high excite- ment, clasping her hands — carried by Basse Bretagne peasants, clad in soutanes for the 2 20 ''Good-bye, Sweetheart f occasion : an honour for which they will have to pay high. '' Has Madame ob- served him — how pretty he is ! how fresh ! how white — as white as a little chicken ?" '' And who is le petit Saint Vincent, when he is at home ?" asks Paul, in crass igno- rance of the Roman Catholic calendar. *' He was martyrised at fourteen years," explains the woman ; and so falls into fresh raptures. '' Oh ! qu'il est gentil, le petit Saint Vin- cent ! II est si frais, si rose." "If she is so much struck with le petit Saint Vincent, what would not she be with Madame Tussaud's establishment ?" says Paul, laughing, and leaning on the sill. He is past now : he, and his red petti- coat. La bonne Dame des homines follows close on his heels, borne on devout shoul- ders ; then the brass head with the black- ened nose waggles along ; then grey-haired What the Author Says. 221 priests in glorious flowered damask robes, holding high the effigy in ivory and gold of the slaughtered Christ ; then two bishops in mitres ; then a great flood of snowy caps and broad-brimmed beavers ; everybody with a candle : some big, some little, but everybody with one. It is the greatest wonder how they manage to avoid setting fire to each other. All together, singing loudly, yet sweetly, they float away slowly into the distance. Half caught by the infection of their devotion, Lenore throws herself forwards half through the rusty casement to look down the street ; one sea of waving light» an undulating river of light, rather, flowing between the two dark banks of the houses on either side. The soft glamour of the summer moonrise makes glorious each little detail of the queer pretty show. The coloured lamps sparkle like real great jewels — rubies, sapphires, ameth)'sts — 2 2 2 " Good- bye, SwcetheaiH I ' ' through the cool night. The young girls' dresses shine dazzllngly candescently white : even the brass head with the black nose is transmuted to gold. " What a pleasant easy way of getting to heaven !" says Lenore, withdrawing her head. *' I wish I could believe that a big candle and a kiss to little St. Vincent would take me there !" " Do not you think we have had almost enoueh of this ?" asks Le Mesurier, rather indistinctly, from between the folds of his pocket handkerchief, in which he has now completely enveloped his nose and mouth. " Oh, libelled Cologne ! If Coleridge had but smelt Guingamp !" So they descend into the street. The procession is to circle round the town, chanting always, and re-enter the church by another door. It w^ill be some time before this is accomplished. Meanwhile people still swarm in th3 space before the What the Aicthor Says. ''^^ -- J church. Women in close stiff black bon- nets or hats, and big black collars to match, takine one back to the reii/n of Edward VI. Dark, sad-faced, lean men. These are from the very, veiy Basse Bretagne. They are so poor, so poor ! They have come on foot many a weary mile, to have their sins forgiven : they will sleep in the street to-nis^ht, and' at cock-crow to-morrow set forth on the trudge back to their far lone homes. Others with almost low- necked dresses, and wide loose muslin col- lars. They are all tramping hither and thither ; talking very merrily ; hustling Paul and Lenore with their stout Breton elbows ; threatening them with their heavy sabots, which at any moment may come pounding down on their feet. *' You had better take my arm," says Paul, with a protecting air, as they move slowly along. " I might easily mislay you in this crush, and if I did, it would be like 2 24 ' ' Good-bye, Sweetheart ! ' ' looking for a needle in a bottle of hay to try and find you again." "It would be no great harm if you did mislay me," she answers with a pretty air of independence. " I, who have travelled all over England, Scotland, and Ireland quite by myself, am hardly afraid of coming to harm in the half-dozen safe yards that intervene between here and the Hotel de France." '* What business had you to travel all over England, Scotland, and Ireland by yourself ?" he asks brusquely. '' It was very wrong of your people to let you." " Of course," she answers with irony, " of course, I ought to have had a maid to carry my dressing-case, and a footman to take my ticket and look after my luggage. So I will, some day, when I marry the Marquis of Carabas, or — or Frederic /" '' You will never marry Frederic !" he says vehemently, involuntarily pressing the JV/ial the Atiihor Says. 225 small hand that lies on his arm, close to his side ; " never ! never ! I" looking down at her face, on which the flaring candles are throwing capricious little crimson flushes. " Shall not I ?" she says, lifting her lim- pid innocent gaze to his, " I do not know." He is silent, at least as far as speech goes. He has forgotten the pardon, the white caps, the thronging peasants. His reason is drowning fast, fast, in the unfathomed wells of a woman's slate-blue eyes. " You told me just now that I might do worse," she says, under her breath. " So you might," he says, with some ex- citement. " So you miLrht. I said true : you might " (with a rather reckless laugh) " you might marr)- — nic ! who am the younger son of a younger son — have not a sixpence to bless myself with, and have the Devil's own temper to boot." At his words her head droops forward, like a snowdrop's, weighed down with a VOL. I. 15 2 26 ''Good-bye, Sweetheart T happy shame ; her hand falls from his arm. It is past eleven o'clock ; the people are hurrying Into church again for the midnight mass. At the door every one gives up his or her candle to men stationed to receive them. There is a great heap, as high as your shoulder, already in the porch. A throng of peasants — lean, long men ; stout, square women ; big lads — come pushing by, nearly hoisting Lenore off her legs. As they pass she utters a little sharp cry of pain. " What is It ? Are you hurt ?" asks Paul, vigorously shouldering aside the peasants, who are beginning to crowd again as thickly as ever, and digging his elbows viciously into the plump ribs of a matron behind him. '' It Is nothing," she says, a little faintly ; '' one of them trod on me, I think, and a sabot Is not the lightest — there !" (beginning to laugh a little) "do not look as if you IVkat the AutJior Says. 227 were bent on knocking- somebody down ; it would be sure to be the wrone some- body." " You arc hurt," he says, with vague in- dignation, gazing down soHcitously at the cheeks that the little sudden pain has drained of their sweet red blood, " I know you are, only you are too spirited to own it." " You are wrong," she says, smiling ; " from a child I have always cried out before I was hurt." *' Lean on me ; lean all your weight on me," says Paul obligingly, drawing her away out of the press, and into a little side street. " Ah ! here is a door-step, let us sit down and rest." The little street is quite dark, at least on the side where Paul and Lenore are : as dark as the Place Du Guesclin under the limes. Only on the faces of the houses 15 — 2 2 28 '^Good-bye, Sweetheart T opposite the moonbeams are sliding pearl- white. " I never could bear pain," says the girl languidly, leaning her back against the closed door of the unseen house. " I never coidd understand that line of Long- fellow's — ' To suffer and be strong.' ' To suffer and scream' is my ver- sion." There is a momentary pause between them. They are beginning to feel as if they need not be talking all the while. In the deep shade where they are sitting they can hardly see each other's faces : they only feel one another's pleasant proximity. The tramp, tramp of wooden shoes, the distant chant, bandied about, tossed this way and that by the frolic airs, come, now loud, now low, to their ears. '' I wonder what time it is T says Lenore W/iat the AictJior Says. 229 presently, reluctantly breaklnor the happ)' silence ; " ten ? eleven ? twelve ?" ''What does it matter?" replies Paul indolently, clasping his hands behind his head. She is the exact opposite of every- thing he has hitherto thought good and fair in woman. Her very beauty — large and noble — is the reverse of the small, meek prettiness that has hitherto been his ideal, and yet — and yet it is pleasant to him to sit in the dry, warm gloom beside her, while the night winds, fresh from the tanned haycocks, fondle his hair with lightest, gentlest hands. The church clock strikes midnio^ht : each slow stroke fallino- on the air like a rebuke. " I must go," replies the girl, half- frightened, springing to her feet. " Go !" repeats Paul impatiently, rising too. " Why must you ? Shall we be better off in two stuffy garrets in the Hotel de France, apart, than here together T 230 " Good-bye, Sweetheart /" They are standing in the middle of the street : a tall ugly man, a tall beautiful woman (men always have the best of the bargains in this world). She has taken off her hat : it hangs with its coquettish poppies and black ribbons in her drooped right hand ; the moon is throwing little jets of silver on the waveless sweep of her hair. "We shall at least be less likely to take cold," she answers demurely. But Paul is losing his head. Lenore and the moonshine are too much for him. " Cold ?" he repeats, crossly. " You never thought about cold that happy night when we went on the Ranee together." *' That happy night, when you tried so hard to get out of going, and said it was time to go to bed," she answers mockingly, while her eyes for the moment lose their love