"Claud: 'In mine eye, she is the sweetest lady that ever I looked on.'"—Much Ado About Nothing.
It is that most satisfactory hour of all the twenty-four,—dinner-hour. Even yet the busy garish day has not quite vanished, but peeps in upon them curiously through the open windows,—upon Lady Chetwoode mild and gracious, upon the two young men, upon airy Lilian looking her bravest and bonniest in some transparent gown of sombre black, through which her fair young neck and arms gleam delicately.
Her only ornaments are roses,—rich, soft white roses, gathered from the gardens outside: one, sweeter and happier than its fellows, slumbers cozily in her golden hair.
Cyril and she, sitting opposite to each other, smile and jest and converse across the huge bowl of scented flowers that stands in the centre of the table, while Guy, who is a little silent, keeps wondering secretly whether any other woman has skin so dazzlingly fair, or eyes so blue, or hair so richly gilded.
"I have seen the widow," he says at length, rousing himself to a sense of his own taciturnity. "On my way home this morning, before I met you,"—turning to Lilian,—"I thought it my duty to look her up, and say I hoped she was comfortable, and all that."
"And you saw her?" asks Cyril, regarding Guy attentively.
"Yes; she is extremely pretty, and extremely coy,—cold I ought to say, as there didn't seem to be even the smallest spice of coquetry about her."
"That's the safest beginning of all," says Cyril confidentially to his mother, "and no doubt the latest. I dare say she looked as though she thought he would never leave."
"She did," says Guy, laughing, "and, what is more unflattering, I am sure she meant it."
"Clever woman!"