"Silly child!"—turning up her small nose with immeasurable disdain,—"do you think I would deign to accept your boyish homage? No; I like men! Indeed!"—with disgraceful affectation,—"I think it my duty to warn you not to waste time burning your foolish fingers at my shrine."
She moves him aside with one small finger, the better to see how charming she is in another glass. This one reveals to her all the sweetness she has seen before—and something more. Scarcely has she glanced into it, when her complexion, that a moment since was a soft and lovely pink, changes suddenly, and flames into a deep crimson. There, at the farthest end of the long room reflected in the glass,—staring back at her,—coatless, motionless, with a brush suspended from each hand, stands a man, lost in wonder and most flattering astonishment.
Miss Chesney, turning round with a start, finds that this vision is not belonging to the other world, but is a real bona fide creature of flesh and blood,—a young man, tall, broad-shouldered, and very dark.
For a full minute they stare silently at each other, oppressed with thoughts widely different in character, while Taffy remains blissfully ignorant of the situation, being now engaged in a desperate conflict with a refractory tie. Then one of the brushes falls from the stranger's hand, and the spell is broken. Miss Chesney, turning impetuously, proceeds to pour out the vials of her wrath upon Taffy.
"I think you might have told me," she says, in clear, angry tones, casting upon him a glance meant to wither. But Mr. Musgrave distinctly refuses to be withered.
"Eh? What? By Jove!" he says, vaguely, as the awful truth dawns upon him. Meanwhile Lilian sweeps majestically to the door, her velvets trailing behind her. All her merry kittenish ways have disappeared; she walks as a young queen might who has been grossly affronted in open court.
"Give you my honor I quite forgot him," murmurs Taffy, from the spot where he is rooted through sheer dismay. His tones are dismal in the extreme, but Miss Chesney disdains to hear or argue, and, going out, closes the door with much determination behind her. The stranger, suppressing a smile, stoops to pick up the fallen brush, and the scene is at an end.
Down the stairs, full of vehement indignation, goes Lilian, thoughts crowding upon her thick and heavy. Could anything be more unfortunate? Just when she had got herself up in the most effective style,—just when she had hoped, with the aid of this velvet gown, to make a pleasing and dignified entrée into his presence in the drawing-room below,—she has been led into making his acquaintance in Taffy's bedroom! Oh! horror! She has been face to face with him in his shirt-sleeves, with his odious brushes in his hands, and a stare of undeniable surprise upon his hateful face! Oh! it is insupportable!
And what was it she said to Taffy? What did she do? Hastily her mind travels backward to the conversation that has just taken place.
First, she combed Taffy's hair. Oh! miserable girl! She closes two azure eyes with two slender fingers from the light of day, as this thought occurs to her. Then, she smirked at her own graceful image in Taffy's glass, and made all sorts of conceited remarks about her personal appearance, and then she said she hoped to subjugate "him." What "him" could there be but this one? and of course he knows it. Oh! unhappy young woman!