A Nest of Linnets

by Frank Frankfort Moore

Strolling to another part of the Rooms, he felt himself tapped on the shoulder. Looking round, he saw that he was beside a certain Mr. Bousfield—a young gentleman of property who had been paying great attention to Miss Linley.

“You see, she is not here—she has not the courage to come face to face with me,” said young Mr. Bousfield.

Dick looked at him from head to foot, and then with an exclamation ran for the nearest door, and made his way home without glancing to right or left, lest he should be confronted by some other men seeking to pour their grievances into his ear. He thought that he had exhausted the tale of the rejected lovers, but it seemed that when he had routed the main body, a company of the reserves had come up, and he did not know what strategy they might employ to force themselves upon him. He felt relieved when he found himself safe at home.

But to say the truth, he was greatly disappointed at not meeting Betsy face to face, when he felt sure of himself—when he felt sure that he would be able to offer her his congratulations without faltering. He had prepared himself for that meeting; and now he had begun to lose confidence in his self-possession, having had a proof of his weakness in the presence of Mrs. Abington. It was not satisfactory for him to reflect upon the ease with which that lady had extorted from him his confession that he was miserable because Betsy had promised to marry another man. Although he had begun talking to her in the same spirit that he had meant to adopt in regard to Betsy, yet she had only to utter a single sentence, suggesting that she knew his secret, and forthwith he had broken down, and, by confiding in her, had put himself on a level with the full band of plaintive suitors who had gone about boring him with the story of their disaster.

To be sure, Mrs. Abington had professed to stand in need of no confession from him. She had—if she was to be believed—posted down to Bath the moment she had heard that Betsy had given her promise to Mr. Long, in order to tell Dick that she sympathised with him.

And if Mrs. Abington, living in London, was aware of his secret, might it not be possible that it was known to numbers of people living in Bath, who had far more frequent opportunities than could possibly be available to her to become aware of the truth?

This question caused him a sleepless hour after he had gone to bed. He could not endure the thought of being pointed at—of being whispered at by busybodies as one of the rejected suitors. His vanity recoiled from the thought of the bare possibility of his being relegated to so ignoble a position. He made up his mind to go to Mrs. Abington the next day and beg of her to keep his secret.

But, strangely enough, he became conscious of a curious reluctance—it seemed a curious instinct of reluctance—to go to Mrs. Abington. The truth was that what she had said to him when talking unreservedly and sincerely had somewhat frightened him. He had not quite understood what she meant when she had reproached herself for being a fool, and it was because he did not understand her that he was—in a measure—afraid of her. The young animal is invariably afraid of what it does not understand. To do so is an elementary impulse of instinct. That is why a dog is cowed when it sees a ghost; ghosts are unusual—very unusual; and that is why men who have not gone through a course of astronomy are terrified at the appearance of a comet.

And the more that Dick Sheridan tried to arrive at an understanding of what the fascinating actress had said to him, the more frightened he became. She had spoken with convincing sincerity. That was just where the element of the unusual appeared, giving rise to his fears.

And then there was that little twinge—was it of jealousy?—which he had felt on looking up the Room and seeing her lavishing her attention upon Tom Linley.