Page:Once a Week Jun to Dec 1864.pdf/142



years to look forward to is a vast period of time; to the young it seems almost interminable. It is long in the passing: for we count it by hours, and days, and weeks, and months and years. But what is it in the retrospect?—a little bubble, as it were, on the ocean; a speck in the span of life. Since the last chapter, seven years have gone over the heads of the actors in this history, and now the reader is invited to meet some of them again.

Seated on the sands of a fashionable and somewhat exclusive English watering-place, was a group of ladies. Some were working as they talked, some were reading, some were enjoying in idleness and silence the fresh breeze that came wafting over the sea, and some were watching the sports of the children in the distance, running hither and thither and making pies in the sand. A bevy of girls had congregated together, rather apart, but still within reach of speech and hearing. They were intent on their own pursuits, their peculiar interests: dress, flirtation, the libraries, the fashionable promenades of the day, and the assemblies in the rooms at night. Just now they seemed inclined to be quarrelsome rather than sociable. Jealousy was creeping in amidst them.

“You may say what you will, Miss Lake,” exclaimed one, “but I maintain that he is the most distinguished-looking man staying at Seaford. Am I right or not?” she added, appealing to her companions.

The speaker was a tall, stately girl, with aquiline features, pale and classic. She was the daughter of General and Mrs. Vaughan, and was staying with them at Seaford. The Miss Lake she had replied to was plain and cynical. And Miss Lake, in place of answering, again drew down the corners of her lips.

“I don’t care whether he’s ‘distinguished looking’ or not,” spoke up a pretty girl, Fanny Darlington. “I know he is the pleasantest man I ever spoke to. And if he is ‘distinguished’ it does not make him disagreeable. I hate your distinguished-looking men; they are generally vain and unapproachable; two faults that he steers clear of. He danced with me twice last night.”

“And not once with Augusta Lake, and that’s why she is accusing him this morning.”

A slight smile, suppressed out of good manners, appeared on the lips of several. Miss Vaughan was the only one who spoke.

“Dancing goes for nothing. A man may whirl his legs off, dancing with a woman, and yet not care for her: while he may be secretly attached to one, whom he never asks to walk through a quadrille.”

“You say that, because he sits at your side in the rooms, and talks to you by the hour together, Helen Vaughan,” interposed Fanny Darlington, who had a free tongue, and some times used it more than was quite requisite. “But you will be none the nearer him, for all that. I don’t believe he cares two pins for any girl at Seaford.”

A tale-telling flush rose to the face of Helen Vaughan. She shook back her head haughtily, as if to intimate that retort would be beneath her.

“Talking about the rooms, though, who was it he was with there last night?” asked Miss Lake. “I have not seen her there before. A lovely girl.”

“I’m sure I saw him with no lovely girl at the rooms last night,” struck in Helen Vaughan.

“I know who Miss Lake means,” cried Fanny Darlington. “She is lovely. She sat with a tall, majestic-looking lady, quite a Juno, and he kept coming up to them. I was near when he asked her to dance; she refused, and said her mamma wished her not; and he turned to the Juno, and inquired whether it was true"

“A very ugly Juno in face, whatever she may be in figure,” interrupted Augusta Lake.

“How you do stop me! The Juno said Yes; she thought it better that (I could not catch the name) should not dance with him, because she would have no plea for refusing others.”

“Some second-rate city people, who would stick themselves up for ‘quality,’ and say the frequenters of the rooms are not good enough for them,” remarked the general’s daughter, with a lofty sneer.

“No, they don’t look like that; quite another sort of thing,” said a young lady quietly, who had not yet spoken. “I think they are ‘quality,’ not would-be.”

“Rubbish!” cried Miss Lake. “How do you know anything of them, Mary Miller?”

“I have the use of my eyes, and can observe them as well as you, that’s all. You