The White Riband; Or, A Young Female's Folly

by F. Tennyson Jesse

From which it will be seen that a month had already passed since Loveday had been the excitement of society, and that this conversation between the eccentric Mr. Constantine and the charming Miss Le Pettit was almost the last flickering of interest in her fate. The life of one moon had been enough to see the waxing and waning of what Mr. Constantine had surprisingly called her passion.

Yet Miss Le Pettit, eager, nay, even anxious, as she had been to lead the gentleman away from the topic, reverted to it as though by a curious fascination, when he had taken his leave. To tell the truth, her conscience had some slight cause to make her uneasy on this very subject of the violent Loveday. The thing was ridiculous, of course ... she, Miss Le Pettit, could not conceivably have been even remotely to blame for such a fantastical happening, and yet that slight pricking remained....

"An odd word to have used," she commented, in recounting the conversation she had had with Mr. Constantine to her eager friends, "a very odd word, indeed, for by it, apparently, he did not mean an access of anger such as the word signifies in all the books I have read...."

"You mean in the books that you are supposed to have read, Flora," interrupted one of the young ladies, a flighty girl, whose tongue often outran her discretion. "I have come across it meaning something quite different in books like—well, you know the sort of books I mean."

"I do not think, though, that even that was how Mr. Constantine used the word," replied Flora, with more of discernment than she commonly showed, "though I will not pretend to you, Ellen, that I do not recognise the sense in which you refer to it. To be candid, I don't think I know what he did mean, but he seemed to me to be paying a vast deal of attention to the matter, which surprised me in a person of his standing."

"I have heard he is a man of much sensibility, though he is so satirical," murmured the romantic Emilia, bending over her netting so that her ebon curls shaded her suddenly flushing cheek.

"Perhaps he knows more about the fair Loveday than we have guessed," cried the careless Ellen; "perhaps he knows too much, and cannot keep away from the subject for his guilty conscience, as they say murderers are drawn back to the spot where they have buried the body of their victim!"

But this was too gross a departure from delicacy of thought and phrase, and Miss Le Pettit, the prick stirring, perchance, signified as much by the cold manner in which she brought back the conversation to the more correct and really more enthralling subject of the Alexandra jacket.

It was generally agreed that Miss Belben, of Bugletown, could not go far wrong with the sleeves if Flora would be so infinitely good as to lend her jacket for a copy, and this favour she accorded graciously to her dear friend, Emilia.

Mr. Constantine walked down the windy hill with his mind already clear both of Loveday and the elegant company in which he had been taking tea. He was, above all things, a philosopher, and that means that, though his imagination was easily touched, his heart remained unstirred, He had serious thoughts of ordering a new cabriolet, and on arriving at the market place, he turned into the coachbuilder's to renew the discussion as to whether red or canary yellow were the more fashionable hue for the wheels.