A BUNCH OF VIOLETS.
He had spent the greater part of the day looking for her, his disappointment growing hour by hour as he grew convinced that he should not find her; that he had lost her forever. If he had only known her name, he could have inquired in the town; but he could scarcely go about asking people if they had happened to see the loveliest girl on earth, with dark hair and wonderful blue eyes; besides, there was, to him, something almost sacred in his meeting with her, and he shrank from putting commonplace questions about her.
By luncheon time he was, I am sorry to say, in anything but a good temper. Fortunately the marquis rarely put in an appearance at that meal, or, in all probability, there would have occurred an open quarrel between him and his nephew, and Lord Cecil would have fled the house. Lady Grace, too, did not appear; she had gone to pay a visit to a friend in the neighborhood, and Lord Cecil, therefore, ate his cutlet and drank his Chateau Margaux in solitude.
He was not at all sorry for this, for, to tell the truth, Lady Grace’s candor, though extremely original, had very much embarrassed him, and Lord Cecil was too little used to embarrassment to find it agreeable. She was very beautiful, very charming, and he admired her very much, but still he felt her absence a relief; he was free to muse over the unknown, who had eluded his search all the morning.
Suddenly, as he finished his last glass of claret, he remembered the play-bill he had picked up on the terrace, and it occurred to him that here was the means of escaping dinner at the Towers; for this night, at all events, he could get away from the marquis’ sneers and sarcasm.
“I shall not be home to dinner,” he said to the stately butler. “I think I’ll go to the theatre.”
“Yes, my lord,” responded the butler, displaying not a sign of the disgust which the announcement caused him. To think that any one—a viscount, especially—should prefer going to the play to dining!
“What sort of a theatre is it?” asked Lord Cecil, carelessly, and for the sake of talking.
“Very good, my lord, I believe,” was the solemn reply. “I’ve heard that it’s almost as good as a London theatre, and that there is an excellent company there. They play ‘Romeo and Juliet’ to-night. That is,” he made haste to add, “I heard some of the under-servants talking about it; I never go to the theatre myself, my lord. I will send a small dinner, of three or four courses, at an early hour in the breakfast room, for you, my lord.”
“All right,” said Lord Cecil, carelessly. “That will give you a lot of trouble, will it not? I can get a chop or something at the hotel in the town, can’t I?”