Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, October, 1877, Vol. XX. No. 118

Eyes Of

g a conversation was going on which

daughters were with her. Addie, the elder, was at the looking-glass brushing her hair and half enveloped in its silky blackness. She was a tall, graceful girl, a refined likeness of her mother. On the rug lay Lottie, three years younger, hardly more than a growing girl, long-limbed, slight, a little abrupt and angu

hands and looked up at her mother. "I don't suppose

lied with, a smile. "Espec

nd: "I really think you'v

n't, though," said tha

die hesitated, with a li

y?" said Mrs. Blake, as if

y, "Godfrey Hammond told me that Pe

val only goes on a visit now and then. Every one knows," sai

ent, wonder, and a little scorn in her glance. Addie, blissfully unconsci

ey Hammond, sits down by me, and says some rubbish about consoling me. I think I laughed. Then he looked at me out of hi

, "you appear to have distinguish

he said something-I forget how he put it-about our being just the right number and pairing

at did

and smiled, and said, 'Don't you

t proves nothing

ere much about the same age, or if Percy were a month or two older it made no di

" said

e told you that. It so happens that Percival is not only the elder by a month or two, as you say, bu

d Addie excha

e made a mistake?

ough, certainly,"

he known the Thornes all their lives? and didn't he say o

lake a

nto her recumbent position, "perha

ed a shadow of perplexity on her face which increased the likeness between herself and Addie. Apparently, Lottie was right as to her facts. The estate was not entailed, then, and despotic power seemed to be rather capriciously exercised by the head of the house. If Horac

ing her fingers through her long hair. "Addie," she said, after

shan't do anything: ther

much? You are very fond

ed. "He is very pleasant to

believe that you are in love w

e described in this startling fashion. "Indeed, I'm nothing of the kind," she said hurriedly. "Pray don't t

dn't be." She had an unsuspected secret herself, but she w

ou know nothing about being in love,

of manner: "I know how to tell whether you are in love or not, Addie.

's answer and gave sharpness to her voice: "I

ht say so to her, but what would you do? Wouldn't you w

going to die for Mr. Horace Thorne. Please don't say such things

tainly." Lottie pronounced this decision with th

d, coming back, and glancing from Addie's flushe

? I heard you tell him one day "-here Lottie looked up with a candid gaze and audaciously imitated Mrs. Blake's manner-"that though we knew his cousin fir

hat do you mean by listen

I always do hear when you say your words

n with than his cousin," said Mrs. Blak

o be Horace. Nobody asks what I should l

When is that to come off? I dare say you will lo

ago you were always saying that I was grown up, and oug

"I'll buy you a doll for a birthday

ud but not unmelodious. "What rubbish we are talking! Seventeen to-morro

ber you would go into that wet meadow by the rectory to play trap-and-ball with Robin and J

n't it? Poor little Cock Robin! I met him in the lane the day before he went away. They will keep him in jackets, and he h

been silently recovering herself: "there's n

rted. "I'm going to bed now." She sprang to her feet and sto

s thick, or thic

hick like horse-hairs!' That's what Percy quoted to me one day when I was grumbling, and

tell? I s

an at Brackenhill treat Percival as the eldest? Well, good-night." And Lottie went off, half saying, half singing, "Who killed Cock Ro

id, "Seventeen to-morrow! Mamma,

lied doubtfully. "Time s

nruly boy," she lamented. She dashed through her lessons fairly well, but the moment she was released she was unendurable. She whistled, she sang at the top of her voice, and plunged about the house in her thick boots, till she could be off to join the two boys at the rectory, her dear friends and comra

let them. For Heaven's sake, Caroline, don't attempt to keep her at home: she'll certainly drive me crazy if you do. No one ever banged doors as Lottie does: she ought to patent the process. Slams them with a crash which jars the whole house, and yet manages not to la

said something about "a sweet neglect." But the soul of Lottie's mamma was not to be comforted with scraps of poetry. How could it be, when she had just arraigned her daughter on the charge of having her pockets bulging hideously, and had discovered that those receptacles overflowed with a miscellaneous assortment of odds and ends, the accumulations of weeks, tending to show that Lottie and Cock Robin, as she called him, had all things in common? How could it be, when Lottie was always outgrowing her garments in the most ungainly manner, so that her sleeves seemed to retreat in horror from her wrists and from her long hands, tanned by sun and wind, seamed with bramble-scratches and smeared with school-room ink? Once Lottie came home with an unmistakable black eye, for which Robin's cricket-ball was accountable. Then, indeed, Mrs. Blake felt that her cup

about somewhere It is very stupid being shut up here Addie says she can't go running about giving messages to boys and Papa said i

of the fields which were the short cut from the house, he spied Robin lurking on the other side of th

ed: "There's a

he boy was not big for his age, but there was a good deal of cleverness i

ated the Blakes' house

t, though, of course, she can't come out at present

ry to hear how she was

" said young Thorne. "Ah! Hard

id I ought to be ashamed of myself. Supposed I should be satisfied when I

afternoon's work. And, Wingfield, though I was especially to tell you that you were not to vex

of intense scorn. "Lot

she?" sai

e meditated wiping out the insult to Lottie then and there. But even with Jack, his sturdy sat

don't know," he soliloquized. "Judging by most women's novels, from Jane Eyre downward, the taste for muscular bullies prevails.

