"Did I hear you say he wasn't extravagant?" breaks in Cyril, lazily, purposely misconstruing her application of the word. "My dear Florence, consider! Could anything show such reckless extravagance as the length of his coat-tails? I never saw so much superfluous cloth in any man's garment before. It may be saintly, but it was cruel waste!"
"How did you amuse yourselves?" asks Lady Chetwoode, hastily, forestalling a threatening argument.
"As best we might. Lilian and I amused each other, and I think we had the best of it. If our visit to the Grange did no other good, it at least awoke in me a thorough sense of loyalty: I cannot tell you," with a glance at Lilian, "how often I blessed the 'Prints of Wales' this night."
"Oh, Cyril, what a miserable joke!" says Lilian, smiling, but there is little warmth in her smile, and little real merriment in her usually gay tones. All this, Cyril—who is sincerely fond of her—notes with regret and concern.
"Guy, give Lilian a glass of Moselle," says his mother at this moment; "it is what she prefers, and it will put a little color into her cheeks: she looks fatigued." As she says this she moves across the room to speak to Florence, leaving Lilian standing alone upon the hearth-rug. Guy, as desired, brings the wine and hands it to Lilian.
"No, thank you," turning from him coldly. "I do not wish for it."
"Nevertheless, take it," Guy entreats, in a low voice: "you are terribly white, and," touching her hand gently, "as cold as death. Is it because I bring it you will not have it? Will you take it from Taffy?"
A choking sensation rises in Miss Chesney's throat; the unbidden tears spring to her eyes; it is by a passionate effort alone she restrains them from running down her cheeks. As I have said before, the day had been a distinct failure. She will not speak to Guy, Archibald will not speak to her. A sense of isolation is oppressing and weighing her down. She, the pet, the darling, is left lonely, while all the others round her laugh and jest and accept the good the gods provide. Like a spoilt child, she longs to rush to her nurse and have a good cry within the shelter of that fond woman's arms.
Afraid to speak, lest her voice betray her, afraid to raise her eyes, lest the tell-tale tears within them be seen, she silently—though against her will—takes the glass Sir Guy offers, and puts it to her lips, whereupon he is conscious of a feeling of thankfulness,—the bare fact of her accepting anything at his hands seeming to breathe upon him forgiveness.