"I wish we had a few Indian customs in this country," says Cyril, languidly. "The Suttee was a capital institution. Think what a lot of objectionable widows we should have got rid of by this time; Mrs. Boileau, for instance."
"And Mrs. Arlington," puts in Florence, quietly. An unaccountable silence follows this speech. No one can exactly explain why, but every one knows something awkward has been said. Cyril outwardly is perhaps the least concerned of them all: as he bites languidly a little blade of green grass, a faint smile flickers at the corners of his lips; Lilian is distinctly angry.
"Poor Mrs. Boileau; all this is rather ill-natured, is it not?" asks Florence, gently, rising as though a dislike to the gossip going on around her compels her to return to the house. In reality it is a dislike to damp grass that urges her to flight.
"Shall I get you a chair, Florence?" asks Cyril, somewhat irrelevantly as it seems.
"Pray don't leave us, Miss Beauchamp," says Taffy. "If you will stay on, we will swear not to make any more ill-natured remarks about any one."
"Then I expect silence will reign supreme, and that the remainder of the conversazione will be of the deadly-lively order," says Archibald; and, Cyril at this moment arriving with the offered chair, Miss Beauchamp is kindly pleased to remain.
As the evening declines, the midges muster in great force. Cyril and Taffy, being in the humor for smoking,—and having cheroots,—are comparatively speaking happy; the others grow more and more secretly irritated every moment. Florence is making ladylike dabs at her forehead every two seconds with her cambric handkerchief, and is regretting keenly her folly in not retiring in-doors long ago. Midges sting her and raise uninteresting little marks upon her face, thereby doing irremediable damage for the time being. The very thought of such a catastrophe fills her with horror. Her fair, plump hands are getting spoiled by these blood-thirsty little miscreants; this she notices with dismay, but is ignorant of the fact that a far worse misfortune is happening higher up. A tasteless midge has taken a fancy to her nose, and has inflicted on it a serious bite; it is swelling visibly, and a swelled nose is not becoming, especially when it is set as nearly as nature will permit in the centre of a pale, high-bred, but expressionless face.
Ignorant, I say, of this crowning mishap, she goes on dabbing her brow gently, while all the others lie around her dabbing likewise.
At last Lilian loses all patience.
"Oh! hang these midges!" she says, naturally certainly but rather too forcibly for the times we live in. The petulance of the soft tone, the expression used, makes them all laugh, except Miss Beauchamp, who, true to her training, maintains a demeanor of frigid disapproval, which has the pleasing effect of rendering the swelled nose more ludicrous than it was before.