“Let us turn back, Charles—dearest Charles” murmured Perdita, in a faint and tremulous tone; and she wheeled him round, as it were, with extraordinary alacrity.
A load burst of laughter on the part of the officers met their ears; and Charles, uttering an ejaculation of rage, was about to relinquish his fair companion’s arm and rush back to demand an explanation, when Perdita said, “In the name of heaven, molest them not—I implore you!”
And she hurried him away.
“My God! Perdita,” he said, when they were at some distance from the spot where the officers had stopped short to gaze upon Perdita, and where their complete recognition of her had betrayed them into an act of rudeness which they almost immediately afterwards regretted—for they felt that they had no right to insult the young woman by laughing at her altered circumstances: “my God! Perdita,” said Charles, labouring under a painful state of excitement; “what means this conduct of those unmannerly fellows? and wherefore will you not permit me to chastise them?”
“Would you expose me to the ridicule of all the persons assembled on the Parade?” demanded Perdita, who had now recovered her presence of mind—at least sufficiently to feel the necessity of immediately allaying her lover’s excitement.
“But those officers insulted you—insulted you grossly, Perdita!” cried Charles, who did not, however, entertain the remotest suspicion prejudicial to the young woman, but merely felt deeply indignant at an insolence which he could not understand, and which was so completely unprovoked.
“They insulted us—they insulted you as well as myself, Charles,” answered Perdita, hastily: “it was because you were bending, as it were, over me while you spoke—because your head was approached so close to my ear—and because I was listening with such unconcealed delight to your tender words! They saw that we were lovers—that we felt as if we were alone even amidst the crowd of loungers——”
“Yes: it must have been as you say!” cried Charles, receiving Perdita’s ingenious explanation as natural and conclusive, and now absolutely wondering at his own stupidity in not penetrating the matter before.
“You may conceive,” resumed the artful girl, “how ashamed and bewildered I suddenly felt, when, on raising my eyes, I saw the two officers standing still only a dozen yards in advance, and gazing upon us in the rudest possible manner. I instantly understood the truth: women, dear Charles, are sometimes more sharp-sighted than your sex. It flashed to my mind that our manner had betrayed that we were lovers; and hence my emotions! And can you wonder, my beloved Charles, if I hurried you away from a scene where you incurred the chance of becoming involved in a quarrel with those fire-eaters?”
“In good truth, my Perdita,” said Hatfield, now smiling, “they seemed to me—if I might judge by the short glimpse I had of them—to be rather fitted for the drawing-room than to smell gunpowder.”