“Have you?”
He produced triumphantly the tiny handkerchief embroidered with a double “C” intertwined and encircled with a wreath. Lady Selina had presented a dainty dozen of these to Cicely on her seventeenth birthday, a præmium diligentiæ.
Cicely, faintly smiling, gazed at the small square of cambric, and then at Wilverley’s flushed, eager face. And at the moment, incredible as it may seem to men, she felt, like Mrs. Roden, maternal. The prosperous magnate of nearly forty became a jolly boy. Somehow she guessed that in many things he would remain simple and boyish. He seemed to be enjoying himself immensely. He reminded her of Brian going in to bat on the village green, and quite sure that he was going to knock the bowling about.
He whispered:
“I’ve heartened myself up with a squint at this, many and many a time.”
As he spoke, he put it reverently to his lips and kissed it. Cicely was amazed. She had always imagined Wilverley, engrossed with his never-ending activities, reading dry treatises upon agriculture, poring over the blue tracings of plans, prodding fat bullocks, and so forth——
Two dimples appeared in her cheeks.
“How absurd you are!”
“Are you angry because I am absurd about you?”
He folded the hanky carefully and replaced it in his breast-pocket. Then he valiantly captured her hand, a notable effort for him. Cicely made no protest. An agreeable languor stole upon her. Somehow Wilverley’s firm clasp warmed her chilled sensibilities. She sighed. A midsummer’s sun, still high in the heavens, poured down his beams upon the rose-garden. Out of the more old-fashioned roses came a sweet, pervasive fragrance. From the shrubs and trees beyond Mon Plaisir floated the flutings of the warblers. Cicely was learned enough in Arcadian lore to distinguish their particular notes.