'll soon be all righ

e gets any message

way her knife that afternoon. She lent it me. She'd bette

pocket: "She shall have it. And, Robin, you'd better not be h

e boy, and went off,

self as he wrote, and, if the truth be told, had a fair vision floating before his eyes-a girl of whom Lottie had reminded him by sheer force of contrast. Still, he liked Lottie in her way. He was young enoug

cially charged me to send you the enclosed-knife I believe he called it: it looks to me like a whole armory of deadly weapons-which he seemed to think would be a comfort to you in your affliction. I sincerely hope it may prove so. I was very civil to him, remembering that I was yo

again she looked at the thick paper, with the crest at the top and the vigorous lines of writing below; and again and again the four words, "those eyes of yours," seemed to spring into ever-clearer prominence. She hid the letter away with a sudden comprehension of the roughness of her pencil scrawl which it answe

when she knew that Percival Thorne was in the neighborhood. She was very sure of his absence on the November day to which her mother had alluded, when she had insisted on playing trap-and-ball in the rectory meadows. Mrs. Blake did not realize it, but it was almost the last day of Lotti

d gazed in wonder. Was this slender girl, arrayed in a cloud of semi-transparent white, really herself-the Lottie who only a few days before had raced Robin Wingfield home across the fields, had been the first over the gap and through the ditch into the rectory meadow, and had rushed away with the November rain-drops driving in her face? She gazed on

her indignant glance i

eyes of

witchery of her own? Might she not even distance Addie in

e had rather exceeded the allowance, so that most of the guests had arrived and the first quadrille was nearly ended as they came in. Lottie

say to some one, "Do let

l at once. Had he greeted her in the patronizing way in which he had talked to her of old, she would have been deeply wounded, but he asked her for the next dance more ceremoniously, she knew, than Horace would have asked Addie. Still, she trembled as they moved off. They had scarcely met since her note to him. Suppose he alluded to it, asked after her black eye, and inquired whether she had d

ile Lottie was planning her disgrace and exile, but he merely remarked that he liked the fi

er I can waltz," sa

r tortured with

o bumping up against everybody, like that fat man and

t all like that fat man. And if you dance like the lady in pi

teady swiftness and her strong young life, had a charm of her own which he was not slow to recognize. She would hardly have thanked him for accurately classifying it, for as she danced she felt that she had discovered a new joy. Her old life slipped from her like a husk. Friendship with Cock Robin was an evident absurdity. It is true she was angry with herself that, after fighting so passionately for freedom, she should voluntarily bend her proud neck beneath the yoke. She foresaw that her mother and Addie would triumph; she felt that her bondage to Mrs. Grundy would often be irksome; but her

t so much a fit as a possible object. Probably Lottie's passion offere

xtremely well, and at times he had a way of standing proudly aloof which was worthy of any hero of romance. No settled occupation would interfere with picnics an

proved by her white dress, but had Thorne been a painter he would have sketched her as a pale vision of Liberty, with loosely-knotted hair and dark eyes glowing under Robin's red cap. He was able coolly to determine t

o wonderful that she could hardly believe in it, and acted the rough girl now and then with the idea that otherwise they must think her a consummate actress morning, noon and night. For some months no great event marked the record of her unsuspected passion. It might, perhaps, have run its course, and died out harmlessly

looked across at Lottie and shrugged his shoulders expressively. Had there been time he would have tried to escape into the garden with his girl friend; but as that was impossible, he resigned himself to his fate and listened while Mrs. Pickering poured forth her rapture concerning her son's prospects to Mrs. Blake. An uncle who was the head of a great London firm had offered the young man a situatio

Addie and a thought of Horace, sug

looking after their tenants and making improvements that she would not say anything about th

Percival, looking up. "I've a

used, hastened to explain tha

nly mentioned it because I think an illustr

r if you had something to do-I do indeed." She looked at him with an air of affectionate severity. "I speak as your friend

t is true, as a

nk you would be?"

up to a profession." He glanced through the open window at the warm loveliness of June. "At this moment, for insta

o make fun of it-"

ve a little money in my pocket; I am my own master. Sometimes I ride-another man's horse: if not I walk, and am just as well content. I don'

y well for the prese

too? Oh, I have my dre

id Mrs. Pickering, looking down on him

melons very cheap. There will be a little too much garlic in my daily life-even such a destiny as mine must have its drawbacks-but think of the wonderful scenery I shall see and the queer, beautiful out-of-the-way holes and corners I

ed to the other's fluent and tranquil speech, redd

must never marry

"You think I should not find a wife t

" said the future Sir William, feeling it inc

to work, he may marry whom he will. But if he has made up his mind to be idle, he is a contemptible cur if he wi

er fall in love with an h

in her," Lottie suggest

ncied meant "Too late." Mrs. Pickering began to tell the latest

n heiress-he could not: had he not said so? How gladly would she have given him every farthing she possessed! And was her fortune to be a barrier between them for ever? Every syllable that he had spoken was made clear by this revelation, and rose up before her eyes as a terrible word of doom. But she was not one to be easily dismayed, and her first cry was, "What shall I do?" Lottie's thoughts turned always to action, not to endurance, and she was resolved to break down the barrier, let the cost be what it might. Her talk with Godfrey Hammond gave a new interest to her romance and new strength to her determination. Since h