Mrs. Molesworth - Not Without Thorns

“Do you really think so? I am so glad!” she replied, looking up with a sweet flushed face from the sofa, where he had found a charming corner for two. “I was so afraid you would think me very heavy and awkward. I have hardly ever danced except at home with Sydney. Certainly, I have had plenty of that kind of practice.”

“With Sydney?” he repeated, interrogatively, just as one cross-questions a child. “Your brother, I suppose?”

“Oh no; I have no brothers,” she answered; and as she said the words, across her hearer’s mind there flashed the thought, “A cousin, I’ll bet anything. These sweet simple little girls are always spoilt by some odious cousin, or male friend ‘I have known all my life,’ in the background.” But “Oh no,” she went on; “Sydney is my sister.” Captain Chancellor breathed more freely. “She should have been here to-night; but Aunt Penton was not well, and Sydney thought she should not be left alone; and she would make me come. She is so unselfish!” with a tender look in her bright eyes, and a little sigh, as if the remembrance of Sydney’s self-sacrifice somewhat marred her own enjoyment.

“Your elder sister, is she not?”

“Oh no; she is a good deal younger – nearly two years younger.”

Captain Chancellor’s eyebrows went up a little. His companion read his thoughts, though he said nothing.

“I think you fancy I am younger than I am,” she explained, with a little blush. “I am nearly nineteen. I suppose I seem younger from having been so little in society. This is the very first time I have ever been anywhere without Sydney, and I disliked it so much, I asked Mrs Dalrymple if I might come early with my father, as he was passing here, and stay with her little girls in the school-room till after dinner, so that I might be in the drawing-room when every one came in.”

Captain Chancellor smiled at her confession; but its frankness made it the more difficult to realise that she was not the mere child he had guessed her. “And that was how you came to be standing out there in the fog, ‘all forlorn,’ then?” he returned. “Do you know you really frightened me? I don’t know what I didn’t take you for. A Wareshire witch at the least, though I don’t know that I was far wrong.” (A quick upward glance, and a slightly puzzled expression on the girlish face, here warned him that he was venturing on untried ground.) “But I forgot,” he went on hastily, “you don’t belong to Wareborough, I think you said.”

“Oh, yes I do. You misunderstood me a little. I only said I did not know many people here, that is to say personally – I know nearly every one by sight. I have lived here all my life, but my father does not allow us to visit much.”

“I have no doubt he is wise. In a place like this, the society must be very mixed, to say the least.”

Miss Laurence looked slightly embarrassed. “It isn’t exactly on that account. My father never speaks of Wareborough in that way. I don’t like living here much, but,” she hesitated.

“But though one may abuse one’s home oneself, one can’t stand any other person’s doing so – above all a perfect stranger, isn’t that it?” said Captain Chancellor, good-humouredly.

“Not quite. A perfect stranger’s opinion can’t matter much, for it can only be founded on hearsay,” replied the young lady, with a smile.

Her powers of repartee promised to be greater than he had expected, and Beauchamp Chancellor was not fond of repartee when exerted at his own expense. But he covered his slight annoyance by an increasingly paternal tone to his young companion. “Believe nothing you hear, and only half you see. You are rather too young to have adopted that motto yet, Miss Laurence; are you not? But after all, I don’t feel myself very guilty, for you own to not liking Wareborough yourself. You don’t really belong to it, do you? I can’t get it into my head that you do.”

The delicately implied flattery had the intended effect. The very slight disturbance of the young girl’s equanimity disappeared, and with an almost imperceptible elevation of the well-shaped little head, not lost on her companion, she replied:

“I don’t quite know what you mean by belonging to Wareborough? Of course, in one sense, we do not; that is to say, our grandfathers and great-grandfathers didn’t live here, but we, Sydney and I, were born here, and it has always been our home.”

“And yet you don’t like it? I suppose you have been a good deal away from home – abroad perhaps?” questioned Captain Chancellor.

“No, I have very seldom been away, and we have never been abroad,” said the girl, somewhat bluntly, but blushing a good deal as she spoke. “It is not from personal experience I can compare Wareborough with other places,” she went on; “it is from what I have read principally.”

“Ah, then, you indulge pretty freely in novels, like most young ladies,” observed Captain Chancellor.

Something in the tone or words jarred slightly on his hearer, but she had no time to define the sensation, for just then Mrs Dalrymple approached them.

“Well, Eugenia, my dear, you are enjoying yourself, I hope? And you, too, Captain Chancellor? I have been admiring your dancing. Henry introduced you, I suppose? Quite right. This dance is just about over. I want to introduce you to the Miss Harveys – charming girls. You must engage one of them for the next dance.”

“A little later in the evening, I shall be delighted to be introduced to any friend of yours, my dear Mrs Dalrymple,” replied Captain Chancellor. “For the next dance, you must excuse me. I am already engaged.”

“Ah, well, never mind. Come to me when it is over,” said the good-natured hostess. “You are not going to dance with Roma, I suppose? What has come over her to-night – can you tell me?”

“Not I. I have long ago left off trying to comprehend women in general, and Roma in particular,” said Captain Chancellor, lightly; but still with a certain constraint in his voice. Then as Mrs Dalrymple left them, he turned quickly to Miss Laurence: “There are refreshments in another room, I believe,” he said. “Won’t you let me get you an ice, or some lemonade, or whatever there is? Or suppose we both go and see?”

“Yes,” said Eugenia, rising as she spoke. “I should like to go into the other room; it is getting a little too hot here.”

She did not care for lemonade, or ices, or anything so material and commonplace. The novelty and excitement of the evening seemed to raise her above all such vulgar considerations as eating and drinking. She was not in the least tired, nor had she discovered that the room was too hot, till she heard Captain Chancellor’s announcement of being engaged for the next dance. Then everything changed to her: she felt like Cinderella at the stroke of twelve.

“I am not going to sit all alone in a corner again with nobody noticing me, and watch him dancing with some one else,” she said to herself. “I believe he is only making an excuse to get rid of me, and very likely he wants to go and talk to Miss Eyrecourt. He told me he knew no one here.” So she gladly accepted the offer of his escort to the next room, quite unaware how visibly the brightness had faded out of her tell-tale face.

It was not all at once that her companion perceived the change; his thoughts seemed otherwise engaged. But when he had found her a deliciously draughty seat, had fetched her an ice, and was about to establish himself beside her, something in her manner caught his attention.

“You are not vexed with me for my little fib, I hope?” he said gently. Just then the music began again. She looked up, grave but puzzled.

“I don’t quite understand what you mean,” she replied. “But never mind about that. The next dance has begun, and you said you were engaged for it.”