Page:Lippincotts Monthly Magazine-70.djvu/96

86 hanging of every lantern. I have one talent, such a useful one!—for dressing up a garden! I'll show you the whole place," and, walking slowly, they went the circuit of the grounds.

She gave him as they wandered a half-jesting account of the passage of her days, and as they entered a little arbor, also lantern hung, she summed it up contemptuously.

"In fact, papa treats me like an orchid, and I am beginning to believe that I am a rank little weed who would flourish better without the steam heat and prepared earth of the greenhouse. And sometimes I have such a yearning to feel the breath of life blow untempered on me, even though it were fierce and I had to bend before it like my fellows."

"Have you never had a bad time?" Hilliard returned, smiling, but with brows that drew together in something half wonder, half envy.

She considered gravely. "No," she answered, "I don't think I ever have. It's partly because I love so few people; it makes one less vulnerable. I think I started with a heart somewhere," she added, with another of her faint smiles, "but it's—it's—getting atrophied from lack of use. Listen,"—she broke off and held up her hand,—"that is a very nice tune, don't you think? I chose it." The music filled the little place with its rhythm.

"A waltz, isn't it?" said Hilliard. "I can't dance. I never had time to learn or anyone disposed to teach me, but one feels it in one's head, if one don't know it with one's feet."

"I used to dance a great deal,"—Miss Bagehot shrugged her shoulders,—"but it isn't as good fun as it looks. I'm not strong enough now; I should keel over, I think, before the dance was over."

"That would depend on your partner, wouldn't it?" responded Hilliard. He had folded his arms on his chest and gazed down into her face with an intent study of it.

"How on my partner?" returned the girl.

"If you liked him enough, you would see the dance through," said Hilliard coolly.

She looked at him. "Perhaps yes, but then I shouldn't."

"Are you incapable of human affection?" he answered, allowing a little of that grimmer smile of his to curve his lips.

"No, I suppose not," she said slowly. "But you are not talking of affection, you mean that queer, mixed-up hallucination we call falling in love. I used to sit ready for it, with round, expectant eyes, when I first went to balls and parties. 'Now for it,' I thought, as each young man approached, 'perhaps it's this one—or this one—or this one,' but it never came off. On the whole, I didn't have a very good chance. I had some proposals but no lovers,—at least, I didn't think they were lovers."