The Lady Paramount

with impatience. "Am I returning to my cubhood, that the me

r," he decided. "Yes-I 'll bet you ten-and-sixpence that it's nothi

s, red, white, and yellow roses. The sunshine broke into colour, it laughed, it danced, it almost rioted, among the flowers; but in the prim alleys, and on the formal hedges of box, and the quaintly-clipped yews, and the old purple brick walls, where fruit trees were trellised, it lay fast, fast asleep. Without the walls, in the deep cool greenery of the park, there was a perpetual drip-drip o

walking home from the village: a young lady drivi

of any deeper or more detailed impression. He had glanced at them vague

and its occupants, with the stretch of brown road, and the hedge-rows and meadows at either side, were visible anew to him; and he saw that the young lady who was driving had dark hair and dark eyes,

e noticed, too, that she had what they call "a fine figure,"-that she was tall, for a woman, and slender without being thin; that she bore herself well, with an air of strength, with an air of suppleness and resistance. He could even see how she was dressed: in grey cloth, close-fitting, with grey driving-gloves, and a big black hat that carried out the darkness of her hair.

ince one has got to know her. She looks as if she migh

ldom enough, in our staid, our stale society, meets a per

ppened to him would begin, and well up, and grow within him, penetrating and intensifying his sense of the summer sweetness round about, till it distracted his attention, and he must suspend his occupation of the moment, to wonde

acter: a natural quality, indeed, and one that should naturally be common: but one that is rare in England among women-among nice women, at least: the quality of sex. The woman in the dog-cart was nice. About that, he recognised with instant certainty, there could be no two conjectures. But she was also, he recognised with equal certainty, a woman: the opposite, the

t down his pen, and her face shone before him for the twentieth time this sunny afternoon, now all at once, "

he check

t. No such luck," he

f two young foreign women in this out-of-the-way country neighbourhood see

r: a commotion, piercing, regretful, desirous, actually in his heart,

Positively, I must not

as thinking of her harder than ever, an

" he told himself, with a thrill and

rd-notes, the perfumes in the still soft air, all seemed to melt and become p

rted up, in a

e weather. It's this imbe

room, looking into the big square court, where the light was colourless, and th

the change did much

ounded eyes of hers. It's those laughin

se, I will ench

o a tune which I suspect was improvised, it drew near along the outer passage, till, in d

ine e-e-ear," he trolled robustly-an

o be deep engrosse

drian, having

ny did no

kely places," said

ily backwards and forw

oncentration," said Adrian, o

tioned, but absently, from the d

r you-ransacking the house, turning

estioned Antho

an lost

, saving your presence, sir,' says Wickersmith to me." Adrian pantomimed the supposed deference of the butler. Then, loftily, "But, 'Shoo' says I. 'An optical delusion, my excellent Wick. A Christian man would be incapable of such a villainy. The billiard-room, that darksome ca

inally relinquished his correspondence. "I was

? My poor lamb. Ah, what a delicate constitution. He could n't s

ote, he passed to the censorious,

-de-vie de Dantzic;-if we only had a liquefying apparatus, we could recapture the first fine careless nectar of the gods, the poor dead gods of Greece. The earth is as aromatic as an orange stuck with cloves; I can't begin to tell you all the wondrous woody, mossy, racy things it smells of. The sea is a great sheet of watered-silk, as blue as my blue eyes. And the birds, the robins and the throstles, the blackbirds and the black-caps, the linnets and the little Jenny Wrens, knowing the value of silence, are hoa

head, in sig

dge by. It may have charms for a voluptuary like you; but I"-and he took a tone of high

," said Adrian, "I 'm pining

pulled a

by one of your periodic spas

g on Madame Torreb

can't help thinking rather remarkable, he feigned a c

iate neighbours, not to say your tenants, I expect you are sufficiently acquainted with the usages of polite society to know that a failure on your part to call would be tantamount to a direct affront. Furthermore, as one of them (Miss Sandus is, unhappily

brows, as who, from an altitude, speaking

he game of eyebrow-rais

se to extend the privilege of hearing Mass in the Chapel, is thereby to be constituted a guest,-my guest,-I shall have my hands full indeed

head, and spoke from a

are the maste

ago resigned all real power into the pink and chubby h

oring the rejoinder. "La Nobil Donna Susanna Torrebianca is a guest. And as master

e fashion of adorning ordinary speech with class

a boor, a churl, and a curmudgeon,"-each epithet received an augmented stress,-"you must call at Craford New Manor with the least possible delay

and sleepily str

et upon it-there. It will be an awful fag; but when D

fled a

nd face radi

r all," he said, "and you s

ow to the top of his bent," was

gh, as they walke

mplated waiting till Sunday?

rrow, seemed, in his present eagerness, t

nd deep shadow, where sheep browsed, and little snow-white awkward lambkins sported, and birds piped, and the air was magical with the scent of the blossoming may,-all the wa

were alwa

were al

ries were yo

n't that

beside him, tr

gh spirits," An

ng of your suggest

rowned, a

ugges

stion that I sh

ny st

he eja

the suggestion is decidedly a happy on

eft of your senses," s

iolent," said Adrian.

g your leg. Marry her? She would n't l

ike to know?" Adrian

too young," Ant

red Adrian, wide-eyed. "I

nthony. "But you 'll never be thirty-not even w

an's despair), a tough, cross-grained, sour-hearted variety of fruit, that dries up and shrivels, and never ripens. There is another variety of fruit that grows rounder and rosier, tende

hest, and signifi

h, at least, to be capable of fresh, impulsive feelings. I am old enough to have cast the crude, harsh pessimism of inexperience. I am old enough to have outlived my disillusions. I am old enough to have learned that the good things

d eyes of de

e man!" he jeered. "If

-haired-and m

u that there are people who admire a rich, ample figure in a man. I admit, I am not a mere anatomy, I am not a mere hungry, lean-faced, lantern-jawed, hollow-eyed, sallow-cheeked, vulture-beaked, over-dressed exiguity, like-well, mark you, I name no names. I need not allude to my other and higher attr

your sincere well-wisher, let me warn you not to cherish hopes that are foredoomed to disappointment. If, on the other hand, she should indeed admire your style of ric

gings, and Persian carpets, and flowers, and books, and bibelots about; with a new aspect of luxury and elegance; with a strange new atmosphere of feminine habitation, that went a little to Anthony's head, that called up clearer than ever the dark-haired, strenuous-faced woman of the dog-cart, and turned his imagi

t with his sense of her imminence;-and then the tall flunkey said, in the fastidious accents of flunkeyd

smile, he gloomed at it savagely, from eyes of deep rebuke, as at a thing that had beguiled h

you 've led me, for the

ellow

e relieved. You did n't want to see them. And the ex

t my card by you,

with a lovely comrade, in

simply brazen,"