"And is she nice, Hester,--is she pretty? Robert never has told me any thing particular about her. Men never can describe any one."
"She is very handsome, very elegant, and very fashionable," replied Hester; and then she departed from her usual cautious reticence so far as to say, "and I heard the Morrisons say Mr. Guyon was very 'fast,' and lived beyond his means."
"Indeed," said Ellen in a very grave tone, for to her the accusation of living beyond one's means sounded very portentous; "I am sure Robert would not approve of that."
Hester Gould watched Robert Streightley quietly and closely the whole of that evening. She saw him different to any thing he had ever been; preoccupied, absent, but not unhappy. A smile played frequently over his features; and though he sunk into frequent fits of abstraction, they were evidently not painful. He was as kind and affectionate as usual to his mother and sisters, as attentive to herself; but a change had passed upon him which she fully understood. In her cold repressed way, she was bitterly angry.
She went home rather early. As Robert Streightley saw her to the cab, and bade her good-night, she said to herself:
"Daniel Thacker knows this Mr. Guyon,--his sisters may know something about the girl. I'll go to Hampstead to-morrow; they don't mind Sunday visitors; and I may have a chance of seeing their brother. Really that girl Ellen grows sillier every day."
[CHAPTER VIII.]
AMARYLLIS IN A MARQUEE.
The prettiest public fêtes in London are those given in the gardens of the Botanical Society in the Regent's Park. There is to be found plenty of fresh green turf; there are myriads of lovely flowers blooming in open beds, or tastefully arranged beneath the marquees; there are solemn old big trees stretching out their umbrageous arms, and in their majesty making one think even less favourably than usual of the perky straggling sticks at South Kensington; there are the bands of two or three guards regiments, having sufficient compassion on the visitors to play one after the other, and not, as in some places, at the same time; and there is generally a collection of the nicest-looking people in town. There are few savans, and not much literary or artistic talent; but as savans and the professors of literary and artistic talent are for the most part any thing but nice-looking, and as flirtation is the science to which at these gatherings attention is principally devoted, their loss is not felt; indeed it may be safely said that the general company is happier for their absence.
Although the last fête of the season is scarcely to be compared to its immediate predecessor, the warm weather of the two preceding days had done very much in contributing to its gaiety on the first occasion when Mr. Charles Yeldham found himself making holiday from his work, and taking part in a grand ceremony of nothing-doing with those whose lives were passed in never doing any thing; and, like most men who rarely emerge from the business of their lives to seek a temporary respite from perpetual work in a few brief hours of enjoyment, Charley was determined to make the most of his time, and to reap the full value of those precious hours which he had grudgingly given up. With his chum leaning on his arm, he made his way through the fruit-tent and the flower-tent, round the American garden, where the glorious azalias, so lately a mass of magnificent beauty, now stood bare and drooping; now attracting the attention of a group of faded dowagers by his energy and volubility; anon pausing in rapt attention, listening to the strains of the melody-breathing "Sonnambula," as performed by the Grenadiers, or nodding head and beating hand in sufficiently ill-kept time to a whirlwind galop rattled through by the band of the Artillery. Into his holiday, as into his work, Charley had thrown his whole heart; he had determined to shut out temporarily all thoughts of attorneys, pleas, work, and worry, and he went in for the pleasures of the day with an eagerness and an impetuosity that perfectly astonished his companion.