"I'm afraid—I mean—I am sure not," says Cyril, absently. "Thank you very much for the shelter you have afforded me. Would you think me very exigeant if I asked you to give me that rose you have been ill-treating for the last half hour?"
"Certainly not," says Mrs. Arlington, hospitably; "you shall have it if you care for it; but this one is damaged; let me get you a few others, fresher and sweeter."
"No, thank you. I do not think you could give me one either fresher or sweeter. Good-evening."
"Good-bye," returns she, extending her hand; and, with the gallant Marshal firmly clasped in his hand, Cyril makes a triumphant exit.
He has hardly gone three yards beyond the gate that guards the widow's bower when he finds himself face to face with Florence Beauchamp, rather wet, and decidedly out of temper. She glances at him curiously, but makes no remark, so that Cyril hopes devoutly she may not have noticed where he has just come from.
"What a shower we have had!" he says, with a great assumption of geniality and much politeness.
"You do not seem to have got much of it," replies she, with lady-like irritability, looking with open disfavor upon the astonishing dryness of his clothes.
"No,"—amiably,—"I have escaped pretty well. I never knew any cloth to resist rain like this,—doesn't even show a mark of it. I am sorry I cannot say the same for you. Your gown has lost a good deal of its pristine freshness; while as for your feather, it is, to say the least of it, dejected."
No one likes to feel one's self looking a guy. Cyril's tender solicitude for her clothes has the effect of rendering Miss Beauchamp angrier than she was before.