light, and glitter maliciously. He laughs rather consciously. " That happy night when you soaked all the colour out ^jl What the Aicthor Says. of my blue ribbons, and drowned my best hat for me," continues she gaily. " No, no! we will have no more happy nights. l\Iy wardrobe would not stand it! Come, let us go !'' CHAPTER XIV. WHAT JEMIMA SAYS. T is too late now," says Lenore, with a sulky pout, leaning her arms on the top of the wrought- iron rails of the balcony ; " TAmericaine is at the door." We are no longer at Guingamp. We have moved on to Moirlaix, and are lodged in a certain hostelry, that is scented through and through with the ill-odour arising from the very unclean stable over which it is built : " I do not wish to tell its name, Because it is so much to blame.'" IJliat ycmiina Says. 233 No one dislikes the smell of a clean stable. The warm, pungent odour that greets }'ou, when )ou go to see }'our friend's hunters need offend no well educated nostrils ; but the terrific reek that ascends from the lodgings of Breton beasts of hire, that you swallow, nolens volcns. in bed, in your bath, with )'our tea, with your cider — which enters not only your nose and mouth, but even )'our very eyes and ears — is trying to the least sensitive organs. We two are seated — by-the-b)-, Lenore is standing — in a little salon whose balcony overlooks the street, and whence we ma}' sp)' the passers below, keep a look-out on Lozach, dcbitant dc doissons, opposite, and refresh ourselves with a slightl)' varied version of essence of manure. A great bowpot, full of immense roses, stands at ni)- elbow : each several rose smells mightily of tobacco : a phenomenon accounted for by the fact that the saloji is daily resorted 2 34 " Good-bye, Sweetheart P' to for smoking and coffee-drinking pur- poses by the noble army of commercial travellers who breakfast and dine at the table d'hote. When '' ces messieiLrsl' as the landlord, with Innocent Irony, calls them, have retired, we are permitted to enter, and work our own wild will among the tobaccoed roses and the jingling old spinet In the corner. "It Is too late," says Lenore, from the balcony ; " rAmerlcalne Is at the door." ''It would be very easy to send It away again, I suppose." " I suppose it would." " I do not believe that there Is anything to see at Huelgoat," say I, sceptically, turn- ing over the leaves of my familiar spirit, ' Murray,' and hunting among the Hs In the index. " I dare say not." '' Nothing but lead-mines and a reading- desk," say I, having found the place. What yeminia Says. 235 - Oh, indeed !" '' It is, then, merely for the pleasure of a icte-a-tete with Mr. Le Mesurier that )ou are li^oing" ?" cry I, raising my voice a little, for fear that the lazy wind that is ruffling- the smoky roses and swaying the muslin curtains may disperse my gibe. " Merely for the pleasure of the tetc-a-tetc with Mr. Le Mesurier, as you felicitously observe," replies my sister, with baffling candour, leaving the balcony, and coming to stand defiantly before me, with her chin a little raised, and her hands folded behind her back, in her favourite attitude, like a child saying its lesson. Some people's clothes look as if they were throivii on ; some as if they were put on ; some as if they grew on. Lenore's is the latter case. " I should have thought that )ou must have had a surfeit of those delights by now," say I, disdainfully, with all an out- 236 *' Good bye, Siucethcart T sider's intolerance for the insipid repetitions of love-making-. " I have had exactly nine," answers Le- nore, growing grave, while a happy absorp- tion fills her eyes ; " I think " (smiling) " I must make it a dozen ; and then, perhaps, if Mr. Scrope is very good, I may give him a turn." I feel vexed, and, unable and unwilling to explain why, rise, and walking over to a little etagcre in the corner, begin to fiddle with some deplorable spar boxes with " A Present from Brighton " on them : traces, even here of the Indefatigable Briton, who has inscribed his name and that of his blacking on the pyramid top. Lenore sits down at the piano, and opens it. " You might be man and wife, from the way In which you travel about together," say I, fuming. " Perhaps we are," answers Lenore, with a laugh, her low rippling laughter mixing What yemima Says. ^ ^ -0/ pleasantly with the crash she Is making among- the bass notes ; " to the prophetic eye present and future are one." " Heaven forbid !" say I devoutly. "* I cannot fancy calling that man ' Paul,' and kissing him, as I suppose one would have to do if he were one's brother-in-law ; one would lose one s self in the intricacies of that scarlet beard." " It is not scarlet !" cries Lenore, in a fury, wheelinor round on the music stool. ''It is not even red." " It is like Graham's hair in ' Vilette,' " reply I gravely, " whose colour his friends did not dare to specify, except when the sun shone on it, and then they called it golden." A little pause. ** I do not think that two young women in our position ca7i be too careful," say I primly, " and reall)-, Lenore, it is hardly advisable." 238 " Good-bye, Sweetheart /" " Advisable !" interrupts my sister, jump- ing off her stool and giving a little stamp, while her pretty pink nostrils dilate with angry wilfulness. '' I hate the word ; it is a mean, sneaking, time-serving word. Either a thing is right or it is wrong : if it is not right, it is wrong, and if it is not wrong, it is right. If it is not wrong to take a drive on a summer day with a man whose society " She stops as if she had been shot. The door has opened, and the man whose society is looking in and saying, " Miss Lenore, are you ready ?" There is a flushed confusion on his honest ugly face, as if he had overheard Lenore's last speech ; and, indeed, as she has always a singularly pure clear enuncia- tion, and declaimed this last sentence in a high key and with a distinct and trenchant emphasis, I do not see how the poor man could well help it. IV hat yemima Says. 239 " Am I ready T says Lenore, with an awkward laugh, turning away to hide her discomfiture. " That is amusing ! A man keeps one waiting an hour and a half, and then comes and asks innocent)}', ' Are you ready ?' " At the door stands the '' Americaine." so called because more ?/;^like an Americaine than any other conceivable vehicle ; a little heavy jingling ratdetrap, with a hood in the last stage of shabbiness. A litde old mare in her dotage, and a tall colt, hardly come to years of discretion, compose the team. One has bells, the other has none ; both are smothered under immense sheep- skin collars, like leviathan doormats ; the flies arc teasing them sad!)-. A noble army of beeears — 'C^c^" " Men and boys, The matron and the maid," press round with oljliging CDiprcssciiicnt ; 240 " Good-bye, Swectheajd /" old blear-eyed men beggars, capped and long-frocked lltde girl beggars — lame boy beggars — beggars with Ingeniously horrible malformations of nature, well brought for- ward Into notice. " So this is a walklnor tour throuo^h Brit- tany, is it, Paul ?" asks Mr. Scrope pen- sively, as we emerge from the door. He is leaning against the doorpost, looking very handsome, very lazy, and half asleep, as he mostly does. " So this is the pedes- trian exercise that was to make you two stone lighter by next season ! Oh, Miss Herrick !" shaking his head at Lenore, and smiling reproachfully with his indolent blue eyes, " how much you have to answer for !" They get in. I think they feel rather foolish, sitting perched up on high, side by side. There is something absurdly nuptial about this departure. " Go on ! what are you stopping for ?" cries Paul, in the worst possible French. What yemhna Says. 241 The driver says " Sapr — r- — r," the poor beasts stretch to their work ; the old rope traces strain ; the grin of expectation vanishes from the beggars' faces. " Do not you feel as If we ou^ht to throw old shoes after them ?" asks Mr. Scrope, turning languidly to me, as the bells go tinkle tinkle down the street. I smile. " Would a sadot do as well ? I mieht bor- <_> row one." The jingling has ceased. They are fairly gone. " What shall zue do, Miss Herrick, now that our natural protectors have left us ?" says my companion, appealing piteously to me, as I stand on the broiled and broiling steps under the umbrella with which I have judiciously furnished myself; while the sun catches his yellow hair and the young soft moustache that rather directs attention to than hides his handsome mouth — the fea- ture that Is seldomer than any other In the human face good. '' What shall we do ? VOL. I. 16 2\z ''Good-bye, Sweetheart T Shall we hire a couple of jackasses, and out riding ?" " Rather too hot, I think." *' It is hot, now you speak of it. Phew ! go CHAPTER XV. WHAT THE AUTHOR SAYS. ERTAINLY It is sleepy work, driving to Huelgoat. The day is one of those that remind one of a bad painting or of the landscape on a papier-mache tea-tray : garish, staring, in- artistic. The sky is all dead blue, and the trees are all dead green. Jingle, jingle, jingle, tingle, sound the bells ; jig, jog, with their noses down to their knees, go the horses along the road — that Is white as flour, and quite as powdery. Up long- backed hills, down long-backed hills ; up, 16 — 2 244 '* Good 'bye, Sweetheart /" down, up, down ; there is no end to it. The driver forgets to flick his whip, and cry '' Allcz ! allez T He sits swaying to and fro in the sunshine, fast asleep. He looks old and starveling, as if he had never had enouorh to eat in all his life. Great sweeps of fern and gorse spread around, only broken