“If you bribe me with violets and rosebuds, I shall say it is better that you should be æsthetic enough to care to cultivate them, than that I should not have the pleasure of receiving them as a gift. It is very pretty of you to do such things.”
There was no denying that they had become excellent friends. There were not many people to whom his lordship would have offered his rosebuds and violets, but for some reason or other he had taken a sudden fancy to Mrs. Despard, and was anxious to show himself to advantage. He was even ready to answer her questions, and once or twice they were somewhat close ones, it must be confessed.
“Tell me something about that nice girl,” she said, glancing at Miss Esmond, who was talking to the rest of the party. “What a pretty creature she is, and how bright her eyes and her color are! There are very few girls who look like that in these days.”
“Very few,” answered Anstruthers. “That nice girl is Miss Georgie Esmond, and she is one of the few really nice girls who have the luck to take public fancy by storm, as they ought to. She has not been ‘out’ long, and she is considered a belle and a beauty. And yet I assure you, Mrs. Despard, that I have seen that girl playing with a troop of little brothers and sisters, as if she was enjoying herself, helping a snuffy old French governess to correct exercises, and bringing a light for the old colonel’s pipe, as if she had never seen a ball-room in her life.”
“Oh!” said Mrs. Despard, “then I suppose you have seen her in the bosom of her family,” a trifle slyly.
“I know them very well,” replied the young man, with a grave air. “I have known Georgie Esmond since she wore pinafores. My poor cousin, who died, has played blindman’s buff with us at Scarsbrook Park, when we were children, many a time. The fact is, I believe we are distant relations.”
“I congratulate you on the distance of the relationship,” said Mrs. Despard. “She is a fresh, bright, charming girl.”
“She is a good girl,” said Anstruthers. “Congratulate her on that, and congratulate her father, and her mother, and her brothers and sisters, and the snuffy old governess, whose life she tries to make less of a burden to her.”
It was at this moment that the carriage in which Lisbeth had driven away returned. It drove by the window, and drew up at the door, and Mrs. Despard saw her young friend’s face alter its expression when he caught sight of it, with its prancing bays and faultless accompaniments, and Lisbeth Crespigny leaning back upon the dove-colored cushions, with a book in her little dove-colored hand. She saw Mrs. Despard among the flowers, but did not see her companion; and being in an amiable humor, she gave her a smile and a nice little gesture of greeting. Her eyes looked like midnight in the sunshine, and with a marvel of a cream-colored rose in her hat, and in perfect toilet, she was like a bit of a picture, dark, and delicate, and fine; she struck Anstruthers in an instant, just as anything else artistic would have struck him, and held his attention.
“I wonder if she would come up,” Mrs. Despard said. “I wish she would. She ought to see this. It would suit her exactly.”