Page:ONCE A WEEK JUL TO DEC 1860.pdf/96

88 do you know, Rose can’t bear me to be with you. Jealousy, I suppose, for you’re very agreeable. And, do you know, your mama is coming to-day? I’ve got a papa and no mama, and you’ve got a mama and no papa. Isn’t it funny? But I don’t think so much of it, as you’re grown up. Oh, I’m quite sure she is coming, because I heard Harry telling Juley she was, and Juley said it would be so gratifying to you.”

A bribe and a message relieved the Countess of Dorothy’s attendance on her.

What did this mean? Were people so base as to be guilty of hideous plots in this house? Her mother coming! The Countess’s blood turned deadly chill. Had it been her father she would not have feared, but her mother was so vilely plain of speech; she never opened her mouth save to deliver facts: which was to the Countess the sign of atrocious vulgarity.

But her mother had written to say she would wait for Evan in Fallowfield! The Countess grasped at straws. Did Dorothy hear that? And if Harry and Juliana spoke of her mother, what did that mean? That she was hunted and must stand at bay!

“Oh, papa! papa! why did you marry a Dawley!” she exclaimed, plunging to what was, in her idea, the root of the evil.

She had no time for outcries and lamentations. It dawned on her that this was to be a day of battle. Where was Harry? Still in the midst of the Conley throng, apparently pooh-poohing something, to judge by the twist of his mouth.

The Countess delicately signed for him to approach her. The extreme delicacy of the signal was at least an excuse for Harry to perceive nothing. It was renewed, and Harry burst into a fit of laughter at some fun of one of the Conley girls. The Countess passed on, and met Juliana pacing by herself near the lower gates of the park. She wished only to see how Juliana behaved. The girl looked perfectly trustful, as much so as when the Countess was pouring in her ears the tales of Evan’s growing but bashful affection for her.

“He will soon be here,” whispered the Countess. “Has he told you he will come by this entrance?”

“No,” replied Juliana.

“You do not look well, sweet child.”

“I was thinking that you did not, Countess.”

“Oh, indeed, yes! All our visitors have by this time arrived, I presume?”

“They come all day.”

The Countess hastened away from one who, when roused, could be almost as clever as herself, and again stood in meditation near the joyful Harry. This time she did not signal so discreetly. Harry could not but see it, and the Conley girls accused him of cruelty to the beautiful dame, which novel idea stung Harry with delight, and he held out to indulge in it a little longer. His back was half turned, and as he talked noisily he could not observe the serene and resolute march of the Countess towards him. The youth gaped when he found his arm taken prisoner by the insertion of a small deliciously-gloved and perfumed hand through it.

“I must claim you for a few moments,” said the Countess, and took the startled Conley girls one and all in her beautiful smile of excuse.

“Why do you compromise me thus, sir?”

These astounding words were spoken out of the hearing of the Conley girls.

“Compromise you!” muttered Harry.

Masterly was the skill with which the Countess contrived to speak angrily and as an injured woman, while she wore an indifferent social countenance.

“I repeat compromise me. No, Mr. Harry Jocelyn, you are not the jackanapes you try to make people think you: you understand me.”

The Countess might accuse him, but Harry never had the ambition to make people think him that: his natural tendency was the reverse: and he objected to the application of the word jackanapes to himself, and was ready to contest the fact of people having that opinion at all. However, all he did was to repeat: “Compromise!”

“Is not open unkindness to me compromising me?”

“How?” asked Harry.

“Would you dare to do it to a strange lady? Would you have the impudence to attempt it with any woman here but me? No, I am innocent; I know that; it is my consolation; I have resisted you, but you by this cowardly behaviour place me—and my reputation, which is more—at your mercy. Noble behaviour, Mr. Harry Jocelyn! I shall remember my young English gentleman.”

The view was totally new to Harry.

“I really had no idea of compromising you,” he said. “Upon my honour, I can’t see how I did it now!”

“Oblige me by walking less in the neighbourhood of those fat-faced glaring farm-girls,” the Countess spoke under her breath; “and don’t look as if you were being whipped. The art of it is evident—you are but carrying on the game.—Listen. If you permit yourself to exhibit an unkindness to me, you show to any man who is a judge, and to every woman, that there has been something between us. You know my innocence—yes! but you must punish me for having resisted you thus long.”

Harry was staggered. He swore he never had such an idea, and was much too much of a man and a gentleman to behave in that way.—And yet it seemed wonderfully clever! And there was the Countess saying:

“Take your reward, Mr. Harry Jocelyn. You have succeeded, I am your humble slave. I come to you and sue for peace. To save my reputation I endanger myself. This is generous of you.”

“Am I such a clever fellow?” thought the ingenuous young gentleman. “Deuced lucky with women:” he knew that: still a fellow must be wonderfully, miraculously, clever to be able to twist and spin about a woman in that way. He did not object to conceive that he was the fellow to do it. Besides, here was the Countess de Saldar—worth five hundred of the Conley girls—almost at his feet!