by little miserable patches of oats and ble noir ; endless reaches of deso- late moorland — grey, barren, silent. It makes one shiver, even in this broiling noon, to think how the north wind must rush and rage over these eerie wolds, these awful landes, on a January night. Jig, jog, jig, jog. The road still twists, twists always, like a white snake writhing its end- less folds about the hills. " I wonder how they are getting on," says Lenore, after a twenty minutes' silence, blinking in the sun, and trying to believe that she is enjoying her- self. W/ial the AiUhor Says. 245 " They. Who ?" asks Paul, with an absent start. " Jemima and Mr. Scrope, to be sure." '' I do not know about your sister, I'm sure," repHes Paul, leaning back, and rest- ing his head against the stained and dis- coloured leather of the old hood ; ^' I have not known her long enough to say ; but as I knew Scrope when he was in round jackets, and have seen a good deal of him, off and on, ever since, I can tell you to a nicety what he is doing, if you wish." " What r " He is lying on his back, in the coolest place he can find, and drinking claret-cup, if he can ask for it in French, which I doubt ; but if not, brandy and seltzer, cider and siphon, anything— certainly drinking; and as certainly making love to some one the landlady, the fcmme de chtwibre, your sister, perhaps, if she does not snub him as resolutely as she does me." 24© " Good-bye, Sweetheart /" " Poor dear Mima!" says Lenore, laugh- ing. " She will be sorely puzzled to know how to take it if he does." ''If it is not your sister it is somebody else," says Paul, tilting his hat over his nose, and closing his eyes ; " he is the sort of fellow that one could not trust alone in the room with his own grandmother for five minutes." '' Indeed !" " Generally," pursues Paul, in a sleepy voice, " after a two days' acquaintance, he proposes to every woman he sees ; if she refuses him, he asks her to be a sister, or mother, or aunt, or something of the sort, to him ; if she accepts him he is off by the next train, and never heard of (by her, at least) again." "He must remind one of the saying that the best way to be rid of a troublesome friend is to lend him a five-pound note." Their talk flags ; the dust seems to have What the Author Says. 247 got Into It ; there Is no juice In it. A little public-house stands by the road-side, a bunch of box over the door, to show that they sell cider there. Inside, a woman with a distaff, an old old woman, all grin and wrinkles, every wTlnkle filled up with dirt. Immensely tall pigs, with finely- arched backs, noses like greyhounds, and legs like antelopes, throng about the door. Now and again a primitive cart passes ; the shaggy unkempt horses prick their ears and rear and plunge, as If they had never seen a civilised being before. With hardly less astonishment do their wild-eyed drivers stare. It is three o'clock and past by the time that Paul and Lenore reach Hueleoat — Huelgoat, sitting in the sunshine, at the very end of the world, beside her still grey tarn. '' I am ravenous," says Lenore, gaily, as they jingle up the dead grey street. " I ate no breakfast, did you ? One cannot 248 " Good-bye, SzvcdJicart f eat in that smell. What shall we have ? Cutlets, trout ? There ought to be trout in that lake." '' Do not be too sanguine," answers Paul, shaking his head ; "it is uncharitable to judge by appearances, but from a bird's-eye view of Huelgoat I should say that white- bait was hardly less unlikely than trout or cutlets." No one, it seems, at first sight, lives at the Hotel de Bretagne, at least no one appears. They descend from the Ameri- caine, and enter a flagged passage, with two doors exactly opposite each other, one on each side. That on the left is open, and gives admittance into a bright and hreless kitchen — innocent of the very faintest odour of cooking. A woman, in a cap that is a cross between a night-cap and a chimney-pot of the hooded kind, comes to meet them, with an immense white collar and a clean sour face. What tJic Author Says. 249 " What did Monsieur and Madame Avish ?" " Monsieur and Madame wish for some- thing to eat, noiv, immediately, a F in- stant.'' " Monsieur and Madame can have some bread and butter — some cheese ; there is unhappily nothing else in the house an moment y " Nothing else in the honse /" repeats Lenore with angry volubility. " Why there is a chicken ! I saw it. I see it now, there r pointing with her finger to where a long lean cock lies, lank and plucked, in a meat-safe in the passage. " There is, as Madame has observed, a chicken, a superb chicken, but he is for the table d'hote." '' But we are dying, perishing, affamcs /" cries Lenore, eking out her uncertain talk with plentiful gesticulation. '' Monsieur and Madame can have some 250 "'Good-bye, Sweetheai^t T bread and butter — some excellent cheese — an omelette." It takes ten minutes of entreaties, ex- postulations, prayers, before she can be over-persuaded to the sacrifice of the " stt- perb'' chicken. On being asked how soon it will be dressed, she answers, " Half-an- hour ;" and being earnestly besought to abridge that time, repeats inexorably, " Une demi-heii7^e, ct peu presT " Let us go into the salle a manger and shut the door," says Lenore despondently. "It will drive me mad to see her pottering and dawdling about ; and if we watched her she would only potter and dawdle the more, to spite us." A quarter of an hour passes. They devour huge slices of the loaf, and make a clearance of three miserable little dry sardines, brought in on a plate. They look out of window at the silent street, call it Welsh, Irish — every ugly name they can What the Author Says. 251 think of. Lenore could not coquet with Paul now, were she to be shot for it ; neither could Paul say an}'thing affec- tionate, even if under the same penalty. They are both far too hungry. " Look if it has eone out of the meat- safe yet," says Lenore presently. ''If it has not," replies Paul gravely, " I am aware that it will be unmanly — but I shall cryT He opens the door and peeps out into the passage. " It is there still !" Despair for a few moments — then rage ; then a rush into the bright kitchen oppo- site, bright with pewters and coarsely painted pottery plates ; bitter reproaches, quickly sunk in hopeless silence. '' Madame is unreasonable ; Madame must have patience ; the fire is not yet lit !" They return to the salle ct manger, and 252 ' ' Good-bye, Szvcetheart ! ' ' Lenore sits down on the flagfofed floor, while her pretty blue gown makes what children call " a cheese " all round her. Paul stands over her in gloomy silence. '' How well I can understand now how shipwrecked mariners eat one another," she says, looking up at him pathetically. After a while a few coals of charcoal make a feeble glimmer in the open hearth. The enemy with the chimney-pot cap takes the fowl — his sex plainly declared by the comb which still adheres to his head — and runs him once or twice through the flame to singe him ; then, taking a few warm (not hot) coals, places them In a sort of tin box, and lays the carcass in the box at some distance from them. " As if those wretched, half-dead embers could ever cook anything !" cries Lenore, indignantly. They sit stupidly gazing through the two open doors. '' How does he look ?" What the AittJior Says. 253 " There is not a sign of cooking upon him," answers Le Mesurier morosely. "He is as white as when he went in." "He will be done only on one side," says Lenore, half crying ; "is not she going to turn him at all ?" She comes in presently, and turns him over deliberately ; then goes with unfeeling calmness about her other occupations. " Well ! Now f (eyes sparkling, and her lonof neck stretched to look into the kitchen). " There is a slight shade of brown coming over him," says Paul, with a smile. Ten minutes more, and he appears ; his legs and arms are all straggling wildly about, his skin is burnt blacker than any coal, and his flesh is as pink as a bit of catchfly ; but he is — oh, how delicious ! By-and-by, after he is eaten, and nothing but memory is left of his charms, they stroll out together dov/n the dumb stone 2 54 ''Good-bye, Sweetheart f street, where tiny old-world children, In tight white skull-caps, not showing a curl of their baby hair, are playing gravely in the gutter, with their long petticoats flap- ping about their heels and entirely hiding their little fat legs — where, just Inside the doors, women in the home dishabille of filthy white chimney-pots sit at their spin- nlnof-wheels. Coming to Huelgoat Is synonymous with putting back the clock two hundred years. Down by a mill, along a narrow path, across a ferny slope, to see th^ piei^re ti^ent- blantc. Great rounded boulders lie about like couchant elephants ; dusky fir woods clothe the hills, that rise so close and stern, and on their barren breasts great grey granite masses heave huge shoulders out of the heathy ground. Below, a little brawling stream slides coyly under the great rocks, then bubbles coldly out again, talking to itself all the way and to the What the A 7 it ho r Says. -DD small marsh flowers that grow about its low brim ; a little mountain beck, like a flashing smile on the valley's lips, like a silver chain about the hill's cool feet. Paul and Lenore have been climbino^ the hills, have been straying amongst the piny odours, have been pushing and fighting their way through the thick bilberry bushes, and now they are hot and tired. Lenore is kneeling on a flat grey stone, and, stoop- ing low down, lays her mouth to the clear water and drinks. '' I am too old and stiff to be so supple,'* says Paul, with a smile of admiring envy ; " make me a cup of your hands ; I have no letter in my pocket to make a leak)- cornu- copia of." She complies, gravely. Joining her white hands together, she dips them into the water, and then holds them up for him to drink. He has to drink ver}- fast, as the water runs out nearly as quickl)- as it 256 ^' Good-dye, Sweetheart r came in. Then she stoops again and bathes her head in the stream. The water rolls in diamond beads from her hair, and on to her turquoise blue gown, as she kneels on the broad grey stone ; long- legged flies are walking about on the stream ; little blue butterflies hover round like flying flowxrs, that have grown tired of their stalks, and are gone visiting their kinsfolk. Paul is stretched on the short fine grass on the other side of the brook, but yet not a span off. His elbows rest on the ground and his hands are buried in his bronze beard. It is all so pretty, so lorn, so silent, as if, long ago, God had made this fair spot and then forgotten it. " Mr. Le Mesurier," says Lenore sud- denly, " do you think it was wrong of me to come with you here to-day ? I would not ask any other man, because I know I should only get some silly civil speech : but I know that jj/^?