The Coningsbys
THE day was brilliant: music, sunshine, ravishing bonnets, little parasols that looked like large butterflies. The new phaetons glided up, then carriages-and-four swept by; in general the bachelors were ensconced in their comfortable broughams, with their glasses down and their blinds drawn, to receive the air and to exclude the dust; some less provident were cavaliers, but, notwithstanding the well-watered roads, seemed a little dashed as they cast an anxious glance at the rose which adorned their button-hole, or fancied that they felt a flying black from a London chimney light upon the tip of their nose.
Within, the winding walks dimly echoed whispering words; the lawn was studded with dazzling groups; on the terrace by the river a dainty multitude beheld those celebrated waters which furnish flounders to Richmond and whitebait to Blackwall.
‘Mrs. Coningsby shall decide,’ said Lord Beaumanoir.
Edith and Lady Theresa Lyle stood by a statue that glittered in the sun, surrounded by a group of cavaliers; among them Lord Beaumanoir, Lord Mil-ford, Lord Eugene de Vere. Her figure was not less lithe and graceful since her marriage, a little more voluptuous; her rich complexion, her radiant and abounding hair, and her long grey eye, now melting with pathos, and now twinkling with mockery, presented one of those faces of witchery which are beyond beauty.
‘Mrs. Coningsby shall decide.’
‘It is the very thing,’ said Edith, ‘that Mrs. Coningsby will never do. Decision destroys suspense, and suspense is the charm of existence.’
‘But suspense may be agony,’ said Lord Eugene de Vere, casting a glance that would read the innermost heart of Edith.
‘And decision may be despair,’ said Mrs. Coningsby.
‘But we agreed the other night that you were to decide everything for us,’ said Lord Beaumanoir; ‘and you consented.’