“I have frightened you, worried you. You won’t let me come again. But you will, won’t you?” she added, in a coaxing tone—“for I am so dull. May I come on Thursday, the day after to-morrow, and we will go to the Academy together? It will soon close now, so it will be full of country bumpkins; but I will brave them, if you will. Mamma and Aunt Constantia find it too tiring for them. May I come?”
She asked quite restlessly and anxiously; and Annie, surprised, begged her to come, and promised to be ready at whatever time she pleased.
When Harry returned home, and his wife told him of his sister’s visit, he was even more surprised than she had been.
“Well, she is a queer girl; but I think this beats any freak she has had yet,” he said. “You should just have heard her go on at me—and at you—at Garstone, when she first heard about it—just after our father’s death too. I told her if she didn’t hold her tongue, I would turn her out of the room.” And presently he broke out again, “I wonder what she is up to now?”
Without suspecting any deep-laid plot under Lilian’s friendliness, as her husband seemed to do, Annie was more surprised than ever when Thursday came and Miss Braithwaite drove up in a hansom very punctually, to see how excited she seemed to be over such a simple diversion as a visit to the Academy with her sister-in-law. She was looking radiantly lovely. The mourning, which did not at all set off Annie’s brunette beauty, was the most perfect setting possible for Lilian’s bright, fair complexion and chestnut-brown hair. She was in good spirits too, and so anxious to start that she gave Annie doubtful help in dressing with her own hands. Then they got into the hansom which was waiting outside, and were at Burlington House in five minutes.
Lilian did not care a straw about pictures, and gave most of her attention to the curious crowd which may be seen at the Academy every year during the last week of the season. They had been through two rooms, and were entering a third, when a gentleman came up to them, and the color deepened on Lilian’s face. He was a tall, strikingly handsome man, of slighter build than the Braithwaites, and much better carriage. Lilian introduced him to her companion as “Colonel Richardson.”
Then they all went on together. Miss Braithwaite, being in a brilliant mood, did all the talking; and, as her talk was chiefly addressed to the new-comer, Annie gradually fell behind them and gave her attention entirely to the pictures. As she noticed how happy Lilian looked, how evidently she was taking pains to please, and how attentive Colonel Richardson was to her, it occurred to the quiet little woman behind that this meeting was not accidental; she was not surprised at their pleasure in each other’s society, and thought to herself what a handsome pair they would make. When they had nearly finished their inspection of the pictures, which had become a very transparent pretext to Annie’s eyes, they turned to her, and Lilian dropped out of the conversation to allow Colonel Richardson to talk to her companion. He could talk about the pictures very well, she found, though he had ignored them a good deal that day; and, when he presently asked permission to call upon her and lend her a book with valuable engravings which he had brought from Italy, she could not easily refuse.
So, two days later, he called and brought the book; and while he was there Lilian came in, and they both stayed to tea. Annie, who was always rather overpowered by the brilliant and rather exacting Miss Braithwaite, was a sweet and gracious little hostess, but listened more than she talked. And Colonel Richardson called after that very frequently. It generally happened that Lilian was there; but that did not seem surprising, for she had got into the habit of spending a good deal of time with the gentle little sister-in-law who made such an amused and therefore amusing listener to her chatter. Sometimes Harry was there; and the influence of the elder man—Colonel Richardson was between thirty-five and forty—upon the younger soon became very strong. The latter worshiped his new friend, and would follow him about like his shadow when he could, so that the colonel had to get him a mount or a seat on a drag to get rid of him.
One evening Harry came home from visiting his aunt and his mother with “a good joke” to tell his wife.
“Aunt Constantia and my mother have found a mare’s nest,” said he, with his usual elegance of speech. “They have discovered that the colonel is a most dangerous man, that he comes here not to see me, who can talk about horses and shooting and all the things he likes, but to make love to you and Lilian! Why, he never speaks to either of you if I’m here! He has too much sense to go dangling after any woman. I told my aunt I could look after my wife, and Lilian could look after herself. She is not the girl to throw herself at any man’s head.”