^ will tell me the truth, how- What the AiitJior Says. 257 ever disagreeable ; perhaps " (laughing) *' with all the more alacrity, the more un- flattering it may be." Paul lifts his head and stares at her in some surprise at the demand made upon his veracity. '' Since when has your conscience grown so tender ?" he asks evasively. " Who has been putting such an idea into your head .'^ — for I am sure it never orrew there of itself." " Jemima," she answers, dabbling her hand and her pocket-handkerchief in the bright water, with more than a child's de- light. "When you came in this morning- she was in the middle of telling me how improper it was. I do not mind her ; she is an old maid — or at least, in her, coming events cast their shadows before ; but I want jK^?/ to tell me. Is it wrong, incorrect, hasardd, as the French say ?" " Not one of the three, in the very least," VOL. I. 17 258 " Good- bye, Siueet heart ! ' ' he answers warmly. " The worst that any one can say of it is, that it is a httle, a very httle, unconventional." " The woman with the eyes like a shot partridge would not have done it, I sup- pose : " Probably not." Then, seeing her look mortified : "If the woman with the eyes like a shot partridge has a fault, it is being in the slightest degree in too great bondage to Mrs. Grundy. She would hardly dare to go along the road to Heaven unless she knew that many very respectable people had eone there before her." Silence, save for the low small noise that the glossy bees make in visiting from heather- bloom to heather -bloom. The high sun is already sloping westwards ; in two or three hours one will be able to look him in the face. " If I had but Joshua's gift!" says Paul, sighing, as he lies gazing up at the flawless What the AtUhor Says. 259 sapphire above him. '' If I could but say, with any hope of being obeyed, ' Sun, stand thou still !' " " Why should you say so ?" asks Lenore, opening her eyes as she busily wrings out her pocket-handkerchief, and lays it on the grass to dry. " Why should you luish to stop him ? He will last quite long enough to light us home, and that is all we want him for to-day." " To-day ! Yes," answers Le Mesurler, sighing again ; '' but when one thinks that, in all human probability, he will shine upon us two toofether at Huelo^oat never ao^ain !" ''He will shine upon us two together at Morlaix," says. Lenore playfully, ''which will be much the same, will not it ? Pro- bably he will not only shine upon us, but will freckle us a good deal." " He will not shine upon us together anywhere long," says Paul, rather crossly, as if vexed by her gaiety. I 7 — 2 26o ^^ Good-bye, Szucelheart r " What do you mean ?" '' I mean that I am going back to England the day after to-morrow ; that Is all." " Going !" she repeats, while a cowardly, treacherous white spreads over cheeks and lips, and her wet hands drop forgotten into her lap. '' Yes ; I am going," answers Paul, his vain man's heart all astir at sight of her change of countenance, and his face gaining all the colour hers has lost ; " my people, who have never hitherto shown much pro- pensity for my society, have suddenly found that I am Indispensable to them." She turns her head aside, and looks away towards the piny hills. *' So you are going away ?" she says, almost under her breath. " Well " (forcing a smile) '' considering how inausplciously our acquaintance began, we have got on very well together, have not we ?" What the AiLthor Says. 261 " Very well," answers Paul, emphati- cally. '' We have managed to agree pretty well, although I am not your sty lei' with a perceptible accent on the last three words. '' Not my style ? What do you mean ?'* he asks, reddening consciously. " Although you did think it such a hard- ship coming on that tea picnic with us down the Ranee ; although you did look at your watch so often and sigh so heavily. I thought once or twice" (laughing a little) ^'that you would have blown out Frederic's new-lit fire." '' Is it possible ?" cries Paul, tragically ; not in the least struck by the ridiculous- ness of the offence imputed to him, but rather by the state of mind in himself that such an offence evidenced. Lenore bends her eyes on the ground ; her fingers, ignorant of what they are doing, pluck at the fine blades of grass and 262 *' Good-bye, Sweetheart /" dwarf yellow flowers about her ; her figure has a drooped air of languor. " There was a pretty redness in her Hp, A httle riper and more lusty red Than that mixed in her cheek; 'twas just the difterence Betwixt the constant red and mingled damask." " Yes, we have got on very well," she says, in a tone that is half a whisper and half a sigh. Paul has risen to his feet^ and now steps across the narrow barrier of the brook that parts them, and stands over her, w^ith his hands in his pockets, and a strong emotion agitating his plain burnt face. " Lenore," he says impetuously, " do not you think that we should get on very well together always f " If only premeditated proposals came to pass, every parish register would be the poorer by two-thirds of its marriages. When he set off this mornlnof from Mor- laix, Paul had as much Idea of offering W/iat the A2itho7^ Says. 26 J himself to Jemima as to Lenorc, only he would not believe it now if you were to tell him so. At his words she springs to her feet, and a slight quiver passes over her features. " I think," she says, trying to laugh, " that we should quarrel a good deal." " Lenore !" says Paul, earnestly, " I do not know why I am asking you. You are not in the least the sort of woman that I ever pictured to myself as my wife, and I have no earthly business to ask any woman ; my face " (with a rather grim laugh) " is my fortune, and you see what a handsome one that is, and yet — and yet — tell me, Lenore, am I worth living in a garret on cold mutton with ?" She gives him no speech in answer ; only she stretches out her arms, and her eyes flash softly through her happy tears : he must read his answer there. The beck tinkles at their feet; the butter- 264 " Good-bye^ Sweetheart /" files hover about their heads ; the sun gives them his broad, warm smile ; and three Httle Breton girls, going a bilberry- ing, with tin mugs in their hands, stand on a neighbouring slope, aghast at the manners and customs of the British. She is lying in his arms, and he is kissing the beautiful lips that have kissed none but him, that (as he confidently thinks) will kiss none but him ever ao^ain. '' Are you sure," asks Lenore, presently, lifting her ruffled head from his breast, and smiling through her tears, " are you sure that you are asking me for yourself this time ?" '* Qtdte sure." " That it is not for Frederic ?" '' No." '' Nor for Mr. Scrope ?" " No." " Are you quite, qtcite sure that you like me ?" she asks, drawing a little away from IV/iat the Author Says. 265 him, and reading carnesdy his grey eyes, as if with more confidence in their truth than in that of his mouth. " I am not at all sure of it," he answers, laughing. '' You are not the sort of per- son that any one coicld like, but I am very sure that I love you, if that will do as well." "Better than the shot partridge woman?" she asks, smiling, half ashamed of her question, and yet with solicitude. " ImmeasiLrably better !" answers he, devoutly. At that she seems satisfied, but in a very little while her restless doubts re- turn. '' Paul," she says, withdrawing herself from his arms, " you have not yet asked me whether I like you." " I suppose," he answers, gaily, " that I thought actions spoke louder than words." " You did not think it worth while ask- 266 " Good-bye, Siued heart /" ing me," she says, reddening painfully, '' because you were so sure of what the answer would be ; you kneiu I was fond of you ; you have known it all along ! Oh, why did not I hide it better ?" clasping her hands together, and flinging herself down, disconsolately, on the grass. " I knew nothino" of the kind," answers Paul, pulling his moustache, and looking very much embarrassed ; " if, indeed, you had been any other woman, I might have been conceited enough to fancy from your manner that you did not dislike me, but as you are not in the least like any woman I ever saw in my life, I could not possibly argue from their manners and customs to yours." *' You