* * * * * * *
The next morning Lilian (to whom early rising is a pure delight), running down the broad stone stairs two steps at a time, finds Guy on the eve of starting, with Florence beside him, looking positively handsome in the most thrilling of morning gowns. She has forsaken her virtuous couch, and slighted the balmy slumber she so much loves, to give him his breakfast, and is still unremitting in her attentions, and untiring with regard to her smiles.
"Not gone!" says Lilian, wickedly: "how disappointed I am, to be sure! I fancied my bonbons an hour nearer to me than they really are. Bad Guardy, why don't you hurry?" She says this with the prettiest affectation of infantile grace, accompanied by a coquettish glance from under her sweeping lashes that creates in Florence a mad desire to box her ears.
"You forget it will not hasten the train five seconds, Guy's leaving this sooner than he does," she says, snubbingly. "To picture him sitting in a draughty station could not—I should think—give satisfaction to any one."
"It could"—willfully—"to me. It would show a proper anxiety to obey my behests. Guardy," with touching concern, "are you sure you are warm enough? Now do promise me one thing,—that you will beware of the crossings; they say any number of old men come to grief in that way yearly, and are run over through deafness, or short sight, or stupidity in general. Think how horrid it would be if they sent us home your mangled remains."
"Go in, you naughty child, and learn to speak to your elders with respect," says Guy, laughing, and putting her bodily inside the hall-door, from whence she trips out again to wave him a last adieu, and kiss her hand warmly to him as he disappears round the corner of the laurustinus bush.
And Sir Guy drives away full of his ward's fresh girlish loveliness, her slender lissome figure, her laughing face, the thousand tantalizing graces that go to make her what she is; forgetful of Miss Beauchamp's more matured charms,—her white gown,—her honeyed words,—everything.
All day long Lilian's image follows him. It is beside him in the crowded street, enters his club with him, haunts him in his business, laughs at him in his most serious moods; while she, at home, scarce thinks of him at all, or at the most vaguely, though when at five he does return she is the first to greet him.
"He has come home! he is here!" she cries, dancing into the hall. "Have you escaped the crossings? and rheumatism? and your old enemy, lumbago? Good old Guardy, let me help you off with your coat. So. Positively, he is all here,—not a bit of him gone,—and none the worse for wear!"
"Tired, Guy?" asks Florence, coming gracefully forward,—slowly, lest by unseemly haste she should disturb the perfect fold of her train, that sets off her figure to such advantage. She speaks warmly, appropriatingly, as one's wife might, after a long journey.