Page:Once a Week Volume V.djvu/378

 . 28, 1861.] Lilian, laughing; “by-the-bye, that is your profession.”

“And you’ve not outgrown that wild spirit of yours,” continued Scott, “and become glum and stupid, and that’s why some people find fault with you.”

“You really are a splendid advocate, Frank; positively you ought to do something at the bar.”

“Well, perhaps some day,” he replied, in a deepened voice, “when I have an object in life, I shall buckle to.”

Mrs. Vernon’s carriage was announced.

Lilian hesitated for a moment looking at the bouquet.

“Never mind it, Lilian,” said Scott, affecting utter unconcern; “your mother will be very pleased with it to grace the new vase.”

“It’s too good for that, Frank; rosebuds and violets in December! I shall take it to the ball.”

And Frank Scott’s heart beat violently.

One half page of moralising—and but one half page—for love of the reader.

Self-love the theme. Behold this girl, Lilian Temple, at the ball, more beautiful, everybody declared, than they had seen her for months; and truly so, for the hard sarcastic smile which had marred her countenance had become a smile of happiness. “Youth is youth, pleased with the enjoyment of the hour,” would be the ready answer of the elderly moralist planted as a “wall-flower” amid the purgatory of a ball-room, having sipped his wine with immense gusto an hour before.

Yet it was far beyond the elderly moralist, amid the gay strains of the music and the whirl of the dance, to fathom the secret of Lilian’s happiness;—flattery had caused it, and though she smiled while she listened to the words of Scott, none the less was she delighted, for those words had staunched the wounds which her self-love had sustained. She had dreamt of greatness and work and endurance; she had thought it possible to follow in the footsteps of Charles Westby—to live or die with him. Granted such like dreams may be utterly delusive; there may be no power of character to realise them; but we awake to our sense of mediocrity with a shudder; and tenfold more was it chill and bitter to Lilian when the very man whose character had created the hope in her soul, proclaimed that her own character was nothing worth.

Lilian Temple despised herself: she was in the power of anybody who could raise her in her own estimation. Frank Scott was clever enough to see how he might win her; but he did not know what an immense influence his few words had already given him over her.

Yet everybody could discover the fact except Frank Scott. She let him choose what dances he would on her tablet, she was at her brightest when he was at her side, but with his preconceived notion he fancied that all this was the retraction of her words about ceasing to treat him as a cousin.

Let Frank Scott, however, lose no time in making use of the advantage he has gained. Lilian, rising from her self-abasement, is too grateful for his esteem to reflect much on his character; but when she does think upon it, it will fail to satisfy her ideal. Frank Scott possessed talent and certain hundreds per annum, with certain other hundreds in reversion, and therefore he had lived an idle life, and done nothing. Delay was fatal to his chance of success.

Frank Scott was in the grandest spirits. He met all the badinage about being engaged to Lilian with broad denial, but with inward elation at his promised victory; and he danced away gallantly; and he chatted to his partners with the fluency which belonged to him; and he danced, too, with Margaret Vernon; but that young lady found not one touch of sentiment in all he uttered.

Lilian was also attacked upon her assumed engagement with her cousin. The charge was by no means a novel one, and up to this particular evening she had been able to rebut it with excellent spirit, more particularly as it had often been made from obvious motives by the mothers of fair daughters who considered Frank Scott a very eligible parti—but now her replies were utterly lifeless, brief denials, while love stood written in her eyes. Then that bouquet was a source of embarrassment; it attracted notice by its beauty and rarity; it led to an irresistible inference which Lilian’s most subtle logic was unable to confute. “No, my dear,” replied one affectionate friend, epigrammatically, and with many smiles, “December roses don’t bloom out of cousinly love.”

In very fact, Frank Scott was Fortune’s favourite this evening—all things were ordered in his interest. Who should appear at this ball, by strangest chance, but Westby, looking bored and bothered at the whole affair,—so Lilian read his countenance, but read it wrong.

Then her thoughts reverted to their last meeting and all its bitterness—those hard words which he had spoken—the contempt he had evinced for her conduct—“fickle, wavering conduct,” in rejecting George Newton. She had listened and endured it all without reply, very submissive, despising herself:—yes, but it had caused her infinite pain, for after all it was her love for him, which was the real cause of her error; but that was a fact which he could never know. Thus it was that the presence of Westby threw her feelings with still greater vehemence towards Frank Scott. Here was one at least who had upheld her character when she herself decried it—who had declared his faith in her goodness and her heart. Why, resting on this new strength, she need not shrink any longer from Charles Westby; she could meet his contempt without dismay, ay, and if so be, the contempt of the whole world.

She determined to go and speak to Westby on her cousin’s arm. She told Scott that she wished to join her chaperon. He led her across the room. Her spirit rose into bold defiance. This was the man for whom she had been taunted at the time for giving up Newton: she had denied the accusation, and with truth, and now that denial would be a palpable lie in Westby’s eyes. Let him him think the worst of her. What matter? Frank