are very kind," she answers, shaking her head, " trying to put me in good humour with myself, but you cannot : I have been a lame hare — a lame hare !" "Do not call my wife ugly names !" cries TVhai tJie Author Says. 267 Paul, playfully, yet distressed, sitting down beside her ; " it is very bad manners." ''If you had been less sure of me, you would have valued me a hundred times more," says the girl, with bitter mortifica- tion, fixing her solemn, tragic eyes on his face. '' Do not get into the habit of talking such nonsense," retorts he, brusquely ; all the more brusquely perhaps from a latent consciousness that there is a grain of truth in her self-accusation. '' How many times must I tell you that I was not sure of you ; that I did not know but that }'0u might give me my coitp de grace with as little remorse as you did West ?" How Mr. Le Mesurier reconciles this astounding fib to his conscience, I must leave the reader to determine. Another little silence ; the bilberry children have disappeared in the wood ; the long-legged flies are still promenading 268 ''Good-bye, Sweetheart T on the stream ; the sleepy mellowness of afternoon is upon everything. " Paul," says Lenore again presently, not in the least convinced by her lover s perjuries, and lifting a charming quivering face to his ; '' can you swear to me that you did not ask me because I looked grieved at the news of your going ? Can you swear to me that you like me always ? Not only noiu, here, but always, all day and all night — even when you are away from me." '' Even when I am away from you, strange to say," he replies, heartily, draw- ing her fondly towards him. " I know," she continues, not yielding to his caresses, but rather resisting them, " that while I am with you, I please you, as any man is pleased with the company of a young, good-looking woman, who has evident delight in his society ; but when you are away from me — alone, in your own What the AlUhor Says. 269 room at night, quietly thinking over things — do you hke me then ? do you approve of me then ?'' He looks a little pained at first by this puzzling catechism ; then, putting an arm of fond and resolute ownership round her, answers gravely, but without hesitation : " Lenore, since you are bent on torment- ing yourself and me with these ridiculous doubts and questionings, I will tell you the very truth : I would not have loved you if I could have helped it ; for the last three w^eeks I have been trying honestly to dis- like you. I have told myself over and over again — yes, I have even told West too, that I did not admire you ; I have pretended to hold you cheap ; I have said that you were fast — that I could see you had a temper — that }'0u were bad form — that you were not even pretty — God for- give me for such a lie," breaking off sud- denly, to smooth her ruffled hair. 270 ^' Good-bye, Sweetheaid P^ " Well ; go on," she says, curtly, im- patient of the interruption, while her cheeks wear as deep a dye as the strewn petals of a red rose. '' I felt — w^ell, to tell truth, I feel now" (laughing) "that you were not a woman that a man would have an easy time with. Lenore, I shall be frantically jealous of you ; I shall very often fly into a rage with you " There," cries Lenore with spirit, '' we shall be quits ; for I never stayed in the house with any one for a fortnight in my life, without quarrelling a Voutrance with them." " You are," continues Paul, still smiling, " as unlike as it is possible to be to the patient Grizzle, the amiable fond drudge, that I have always imagined trudging humbly through life beside me ! I cannot fancy yotL trudging humbly beside any one ; you would be more likely to stalk on in What the Author Says. 271 Jront of them, with 3'our head up — but yet — but yet, Lenore — look me in the face for as long as you please — the longer the better — I defy even yoic to find any falsehood there — I would not change you now for all the Grizzles in Christendom." " Would not you ?" she says, softly lay- ing her head caressingly down on his shoulder, '' I am glad !" '' Poor darling !" he says, with a passion- ate pang of self-reproach, '' I wish I was better worth belnof orlad of" Neither speaks for a few moments, and both are happy. Lenore, womanlike, is the first to break silence. " Paul," she says, lifting her head from Its new resting place, laying a hand with Innocent familiarity upon each of his shoulders, and scanning closely his face, which looks even less handsome under this minute inspection than when viewed from the respectful distance at which his 272 ^'Good-bye, Sweetheart f acquaintance are wont to regard it, ''do you know that I am not at all nice ? Not at all ; quite the contrary. I would not have told you, only that I am sure that you would very soon have found it out for yourself : hitherto, I have not cared whether I was or no ; but I am not a nice person, certainly. As yet you have seen only the best of me." '' The best of you !" cries Le Mesurier, raising his brows in feigned dismay, " if what I have seen be the best of you, what iniLst the worst be ?" She smiles. ^ '' You remind me of the man, who, when his ladylove refused him, saying that she wondered how he could have the presumption to propose to her, as she had never shown him anything but her coldest manner, answered that if such were her coldest manners, he shuddered to think what her warmest must be." The laugh becomes a duet. '' Do not you remem- What the AtUhor Says. 273 ber," continues Lenore, gravely, " what Miss Richland says in Goldsmith's ' Good- natured Man ?' ' Our sex are like poor tradesmen that put all their best goods to be seen in the windows.' All my best goods are in my windows." " Why do not you leave me to make these discoveries for myself ?" asks Paul, half vexed, half playfully. " Why do you tell me ? It Is like tellinor j^e the end of a novel." " Do not you see," she says, eagerly, " that I want you to know the worst of me at once ?" '' And about how bad is the worst ?" asks Paul jestingly, as he takes her two hands, and puts them about his own neck, while he gazes at his leisure into the shady depths of her deep-fringed eyes, " is it that you have a will of your own ? — I know that already — I knew it from the day when you first burst upon my dazzled sight in VOL. I. 18 2 74 ''Good-bye, Sweethea7^t !'' Stephanie's cap and petticoat — Is it that you snub your sister ? I know that too — is It " " Oh do not joke," she says, earnestly, ''It is no joking matter, but I will try to be nicer for the future ; I zuill Indeed, for your sake ! I will begin directly — to-morrow." '' Why not to-day ?" (smiling). '' I shall have no temptation to resist to- day," she answers simply. " To-day, I am too happy to be wicked." Again he presses her to his heart, with a feeling of remorse, as one that has been given a good gift, and prizes It not accord- ing to its worth. " Oh poor child !" he cries with emotion, *' why are you happy ? Is It because you have made the worst and most loslne bar- gain ever woman made since first this cheatino^ world beo^an T' " I have been so lucky all my life," she says with a pensive smile, " from a little What the Atithor Says. 275 child, I have always succeeded in getting what I wanted ! You are the first person whose love I ever wished for, and — is it forward of me to tell you so ? — I wished for it from almost the first day I saw you, rude and surly as you were to me — and now — so you tell me, do not you ? —against your will I have got even that." " There is not much doubt of it," answers Paul, with more emphasis than eloquence. " Oh perverse pretty darling, what blessed contrariety ever induced you to take a fancy to such an ugly ill-conditioned devil as I ? Most women hate the sight of me. " And you return the compliment with interest," rejoins Lenore, smiling ; " so Frederic told us. That was what first made me think of you. Oh Paul " (her gravity returning, and the unbidden tears rising to her eyes) '' w^as there ever an in- stance of any one being happy ahvays ? or 18—2 276 " Good-bye, Sweetheart P' shall I have to pay for my good luck by- and-by ?" "Do not talk like that," says the young man hastily, with a pained look, " It makes me feel as If I had been misleading you, and yet God knows I have not done so consciously. Oh love !" (with an accent of bitterness) " you will find soon enough that there Is nothing alarmingly fortunate In the lot you have drawn." "If you think," she answers, with a spirited smile, " that I am deceiving myself In my estimate of you, you are mistaken ; I am not elevating your excellences at the expense of my own ; if I am not remark- ably amiable, neither I am sure are you ; we shall probably lead a cat and dog life, to the edification of all our neighbours — but yet, try as you may to persuade me to the contrary, it still seems — It will always seem to me — good luck to belong to you. Come, let us go !" What the Author Says, 277 As she speaks, she rises, and stands beside the httle quarrelsome stream, tall, and straight, and beautiful, with a grave fond smile on her shut lips, and a bulrush wand in her small white hand ; his own, his very own, and not another man's ! CHAPTER XVI. WHAT JEMIMA SAYS. ^j^'fe^T Is half-past eight, but still broad daylight. Paul and Lenore have not yet returned. I wish they would. " Good night !" say I, closing the old spinet at which I have been war- bling, in the little salon that overhangs the street. '' Are you going to bed ?" asks Mr. Scrope, dissuasively, '' do not." He is lying on three chairs, meditating, like Mr. Pick- wick, with his eyes