"Nor I,—until I lost him," murmurs poor Molly, with a vain attempt at composure. Two tears fall heavily into her lap; a sob escapes her.
"Now you are going to cry again," interposes Cecil, with hasty but kindly warning. "Don't. He is not going to fall in love with any one so long as you are single, take my word for it. Nonsense, my dear! cheer yourself with the certainty that he is at this very moment eating his heart out, because he knows better than I do that, though there may be many women, there is only one Molly Bawn in the world."
This reflection, although consolatory, has not the desired effect. Instead of drying her eyes and declaring herself glad that Luttrell is unhappy, Molly grows more and more afflicted every moment.
"My dear girl," exclaims Lady Stafford, as a last resource, "do pray think of your complexion. I have finished crying; I shall give way to crying no more, because I wish to look my best to-morrow, to let him see what a charming person he has chosen to quarrel with. And my tears are not so destructive as yours, because mine arise from vexation, yours from feeling."
"I hardly know," says Molly, with an attempt at nonchalance she is far from feeling, "I really think I cried more for my diamond than for—my lover. However, I shall take your advice; I shall think no more about it. To-morrow"—rising and running to the glass, and pushing back her disordered hair from her face, that is lovely in spite of marring tears—"to-morrow I shall be gayer, brighter than he has ever yet seen me. What! shall I let him think I fret because of him! He saw me once in tears; he shall not see me so again."
"What a pity it is that grief should be so unbecoming!" says Cecil, laughing. "I always think what a guy Niobe must have been if she was indeed all tears."
"The worst thing about crying, I think," says Molly, "is the fatal desire one feels to blow one's nose: that is the horrid part of it. I knew I was looking odious all the time I was weeping over my ring, and that added to my discomfort. By the bye, Cecil, what were you doing at the table with a pencil just before we broke up to-night? Sir Penthony was staring at you fixedly all through,—wondering, I am sure, at your occupation, as, to tell the truth, was I."
"Nothing very remarkable. I was inditing a 'sonnet to your eyebrow,' or rather to your lids, they were so delicately tinted, and so much in unison with the extreme dejection of your entire bearing. I confess, unkind as it may sound, they moved me to laughter. Ah! that reminds me," says Cecil, her expression changing to one of comical terror, as she starts to her feet, "Plantagenet came up at the moment, and lest he should see my composition I hid it within the leaves of the blotting-book. There it is still, no doubt. What shall I do if any one finds it in the morning? I shall be read out of meeting, as I have an indistinct idea that, with a view to making you laugh, I rather caricatured every one in the room, more or less."
"Shall I run down for it?" says Molly. "I won't be a moment, and you are quite undressed. In the blotting-book, you said? I shan't be any time."
"Unless the ghosts detain you."