The lonely house

by Marie Belloc Lowndes

“He has very old-fashioned ideas,” said Lily a little awkwardly, “but I like him all the better for that.”

“So do I,” her companion’s voice altered, the irony died out of it. “Most nice Frenchmen have old-fashioned ideas—I mean about young ladies. I found that out during the war. But all the same—well, I often feel envious of M. Popeau, for he seems to be always doing things for you.” He turned round on the bench on which they were both sitting, and looked at her very earnestly. “I’m a lazy chap, but I’d like to—to be able to prove——”

Then he stopped dead, and Lily’s heart began to beat unaccountably.

What a pity it is sometimes that two human beings cannot see what is passing through each other’s minds and hearts. What a lot of trouble, pain—aye, and danger—their doing so would often save.

Angus Stuart was feeling exasperated with himself, and yet—and yet how could he take advantage of this unlooked-for opportunity? Deep in his heart he knew that he had fallen in love, practically at first sight, with Lily Fairfield, and that he was falling deeper and deeper into love each day. And yet, in a conventional sense, he hardly knew her, for they never could escape from M. Popeau. This was really the first time they had ever had a chance of a real talk together!

M. Popeau, well as he knew English, did not always express himself very happily. “Take advantage of her to-day, my friend,” was what he had said this very morning. But that was the very last thing he, Angus Stuart, would care to do with regard to any human being, least of all with a girl whom he was almost angry with himself to find he loved.

There had been a hint, too, about her having money. If there was anything in that, it also put him off. He was, as are so many young Scottish soldiers, “a penniless lad with a long pedigree.” Yet he didn’t want to marry what M. Popeau had called “a ’airess.” Still, deep in his heart he knew that all that really mattered to him was that he loved Lily Fairfield. During those long, dreary days at Milan he had thought of her the whole time—of her and of nothing else.

Stuart realised that he loved everything about Lily—from every shining hair on her well-set head, down to the unpractical buckled shoes on her pretty little feet. He had supposed, in his simplicity, that when one fell in love the right words always came. But they did not come to him to-day, sitting there by her side in that solitary garden full of brilliant bloom and colour, with the marvellous blue sea spread out before and below them, as far as the eye could see.

There are men, many men, who are in love with love. They delight in falling in love; the fact that they fall out of love almost as easily as they fall into love makes no odds at all.

But Angus Stuart was not that sort of man. Love was still to him an unfamiliar, rather menacing shape. He was ashamed of the strength of his feeling for Lily Fairfield. Now, at this moment, he felt he would give years of his life to have the right to turn round, take her in his arms and kiss her. What madness was this that was working in his brain?