closed. " I have a head-ache," I answer rather What Jemima Says. 279 crossl)'. " Can no one keep awake In my society ?" is my reflection. '' Please sing ' Good night, good night, beloved,' before you go," says he, Hfting his bkie eyes with lazy entreaty to my face, ''dor I laugh : " You are like the man in ' Sam Slick,' who said to the girl, ' Thing me that little thong again !' when she had already sung it twice. I sang ' Good night, good night, beloved,' ten minutes ago." . He first looks confused, and then laughs with boyish heartiness. '' Did you ? You see it was a better lullaby than you had any idea of." " Good night !" say I, tendering my hand for the second time. " Do not go !" he says again, drawing himself languidly up ; " it is only half-past eight." *' Is not it as well to sleep comfortably and peacefully in bed, as uncomfortably 2 8o '* Good-bye, Sweetkeai^t T and spasmodically on three hard -bottomed chairs ?" '' I think not" (rising and yawning). "In order to get to bed one has the trouble of going upstairs. Now, if one had some one to camy one up it would be dif- ferent." " I wish they would come back," say I, uneasily stepping out into the little bal- cony. '' It is a great shame of Mr. Le Mesurier keeping Lenore out so late." " How do you know that it is not she that is keeping him out ?" I drew myself up with dignity : '' What do you mean ?" " I meant no offence," he answers, good- humouredly ; " only from the very little I know of your sister, I should say that she was not the sort of person to let any one make her come in, or go out, against her own will." " You do not like Lenore," say I, lean- IV hat yeinima Says. 281 ing- my arms on the rails and gazing down the street. " To tell you the truth," he answers, con- fidentiall}% '' she frightens me out of my wits ! Yoic do not in the least ; but when I see her come into the room, my first im- pulse is to take to my heels, and hide in dens and caves." '' Is it," say I, surprised. "Why?" " Her eyes go through one like gimletsl^ he says, his handsome young cheeks flush- ing ; " and she has a way of looking over and under and throuorh and on each side of one, without affecting to perceive one." " Has she ?" I say, wonderingly ; '' I never observed it." '' Perhaps it is only / who am invisible to the naked eye," rejoins he, with an in- dolent smile. " She perceives Paul, no doubt : we can all see that, of course." '' There is no accounting for taste," I 282 '' Good-bye, Szueetheart f answer, tritely. " Bottom and Titania are of very frequent occurrence nowadays." '' I did not mean that exactly," says Mr. Scrope, too loyal to his friend to relish the ingenious comparison that I have instituted between him and the ass-headed weaver of Athens. '' I am not in the least surprised at Miss Lenore's preferring Paul to me, for he is the very best fellow in the world, and con- sequently I can only be the second best." " Very best /" cry I, carping at such un- limited praise bestowed upon a person whose merits I have, as yet, been unable to discover. " How very best? Most re- ligious, do you mean ?" He looks down. '' No, not that, I sup- pose." '' Steadiest ?" He smiles significantly. " Hardly! poor old Paul ! They used to call him Lincoln and Bennett in his old regiment, because he was as mad as two hatters." What yemima Says. 283 " Most amiable ?" " Well no, I think not ; Paul is a queer- tempered fellow ; he can be very nasty when he likes." " In what, then," inquire I, astonished, ''may I ask, does his super- eminent merit consist ?" ''It knocks one up so much this hot weather, explaining things," answers he, stretching. " All the same, he is the very best fellow in the world." " That is the Italian mode of argument," say I, smiling, " which consists in repeating the disputed assertion over a certain num- ber of times, in exactly the same words as at first." With this parting thrust, I take my leave. Early as is the hour, many of the commer- cial travellers have already retired to bed ; at least, many boots stand outside many doors. As I walk slowly up the stairs, the problem that engages my mind is — 284 *' Good-bye, Sweetheart /" *' Wherein can Mr. Le Mesurler's charm He ? Ugly — irreligious — ^dissipated — ill- tempered !" I fall asleep without having solved it. I am awoke, or half-awoke, by a sensation of being violently called upon and shaken by some one. I sit up and blink : " I have sung it tzvice already," I say, irrelevantly, imagining that Mr. Scrope is still pressing me to sing " Good-night, good-night, beloved," and is shaking me to enforce compliance. " Sung what ? Who wants you to sing ? Wake up, you foolish old person !" cries my sister's laughing voice. I obey. Broad awake, I look round. The moon- light is lying in silver bars on the floor, havinof shone throuo^h the Venetian blind. A candle glares uncomfortably into my eyes ; and, on my bed, Lenore is sitting, still dressed in her hat and jacket ; her clothes wet with the night-dews, and the steady shining of a great new happiness in What ycmivia Says. 285 her eyes. " Jemima !" she says, with an excited smile, snatching my hand ; '' are you awake ? — wide ? Can you understand things ?" *' It is not your fault if I cannot," I answer, drowsily, rubbing my eyes. '' Stop blinking," she cries, impatiently, '' and look at me ! Do you know that you are looking at the very happiest woman in all France ?" '' And you at the sleepiest," reply I, lying down again. '' Do not go to sleep !" she says, laying her sweet fresh face, cool with the kisses of the night-wind, beside mine on the pillow. '' You do not know what interesting things I have to tell you. Do you know" (in a confidential, emphatic whisper) — " I dare- say you will hardly believe it at first — I can hardly believe it myself, yet — but Paul likes — me — very — much /" '' Well ?" say I crossly, half at my Inter- 2 86 " Good-bye, Sweetheart /" rupted slumbers, half at the unwelcome, though expected news ; " there is nothing very wonderful in that ; for the last three weeks you have been doing your very best to make him like you, and your efforts in that line are not generally unblessed with success." Her countenance falls ; her tone of gay triumph changes. " Doing my very best !" she repeats, slowly. ^' Ah ! that was what I was afraid of. So I have — so I have." '' Your friend Paul had no need to see farther through a stone wall than other people, in order to perceive that it was a case of, ' Oh, whistle and I'll come to you, my lad !' " pursue I, with clumsy badinage. She covers her face with her hands; then, lifting it, looks with wistful anxiety at me. " Did I do anything to make a person despise me, do you think ?" she asks, in a low voice. " Was I unladylike ? Did I run after him ?" What yemiina Says. 287 " Run after him ! Pooh ! nonsense !'* reply I, carelessly; then, after a pause, meditatively : " Paul ! Paul ! It is an ugly, abrupt little name. Paul Pry! Paul Ferroll, Avho killed his wife ! Are there an}' more Pauls ? You really must have him re- christened, Lenore." "Paul and Virginia," says Lenore, assisting my memory, having recovered her smiles ; *' I do not think I am much like Viro^inia." " And do you mean seriously to tell me," continue I, becomincr orrave, " that it was with the deliberate intention of asking you to share his exceedingly indifferent fortunes that he took you out on this expedition to- day, in that little dusty tumble-down pony- gig, in the roasting sun ?" '' I do not know whether it was deliberate intention or accident," replies my sister, looking down, and plucking at the clothes. *' I rather think it was accident ; but which- ever it was, he did ask me." 288 " Good-bye, Sweetheart /" " And you said ' Yes,' and ' Thank you kindly,' I suppose ?" cry I, reddening with indignation. She nods assent : '' If I did not say it, I felt it." A httle silence : " You will at least have an excellent foil, on all occasions, ready to your hand," I say, spitefully, in bitter vexa- tion that Damocles' sword has fallen — that the catastrophe which I have been vaguely dreading for the last three weeks has happened. '' What do you mean ?" (with an absent look). '' Oh !" (with a smile) '' I see ; you think him so ugly ?" " Extremely !" reply I, drily. " So do I," rejoins she calmly ; ** I like ugliness." ■^' ' Come sit thee down upon this flowery bed, While I thy amiable cheeks do coy, And stick musk-roses in thy sleek smooth head And kiss thy fair large ears, my gentle joy,' " What yemivia Says. 289 say I, maliciously, quoting Titania's apos- trophe to Bottom. Lenore reddens. ''You are rude, Jemima, and not at all witty." "He is poor too," say I, with rising exasperation ; '' unjustifiably poor. I sup- pose he goes upon the principle that what is not enouofh for one is enouo^h for two ?" '' I suppose he does," she answers, quietly. " I like poverty." '' He is ill-tempered, too," pursue I, eagerly. "Do you remember what a fury he flew into at Guingamp, with that poor garcon who could not understand his bad French when he asked for the time-table ?" " I remember ; I like ill-temper." " And he is also a gourmand," continue I, relentlessly. " Did you notice how tho- roughly put out he looked yesterday at dinner, because the galantine was finished before it reached him ?" "■ Did he ? I dare say; I like greediness." VOL. I. 19 290 " Good-bye, Sweethea7^t ! ' ' I shake my head, silenced and baffled by this hopeless agreement with all my objec- tions. " You see," cries Lenore, with a tri- umphant smile, " that, try as you may, you cannot put me out of conceit with him." " The point I am trying to arrive at," say I, with a sigh, " is, what could have ever put you into conceit with him first ? Do not look so angry, my dear child ! I am not so wedded to my own opinion but that I am quite ready to change it, if you show me good reason why I should. But — I really do not mean it offensively — but what good qualities of mind or body has. Mr. Le Mesurier ?" Lenore springs off the bed, and begins to walk rapidly up and down the room : her little high heels tap-tapping against the carpetless boards. " How you talk !" she cries, angrily. " Do you think that, when a person loves, they pick out this quality What yerniina Says. 291 and that, and say, ' This is loveable, and that is loveable, and therefore I will be fond of the person who owns them all ?