“I say, have you seen Humphrey hanging about or talking to Polly lately? I don’t want to think the girl artful; but she has been very quiet, and I hardly like it. Lloyd, do you hear what I say?”
There was a long-drawn breath for reply, and Mrs Lloyd went on making her plans—giving her husband the credit of being asleep.
But the latter was very wide awake, and he had seen something that night of which he did not wish to tell. For while Mrs Lloyd had been busy with the company that evening, there had come a soft tap on the housekeeper’s room window, whose effect was to make little Polly turn violently red in the face, begin to tremble, then, after listening at the door, steal out, little thinking that the butler had seen her go.
Of course it was very artful and very wrong, but it is an acknowledged fact that there is a certain magnetism in love; and, to go back to the simile before used, when the loadstone came what could the industrious little needle do?
The next morning, after breakfast, Mrs Lloyd called Polly to her.
“Found out at last,” thought poor Polly.
She went shivering up to her very stern-countenanced aunt, with the recollection of twenty sweet but stolen meetings on her conscience.
“Go and put on your white muslin dress and blue ribbons, Polly,” said her aunt.
“Are we going out, aunt?” faltered the girl.
“You are, my dear,” said Mrs Lloyd; “so put on your hat—the new one, mind.”