* One loves because one loves — because one cannot help it, and because one would not, If one could." " Talk High Dutch, or Coptic, you will be quite as intelligible to me,'' I say, indig- nantly. She returns to the bed, and fixing her large bright eyes on my face, "Is it pos- sible, Jemima," she asks, ''that in all the many years you have been about the world," (I wince) " you have never had a lover that you cared about with all your heart and soul, for no particularly good reason that you could give either yourself or anybody else ?' " '' Never," reply I, with rather a grim laugh. " Humiliating as the confession is, I should have thought, Lenore, that you might have known by this time that I never 19 — 2 292 '^Good-bye, Sweetheart f have had a lover, either that I cared about or that I did not care about ; and I do not think that there are many women of eight- and- twenty that can make that proud boast." "Poor Jemima!" cries my sister, in a tone of the sincerest compassion, taking my hand : at this moment she feels ten years older In experience and emotion than I. " Do not pity me !" say I, with asperity ; " Vappitit vient en mangeant : if I had one lover, I might wish for more ; but, as things stand, the more I look around me, the more Inclined I am to think that ' Ignorance Is bliss/ " " Good-night, Jemima !" says Lenore, stalking to the door with as much dignity as a waterproof down to the heels and a brass candlestick In her hand will permit ; " I am sorry I woke you ; next time that I come to you for sympathy ^" ; What yemima Says. 293 ''Stay — stay!" cry I, vexed at the effect of my words, and yet puzzled how to mend them. Sitting up in bed and stretching out my arms to her : — " Remember, I was only half awake ; I did not quite take it in : I — I — daresay he is very nice when you come to know him." (Lenore pauses with the open door in her hand.) " He looks quite like a gentleman, and — and has the usual younger son's portion — Very good teeth," continue I, laughing awkwardly, and floundering about in search of a pos- sible excellence in mind or body on which to be able conscientiously to compliment my sister s lover. Silence. " I am sure — at least I think — that he will improve on acquaintance." " It is not of the least consequence what you think !" says Lenore in a fury, banging the door. CHAPTER XVII. WHAT THE AUTHOR SAYS. " The Lord of Nann and his lady fair In early youth united were, In early youth divided were." " /t^vS^ ^^^ y^^^ think that we are rather Hke the Lord and Lady of Nann, engaged yesterday, to be separated the day after to-morrow ?" It is Lenore who says all this : she is strolling along beside her lover down one of the lovely old streets of Morlaix, that the malignant mania for smart new quays, broad bright new thoroughfares, has not What the Author Says. 295 yet swept away. They have been prying into the dim interiors ; dimbing unforbid- den the dusty beautiful wrecks of carven stairs, up and down which the stately nobles used to pace, in the gone centuries ; and where now only d\.x\.y gamins roll and tumble, and the clamp of sabots comes. Life seems easier here than in Eno^land. In the ancient timber-fronted houses people are leaning on the heavy window-sills miles up in air : below, in the street, they seem to have nought to do but io jascr with their neighbours, sitting in old carved doorways ; while brio^ht blankets and ruo^s huno^ out in the front make a brilliant bit of colour. At almost every house, birds, hung in wicker cages — parrots, canaries. A little child is trotting about in the gutter with a bunch of cherries in its little hand. The sun is beat- ing, blinding hot, on the fine bare new streets, but here the tall friendly houses lean over, storey above storey, so close, to 296 " Good-bye, Sweetheart T gossip together, that they intercept his rays. Lenore has furled her umbrella. " I do not think that my worst enemy could accuse me of being in early youth," Paul says, with a smile. " About how old are you ?" asks Lenore, peering up inquisitively at him. '' You are one of those baffling sort of people who might be any age, from twenty- five to forty- five inclusive." " I am halfway between the two ; I am thirty-five." *' You look more, I think," says Lenore, with charming candour ; " I suppose it is that horrid beard." Le Mesurier does not answer, but he does not look particularly pleased. " You know I have never yet seen your real face," continues she, slipping her hand through his arm. " I have the vaguest idea of what sort of features I am under- What the Author Says. 297 taking ; I shall be like the lady who was so short-sicrhted that she said she never knew her husband by sight until they mar- ried : this appendage must come off before we meet again." She speaks playfully, but in the imperative mood, which has been habitual to her throuo^h life. Paul thinks the imperative mood very good in a man, but utterly inadmissible in a woman. " Must it ?" he answers, very shortly ; then, with a rather awkward attempt to recover his good humour : " Do not you know what the early Christians said ? — that shaving was a lie against one's own face, and an impious attempt to im- prove the works of the Creator !" Lenore thrusts out her fresh lips in a mutinous pout. *' I can quote too ; did you ever hear this distich ?" she says, saucily : — " ' John P. Robinson, he Said they did not know everything down in Jiidee.' " Paul looks grave. He has not read the 2gS ''Good-bye, SweetheaiH T ' Biglow Papers,' and he particularly dis- likes flippancy in a woman. Men may be allowed to be a little wicked ; but all ivomeii should be religious. They have emerged from the old street ; have left behind them the- tall slate-fronted houses, nodding to each other over the way ; have left also the gables, the dormer-windows, the strange saint-faces, deftly wrought in wood. They are sauntering slowly back to their hotel through the more modern part of the town. Morlaix lies so prettily ; viaduct, river, churches, peaked houses, all hobnobbing in the hollow, between green hills. " What will you be doing this time three days hence ?" asks Lenore, presently, with a half pensive smile, abandoning the obnox- ious subject of beards. '' Undergoing, probably, a catechism at the hands of my people, as to your merits and demerits," answers Paul, laugh- ing. What the Aiithoj" Says. 299 " What will they ask you first about me ?" inquires she, with anxious curio- sity. '' How can I tell ?" " What points are they likely to la}' most stress upon ?" '' They will probably," begins Paul with some reluctance, '' vrlsh to know first whether you are of a good family. By-the- by — do not be angry with me for not knowing, but you see I should like to be ready with my answer — are you ?" " Of course," replies the girl, drily, toss- ing her head with a jerk. '' Came over with the Conqueror." " Really ?" cries Paul, with an eagerness which shows that, whatever other Aveak- nesses he may be superior to, he is not above that of a sincere penchant towards pedigree. " How do I know ?" cries Lenore, im- patiently. *' Who cares ? What does it ;oo " Good-bye, Sweetheart /" matter ? Grandfathers do not make a man, or a woman either." " They are rather apt, however, to make a gentleman," answers Paul, somewhat stiffly. " I always tell everybody," continues she, with an arch smile, " that we are lineally descended from the poet. I should not mind being great — great — great — granddaughter to ' Fair Daffodils.' " " And are you ?" asks her lover, resign- ing himself to come down six centuries in his expectations. '' I have not the slightest reason for . supposing so," answers she, with a careless laugh. Paul heaves an involuntary sigh. " What will the next article be, as shop- keepers say ?" asks Lenore, presently, giving her head an uneasy toss, and with a sort of siuagger in her voice, which is quite as much the result of nervousness as What the Author Says. 301 of pride. " Whether I have any money, I suppose ?" '' Possibly," answers he, uncomfort- ably. '' And you will reply, ' Not a sou !' " (raising her two hands and letting them fall again with a gesture expressive of utter destitution). '' Exactly." She laughs maliciously. *'How I should like to see their faces ! Grandfather doubtful, and pennilessness certain I You would, however, not be quite correct ; I have several sous — an immense number, in fact. How many sous are there in four thousand pounds In the Three per Cents ?" " As many as in four thousand otit of the Three per Cents," he answers, laueh- ing. " A base evasion of a difficult arithmeti- cal problem ! Well, sous or no sous, I really have four thousand pounds." 302 ' ' Good-bye, Sweetheart f ' " I am delighted to hear it." *' Could not you put it into francs when you mention it to your family ? It sounds so immense then." " I am afraid they would detect the im- posture." *' Jemima has more — a good deal more," says Lenore, communicatively ; " still, we only make up five hundred pounds a year between us — a fact, however, which we carefully conceal from our acquaintance, having learnt by experience the entire truth of Solomon's epigram, that ' the poor, even his neighbour hateth him !" They reach the hotel, the empty salon. " It /i" a contemptible dot',' cries Lenore, indignantly, flinging down her hat on the floor, and herself on the sofa. " One ought to be superhumanly handsome to induce people to overlook it." " It is better than nothing," replies Paul, with a philosophical, if lugubrious attempt What the Author Says. 30 0^0 to look at his beloved's minute portion from a cheerful point of view. '' Four thousand pounds !" repeats Le- nore, scornfully. " Not four thousand pounds a year — that would be all very well ; but four thousand pounds for the whole maintenance and support of a rea- sonable educated being, with a fine feeling for lace, and a just abhorrence of country boots and thread gloves !" " And gingham umbrellas !" supple- ments Le Mesurier, laughing. " You must know that we are not all church mice however," says Lenore pre- sently ; " for the credit of the family, I must tell you that we have some rich people among us — my sister Sylvia, for instance." '' Your sister Sylvia !" cries Paul, rather aghast. " I had no idea that you had a sister Sylvia, or a sister anything else, ex- cept Jemima. I suppose Kezia, and 304 " Good-bye^ Szueetheart /" Keren Happuch, and a few more, will transpire by-and-by." " Some years ago she married," con- tinues the girl, blographically. " She is a pretty little cat, with eyes as big as tea- cups ; and he — well, he was old enough to be everybody s grandfather " (stretching out both arms comprehensively). " He was as bald as my hand " (opening one pretty pink palm), "as fat as Falstaff, as ignorant as a carp, and he had made his money by that yellow grease that they put on railway wheels." '* Good Heavens ! how awful ! Is he alive still ?" asks Paul, nervously. *' That is what I am coming to," con- tinues she, gravely. "In poetic justice he ought to have had creeping paralysis, softening of the brain — anything that would have kept her tied to the leg of his bath-chair for the next twenty or thirty years, as a judgment on her for marrying JV/iai the A^ithor Says. 30 0^0 him ; instead of which, what happens ?" (Standing before him and gesticulating). *' Within four years he is carried off by an attack of apoplexy ! Bah ! what luck some people have !" " So that is your idea of hick /" rejoins Paul, leaning his chin on the back of the chair on which he is sitting astride, and staring curiously up at her ; '' to marry a commercial porpoise, and survive it." " It is to be hoped/' resumes Lenore, after a thoughtful pause (marching up and down the little room), " that }'our people will ask whether I am good-looking. That is the one question to which )'ou could give a really satisfactory- answer." She speaks, not with the blushing naivete of a jeiine ijigemie, but with the matter-of-fact calmness of a woman whom earl\' contact with the world has taui^dit the value of the one great gift she has been given. "If they do not ask I must volunteer the information." VOL. I. 20 o 06 " Good-bye, Szveetheart /' " You might also," pursues Lenore, be- ginning coolly to check off her accomplish- ments on her finp-ers, '' hint to them that I dance extremely well — that " ''My father does not approve of dan- cing," interrupts Paul, tilting the hind legs of his chair till he nearly topples over. Her hands drop to her sides, and her great eyes open wide like large blue flowers in the sun. " Not approve of dancing ! What a dreadful old man ! What can he be made of ?" "If you asked my eldest brother, he w^ould answer ' Cast iron,' judging from his duration," replies he, with a lazy chuckle of amusement. " And does not he allow your sisters to dance ?" asks Lenore, looking thoroughly dashed by the Insight just afforded her into her future father-in-law's character. " They may walk through a quadrille, or romp through the Lancers, if they choose," replies Le Mesurler, still laughing at the What the Author Says. 307 expression of his betrothed's face. " I would not be they if they were caught in- dulging in any Avilder mode of progression." *' Poor dears !" ejaculates Lenore, with a sigh of heartfelt compassion. "No doubt, however, they dance like dervishes as soon as his back is turned." ''Is that the course yo2t^ mean to pursue when I forbid you to do anything ?" asks Paul in jest, but also most heartily in earnest. "- Undoubtedly," replies she, coolly, look- ing back at him with defiant gravity. " From the time I could walk alone I can safely say that I have never yet been for- bidden to do anything that I did not in- stantly strain every nerve to do it." If Miss Herrick expects her lover to show either pleasure or amusement at this J) roof of her spirit, she is disappointed. He only says '' Oh !" and coughs rather drily. " Parents and guardians, tutors and go- vernesses, forbid^' continues Lenore, inci- 3o8 ''Good-bye, Sweetheart!''' sively ; '' one does not hear such an ugly hectoring- word mentioned between man and wife." '' I have an idea, however," retorts Paul, quietly, " that one can find such ugly hec- toring words as ' honour ' and ' obey ' in the Prayer Book. I will show you the place, if you like." ''One cannot always take the Prayer Book atL pied de la lettre'' says Lenore lightly. '' After all, I dare say I shall be quite as likely to ' honour and obey ' you as you to ' worship ' me !" '' I do not know that " (rising) ; " when you have that blue gown on, and a blue ribbon in your hair, and look meek, I am not far off it now." As he speaks he takes her two hands in his, and the look that for the moment makes the wise man half- brother to the idiot — that no doubt made even Solomon himself seem but a foolish fellow among his seven hundred charmers ■ — invades his usually shrewd eyes. What the Author Says. 309 '' I had that identical blue crown on, the day that you so good-naturedly acted as Frederic's proxy," replies Lenore, demurely. *' Lenore !" says Paul, neither heeding nor hearing her allusion, loosing her hands, and clasping his own round her waist, " I have told you what I shall be doing when I am gone : tell me now what yoiL will ? I do not want you to promise to look at the moon, or say your prayers, or drink your cup of tea at the very same moment I do, or any such folly, but " (with an impatient sigh) " I — I suppose in this sort of cases we are all pretty much alike, and — do not laugh at me, I hate being laughed at — I should like to be able to say to myself at such-and-such an hour, Lenore is doinof such-and-such a harmless thing ; if not I shall be sure to imagine that you are up to some mischief." " Thank you." " Come, Lenore, what will you be doing the first day T 3'io *' Good-bye, Sweetheart /" " The first day," says the girl, feeHng a vile inclination to be sentimental and tear- ful, and resolving not to be conquered by it — ^' The first day I shall lie in bed all day with the window-curtains drawn : I shall refuse all food^ however hungry I may be ; hitherto I have not found that love takes away the appetite, and I shall cry noisily, obtrusively, and without inter- mission." '' And the second day ?" '' Half of the second day I shall spend in gazing at your photograph — that one of Disderi's, in which you are sitting with' your back to Mont Blanc, looking like a murderer — and the other half in wranoflingf with Jemima about your attractions : we have already had one or two passages-of- arms as to the shape of your nose and the colour of your eyes." " And the third day ?" " The tJiirci day /" flinging down her head on his shoulder, and groaning honestly, What the Author Says. 3 1 1 '' the third ugly empty Immense day ! How shall I get through It ? Well," (recovering herself, and feeling rather ashamed of her ebullition,) '' the third day I may, perhaps, pluck up my spirits enough to enable me to try and wile that handsome, sulk)', sleepy Scrope boy Into the mazes of a gentle flirtation." Paul unclasps his hands from about her suddenly, and walks towards the balcony. '' What Is the matter now ?" cries the girl, half bewildered, half offended ; then, breaking into a laugh, as she catches a glimpse of his face : " Good heavens, Paul, how Ill-tempered you can look when )ou try ! I thought I Avas a pretty good hand at It, but Fm nothing to you." '' I detest that sort of jokes," replies Paul tersely, turning upon her a thoroughly cross jealous face ; " they are not ladylike !" '' But I am not ladylike either," retorts Lenore, flinging up her head and growing- scarlet ; " did I ever say I was .^ We did o 12 " Good-bye, Sweetheart /" iiot come over with the Conqueror ; we have no more to say to the poet than you have : it Is my behef that we are roturier to the backbone !" She is standing" beside him, very up- right, with her hands behind her : her voice is not shrill, it is not its way to be so ; but it is undoubtedly raised two or three tones above its usual low key : little sparks of fire are darting from her eyes, and her cheeks are redder than the red rose in her belt. Delightfully handsome as a picture, cer- tainly — but as a future wife ? " Is it pos- sible that she can have told me the truth when she said that hitherto I had seen only the best of her ?" thinks Paul, with a cold qualm. END OF VOL. I. BILLING, PRINTER, GUILDFORD, SURREY. *^